The sound of the river was almost gentle—lapping, whispering, as though the water pitied the living. Bai Xueyi stood at the edge of Pier 3 beneath a broken floodlight, rain dripping from her hood. The black current carried bits of trash and moonlight; somewhere upriver, a ferry's horn moaned again, long and low.
The red laser dot that had danced across Mo Liuxian's chest vanished as fast as it appeared. He pressed Xueyi down behind a stack of crates, scanning the rooftops.
"Sniper—north tower," he hissed.
"Then he knows we came together," she said.
"He wants us to panic."
"He's going to be disappointed."
She drew her pistol, checked the chamber. Her hands were steady now—the kind of calm that comes after too many goodbyes.
Across the water, a ferry's deck lights flicked on, one by one, revealing a narrow gangway extended to the pier. A single figure stood at the top of it, backlit by amber glow. Bai Ming.
His voice carried easily across the distance.
"My niece. You never could resist a stage."
Xueyi stepped out from cover. Liuxian swore under his breath but followed, moving slightly behind her flank.
"You've been busy rewriting gods," she said.
"Someone has to," Bai Ming replied. "Humanity drifts, love corrodes, greed multiplies. I found a cleaner algorithm."
"You built cages and called them hearts."
"I built order."
He gestured to the deck. "Come aboard. Or your friend stops breathing in—" he glanced at a small watch—"forty-seven seconds."
A monitor flickered to life on the ferry rail. Xiao Rou appeared on-screen, bound to a chair, a mask strapped over her face, fogging with each shallow breath.
"Forty-six," Bai Ming said pleasantly.
Xueyi walked forward. Liuxian caught her arm.
"It's what he wants."
"It's what she needs."
She turned her wrist so he could see the small transmitter Lin Qiao had embedded beneath the bandage—her own signal, scrambled. "If he kills me, he loses the live sample."
Liuxian nodded once. "Then let's make him think the sample is still perfect."
They stepped onto the ferry. The deck thrummed as engines woke. Rain hissed against metal.
Bai Ming descended the stairs, immaculate as always. Age hadn't softened him; it had polished him into something colder.
"You brought your handler," he said to Xueyi. "Touching."
"You programmed him," she said. "But you forgot something. You can't code a soul."
He smiled faintly. "Souls are noise. Beautiful, unnecessary noise."
He raised a remote. The screen behind him showed a biometric readout—VOWS/LEGACY INTERFACE ACTIVE. Two heart-rate lines pulsed in sync: hers and Liuxian's.
"You see?" Bai Ming said softly. "Even after you removed the implant, your body seeks the frequency. He is the trigger, you are the echo. Together, you are my proof that emotion can be engineered."
Xueyi took a step closer. "Then let's finish your experiment."
She pressed her palm to her bandaged wrist. The hidden capsule Lin Qiao had given her earlier pulsed once—blue light under skin. Every monitor blinked.
Bai Ming's eyes widened. "What did you—"
"You taught me well, Uncle," she said. "I learned how to rewrite the code."
The blue pulse leapt from her wrist to the ferry's control panels. The screen spasmed—data streams reversing, feedback screaming through the system.
"She's looping his network," Liuxian shouted.
"Exactly," she said. "LEGACY can't tell who's the subject now."
The heart-rate lines fused into one. Bai Ming staggered, clutching his chest as his biometric implant fed on its own signal.
"You… linked us?" he gasped.
"I freed us," Xueyi said. "If you built your world on pairing bonds, then drown in one."
He lurched toward the console, fingers bloody. Liuxian moved first—one clean shot to the remote, shattering it. Sparks flared. Alarms wailed.
"The ferry's going to blow," Liuxian said.
"Then we end it in the water," she answered.
They dragged Xiao Rou from the cabin, ripped the mask free. She coughed, alive.
Behind them, Bai Ming laughed once, low and broken.
"You think this stops it? LEGACY is already online. There are hundreds now. Lovers, soldiers, leaders—every bond, every oath, every—"
The deck buckled under his feet. The rest of his words drowned in the roar of detonating fuel.
Cold water closed over them. The explosion turned the night to noon. Xueyi felt herself pulled under, the current tearing at her clothes, her lungs burning. Then strong arms caught her—Liuxian's—dragging her upward.
They broke the surface together, gasping under rain that hissed against falling embers.
He kept her close as the wreck burned itself into silence.
"Is he dead?" she whispered.
"He has to be," Liuxian said.
"That's what I thought once," she murmured.
He looked at her—really looked—and for the first time in years, there was nothing between them: no code, no command, no ghost but the water.
He touched her face. "No more experiments."
She leaned into his palm. "No more cages."
Behind them, the wreck sank, taking secrets with it. But far downriver, in the control tower of Aurora's main facility, a monitor flickered to life again. The LEGACY logo glowed faint blue, and beneath it scrolled a new line of text:
SUBJECT Z-00 — LINK TRANSFER COMPLETE.
NEW HANDLER : WEN QINGMEI.