CHAPTER SIXTEEN - The knock came at 2:17 a.m.
Not loud.
Not urgent.
Just three soft taps against the thin metal door.
Xinyue was awake before the sound finished echoing.
Her eyes opened in the dark, her breath already steady, her body still. Silence followed — the heavy kind that presses against your ears, that dares you to move.
No footsteps.
No voices.
Only the city humming beyond the window.
She did not reach for her laptop. She did not reach for the door. Instead, she counted — ten seconds, then twenty — listening for the subtle betrayals that people carried without knowing: shifting weight, fabric brushing skin, the faint tick of impatience.
Nothing.
Another knock came. Same rhythm. Same softness.
Controlled.
Deliberate.
She slid from the bed without a sound, crossed the narrow room, and pressed her eye to the peephole.
The hallway was empty.
Her pulse did not change.
The third knock came — not on the door.
On the wall.
Three taps.
From inside her own building.
Her spine tightened.
Someone was already past her first layer of security.
She backed away slowly, every instinct calculating distance, exits, angles. Her laptop sat closed on the table. Her bag was packed beneath the bed — a habit she never broke.
Then her phone vibrated.
A new message bloomed on the dark screen.
We're not here to hurt you.
We're here because you're already hurting us.
She exhaled through her nose.
A thin smile touched her lips — humorless.
"Finally," she whispered to the empty room.
Her fingers typed once.
Speak.
The reply came immediately.
Open your door.
She didn't.
Instead, she stepped closer to the wall and spoke softly, not raising her voice.
"You already broke in," she said. "You don't need permission."
Silence followed.
Then a voice — calm, female, close enough to feel through the thin concrete.
"We didn't break in," the voice said. "We followed you."
Xinyue's gaze hardened.
"Then you're bad at your job," she replied. "Because I'm still breathing."
A quiet laugh came from the other side.
"That's exactly why we're here."
The voice paused.
"You're disrupting contracts that keep very powerful people comfortable. You're doing it without knowing who you're hurting — and who you're protecting. That makes you dangerous."
"I don't protect anyone," Xinyue said flatly. "I protect myself."
"Not anymore," the voice answered. "Now you protect balance."
Xinyue leaned against the wall, eyes closing briefly.
"Say what you really want."
A pause.
Then:
"We want you to work for us. Quietly. Officially. Safely."
There it was.
Ownership.
The same offer, with a different mask.
She opened her eyes.
"And if I refuse?"
The woman's voice softened — not with kindness, but with certainty.
"Then we will keep coming. Not to arrest you. Not to kill you. Just to make your life… very difficult."
Xinyue smiled again — small, sharp, unafraid.
"You already do," she said. "And I'm still standing."
Silence stretched between the walls.
Then footsteps retreated — slow, unhurried, confident.
They knew where she was.
They knew what she could do.
And now they were done asking.
Xinyue stood in the dark long after they were gone, the city humming through the walls like a held breath.
The game had changed.
And she had just been formally invited into a war she never agreed to fight.