In the dim hush of her compact apartment nestled deep within City H's oldest district, Zhao Meilin sank into the worn cushions of her couch, the sigh escaping her lips as soft and weary as the rain tapping against the windowpane.
She has at last received her ID and household register along with the bank card this morning from Madam Li and is legally now an adult in all means. Though she still has some restictions from the government but still have freedom to a certain limit.
Looking at the 2 bank cards infront of her, Zhao Meilin suspire heavily. Upon obtaining the bank card, the first thing she did was to go to the bank and open a new bank account and transfer all the money in it and tossed away the original card she had received as she doesn't trust Madam Li. Not a sliver, not a breath, not even the shadow of a doubt.
Leaning into the worn cushions of her couch, Zhao Meilin can't help but remember the memories of her past life.
She had no name.
No identity.
Nothing.
Somehow, impossibly, the only warmth she could recall from that fractured life was the heat of her mother's skin against hers—one sacred moment before the cold hands of fate tore them apart.
By the time she began to make sense of her surroundings, she was already two years old. She had no idea what they had given her, but from that moment on, every detail etched itself into her memory—vivid, precise, unrelenting.
They called her X-9. Their most sucessful experiment.
She wasn't alone. There were others—children like her, wide-eyed and trembling, all fed the same drugs, all thrown into the same trials. It was survival of the fittest, and losing didn't mean shame. It meant death. A death they can't escape from.
At two years old, she was taught to fight. To kill. They called it training, but it was indoctrination. The children laughed at first, mimicking moves they didn't understand. Then one of them died—another toddler, torn apart before their eyes.
The child—a boy with wide eyes and a crooked smile—had stumbled during the drill. One of the older trainees didn't hesitate. A strike to the throat. A second to the temple. He collapsed, twitching, blood pooling beneath his tiny frame.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her heart thudded against her ribs like a trapped bird. She looked around. The older trainees stared straight ahead, unmoving. The younger ones blinked, confused, but silent.
He wasn't breathing.
He wasn't moving.
He wasn't alive anymore.
A woman in a white coat entered, dragging his body away with clinical efficiency. The blood was wiped. The mat replaced. The drill resumed.
Her fists unclenched. Her fingers trembled. She wanted to ask why. She wanted to run. But her legs wouldn't move.
She didn't know the word for death yet. But she knew something had ended. Something that wouldn't come back.
That's when she realized: this wasn't a game. It was survival. And survival had no mercy.
That night, she didn't cry. She didn't speak. She lay awake, staring at the ceiling, replaying the moment over and over.
She didn't know the word for grief.
But she knew what it felt like.
She realised; if she wants to survive, she has to win.
After that day, something shifted inside her.
She stopped waiting for comfort. Stopped hoping for rescue. The world had shown its teeth, and Meilin learned to bare hers in return.
She fought.
Fought with everything she had—tiny fists, scraped knees, a heart too young to understand rage but old enough to wield it.
Every morning began with drills. Every night ended in bruises. The instructors pushed them to the edge, and Meilin never fell. She memorized every move, every weakness. She studied her opponents like puzzles, broke them like glass.
She didn't speak unless spoken to.
She didn't cry.
She didn't lose.
By the time she was three, she could disarm a grown man. By four, she could break bone with precision. Her number—X-9—became a warning. A shadow. A myth among the other children.
They whispered about her in the dorms.
"She doesn't bleed." "She doesn't sleep." "She's not like us."
But Meilin knew the truth.
She bled. She ached. She remembered that boy's eyes, wide and empty. She remembered the silence.
And so she fought—not for glory, not for pride.
She fought to live.
She worked hard. Harder than everyone.
When they were taught how to study, how to speak in foreign tongues, how to solve equations and dissect the logic of science and the soul of literature—Meilin didn't just absorb. She devoured.
While the others studied only when the instructors hovered nearby, she studied when no one watched.
Late into the night, when the dormitory lights dimmed and the silence settled like dust, Meilin remained awake. A single lamp flickering beside her bunk. Eyes burning. Fingers tracing formulas, foreign alphabets, annotated texts.
She whispered vocabulary to herself in Mandarin, English, Russian, Japanese,French,Italian,Spanish, Arabic—her voice barely audible, like a prayer.
She solved math problems until her pencil snapped. She reread scientific theories until they blurred into instinct. She annotated poetry with the precision of a surgeon, dissecting metaphors like wounds.
Sleep was a luxury she couldn't afford.
Mistakes were enemies she refused to tolerate.
She didn't aim to pass. She aimed to dominate.
And slowly, she did.
Her test scores climbed. Her essays were used as examples. Her pronunciation was flawless. Her logic, unshakable.
But no one saw the cost.
The trembling hands beneath the desk. The bloodshot eyes behind the perfect answers. The girl who had turned herself into a machine—because being human had once meant pain.
When they were taught how to shoot, most children treated it like another drill. A few hours of practice. A few rounds fired. Then rest.
Not her.
She trained for six, sometimes seven hours straight. No food. No water. No breaks.
Her wrists bore weighted cuffs. Her ankles dragged resistance. Every movement was deliberate, every breath measured. The others watched her with a mix of awe and unease—she wasn't just practicing. She was transforming.
The gun was heavy in her hands at first. Her arms shook. Her aim wavered.
So she punished herself.
Weights. Repetition. Silence.
She fired until her fingers blistered. Until her shoulders screamed. Until the recoil felt like rhythm.
Each shot was a vow.
Never be weak.Never be slow.Never be the one who falls.
Instructors began to take notice. Her grouping was tighter than anyone's. Her reload time, flawless. Her posture, textbook.
But she didn't care for praise.
She remembered him.
She remembered the blood.
And every bullet she fired was a promise to herself: She would never be the one lying on the mat. She would never be the one dragged away.
That night, long after the others had collapsed into sleep, She stood alone beneath the flickering fluorescent lights of the empty range. Her arms ached. Her lips were cracked. Her stomach hollow. But her eyes—her eyes burned with something unyielding. Not rage. Not grief. Something colder. Sharper. She stared down the barrel one last time, finger resting on the trigger, and whispered to the silence:
"I won't be prey again." The shot rang out like a vow. And in its echo, the girl who once trembled was gone. Only the phoenix remained.