Li An didn't breathe.
The child's words "You're late. We've been waiting",hung in the air like smoke, refusing to fade.
She looked human. Mostly. But something in her eyes was wrong, too still, too knowing. Veins darkened her throat looks like roots pressing from the inside, and when she blinked, it was slow and deliberate like someone mimicking the idea of a child rather than being one.
"Who are you?" Li An asked, barely above a whisper.
The girl just turned and walked into the darkened corridor beyond the tanks.
Qiao grabbed Li An's arm "Don't."
But Li An had already started moving.
Every step echoed in the chamber, heavy with tension,the corridor narrowed as they walked lined with flickering lights and peeling metal walls,somewhere below the hum of the tower deepened into something that sounded almost alive like breathing in slow, sick rhythms.
They reached a small chamber at the end of the hall no glowing screens, no sleek tech just a room carved from the earth, old concrete walls stained with water and rust.
In the middle was a chair.
Straps dangled from the arms,dried blood in one of the floor corner, Nearby a pile of belongings child-sized shoes, a journal with pages torn out, a broken watch.
The child stopped near the chair and turned to Li An.
"They brought you here before," she said.
"I don't remember," Li An replied.
"You're not supposed to."
Qiao stepped back"This is bad this place, her, none of this should exist anymore, it's like a leftover nightmare."
The girl sat on the floor, knees pulled to her chest, staring at nothing.
"They called us Echoes," she said voice thin,"Said we weren't supposed to feel but I remember the cold, i remember the first scream after they put the stuff in me i remember watching you… when you came in and didn't cry,You didn't even fight."
Li An swallowed, her chest ached with something deep and terrible, like mourning something she never knew she lost.
"I don't know what they did to me," Li An said.
The child looked up and told her,"Then you're lucky."
A sound boomed above them distant, but violent not thunder, something heavier ,something falling.
Qiao cursed under her breath "We have to go now, whatever's happening up there, it's getting closer."
But the child didn't flinch she just pointed to the far wall, where a rusted door sat half-open "There's a way out," she said"But if you take it, you'll have to carry what you've forgotten all of it."
Li An stepped closer to the chair something about it called to her not in memory, but in feeling,Cold straps, Silent screams, Loneliness soaked into the walls.
She wasn't just part of something.
She was what it had started with.
Behind her Qiao muttered, "Li An, please,we don't need answers here ,we just need to live."but Li An didn't move.
The girl stood again, walking past her toward the exit, hair swaying like dust in a breeze.
"Not all of us made it out," she said softly "Some stayed here,some… became something else."
Li An finally tore her gaze from the chair and followed.
As they climbed, the air grew heavier, filled with smoke and the scent of ash through cracks in the passage above, light flickered firelight not sun,The world outside was burning.
And Li An didn't know what waited at the top.
But she knew something had followed her from this place, and it was never going to stop.
Not now.
Not after what she remembered.
They emerged through a jagged metal hatch that led up to the surface though it wasn't the surface they remembered.
The sky was stained grey, ash drifting sideways in a ghostly wind a dull red glow pulsed on the horizon. The old radio tower groaned in the distance, straining against its bolts as if the earth beneath it were exhaling its last breath.
The ground was littered with broken things: rusted bikes, cracked helmets, shards of glass and bone and further down the slope, smoke curled from the remnants of a barricade one Qiao recognized.
"That checkpoint," she said "The one by the canal they held the line for weeks…"
Li An didn't speak.
Her eyes were on something else on the road below, limping toward the ruins, came a slow-moving group four figures in gas masks and blood-slicked jackets one of them held a rifle.
The others… dragged chains.
Qiao raised her scope and cursed "Those aren't soldiers."
They were infected.
But not mindless.
They walked in rhythm, eyes unblinking beneath smeared visors. And each one wore a small blinking device near their temple like they were being guided.
The girl behind them whispered "It's spreading differently now they're not just sick they're listening."
"To what?" Qiao asked.
The girl looked at Li An. "To her."
Something in Li An broke then not pain, not rage Just the numb understanding that her freedom was never real.
Everything she had done since leaving Sanyu every movement, every choice had been a thread in a larger weave. Not fate. Not coincidence. Control.
She turned to Qiao voice hollow "We're not escaping this."
Qiao grabbed her shoulders "No. No, don't start that you're not some experiment, You're not them. You're Li An. And if they've been using you then maybe it's time you used them."
The girl stepped back, fading into the fog as if she knew her part was over.
"You're not the virus," she said. "But it remembers you and so do we."
Then she was gone.
The wind picked up a distant explosion shook the horizon, and the tower let out a low, metallic groan that felt like a warning.
Li An stared toward the infected coming up the road their eyes were empty,but one of them paused lifted its head.
And smiled.