Zero Squad's base was far bigger than she had imagined.
Beside her, Qinian pushed open the car door and got out first, then turned back to look at her.
"Getting down yourself, or do you want me to carry you?"
Jiang Nuan didn't answer. She shoved off from the car and jumped down, but the moment her knees hit the ground, pain made her hiss through her teeth.
Qinian smirked.
It was that kind of "I knew you'd try to be tough" smile. The corners of his mouth curved, but his eyes said, "How amusing."
This guy was so annoying.
He led her straight to the medical bay.
The medical bay was pure white.
Walls, ceiling, floor—everything was made of sterile materials, glowing with a light devoid of warmth.
The blue light of the monitor flickered quietly.
On the metal cart, every instrument sat in its designated spot.
Jiang Nuan stood at the entrance as the smell of disinfectant invaded her nostrils. Her stomach instinctively clenched.
In her last life, she'd always been afraid of hospitals. During freshman year's physical exam, her two roommates had to drag her to the blood draw station. After the needle, she sat in the hallway for ten minutes recovering, and her roommates had to feed her half a bottle of Coke before she could stand up.
And now she stood at the door of a medical bay that was a hundred times more advanced and a thousand times more sterile than her school's health center, waiting to be examined from head to toe by a group of people who saw her as nothing more than a Purifier.
The speed at which fate had upgraded her script was even more ruthless than cramming for her final paper.
And the doctor inside the medical bay.
Twins?!
This face was almost identical to Qinian's! But this person was more refined, more restrained—as if he'd stashed all of Qinian's dangerous edge beneath the scholarly facade of a white coat and gold-rimmed glasses.
His nametag read Qi Sui.
Brothers. Or twins.
She quickly updated her mental checklist.
"Bro, she's all yours." Qinian waved lazily and walked out of the medical bay.
Qi Sui smiled at her from behind his glasses.
"Come, have a seat."
Standing next to him was a middle-aged woman, slightly plump, with a kind face.
She wore the same white coat, with a nametag on her chest: Meng Lan.
Meng Lan gave her a small nod. That gaze was the first Jiang Nuan had seen in this base that wasn't filled with scrutiny or evaluation.
It loosened her tense shoulders just a fraction.
Jiang Nuan sat down on the examination table.
The surface was cold, and the chill climbed up her thighs.
Qi Sui began treating the wound on her knee, his touch gentle.
He cleaned the wound, applied medicine—each step meticulous.
But Jiang Nuan noticed that his gaze occasionally drifted from the wound to the inside of her arm, the side of her neck—places that weren't injured.
He wasn't looking at a patient. He was evaluating a body.
Assessing its condition, its value, its durability.
That kind of stare made the shoulders she had just relaxed stiffen all over again.
After the wound was treated came the routine physical exam.
Blood draw, blood pressure, heart rate, and core resonance waveform collection — performed one after another.
During the blood draw, Jiang Nuan couldn't help but turn her head away.
When the needle pierced her vein, her whole body tensed up. Her fingers gripped the edge of the examination table tightly.
Qi Sui stayed all smiles, saying "it's going to sting a little" before every injection, his tone so gentle it was almost excessive.
If you ignored his identity, that level of bedside manner could probably earn him the city's number one patient satisfaction rating.
Too bad he wasn't a real doctor. He was one of the people who had captured her.
The female assistant named Meng Lan was recording data the entire time, occasionally passing her a cotton ball or swapping out a scale, moving with practiced efficiency.
Jiang Nuan watched her own blood being drawn out, vial after vial, her fingertips growing cold.
Finally, the routine tests were over.
Jiang Nuan almost let herself relax.
"In a while, I'll take you for the Purification test," Qi Sui said mildly.
Her shoulders stiffened instantly. She was then led to an empty room next to the medical bay and told to sit down.
She stared at her knees for a long time.
On her knee was the white medical dressing Qi Sui had just applied.
From outside the door came muffled voices.
Qi Sui was in the hallway reviewing data. She couldn't make out the words clearly through the door, but occasionally phrases drifted in: "resonance," "purification," "trigger conditions."
Every word reminded her: she wasn't human. She was a lab specimen.
If this were an otome game...
No. This wasn't an otome game.
Not even if the men who could pass straight for game character portraits were standing right there.
A handsome face wasn't a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Jiang Nuan sat on the edge of the bed, both hands resting on her knees, staring at the floor.
She was thinking about escape.
She'd been thinking about it ever since Ye Que carried her over his shoulder, ever since they named her identity in the car, ever since the physical exam.
She never stopped thinking about it.
Was she really supposed to go through with that Purification test?
Her eyes swept across the corner of the room.
A ventilation shaft.
Metal grating. Four screws holding it in place. Through the gaps in the grating came a faint current of air.
Her heartbeat suddenly raced.
Don't ask why a liberal arts college student's first instinct was to crawl through a ventilation duct—blame it on watching too many movies.
She quickly scanned the room again.
One chair, one examination table, one metal cart. In the corner, two storage bins were stacked on top of each other.
The ventilation opening was on the ceiling, slightly to the right, less than three meters high. If she stacked the chair on top of the storage bins, she could reach it.
The voices outside kept going.
Jiang Nuan stood up.
Her knee hurt so much she winced, but she didn't stop.
She moved the chair directly under the ventilation opening, placing it as quietly as possible—the legs barely made a sound on the floor.
Then she moved the storage bins. They were plastic, lighter than she'd expected, and she stacked them one by one.
Climbing up was agony on her knee, her palms slick with sweat, but she gritted her teeth and moved up, rung by rung.
The screws on the metal grating were old. Using a metal-tipped tweezers she'd swiped from the treatment tray, she loosened them one by one.
The first.
The second.
The third.
Her hands trembled—trembled fiercely.
When the fourth screw came loose, she didn't catch it. It fell onto the chair seat, bounced once, and made a faint ding.
Her heart nearly leaped out of her throat.
The voices outside paused for one second.
Then they resumed.
Jiang Nuan removed the grating and forced herself into the duct. The shaft wasn't spacious, and her clothes scraped against the metal walls with a rasping sound.
She crawled.
Endless duct.
Her elbows banged against the pipe walls. The wound on her knee tore open, burning with pain.
But she didn't dare stop.
Ahead, there was light.
Faint, grayish light, seeping through from around a bend in the duct.
She clawed forward, her eyes stinging—stinging with sweat and hope.
Forty feet.
Just another forty feet and—
A hand clamped down on her ankle from behind.
The force was absurdly strong, yanking her to a halt mid-crawl.
Jiang Nuan's nails screeched against the inner walls of the duct.
She struggled. Didn't budge an inch.
The hand dragged her backward—slow, steady, unhurried, like pulling a fish that had slipped off the counter back onto the chopping board.
She couldn't see who was behind her, but she knew who it was.
The same wrist. The same grip. The same precision that could crush bone.
Ye Que.
The process of Jiang Nuan being dragged out of the ventilation shaft was utterly devoid of dignity.
First came her legs, then her waist, and finally her entire body was yanked out of the opening.
She was hauled back to the medical bay.
Jiang Nuan was covered in dust, with streaks of grime streaked across her face. The bandage had slipped from her knee and was trailing down her shin, and the freshly dressed wound was oozing blood again, mixing with the dirt scraped off the pipes. She looked utterly wretched.
A lean, clean-cut man with sharp features leaned against the wall. His name tag read Shen Wu.
Shen Wu’s gaze flickered over her before shifting to Ye Que. “How far in did you let her crawl before you caught her?”
Ye Que didn’t answer.
“About ten meters from the exit,” Qi Sui said, pushing up his glasses, his tone still mild. “There were cameras in the room, micro-sensors embedded in the pipes. I knew the moment she went in.”
So the entire time…
The entire time, everyone knew.
They knew when she tightened the screws.
They knew when she crawled inside.
They knew when she saw the light.
They knew when she thought she was about to be free.
She was like a lab animal trapped in a transparent maze, sprinting with all her might toward a fake exit while the observers stood outside the cage, evaluating her behavior patterns.
No one stopped her—not out of respect for her choice.
But because it wasn’t necessary.
Shen Wu leaned against the wall, barely lifting an eyelid. “I always thought an SSS-level awakened would have a higher degree of brain development. Never expected you to choose the most primitive method—crawling through a hole.”
…
Shen Wu really had a venomous way with words.
That familiar, calm voice came through the communicator. “Update.”
“She ran. We caught her,” Ye Que summarized succinctly.
There was a two-second silence on the other end of the communicator.
“Classify her as a Level One control subject. Arrange a dorm.”
“She must not leave the room unless absolutely necessary. For medical checkups or meals, she must be accompanied at all times by a Zero member. No independent movement allowed.”
The communication cut off.
Qi Sui walked over to her, his tone still gentle. “Best to just stay put.”
