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Chapter 13 - CHAPTER 11: Silence Beneath the Frost

The warehouse sat on the edge of Jiucheng's industrial skeleton—just beyond the city's neon sprawl, where the frost stayed longer than it should. Its exterior was unremarkable: grey siding, rusted vents, a cracked keypad by the service door. But the cold that bled from the walls wasn't weather. It was memory.

Wáng Shuǒrán stood in the dark with her hand pressed to the metal, feeling its pulse. The facility hummed beneath her palm—not like a machine, but like something sleeping.

"We're in position," Zhào Yǎrán whispered through comms.

"Disable the external net," Shuǒrán said.

Liú Shàoxiǎn knelt beside the service box and slid in a device. The light blinked green.

They entered.

Inside, the air was thick with frost. Their breaths came in clouds. The corridor sloped downward—a descent into something that wasn't supposed to exist.

The doors were pressure-sealed. Jiēhào cracked the first with minimal disruption, and when the vault hissed open, the light hit them like a medical theater:

Pods lined the chamber—chrome-limned, frost-rimed, humming faintly beneath thick panes of glass.

Rows and rows of them, gleaming like coffins made for gods.

Shuǒrán stepped inside.

Her pulse didn't spike. But her body remembered.

Each pod was labeled in code, but some had names faded under the frost. Old names. Familiar ones. The kind of names Jian would erase from records, but never from his reach.

She moved down the aisle like a woman counting sins.

And then she stopped.

Pod 37.

Her fingers trembled as she wiped the frost.

Her father's face stared back.

Not dead. Not decayed.

Sedated. Preserved.

No injuries. No signs of struggle. Just silence. A medical tag beneath the surface read: Wáng Jìngxuān – CLASSIFIED: GENOME MIRROR

Her knees didn't give. But something inside her cracked.

"Jiēhào," she said, voice clipped. "Secure this data and scan the rest."

He moved, silent and fast.

Xīnlĕi's voice crackled. "Something's wrong. Feed interference. Partial breach upstream."

Far across the city, buried in a maintenance sub-node, Lín Yàonán watched it all.

He shouldn't have had access. The node was marked dormant. But three years ago, he'd buried a protocol there out of habit—a backup lens. Tonight, it flickered to life.

And showed her.

Miss Red. Breaking into a classified site. Scanning bodies. Frozen in place before a cryopod that stole the breath from her lungs.

She pressed her hand to the glass. Her mouth formed a name, slow and soundless.

From the surveillance node, Yàonán leaned in. The dormant feed had no audio—only flickering visuals. He couldn't hear her speak.

But he saw the name on her lips.

Jìngxuān.

Yàonán leaned forward. His hands curled into fists. Jian had lied about the disposal order.

She was staring into her past.

And he couldn't touch her. Couldn't stop what came next.

Back in the warehouse, Shuǒrán turned away from her father's face.

"We copy this. We take it. We torch the rest."

But she didn't make it two steps before Liú froze.

"There's a secondary line of pods," he said. "No names. No logs. But one—"

He stopped.

Shuǒrán followed his gaze.

A smaller pod. Thinner. A different model. And inside it—

A boy.

No. A man.

Familiar jawline. Dark lashes. Scar above the brow she'd kissed once before the fire.

Her breath hitched.

"Yìchén?"

The lights flickered.

And his eyes opened.

Just barely.

Liú pulled her back instinctively, but she didn't move.

Yichen blinked.

Not recognition. Not confusion.

Alert.

Alive.

"We have to move," Jiēhào snapped. "Security tripwire just lit. Four blocks out."

Shuǒrán backed away, still staring.

And that's when she heard it.

The safety click.

Behind her.

Too late.

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