Lu Wen propped up Darin's battered carcass, guiding her away from the hall and up the stairs toward the cage they called a room. Inside this casino, life wasn't your own; it was a tombstone where you didn't determine your own fate—not even where you laid your head., You followed the machinery of the watchers, or you were broken by it.
Everyone had at least two roommates, a leash made of shared fear. If a soul went missing or wasn't on their cot when the clock struck the hour, it wasn't just the runner who got a belting—the roommates paid in skin and bone, too.It was a rule that didn't discriminate between the volunteers and the slaves; the machine ate everyone the same. Darin struggled to move faster, her eyes wide and glassy, not out of love for her roommates, but because she knew the cost of their suffering would land on her head. There was no sisterhood here, only a grinding purgatory of suspicion and hate that never let up, even in the dead of night. No one looked for trouble; the nest was already a furnace.
The baby's wail drifted up from the dark, uncaring water of the river again—a high, thin, and lonely sound in the graying light.Darin glanced at Lu Wen, her eyes asking the question he'd heard a dozen times in the whispers of the guards. Lu Wen, despite the cold lead of pity in his gut for her, couldn't suppress a small, secret grin. He alone held the ace in his hole: he knew the 'spirit' haunting their nightmares was nothing but a pathetic wreck of an old man.
But before he could spill the secret, a jagged shout erupted from the basement—the VIP suites that had turned into a slaughterhouse.Lu Wen didn't hesitate; he yanked Darin into the pitch-black shadows behind the second-floor stairs, hiding from the cold, predatory eyes of Big Brother Zhang and his grunts as they moved with a focused, urgent haste.
"A-Ding... that's Ding Fangtou..." Lu Wen groaned softly.What he saw was a walking skeleton being hauled up from the basement by Zhang's grunts.The kid was a mess—his face a roadmap of bruises, blood tracking down his chin in a messy runnel. One eye was swollen shut, a big purple mouse that had nearly closed the lid. This was Ding Fangtou. Lu Wen knew him; they'd sat shoulder-to-shoulder back when Lu Wen was part of the phone-jockey fuckhole, forcing lies down the throats of marks.
Ding was a washout grad student.He'd cooked the university's research books to the tune of 200,000 yuan just to feed a gambling habit that lived on his phone. When his professor caught him and threatened to call the pigs, Ding ran. He'd planned for Macau but swallowed the hook, line, and sinker for a 'Data Analyst' gig in Cambodia. No background check, big scratch. He thought it was a get-out-of-jail-free card, a golden ticket out of the mainland. Instead, the 26-year-old from Xiamen (厦门) ended up as just more meat for the machine in this ghost casino.
'Easy with him, you hicks!' a voice barked from the grease-trap kitchen.
It was Ge Ming, the human stork. 'You handle him like that, you'll damage the goods! You stupid bastards only know how to use your knuckles. If I cut him open and find the merchandise is bruised, I'll carve the hearts out of your chests and box those up instead!' Lu Wen went cold to the marrow. He'd always figured Ge Ming was a decent sort, but this was a nightmare in stained whites.
Ding Fangtou was heading for the final meeting with the butchers.They were going to process him for his insides—human spare parts. Big Brother Zhang just shrugged and slapped his grunts across the back of the head. 'Do like the doctor says, you monkeys,' he said with a jagged, sarcastic grin.
"Right now, only Dr. Ge can pull a few hundred thousand yuan out of this loser's chest cavity."
Ge Ming, the scrawny stork in stained whites, let out a sharp, liquid snort—'Heh!'—before jerking his head toward the kitchen door. Zhang's two grunts hauled the wreckage of the Ding kid inside, their boot-heels clacking on the floor with a focused, urgent haste.
"Is the bald guy really a doc, Big Brother?" He Feng asked. He didn't follow them in, just stood there by the boss's shoulder, his face a roadmap of battle-scars.
"Damn right he is," Zhang said, his face a jagged scrawl of a grin. "Listen, I'm feeling flush today. I just had some quality time with that Thai piece of tail, and once we move this hunk of fresh meat, I'm getting a fat cut of the blood money from Boss Deng. I'll tell you about the bald bastard in the kitchen, but don't you dare puke on my shoes. You hear me?"
He Feng nodded, looking confused, and flicked a needle of fire from his lighter to Zhang's cigarette before lighting his own. They stood there for a moment, the smoke rising in little blue balls that hung in the stagnant air of the casino.
"Listen, Scarface," Zhang said, exhaling a plume of smoke that smelled of cheap tobacco and old secrets. "That Ge fellow looks like just another grunt, but he was a brainy med student back in the day—a regular genius with a scalpel. He was practically a professor before he even graduated. But the guy's a psycho. A cannibal. He liked the taste of human flesh. When that particular cat got out of the bag, he had to run like a rat in a drainpipe."
Zhang leaned closer, his eyes hard as glass marbles. "Big Boss Deng picked him up, forged a new past for him, and tucked him away as an apprentice cook in Nanjing for a few years. While he was there, he had a side-job: processing human spare parts for the black market. Eventually, the law started sniffing around, so the boss shipped him to Thailand. He didn't get along with the head chef there, so he landed here. Lucky for us, too. We've got a mountain of fresh offal that needs his special touch to turn into cold, hard scratch."
"Eating people... Jesus!" He Feng muttered, a cold prickle of horror running down his spine. "The guy looks normal, but he's just a demon in a human skin."
"Hmph! That's just the appetizer," Zhang growled, his voice dropping into a low, menacing rasp. "Keep your trap shut, Scarface. If a third person hears a whisper of this, I'll take a butcher knife and carve your tongue right out of your mouth. Now move!"
"The reason I don't eat his slop is because I never know when that bald bastard's gonna feel generous enough to slip a hunk of his private 'long-pig' stash onto my plate!"
He Feng's eyes went as wide as cracked porcelain doorknobs. His jaw hung open like a broken trap. He turned to Zhang, his voice a dry, shivering rattle. "Big Brother... don't tell me... Ge Ming's bacon... was people!"
Before he could finish the sentence, Zhang lunged and clamped a hand over the man's mouth, choking the words back. When Zhang finally let go, Scarface He bolted for a nearby pillar and yarked all over the battleship-gray concrete. Near the counter, Tie Shou Tai and the other grunts jumped back, startled by the sound of a man losing his lunch.
The guard, Leng Zi Qiang, was already on edge from the whispers of the 'baby ghost' drifting up from the dark water of the river. He was busy stabbing sticks of incense into a burner before a massive ceramic statue of Guan Yu, begging the god for a shield against the abominations of the night. He looked over at the commotion, eyes narrowed in suspicion, but saw nothing except his sub-boss spewing on the floor and Big Brother Zhang laughing at the mess.
It was a lucky thing Zhang was busy enjoying the puke-show, because tucked in the shadows of the stairs, Lu Wen and Darin were fighting the same losing battle with their own stomachs. They both clamped their hands over their mouths, gagging back a sour glut of bile, terrified that a single sound would be the last one they ever made.
Once they caught their breath, they tried to crawl toward the stairs, but they froze mid-motion when Ge Ming suddenly burst from the kitchen. They dropped low, turning into shadows themselves, rooted to the spot by a cold certainty of death.
"Done? That was quick work," Zhang said, flicking his cigarette to the floor and grinding it out with the heel of his boot.
The washout med student stared at the crushed butt, a flicker of disgust crossing his stork-like face. He was a man who liked things clean, even when his hands were wet with the machinery of a nightmare. He didn't waste his breath on a scolding; he just shook his head and spoke.
"Not yet. It's because you stupid bastards made the goods thrash around until his heart was doing fantastic rubber acrobatics. I just pumped him full of the knockout stuff, and we have to wait for the pulse to level out or we risk damaging the merchandise.
Big Brother Zhang let out a sharp, liquid snort and turned his face to the shadows.
"Scarface, what's your problem?" Ge Ming asked, looking across the hall at He Feng, who was ashy-pale and wiping the remains of his lunch from his chin.
"Nothing, he just had a run-in with too much booze and yarked all over the floor—forget the drunk and just get the butchering done so we can move this hunk of meat," Zhang said, moving with focused, urgent haste to cover the truth.
Ge Ming shook his head, looking away with a touch of condescension, as if explaining triggeronomy to a pig.
"Zhang... taking a man's heart isn't a simple cut-and-grab job; it doesn't work like that," he said in a flat, lazy voice, staring at his clean whites, except for the sleeve where a small mouth of blood was weeping.
"You have to prep the preservation solution and the three-layer bags—the heart goes in first, then the cold salt water to shield it from the direct freeze. Everything has to be airtight and packed in crushed ice, holding steady at four to eight degrees Celsius. Once the chest is open and the goods are out, we have a four-to-six-hour window—the Cold Ischemia Time—to make the delivery. There's no need for haste; we can notify the people at Thma Da in an hour and they'll still have time to prep the recipient."
Zhang gave another liquid snort and ground his cigarette into the floor. "Fine, you're the brainy doc here, so suit yourself, but tell me when to call for the pickup. The boat ride from the hotel takes fifty minutes one way—nearly two hours round-trip! You do the math yourself," Zhang said, and walked away.
"Zhang, where the hell are you going?' Ge Ming asked in a voice as low as a whisper.
"I'm empty as a drum! Can't a man go fix himself some noodles without a goddamn invitation?" The boss snapped, his voice a hard scrawl of irritation. He swept past the stainless steel table where the trays of evening slop sat untouched, not giving them so much as a second glance. Zhang meant to grab He Feng by the scruff of his neck—keep the man's trap shut before he spilled any more secrets—but a jagged shout from the front guards stopped him cold.
"What the hell is it now?" Zhang bellowed.
"The baby, Big Brother! It's that goddamn baby crying again!" Dian Yan Ming—the predator they called 'The Lecher'—stammered the words, his face a pale roadmap of terror as he turned toward the leader. The air in the hall went stagnant. Everyone held their breath, caught in a silence so heavy it felt like the world had simply stopped breathing. No birds, no insects—just the low-frequency hum of a nightmare settling in.
Lu Wen strained to hear, and then it hit him. A high, thin wail drifting up from the dark, uncaring water. It sounded like a baby, sure, but it was wrong—raspy and dry, a sound that didn't ask for a mother's milk or a soft touch. It was a sound that belonged in a slaughterhouse, a noise like a sliver of ice cutting straight into the meat of the brain.
The young programmer stayed rooted in the shadows. He alone held the ace in his hole: he knew the 'ghost' haunting their nerves was nothing but a pathetic wreck of an old man. Part of him felt a sharp prickle of satisfaction seeing these bastards shiver, but beneath that was a cold lead of worry. If they caught the old man, they'd break him like a dry twig just for the sport of it.
"Move it! Go see what's out there, you useless eaters!" Zhang barked at the guards, though he didn't budge an inch from his spot. Then, Shan Lang Biao—the ex-ranger who handled a rifle like a second limb—yelled from the entrance, "Big Brother! Someone's at the pier in front of the hotel!"
Zhang lunged, grabbing He Feng by the collar and dragging him toward the door as the hall erupted into a riot of focused, urgent haste. Even Ge Ming, the human stork in his stained whites, came charging out of the kitchen with his grunts. One of them yanked a heavy pistol from his waistband, the blue steel catching the murky light like a promise of death.
"That old man..." Lu Wen muttered, the words catching in a throat that felt like it was filled with dry wool. He couldn't shake the cold lead of worry in his gut for that strange, broken wreck, but he was a man with no power—just a scrawny tech grunt caught in the gears of a machine that didn't know the meaning of pity.
The lights along the riverfront jangled into life, but they were a sorry patchwork.Years of neglect and the humid rot of the jungle had eaten them away; they were sickly and weak, some flickering with the uneven rhythm of bad hearts. It was a murky, stuttering light that made the evening feel even more like a fever dream.
But there was enough of that pale glow to see the wide, empty space between the building's carcass and the pier.And there, right in the middle of that gray expanse, a dark and hunched shape was moving. It was coming toward the building with an agonizing, focused slowness—a shadow that belonged in a nightmare but was currently drifting into the real world.
....................