Runing, Put Me Down.

He Yuanxia didn't move.

She crouched on the edge of the ledge, the wind snapping her blue dress like a small flag. She looked at Fang Runing, and in those black eyes something was shaking violently. Not light, not tears—something closer to instinct, the tremor of a dying little beast hearing "I won't hurt you" for the first time.

Her mouth opened and moved several times, but no sound came out. Fang Runing watched her shoulders begin to shake, very lightly, the way a child shakes before crying.

"You lied to me." She said it again. Quieter this time, almost ground to dust by the wind.

Fang Runing didn't answer. She looked down at He Yuanqiu in her arms, then unwound a short length of the red thread from her wrist and held it out to He Yuanxia. "Touch it."

He Yuanxia hesitated, then reached out. Her fingertips were small, dirt packed under her nails. She brushed the red thread, very lightly.

The thread didn't reject her. Like a drop falling into a lake, ripples spread across its surface, red light blooming from her fingertip and climbing her pale thin wrist, as if someone had taken her hand.

He Yuanxia's eyes flew wide; her pupils contracted in the red glow. She heard it. She could hear it. The thread connected Fang Runing and He Yuanqiu—but He Yuanqiu's consciousness had been torn apart for years, and what flowed through the thread was everything of hers that remained. Like a cracked pipe: from the far end surged all of He Yuanqiu's deepest, most primal feeling.

A name. Repeating, over and over, like a heartbeat that had never once stopped.

Yuanxia.

He Yuanxia screamed. Not in pain—a sound like being scalded, struck, yanked up from somewhere very deep. Her whole body jerked back; loose pebbles skittered from under her feet, and she tilted.

Fang Runing's hand shot out and caught her wrist. He Yuanxia hung in midair, her small body swaying in the wind. She tipped her face up to look at Fang Runing, and the shell in her black eyes broke apart completely, revealing the true face underneath—a child's face. It overlapped with a memory: a dripping corridor, a vanishing afternoon, a terrified little girl hugging herself and saying, "Jiejie, run."

Fang Runing hauled her up. He Yuanxia crashed into her arms, her forehead thudding against her shoulder blade, hands clutching wildly at her clothes, trying to bury herself inside them. With one arm Fang Runing held He Yuanqiu; with the other she pressed a hand to the back of He Yuanxia's head. She said nothing. The wind was fierce, but the three of them, pressed together, found a little warmth.

"She remembers you." Fang Runing's voice was very soft against He Yuanxia's hair. "She's just forgotten how to say it out loud."

He Yuanxia didn't lift her head. Fang Runing felt the front of her jacket go wet.

At that moment, He Yuanqiu suddenly shuddered. Fang Runing looked down: her lashes were fluttering fast, as if trapped in some picture she couldn't escape. He Yuanxia's head snapped up too, her face streaked with tears, staring fixedly at He Yuanqiu's face. She reached out small hands and cupped her sister's cheeks, calling in the lightest of voices: "Sis."

He Yuanqiu's lips moved, but no sound came.

"Sis, I'm here." He Yuanxia's voice trembled in the wind. "I didn't leave. I didn't go anywhere. I waited for you until dark fell, so many times."

He Yuanqiu still didn't wake, but her eyelids were rolling hard, her eyes darting beneath them, searching for the source of the voice. Fang Runing felt the red thread on her wrist turn scalding—so hot she nearly let go. She didn't. Instead she pulled both sisters into her arms, like someone clutching a rope about to snap.

Red light blazed. The whole ledge lit up; three shadows stretched across the gray-white wall.

He Yuanqiu's eyes opened suddenly.

Her gaze was unfocused, drifting—but her lips were moving, as if reciting a word carved into bone. Fang Runing leaned close to listen.

"Run." He Yuanqiu was saying, her voice like bubbles rising from underwater. "Take Yuanxia and run."

He Yuanxia heard. Her tears surged harder, but her expression changed; she stopped shaking. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, twisted free of Fang Runing's arms, and turned to face the sealed window. Both hands closed around two iron bars, and she wrenched them apart with all her strength.

The bars didn't move.

He Yuanxia bit her lower lip, her cheeks ballooning, her whole face flushing red with effort. Fang Runing saw smoke rising where her palms met the iron, like flesh searing. "Move!" she shouted.

He Yuanxia didn't seem to hear. Dark red liquid seeped from her fingers, and where it dripped onto the bars, the iron flushed red, then softened, melting like something touched by tremendous heat. Fang Runing stopped talking and reached over to help—hoisted He Yuanqiu back onto her back—and hammered the softened bar with the hemostatic forceps. Once. Twice. Three times. The bar bent and broke; a flash of dark-red light crossed the fracture.

He Yuanxia tore away the last bar, and the window gaped open. She turned to Fang Runing, her face streaked with tears, her eyes frighteningly bright.

"Inside." she said. "The third floor is mine. They can't come in."

Fang Runing shifted He Yuanqiu higher on her back and climbed over the sill, dropping into the room. He Yuanxia followed, landing lightly. She ran ahead, weaving between rows of empty cribs toward the far end of the room. Fang Runing followed, noticing the wooden name plaques on the cribs going dark one after another, like some seal failing.

"This used to be their warehouse." He Yuanxia said as she walked, her voice echoing through the empty room. "Where they kept the children. I lived here a long time. They gave every child a new name and stuck it on the headboard. Then the children disappeared, one by one. And at the end, I went too. But I didn't leave. I stayed right here, waiting for my sister to come."

Fang Runing followed her to the far end of the room. There stood a very small bed, older than the rest, its little wooden plaque split in two—but the writing on it was perfectly clear: Yuanxia.

He Yuanxia walked to the bed, turned, and pointed beneath it. "There's a passage down there. It leads into the hollow between floors by the stairwell. From there you can get down to the first floor. The courtyard has a back door. Only I know about it."

Fang Runing crouched and lifted the bed board. Beneath it was a narrow hidden crawlway, barely wide enough for a grown person, breathing out a gust of cold stale air. She glanced at He Yuanxia. "Why didn't you leave before?"

"Couldn't." He Yuanxia said quietly. "I tried. Every time I got near the door, my body started to come apart, like it was dissolving. They kept me inside this building. Without them, I can't go anywhere."

Fang Runing was silent for a second. Then she reached out and tied the end of the red thread around He Yuanxia's wrist. He Yuanxia looked down at the glowing knot, then up at her. Fang Runing said, "I'll carry you. Let's try."

He Yuanxia sniffed hard and nodded vigorously.

Fang Runing lowered He Yuanqiu into the crawlway first, propping her against the earthen wall just inside the exit, then came back for He Yuanxia and helped her down. She went last, sliding the bed board back into place. Darkness swallowed everything again; only the red thread glowed between their three wrists, like a river of light.

They crawled forward through the impossibly narrow passage. Fang Runing's knees and palms went numb; He Yuanqiu, on her back, moaned softly now and then in her coma. He Yuanxia led the way, crawling fast, as if she could see the road in the dark. Fang Runing followed that small blue shadow with a single thought: almost there. Almost to the first floor. Almost out.

She didn't know what they would face outside, or what clearing this instance actually required. But He Yuanqiu's breath was warm and slow against the back of her neck, and He Yuanxia was just ahead, the light on her wrist blinking with every movement. That was enough to keep her crawling.

A draft came from ahead. He Yuanxia stopped. "Here."

Fang Runing crawled out and found herself between a wall and a dead flower bed. The courtyard was just as before: gray-white sky, withered flower beds, the sealed iron gate. But this time there were many more people in it.

All of them women. Hospital pajamas, standing in the yard, motionless. Their faces were all blurred, like photographs soaked in water. A rough count—at least dozens, packed dense, all facing the same direction: the main gate.

He Yuanxia tugged Fang Runing's hem and whispered, "They're the mothers who can't leave."

Fang Runing said nothing. She looked at the women—at their blurred faces and their identical, far-gazing postures. They seemed to be waiting for someone. Waiting for a child, a sister, a daughter who would never come back. Or simply waiting for an answer: why didn't you give my baby back that day.

He Yuanqiu stirred on her back, lifting her head slowly, her voice hoarse and lucid:

"Runing, put me down."

It was the first time she had called Fang Runing by her name—in the voice she'd had while alive.