Alarms. Screams. Gunfire.
Rui moved with the calm of someone used to violence. Not just surviving it—committing it. At one point, she ducked a baton swing, rolled forward, and stabbed a soldier in the thigh so precisely that the man screamed without dying. She didn't even blink.
"Did you learn that… before?" Chen Yu yelled as they ran.
"No," Rui answered. "I remembered."
They made it past the gate only after Li Wei cut down two of the guards with his hatchet and Chen Yu blew up a propane tank near the fence.
Rui didn't look back.
An hour later, in the woods, they stopped. Rui sat alone under a tree, arms wrapped around her knees.
Li Wei approached. "Tell me."
"I didn't lie," she said. "I just didn't know. Until now."
"About being Subject 0107?"
She nodded. "They called us the Ghost Batch. They wiped our memories after each round. We were kids, but we were fast, and we didn't ask questions. My sister was in the batch before mine. She didn't survive Phase Three."
Chen Yu exhaled. "What the hell kind of government builds child weapons and hides them in ski resorts?"
Rui didn't answer.
Instead, she pulled her shirt slightly down her back. There, between her shoulder blades, Li Wei saw the truth:
A barcode tattoo. Faded. Branded in.
And just beneath it, in ghostlike ink: GHOST-0107.
Rain fell in sheets, cold and sharp, soaking the soil until it sucked at their boots like a hungry mouth. The mountains of western Sichuan loomed ahead, a jagged black horizon choked in mist. They hadn't stopped moving for three days. No campfire. No sleep. No time.
The Ascendancy had their scent.
Li Wei led the way, silent as ever, his eyes flicking from shadow to shadow. His coat was tattered, its seams caked in mud and blood, but his grip on the hatchet never loosened. Behind him, Chen Yu trudged on, swearing under his breath as rain slipped down his collar.
Rui, barefoot now, didn't seem to feel the cold. Her hair stuck to her cheeks, her dress clinging to her thin frame, but she moved with the eerie grace of someone sleepwalking through a warzone. She hadn't spoken since the raid. Not since they'd burned the facility and fled under gunfire.
They didn't know where they were going. Just that they couldn't stop.
They found shelter under the remnants of an old wooden shrine clinging to the edge of a collapsed cliff road. Moss and ivy had overtaken the statues inside, and the stone foxes watching the entrance were chipped and blind. Chen Yu collapsed to the floor and began wringing out his sleeves.
"You know," he muttered, "for a villain, you're really bad at planning."
Li Wei didn't reply. He crouched by the entrance and watched the mist. Waiting. Listening.
Chen Yu glanced at Rui, who had curled into a corner, hugging her knees. Her eyes were unfocused, distant — not like someone resting, but like someone listening to a voice only she could hear.
"You alright, kid?" he asked gently.
Rui looked up. Her voice came soft, almost melodic. "Do you hear the numbers too?"
Chen Yu blinked. "Uh… no. What numbers?"
"Zero. One. Zero. Seven," she whispered. "That's me. That was me."
Li Wei finally turned. His eyes locked with hers. Cold. Curious.
"What did they do to you, Rui?" he asked.
She hesitated.
And then, her voice changed — colder, robotic, with an accent that wasn't hers. "Subject 0107. Ghost Batch. Genotype: Delta 3. Cognitive Override in progress."
A long silence followed.
Then Rui shook her head, confused and terrified. "I—I don't remember saying that," she whispered. "Why did I say that?"
Li Wei stood slowly and walked toward her. "Because it's in you. Buried."
Chen Yu laughed nervously. "Okay, no offense, but maybe now's a great time to ditch the walking horror movie before she rips our faces off in our sleep."
Rui didn't look up. She was humming again. A lullaby. Not Chinese. Not any language Li Wei recognized.
It made his stomach twist.
Days later.
They were deeper in the mountains now. Food was gone. One of Chen Yu's boots had split open, so he tied it with strips of torn blanket. The trees thinned into harsh stone ridges. The air was thin and cruel.
"We should go east," Chen Yu muttered one morning, crouching beside Li Wei. "There's a dam a few klicks out. Concrete, high ground, tight entrance. It's a fortress."
Li Wei shook his head. "Too exposed. They'll expect that."
"You want to keep running until she collapses?" Chen Yu pointed at Rui, who was crouched over a puddle, staring at her reflection. "She's not eating. She's not sleeping."
"She's remembering," Li Wei said.
"Yeah. Remembering how to kill people with her brain."
A sharp crack rang out — a twig snapping somewhere behind the rocks.
They froze.
Then Rui stood. "They're here."
Li Wei didn't ask how she knew.
The Ascendancy didn't use shambling undead.
They used living weapons.
Black suits. Silent boots. And pale masks with mirrored lenses.
Li Wei saw the glint of one moving through the trees like a ghost. No heartbeat. No heavy breath. Just a shape slipping through rain like death incarnate.
He grabbed Rui's hand. "Run."
Gunfire tore through the mist.
Chen Yu cursed and darted left. "Split up!"
Li Wei didn't let go of Rui. She wasn't trembling. She didn't even flinch as bullets punched into trees around them. She was focused — too focused — and her lips were moving, barely audible.
"Protocol awake. Priority command… Exfil Ghost Zero One."
"What did you say?" Li Wei hissed.
She didn't answer. She just ran faster.
They ducked into a collapsed tunnel once used by cargo trains. Darkness swallowed them. It reeked of rust and mold. Chen Yu found them ten minutes later, panting, bleeding from a graze on his thigh.
"Anyone got a plan?" he gasped.
Li Wei lit a small candle from his pocket. Just one. It flickered against the black.
"We can't outrun them forever," he said. "They know her."
"No kidding. You saw the way they didn't shoot her?" Chen Yu spat blood. "They're not here to kill her. They're here to collect her."
Rui spoke up then, eyes glassy in the candlelight. "I was theirs… before I was me."
"What is The Ascendancy?" Li Wei asked.
Rui shook her head. "They weren't always called that. Before the fall, they were just labs. Black sites. Places the government pretended didn't exist. I remember injections. Dreams. Screams in rooms where time didn't move."
She touched her head. "They said we were gifts to humanity. Weapons with memories. But I don't remember who I was before they named me."
Chen Yu looked ill.
Li Wei just nodded. "We won't let them take you."
Weeks passed.
They never stayed in one place for more than a day.
Li Wei sharpened his blades by moonlight.
Chen Yu learned how to rig tripwires and alarms.
Rui didn't speak much anymore. But her eyes were changing — growing colder. Calculating. A mimic of survival.
One night, they found a half-dead man crawling out of a collapsed building.
Chen Yu went to help him.
Li Wei grabbed his arm. "No."
"But—"
The man's stomach opened. Wires and black metal glinted beneath fake flesh.
Not a man.
A drone.
The explosion shook the hillside.
When the smoke cleared, Li Wei dragged Chen Yu out by the collar, coughing blood. Rui stood over them, eyes vacant.
"They're learning," she said quietly. "Each time, they adapt."
"Who's they?" Chen Yu wheezed.
"The ones who built me."
They reached the outer ruins of a long-dead city. Skyscrapers bent inwards like fingers clawing at the sky. Silence ruled here. No birds. No insects. Just wind through bones.
Li Wei turned to Rui.
"Tell us everything," he said.
Rui looked up. Her voice was calm now. Too calm.
"There were thirty of us. Ghost Batch. Children. Chosen because no one would miss us. They broke us and rebuilt us. Memory wiping. Brain training. Obedience layers. I wasn't the smartest. But I was the quietest. I always obeyed."
She touched the side of her head. "But something went wrong. I saw something. I felt… love. Or maybe it was guilt. I broke protocol. I ran."
"Where to?"
"I don't remember."
Li Wei leaned forward. "You're remembering more every day."
"I don't want to remember."
"You don't have a choice."
Rui's fingers twitched. Her nails had turned black from rot weeks ago.
"I think they put something in me," she whispered. "Something that still talks to them."
Chen Yu paled. "You mean like… a tracker?"
"No." Rui looked up. "A door."