The flashbang was a wall of white noise that bought us exactly four seconds.
Lu Sheng moved through the grate before the smoke cleared. I heard the muffled thuds of three bodies hitting the gravel no gunshots, just the clinical efficiency of a man who knew exactly where to strike. By the time I scrambled out of the tunnel, he was already dragging the last man into the shadows.
He didn't look at me. He was breathing in shallow, jagged hitches, his hand pressed firmly against his side.
"The car," he rasped, nodding toward a nondescript SUV hidden fifty yards away. "Drive."
"I don't have a license."
"Then today is your first lesson. Move."
I took the wheel. The H City skyline was a jagged silhouette of dead towers. I had done that. As we pulled onto the main highway, the tablet on the dash flickered with a private feed from the Qin Group's security.
[ANOMALY DETECTED: SUBSTATION 04. PATTERN RECOGNIZED: 'ZERO'.]
"They know," I whispered. My hands were steady on the wheel. I hadn't masked the metadata fingerprint this time. I needed a third player on the board. "They recognized my signature."
Lu Sheng leaned his head back, eyes closed. "They were always going to find it. The goal was to make the cost of finding us too high."
"And now?"
"Now we go where they can't fire a thermal charge without starting a war."
We pulled into the underground valet of the Grand Hyatt. The lobby was a palace of glass, vibrant with the low, industrial hum of generators that made the dead silence of the surrounding city feel even heavier. Lu Sheng handed me a black credit card and a fake passport.
"Check us in. Suite 402. Use the 'Chen' alias."
"You're coming in like that?" I looked at his shirt. It was ruined.
"Service entrance. Five minutes to get to the room, Lin Xiao. If you're not there, I'm locking the floor."
I walked into the lobby. I was a nineteen-year-old in a dirt-stained hoodie, carrying a billion dollars in a backpack. The air conditioning was freezing. I checked in, my hands only shaking once the elevator doors closed.
When I reached the suite, Lu Sheng was already there. He had stripped off his shirt and was sitting on the edge of the bed, stitching his own side with a needle and thread from a hotel vanity kit. His movements were slow, his left arm pinned to his side to keep the wound from tearing further. He was functional, but he was no longer fast.
"The Qin Group isn't the only one watching," I said, standing by the window. I looked at the black sedan with government plates idling near the entrance. "That car followed us from the highway. I didn't bother masking the route."
Lu Sheng stopped the needle. He looked at me, a flicker of calculation in his eyes that I hadn't seen before.
"It's not the Qin Group," he said, his voice dropping. "It's the Ministry."
I felt the leverage shift. I wasn't just his asset anymore. I had invited the State to the table.
"They aren't here for you, Lu Sheng," I said, my voice gaining a sharp, cold edge. "They're here for the money. And I'm the only one who can move it."
I sat at the mahogany desk and opened my laptop. I didn't ask for permission.
"You wanted a better deal? You just got one. But from now on, I'm the one deciding what it will cost."
Lu Sheng watched me from the bed, blood dripping onto the white hotel sheets. He didn't reach for his gun. He couldn't. Not with a stitched-up side and a room surrounded by federal eyes. He just watched, realizing that the cage had changed and I was the one holding the door open.