The sound of breaking went on for a long time in the dark.
Not glass. Not walls. Something finer, like countless threads snapping at once. It seeped from the ceiling, burrowed through the gaps between floor tiles, and poured from behind the doors on either side of the corridor. In Fang Runing's arms, He Yuanqiu trembled faintly, as though the sound had passed through her body.
Fang Runing tightened her embrace.
Red light burst from where their skin touched, first in a few slender strands, then more and more densely. Like vines growing out of wounds, it wound around them. Fang Runing saw a red thread on He Yuanqiu's wrist too, the same color and origin as her own, only fainter—so faint it might break at any moment. The instant the threads touched in the air, she heard He Yuanqiu's voice.
It didn't come from her mouth. It traveled through the thread, as though someone had folded sound into a narrow beam and injected it straight from Fang Runing's pulse into her brain.
“Go. Through the third door behind you. Quickly.”
Fang Runing didn't hesitate. Holding He Yuanqiu, she turned and rushed toward the third door behind them. Like all the others, it was sheathed in tin, its handle thick with rust. She struck it with her shoulder. Astonishingly, it wasn't locked. It sprang inward, and she tumbled through with the weight in her arms.
The door closed behind her, shutting out the birthing beds' metallic scraping and the death-knell pounding.
Fang Runing knelt on the floor, gulping air. He Yuanqiu still hadn't woken, but her body had stopped growing lighter. Fang Runing looked down. The red thread still glowed, hanging between their wrists like one blood vessel joined to another.
The room was dark. But unlike the corridor's thick, warm darkness, this was dry and cool, like air in a basement. Gently, she set He Yuanqiu against the wall and settled her upright before freeing her hands to feel around. The walls were rough cement, as was the floor. Her fingertips found a row of cold metal pipes, perhaps a radiator. This must be a storeroom. Small, smelling of old dust, but not of blood.
That meant those things couldn't follow them in. For now.
“Are you still there?” she asked the air, keeping her voice low.
Nobody answered. But the red thread on her wrist twitched, as though someone had plucked it at the other end. Looking down, Fang Runing saw that its glow had weakened but steadied, a kind of acknowledgment. She closed her eyes and rested the back of her head against the wall. Only now did her whole body begin to shake.
Not from fear. From exhaustion.
Since entering this place, she hadn't eaten a grain of rice or drunk a drop of water. Wounds covered her body. The deepest lay beneath her left ribs, grinding like a blunt knife between the bones whenever she breathed. She didn't know how long an ordinary person could last, but she knew she couldn't fall. Not yet.
“He Yuanqiu,” she called softly. The woman beside her didn't respond. Her breathing was almost inaudible.
She called again. He Yuanqiu's lashes stirred as though she'd heard her in a dream. Her eyes stayed closed, but her lips moved, releasing an indistinct syllable.
Fang Runing leaned close and heard one word.
“Run.”
It wasn't meant for her. He Yuanqiu was still trapped in a dream Fang Runing couldn't enter, telling someone there to run. Fang Runing straightened her head and let it rest on her shoulder, then closed her eyes. Hungry and exhausted as she was, her mind was terrifyingly clear—clear enough to begin racing.
She sorted what she knew. First: He Yuanqiu was in this building, stripped of her memories, her body so light it might disperse at any moment. Second: He Yuanxia had said anyone who couldn't remember must not leave that room. Yet Fang Runing had carried He Yuanqiu out, and she hadn't immediately vanished. Something was sustaining her existence. The red thread. Third: the thread could carry information. He Yuanqiu's remaining consciousness could speak to her through it. That meant this approach could work: using the thread as an anchor to draw her consciousness out of the room bit by bit. Fourth: the nurses had surrounded the room, so the system was trying to prevent Fang Runing from taking her away. But if she found a way to restore He Yuanqiu's memories, a path to clearing the stage would open.
What did He Yuanqiu need to remember?
Fang Runing opened her eyes and looked down. The woman's face was unusually peaceful in the dark, as though she were merely asleep. He Yuanxia's words in the courtyard came back to her: “Her little sister went missing. I helped hide her. I hid her little sister on the third floor.”
But the truth in Volume Four—no. This wasn't the time. Fang Runing forced her attention back to the present. The girl had said, “The medical records are fake,” and, “My sister came to see her little sister, not to have a baby.” If that was true, He Yuanqiu's connection to this building went beyond being linked into it by the system. She had been here in reality, six years ago. Perhaps she really had come to this hospital to find someone.
Her little sister.
But He Yuanqiu had never mentioned having one. Fang Runing had known her for three years. They weren't close, but she knew the outlines of her life. He Yuanqiu was an only child. Her parents had divorced early, and after remarrying, her mother had grown distant. She always came and went alone. She had plenty of friends, but few she truly confided in. Never once had she mentioned a sister.
Suddenly, Fang Runing remembered a detail. In her second year at university, He Yuanqiu had repeatedly taken leave, missing almost a month of classes. When she returned, she had lost weight, but said nothing. She attended class, led the debate team, and smiled as usual. When asked where she'd been, she said there had been family matters. Not long afterward came the campus attack.
That month matched the date of her appearance here.
Six years ago. July fourteenth.
Fang Runing tightened her grip on He Yuanqiu's cold hand.
“You didn't come here to give birth that year,” she said quietly, almost to herself, almost to whoever lay at the other end of the thread. “You came looking for someone. Your little sister.”
The red thread jolted violently. He Yuanqiu's chest heaved as though something had struck her. Her eyes remained closed, but a tear slid from one corner, slow and bright, tracing a fleeting gleam through the darkness.
Watching it, Fang Runing suddenly felt cold. Not the cold of fear. A cold seeping from deep in memory, like being submerged in well water.
She wiped He Yuanqiu's face with featherlight fingers, as though touching porcelain that might shatter.
“I've come for you,” she said. “That life you owe me—I haven't finished making you repay it.”
In the darkness, the red thread brightened a little, as though someone had heard.
Then the metallic sound returned. This time it came from overhead: steel pipes scraping cement, again and again, as though something were dragging a birthing bed through the ceiling above the storeroom. Fang Runing sheltered He Yuanqiu in her arms and looked up. She could see nothing. Only the sound came closer, growing heavier.
Creak.
A fine crack suddenly split the cement overhead. Dust trickled down. Protecting He Yuanqiu's head, Fang Runing dragged her closer to the wall. The sound stopped directly above them for two or three seconds, then continued, vanishing toward the doorway. Like a patrol. Like something that knew they were there but didn't yet want to come in.
Fang Runing held her breath until the sound had completely faded. Only then did she slowly loosen her embrace. At some point, He Yuanqiu had caught the hem of her clothes, gripping so hard her knuckles whitened, like a drowning person clutching the only piece of driftwood. Fang Runing looked at that hand for a long while.
“Are you awake?” she whispered.
He Yuanqiu neither opened her eyes nor answered. But her body was no longer so rigid, and her breathing had deepened, as though she were struggling toward the surface of a very deep dream.
Fang Runing didn't hurry her.
Leaning against the wall, she held He Yuanqiu loosely and listened to the thing overhead recede. Her own heartbeat and He Yuanqiu's breathing slowly overlapped. The storeroom was small, old, and dark, yet it was the only place she'd entered in the game that didn't smell of blood. If she ignored the monsters outside and the rules that could collapse at any moment, it was almost peaceful.
Peaceful enough to pretend this was only a dream.
But dreams always ended.
A moment later, He Yuanqiu's breath suddenly caught. Fang Runing looked down and saw her lashes flutter violently, as though something had seized her in a nightmare. Then she heard a few whispered words.
“Don't open the door. It's outside.”
Slowly, Fang Runing turned toward the door.
Beneath it, a strip of white skirt had appeared without her noticing.
It was dusty, its edge worn ragged. The hem stirred faintly, as though a breeze were slipping through the gap. Then a very soft, very thin voice, touched with a smile, drifted in from outside.
“Found you.”