Sector West looked like it had been built out of the corpses of everything it had killed.
The outer wall stretched five stories high—steel plating welded over concrete, covered in barbed wire and shrapnel glass. But it wasn't the construction that stopped me. It was the color.
Brown-red. Spattered, smeared, soaked.
Blood.
So much blood dried onto the walls it had turned the whole place into a mural of violence. Some of it was old. Some of it looked like it hadn't dried yet.
There were skulls, too.
Stripped clean and zip-tied to the upper fencing like decorations. Wind chimes. Warnings. Or maybe trophies. I didn't care.
The guards on the perimeter did exactly what I expected them to do when they spotted me.
Guns up. No warning.
"Down on your knees! Hands above your head!"
I didn't move.
A railgun trained itself on my chest. Two snipers flanked the tower points, scopes glinting in the smoke-gray light.
"I said down—"
I raised my hands slowly, palms up, and stepped forward until the laser targeting lines hit my throat.
A woman in a black uniform with a scar splitting her bottom lip came striding from the gate. Officer, maybe sub-commander. Her eyes flicked up and down my blood-crusted frame with disdain.
"Name. Unit. Affiliation."
"Jiang Shanshen," I said. "Former Eastern Command. Special recon."
Her lip curled. "They're all dead."
"I know."
She signaled. A red-eyed drone zipped down from the wall and buzzed a few centimeters from my neck. A tiny needle flicked out and jabbed beneath my ear.
It burned.
"Blood tag scan complete," the drone chirped. "Class A. Recovered Asset."
The soldiers hesitated.
The officer narrowed her eyes.
"Class A? That can't be right. Nobody from Eastern made it out—"
"I died five times," I said calmly. "Apparently that's enough."
The silence thickened.
Then one of the older guards, a man missing two fingers and most of his left ear, squinted at me.
"Wait… I know that name."
I said nothing.
"You're him," he muttered. "Ghost Unit. The one who burned the Kunming sector with his own team still inside."
"They were already dead," I said. "They just didn't know it yet."
More silence.
The woman stared at me like I'd just admitted to eating my own mother. Maybe I had, in another life.
Then she turned, barked a command, and the gates began to creak open.
The hinges screamed like something was trying to crawl out instead of let me in.
⸻
Inside was worse.
The air smelled like burnt oil, rot, and antiseptic. The roads were too clean. Too scraped. Blood had been pressure-washed into the gutters.
Everyone stared. I didn't look back.
A young soldier passed me on a bike and whispered to his friend:
"Is that really him? Ghost of Eastern?"
"Bullshit. He's dead."
"Tell that to the drone. His blood scanned clean."
"You think the rumors are true? That he can't die?"
"Shut up before he hears you."
I walked until the base swallowed me.
I didn't ask for directions.
Because I already knew where he'd be.
—————
There are moments when the world tries to be kind.
It never succeeds, but it tries.
I found him on the upper drill yard, black coat billowing like smoke behind him, boots slicing sharp against the concrete with every step. His posture hadn't changed—upright, blade-straight, shoulders drawn back like the world owed him something and he was collecting one inch at a time.
Li Qiyan.
Alive.
Commanding.
Breathing like he'd never died five times in my arms.
He was taller than I remembered. Or maybe I was just lower. The slope above the yard gave me cover—half-shielded behind a dismantled floodlight tower, shadows biting into the hollows of my neck. I crouched low. Watched.
He wore his uniform like it had been made for him alone. Black tactical fabric, reinforced chestplate, pale gloves that didn't quite hide the strength in his fingers. His voice cut through the air—low, composed, every word a command.
I didn't hear what he was saying.
All I heard was the sound of his last breath—from our fifth life—as he bled out across my lap in the ruins of the ice tunnel. His face pale. His lips moving with nothing but the word:
"Shanshen…"
Now that mouth was cold and expressionless, issuing orders with no memory of me.
And yet—
He turned.
The tilt of his head was subtle, almost instinctual. His eyes—dark and narrow—swept the yard once, then flicked up. Toward the floodlight tower. Toward me.
Our eyes met.
Just for a second.
No recognition. Not really. But a pause. A stillness. Like something ancient had stirred.
I dropped out of sight before he could speak. If he'd spoken my name, I would've broken.
⸻
I didn't return to the barracks they offered.
I took the old watchtower on the south end—abandoned, half-collapsed, filled with dust and rusted ammo crates. I set my cot against the wall, sharpened the edge of my stolen knife on a pipe, and lit one of Yao Cheng's half-broken cigarettes.
The stars had started to peek through the smog.
They looked different this time.
Like maybe the world was going to end slower.
⸻
Sometime deep in the night, I heard footsteps.
Not near me. Not in the tower.
But I knew the sound of his boots. The cadence was unmistakable.
Li Qiyan, walking the perimeter.
Not patrolling. Wandering.
Drawn.
He walked three circles around the tower. Didn't come in. Didn't knock.
Then silence.
I sat up until dawn, listening to nothing.
Meanwhile, inside Qiyan's private quarters…
He couldn't breathe.
The room was dark, cold—despite the powered heater humming near the wall. His hands were clenched so tight the gloves had torn at the palms.
Sweat slicked his skin.
His dream had felt too real.
"Shanshen…"
"Don't leave me."
"I can't die if you don't let me."
He sat on the edge of the bed, jaw tight.
The name echoed in his skull.
"Shanshen…"
He didn't know anyone by that name.
And yet it tasted like blood and ash on his tongue.