The video feed ended, but Li An kept staring, as if the screen might flicker back to life and offer her answers but it didn't.
Her apartment was dim, lit only by the pale gray glow of morning pushing through the windows. The radiator clicked faintly, but the chill was inside her now—settled beneath skin and bone. Something had shifted. Something had started.
She hadn't touched the balcony since. She didn't even draw the curtain.
Li An didn't sleep. She didn't even lie down.
The paper from under the door sat sealed in a ziplock bag, untouched on the edge of the kitchen counter. The words haunted her even without looking.
Subject 0491… looped speech… reflections…
That still figure in the lab coat just a single frame, frozen and blurred had etched itself into her memory. It hadn't been a hallucination. Not a glitch. It was real. Recorded.
And then it was wiped.
She'd checked the system logs. Her security feed had gone dark between 11:02 and 11:41 the previous day. A complete blackout. No malfunction. No power issue. It was a command override. Someone had been in her system and in her building.
And they'd left a message.
She pulled her knees to her chest on the couch, her tablet dim beside her. On the screen, the notepad app was still open. A single line circled:
7:35 A.M. — Collapse at Zhonghua Station.
Then below it, shakier handwriting:
"Virex. But they're calling it something else."
The name had come out of nowhere. Or maybe not nowhere just buried. A whisper she'd overheard at Sanyu months ago. A project under hush orders. Level Z clearance. No written trace. Only murmurs through locked doors and late-night comms between people who didn't sign their names.
She remembered thinking it sounded too clinical to be real.
Virex.
Now it felt too real to be clinical.
By the time the sun reached the tops of the eastern towers, she'd begun packing without realizing it. A scarf was flung over the chair. Her backup drive slipped into her canvas bag. The burner phone off for months was finally charged.
No plan. No checklist. Her body moved on its own, responding to a threat her brain hadn't fully accepted yet.
She had to disappear.
She glanced around her apartment once more to her favourite kettle, the books stacked on the windowsill, the plant that hadn't bloomed in months. Everything looked ordinary. Still. But it wasn't. She wasn't.
Outside, Nanjing carried on. Unbothered. But she could feel it now the hum beneath the surface. Like the city itself had started to stutter. Like something was watching.
She left through the fire escape. Avoided the front door. Merged with the crowd on Zhongshan Road. The weight of her coat was grounding. Familiar.
The city looked the same: mothers walking children, men smoking under overhangs, street vendors whistling to keep warm. But it all moved differently. Slightly too slow. Like a loop half a second behind real time.
She kept walking.
At the underpass where signal strength was weakest, her burner phone buzzed.
Unknown source. No name.
"Sector 6 is in containment. They're calling it infrastructure failure. You know better. Avoid transit.They're sampling people now. Blood, speech, eye movement.Virex doesn't behave like a virus anymore.It listens."
She froze under the concrete arch, heart pounding against her ribs. Cold air in her lungs.
Her fingers trembled as she typed:
Who are you? How do you know about Sanyu's involvement?
"Typing…" appeared.
Then vanished.
No response.
The message deleted itself before she could even take a screenshot.
A car rolled by above. Somewhere far off, sirens wailed. Fainter than before.
She walked faster now. Head low. Shoulders tight. Toward the ferry piers, where communication was even harder to trace.
Her phone buzzed again.
This time: a voice message.
Male. Low. Cautious. Something in the voice carried a weariness she recognized. Like someone who'd spent years holding back.
"If you're reading this, you're already on the watchlist.I used to work behind the glass at Facility C.Virex was never meant to spread.It was meant to trigger behavior.And now it's adapting.You're not alone. Not yet.Keep moving.I'll find you."
She replayed it.
Once again.
She didn't recognize the voice. But the way he spoke calm in chaos something about it steadied her.
Soldier. Researcher. Maybe both. Whoever he was, he didn't sound like Sanyu. He sounded like someone who'd seen it from the inside and had chosen to run too.
The wind off the river hit her sharp and cold as she neared the water. Waves slapped against the cement edge. The ferry station ahead looked deserted. Just a rusted sign and a flickering light.
She stuffed the burner deep into her coat and stepped forward.
Behind her, Nanjing moved like nothing was wrong.
But now she knew better.
Something was spreading.
And it was already listening.