The rain had already started when Lian stepped off the minibus.
Hong Kong at night always felt like it was holding its breath, but tonight the air felt tighter than usual. The streets of Kowloon were slick with neon reflections, red and blue bleeding across puddles like spilled paint. She pulled her hood lower and kept walking.
Kai’s voice came softly through her earpiece. “You’re late.”
“I’m three minutes early,” Lian said.
“Emotionally late.”
She almost smiled. Almost.
“Status,” she said.
“Doctor just left the private wing fifteen minutes ago,” Kai replied. His tone had that careful calm he used when he was thinking too fast. “But that’s not the interesting part.”
Lian slowed near the corner of the hospital block, eyes moving without turning her head. Security cameras. Two visible. One hidden above the pharmacy sign. Same pattern as before.
“What is the interesting part?”
Kai hesitated for half a second. That was enough to tighten something in her chest.
“He’s not logging the patients the normal way,” Kai said quietly. “I got into the hospital backend. There are gaps. Clean ones.”
Lian’s jaw set. “Missing files.”
“Yeah. And not random. Specific ward. Specific patients.”
She stopped under the awning of a closed bakery. Across the street, the private hospital rose in clean glass and white light, looking harmless. Respectable. Expensive.
Dangerous.
“Show me,” she said.
A moment later, her wrist display lit up. Patient IDs scrolled past, then froze on a filtered list.
Lian’s eyes narrowed.
“All of them post-op recovery,” she murmured.
“Exactly,” Kai said. “Minor procedures. Routine stuff. But the follow up data vanishes after forty eight hours.”
Rain tapped steadily against the pavement.
Lian felt that familiar cold settle into her bones. Not panic. Not fear. Just the quiet click of pieces beginning to line up.
“Any deaths?” she asked.
Kai was silent for a beat too long.
“…Three,” he admitted. “Official cause is complications. But the timing is weird.”
Of course it was.
Lian watched the hospital entrance as a black sedan rolled slowly to the curb. Not the doctor’s car. Different plate. Different driver.
Still, she memorized it.
“Can you track the medication logs?” she asked.
“Already trying,” Kai said. “But someone’s cleaning behind him. Real time.”
Her fingers curled slightly at her sides.
He.
Not they.
The doctor was being careful. That was new.
“Lian,” Kai said more quietly, “you need to see this part.”
Her display shifted again. This time it showed a surgical supply request.
Lian’s breath slowed.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Untraceable injectors,” she said.
“Yeah.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
Rainwater dripped steadily from the awning edge beside her.
Across the street, the hospital doors slid open and a nurse hurried out, head down, umbrella already opening. Normal. Everything looked normal.
Lian hated normal.
“You think he’s testing something,” Kai said.
It was not really a question.
Lian did not answer immediately. She watched the building the way a hunter watches tall grass, waiting for movement that might never come.
Finally she said, “I think he stopped being careful about where the money comes from.”
Kai exhaled softly. Not relief. Just understanding.
“That bad,” he murmured.
“Yes.”
A pause.
Then Kai’s voice shifted, more personal now. “You okay?”
Lian’s gaze stayed on the hospital windows.
“No,” she said simply. Then, after a beat, “But I’m working.”
Kai made a small sound that might have been a laugh.
“Yeah,” he said. “That tracks.”
Another car pulled into the hospital drop off. A man in an expensive suit stepped out, speaking sharply into his phone. Lian clocked the watch on his wrist, the security posture in his shoulders, the way the driver stayed alert even after the door closed.
Not medical staff.
Money.
“Kai,” she said quietly, “flag incoming visitor. Black suit. Thirty meters from main entrance.”
“Already on it.”
His keyboard clattered faintly through the comm.
“Corporate,” he said a moment later. “Mid level biotech investor. Nothing obvious tying him to LSK, but…”
“But he’s here,” Lian finished.
“Yeah.”
The rain picked up, drumming harder now.
Lian stepped back into the deeper shadow of the bakery entrance.
“We’re not hitting tonight,” Kai said carefully.
It was phrased like a statement, but she heard the question under it.
She considered the hospital again. The clean glass. The quiet lights. The careful way everything was being hidden instead of rushed.
“No,” she said at last. “Not tonight.”
Kai let out a breath she hadn’t realized he was holding.
“Good,” he said. “Because security rotation just changed and I hate the new pattern.”
That pulled a faint huff of air from her nose.
“Show me.”
Her display shifted to the live camera map. New guard routes. Tighter overlaps. Less dead space.
Lian studied it in silence.
“He’s nervous,” she said.
“Or confident,” Kai replied.
She tilted her head slightly.
“Confident people don’t clean this carefully,” she said.
Kai went quiet.
Across the street, the suited investor disappeared into the hospital lobby. The doors slid shut behind him with a soft, final motion.
Lian pushed off the wall.
“Pull everything on the missing patients,” she said. “Families, payment methods, medical histories.”
“Already compiling.”
“And Kai.”
“Yeah?”
Her voice lowered a fraction.
“Dig into the injector manufacturer. Quietly.”
There was a brief pause.
Then Kai said, softer now, “You think it links back?”
“I think,” Lian said, “we don’t ignore patterns.”
That was enough for him.
“Got it.”
She started walking, melting back into the wet night, footsteps soundless against the pavement.
Behind her, the hospital glowed clean and bright, like nothing inside it could possibly be wrong.
Kai spoke again after a minute, voice lighter, trying to cut the tension.
“You know,” he said, “for a normal city, this place has a very unhealthy number of suspicious doctors.”
Lian turned down a narrow side street.
“Hong Kong isn’t normal,” she said.
“Yeah,” Kai muttered. “Starting to notice.”
They moved in silence for a while after that. Comfortable. Focused. The way they always were when the pieces of a problem were still loose.
Finally Kai said, more carefully, “You’re not going to talk to him again, are you?”
Lian did not slow.
Rain slid off the edge of her hood.
“No,” she said.
It came out flat. Clean.
Kai didn’t push.
“Okay,” he said quietly.
Up ahead, neon flickered over the mouth of the alley that led back toward their temporary safe route. The city noise swelled and dipped around her, alive and restless.
Behind the calm in her chest, something cold had fully settled into place.
Not anger.
Not yet.
Just clarity.
“Get some rest when we’re back,” Kai said after a while.
Lian’s eyes stayed on the street ahead.
“You first,” she replied.
Kai snorted softly.
“Not a chance.”
This time, she did smile. Just a little.
And then she disappeared into the Hong Kong night.
