Fang Runing descended three floors before she truly understood what Fang Ru'an had meant by “there are more of them now.”
The stairwell looked the same, but something stood on every landing: figures in faded nurse uniforms, heads bowed beneath caps that hid their faces, like rows of abandoned dolls.
Keeping close to the handrail, Fang Runing moved lightly and breathed as shallowly as possible. Passing one, she saw that every fingernail had been peeled back, exposing blackened nail beds. Liquid dripped steadily from its fingertips.
The things did not move.
Yet every nurse on every landing performed the same action. With the right hand, each gently rubbed the rail of a birthing bed—up and down, up and down. The polished metal gave a tiny squeak, as though counting out a rhythm for something.
Fang Runing did not stop.
The lower she went, the heavier the air became. Thick blood, disinfectant, and something old enough to have turned bitter welled up from the first floor, as if the building were rotting from its foundations. Her knees and elbows still burned, but pain kept her alert. The hemostatic forceps had warmed in her right hand, and sweat slicked the web of her thumb.
As she walked, she calculated.
Was there an exit in the first-floor maternity ward? When she arrived, the door marked MATERNITY WARD had opened from the corridor. The system had placed her directly inside; she had seen neither a lobby nor a way outside. But the building had windows, a courtyard, and a flagpole. Dawn had reached the rooftop. The instance had boundaries, and somewhere within them there had to be a path out.
He Yuanqiu was in the second-floor ward, surrounded by nurses. The archive-room door was broken, but the duct remained. Fang Runing could retrace her route and drop through the vent. The problem was that black liquid had flooded the room below, and the system had warned that isolation was failing. She had no idea whether the room still occupied the same place.
He Yuanqiu's words repeated in her mind: “Don't come down. Go up. To the rooftop.”
Go up. The rooftop. But the roof was the highest point and led nowhere—unless it was a hidden exit, accessible only after clearing the instance. If so, Fang Runing first had to retrieve He Yuanqiu and then return to the roof.
Down first, then up. Find the person, then find the way.
Good. Her direction was right.
When her foot reached the last stair, the first-floor corridor appeared. A few hours earlier it had been empty except for the mirror and deathly lights. Now something covered the floor.
Water.
No—not water. The black liquid seeping from the cracks upstairs had spread into a shallow layer over the entire corridor, an oil-dark film reflecting the flickering tubes overhead. Its surface was perfectly still, yet it was warm. The instant Fang Runing stepped into it, heat climbed through her sole like the body temperature of some living creature.
She had no shoes to remove. Barefoot, she waded until the fluid covered her insteps. It clung so thickly that every step felt as if invisible hands were tugging at her ankles.
Fang Runing moved slowly but steadily, refusing to fight the pull and keeping her own rhythm. The maternity-room door stood open, darkness filling the space beyond. The crooked-neck nurse was gone.
She glanced toward the full-length mirror. Her reflection had vanished. In its place, words had been traced in black water through mist on the inside of the glass:
“She doesn't have much time left.”
Fang Runing's heart clenched. Not fear, but something harder and sharper drove up from the bottom of her chest and tightened her throat.
She quickened her pace. Black liquid splashed her calves. Drops struck the back of her hand, burning hot.
The archive-room door was broken as expected, its hinges snapped and the panel hanging sideways, leaving barely enough room to squeeze through. Inside, Fang Runing climbed the filing cabinet, hooked her fingers over the maintenance hatch, and pulled herself into the dark opening.
The air in the duct was worse than before. Mold mingled with a scorched smell, as though something had burned there. She crawled from memory toward the vent, but the damaged grille did not appear.
The duct had changed.
Her memory was not wrong. Space itself was shifting. Distances and angles changed. A passage that had once run straight now made impossible turns. Fang Runing stopped and looked back. Darkness had swallowed the route behind her.
There was no choice but forward.
At last she found a vent, but it was not the one she remembered. Its slats were intact, tightly closed, with no light coming through. She pried a gap open with the forceps and peered down.
Below was not a ward.
It was an operating room.
Surgical lamps burned above a table. A young woman lay upon it, her abdomen cut open, the organs inside motionless as specimens left too long in a jar. Two nurses stood on either side with their backs to Fang Runing, heads bent over their work. Blood coated their rubber gloves.
Fang Runing looked away and searched for the bed. There was none. No He Yuanqiu.
A sheet on the wall bore a schedule written in red ink:
Operation time: 1:15 a.m.
The baby had died at 12:15. Who died at 1:15?
The woman on the table suddenly convulsed. One arm lifted, then fell weakly over the edge, palm down. A stitched wound marked the inside of her wrist. Thick black thread crossed the blanched skin like an ugly centipede.
The two nurses slowly turned.
Both wore Fang Runing's face.
Two identical faces. Empty eyes.
One said, “You're late.”
The other continued, “You're always late.”
Fang Runing backed away, but the duct had narrowed. Her shoulder blades struck its walls. She fixed her gaze on the two faces below, forced her breathing steady, and asked, “Where is He Yuanqiu?”
Both faces smiled. Fang Runing knew that smile: Fang Ru'an's smile, beginning at the corners of the mouth, reaching the eyes last. But these smiles stopped halfway, wound-down mechanisms frozen in place.
One nurse said, “You entered the wrong room.”
Again. The baby had said it. Fang Ru'an had said it. Now these things said it too.
“Her ward is on the third floor,” said the other.
Fang Runing froze.
The third floor. Fang Ru'an had mentioned it: “You haven't even met the patients on the third floor.” Yet He Yuanqiu was on the second floor. The medical record said so. Fang Runing had seen her there with her own eyes.
Now these two claimed she was on the third.
The system was changing the rules. No—the building itself was changing. Its structure and truth had never stopped shifting. The closer Fang Runing came to He Yuanqiu, the less stable space became. The room flooded with black water had only been the first coordinate. Now it had moved.
If she kept chasing the old coordinate, she might descend somewhere far deeper, somewhere with no return.
But she had to chase it.
Ignoring the things below, she crawled onward. The duct made a sharp turn and abruptly sloped down. Her foot slipped. She slid helplessly, metal scraping her arms and back. She clenched her teeth to keep from crying out.
After more than ten seconds, the duct threw her out.
She instinctively curled and rolled to soften the impact. The ground beneath her was not tile or concrete, but damp earth scented with grass.
Fine, cold rain touched her face.
Fang Runing lifted her head.
She lay in an open courtyard—the hospital's front grounds. A flagpole stood ahead, white cloth snapping from it in the wind. Day had fully broken, but there was no sun. The sky was gray-white, as though covered by thick frosted glass. Dead vines climbed the hospital walls, and the iron gate was shut.
Fang Runing rose from the mud, covered in dirt and blood, hair tangled across her face. She tried to push it aside and realized she still gripped the forceps so tightly her fingers barely opened.
Then she saw someone.
A girl of eleven or twelve, wearing two braids and a faded blue dress, crouched with her back to Fang Runing beside a flower bed. She dug with a small trowel. No flowers remained, only dry stems. With careful concentration, she scooped the earth one stroke at a time and stacked it neatly beside her.
Fang Runing did not approach.
Too many things in this instance were wrong, but this girl felt different—not because she was less frightening, but because she was too normal. In this place, normality itself was glaring, like a figure cut from an old photograph and pasted into the wrong album.
Without turning, the girl spoke.
“Are you looking for your friend?”
Her voice was crisp and clean, like air after rain.
Fang Runing did not answer.
The girl kept digging. “She came looking for me once, right here in this courtyard. She said her little sister was missing and asked whether I'd seen her. I said no. Then she cried.”
The trowel paused.
“She looked so pretty when she cried. So I lied to her. I hid her little sister.”
Fang Runing's fingers tightened.
“What's your name?”
The girl turned. Her face was small and pointed, her eyes enormous, black pupils filling most of them like twin abysses. Her sweet smile sent cold down Fang Runing's back.
“I'm He Yuanxia,” she said. “Has He Yuanqiu never mentioned me?”
Fang Runing's heart sank.
He Yuanqiu had never mentioned her. The chart said NO FAMILY—no signature, no relative accompanying her. She had entered the hospital alone, entered the maternity room alone, and faced that operation alone.
Yet this girl called her “older sister.”
Something was wrong. He Yuanqiu had been twenty when she was supposedly pregnant. If this child was her younger sister, she would have been six then. Six years later she would be twelve.
The ages fit. But He Yuanqiu had never spoken of her.
A gust scattered mud and grass. The girl stood, brushed dirt from her dress, and let the trowel hang beside her leg.
She walked toward Fang Runing one step at a time, stopping three paces away. Those eyes were so large they seemed ready to draw Fang Runing inside.
“What are you to my sister?”
Fang Runing almost answered, “She saved my life,” but swallowed it. The words were not a question in the girl's mouth. They were a test. In an instance, truth and lies could be equally dangerous.
“She's my senior from university.”
“Only your senior?” The girl tilted her head. “Then how did you find this place? Only people who are about to die can come here. You're dying too, aren't you?”
Fang Runing did not answer.
Beyond the iron gate, she noticed a road that had not existed when she arrived. It stretched into the morning fog. The gate was unlocked, and a sign wedged into its opening read:
WARD THREE.
“Do you want to know what I hid?” He Yuanxia came closer and rose on tiptoe as if sharing a secret. Her breath was cold and smelled of earth and rain. “I hid her little sister on the third floor. Come upstairs and I'll tell you.”
Fang Runing stared into her eyes. “Her sister?”
“Yes.” He Yuanxia smiled again, delighted now, her entire face smiling though no light entered the crescents of her eyes. “You entered the wrong room. My sister came to see her little sister, not to give birth. That chart lied to you. All of it was a lie.”
Fang Runing's thoughts raced.
If the chart was false, was the system log false too? It claimed He Yuanqiu had been connected, with Fang Runing as the bound subject, a mirror generated, consciousness synchronized at ninety-seven percent. If all of that was a lie, then what was true? If only part was true, which part?
He Yuanqiu had said, “Don't come down. Go up.”
Fang Ru'an had said there were patients on the third floor.
He Yuanxia said the little sister was on the third floor.
Every direction pointed to the same place.
Beneath the roof. Above the second floor.
Fang Runing had just come down from above. She had visited the rooftop but never noticed the third-floor door. She had been so certain He Yuanqiu was on the second floor that her objective blinded her to every other possibility.
She had deceived herself.
Fang Ru'an had said, “I'm the other you. I know what you're thinking.”
If she knew, then the system knew. And with that knowledge, the system could lead Fang Runing anywhere.
Fang Runing closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with wet soil and rain.
The red thread around her wrist no longer burned. It was gently, steadily warm, like someone holding her hand.
“Lead the way,” Fang Runing said, opening her eyes.
The girl spun around happily and ran toward the hospital. Her footsteps were nearly silent, her braids bouncing behind her. At the entrance, she stopped and beckoned.
“Hurry. She can't wait much longer.”
Fang Runing started forward. Her feet sank into wet earth, leaving deep prints with every step. Behind her, they formed a straight line from the center of the courtyard to the hospital door.
She did not look back.
The open entrance swallowed the girl in blue.
Then it swallowed Fang Runing.
Darkness closed again.
The red thread flashed softly in the dark, like a tiny lamp lit deep beneath black water, telling her the path had not ended yet.
Fang Runing walked toward the light.