Eyes on Them
The city did not scream.
It recalculated.
And then it decided.
High above the damaged sector, layers of authority unfolded with cold efficiency. Emergency statutes slid into place, older than public law, written for moments when hesitation meant extinction. There was no debate, no moral review, no appeal process left to trigger.
Only classification.
GLOBAL RISK DESIGNATION: CONFIRMED
SUBJECTS: YIN LIE / QIN MIAN
THREAT LEVEL: EXISTENTIAL
RESPONSE AUTHORIZATION: UNRESTRICTED
The city did not call it execution.
It called it survival correction.
A Decision Without a Voice
The Director stood alone in the council chamber, hands resting lightly on the table, her expression calm in a way that unsettled everyone watching.
"They are no longer anomalies," she said.
"They are catalysts."
A voice from the secure channel hesitated. "Director… global authorization means cross-border enforcement. Shared intelligence. Independent actors."
"Yes," she replied. "That is the point."
She looked at the live feed one last time—at Yin Lie dragging himself upright, at Qin Mian barely conscious but still alive.
"If one system fails," the Director continued, "another must succeed."
With that, she turned away.
The order went live.
The World Receives the Signal
The alert did not spread like news.
It spread like infection.
In secure facilities far beyond the city's borders, red indicators pulsed quietly to life. No alarms. No announcements. Just a change in status that certain people had been waiting for their entire careers.
Veteran hunters paused mid-briefing.
Private contractors leaned back, reading the classification twice.
Government handlers frowned—not in fear, but calculation.
"Existential threat," someone murmured. "That's rare."
Another voice replied, calm and practiced. "That's money."
In a coastal city thousands of kilometers away, a man with scarred hands closed a secure terminal and stood slowly. He didn't smile. He didn't rush.
"So it finally happened," he said to no one. "They crossed the line."
He reached for his coat.
Qin Mian Wakes Into a New World
Qin Mian woke to pain.
Not the sharp kind.
The heavy kind.
Her chest burned with every breath, Anchor fragments pulsing erratically inside her like broken glass scraping against her nerves. She tried to move and cried out as agony tore through her spine.
"…Lie?" she whispered.
He was there.
Kneeling beside her, blood dried dark on his hands, his breathing uneven. His left arm hung useless at his side, but his right was steady as he held her, careful not to hurt her.
"You're awake," he said quietly.
Relief crossed his face for less than a second.
Then the alarms began.
No Recovery Window
The chamber walls lit up in harsh red projections.
Not containment.
Targeting.
Multiple vectors.
Multiple entry points.
And not just city hunters.
These signatures were different. Cleaner. More expensive.
Kai cursed under her breath.
"They escalated," she said. "This isn't city enforcement anymore."
Yin Lie forced himself to stand. His body protested immediately, ice crawling up his spine to brace damage that would never fully heal.
"They won't stop," he said.
Qin Mian felt it too—the pressure, the attention, the sense of being noticed from places far beyond this city.
"They're going to hurt people," she whispered.
"To get to us."
Yin Lie met her eyes.
"Yes."
The First World-Level Strike
The ceiling didn't collapse from inside.
It was punched through from orbit.
A precision strike tore through three layers of infrastructure, vaporizing part of the chamber wall in a blast of heat and force. The shockwave hurled them across the floor, alarms dying instantly as power cut out.
Yin Lie wrapped himself around Qin Mian without thinking.
Ice surged instinctively—not outward, but inward—hardening around them just enough to keep her alive.
They hit hard.
Above them, the city burned.
Escape Is Not a Plan
Kai dragged them to their feet.
"This way!" she shouted, already moving.
There was no extraction point.
No safe corridor.
No fallback.
Only movement.
They ran through collapsing tunnels as secondary strikes hit, the city carving itself open to erase them. Distant screams echoed through sealed sectors as civilian infrastructure failed under redirected force.
Qin Mian sobbed, tears cutting paths through the blood on her face.
"This is because of us," she said.
Yin Lie didn't deny it.
He just ran faster.
The World Closes In
Above ground, satellites realigned—not to track, but to share.
Targeting profiles.
Predicted movement patterns.
Partial threat assessments.
No single nation owned the hunt.
That was intentional.
If one failed, another would try.
If one hesitated, someone else wouldn't.
Qin Mian felt her Anchor stir weakly, fragments reacting to distant intent like nerves sensing pressure before pain.
"They're looking at me," she whispered. "Everywhere."
Yin Lie tightened his jaw.
"Then we don't give them time to aim."
Enemies of the World
They reached the outskirts just as the city sealed behind them, entire districts locking down to prevent pursuit spillover.
Sirens echoed far behind.
Drones swept the sky ahead.
Nowhere was safe.
Kai checked her weapon and looked at them both.
"From now on," she said grimly, "anywhere we go becomes a battlefield."
Yin Lie adjusted his grip on Qin Mian, ignoring the way his vision swam.
"Then we keep moving," he said.
"And we break whatever tries to stop us."
Qin Mian closed her eyes.
And nodded.
End of the Chapter
Behind them, the city recovered.
Ahead of them, the world prepared.
They were no longer fugitives.
No longer anomalies.
They were targets—marked by a system that had decided survival was more important than mercy.
And as the first global pursuit orders went live, one truth became impossible to deny:
They were alive.
But from this moment on—
everywhere they went,
someone would be paid to kill them.