Chapter 410: Pulling the Wrong Thread
"There’s another note underneath it," Han Zhi said through the radio. "That’s actually the reason I called."
Lingyun shifted against my shoulder, although Yuche’s hand on his uninjured side stopped him from sitting up far enough to damage himself again. "Read it."
Paper rustled on the other end of the connection before Han Zhi spoke. "Marked survivors aren’t to be killed or burned. If they can still walk, redirect them east toward the sealed residence. Don’t escort them, don’t enter the property, and don’t tell the woman who sent them."
My hand stopped halfway into the Cheezies.
The room remained quiet long enough for Han Zhi to check whether the radio had disconnected.
"Does it say my name?" I asked.
"No, but there’s only one sealed residence east of the industrial district that Head Luo’s people knew about."
"That’s comforting," I grumbled. Seriously. You don’t give the man some embroidery thread and suddenly there was a price on my head and he kept trying to kill me. Was he working on a project or something that he needed that particular shade of purple?!?
Lingyun held out his hand for the radio. Yuche passed it to him before he could stretch across the table.
"Keep reading," Lingyun ordered.
"There’s only one more line." Han Zhi paused again, and I heard another page shift beneath his fingers. "It says that if the woman senses the tether, the route will open from both sides."
My fingers tightened around the snack bag until the plastic crackled.
"What route?" Chenghai asked.
"The note doesn’t explain."
"Who wrote it?" Yuche asked.
"Head Luo copied it into the report, but the instruction is marked as coming from Gu Han. There’s no record of how he contacted the market."
That was probably because Head Luo had possessed enough survival instinct not to document every conversation with people who arranged bitten deliveries to my front door. Unfortunately for him, that instinct hadn’t extended to avoiding Lingyun.
"Send us an exact copy of the page," Yuche said. "Don’t let anyone remove the original."
Han Zhi agreed, but Lingyun didn’t end the call. "Search for the words marked, tether, sealed residence, and east in every ledger. I want anything connected to Gu Han separated from the rest."
"That may take time."
"Then I suggest that you start now."
Han Zhi wisely didn’t argue. The radio remained open on the coffee table while he moved away from it, leaving the faint sounds of drawers opening and papers being shifted in the background.
I stared down at my leg.
Gu Han hadn’t merely pushed one injured man toward us because he needed somewhere to dump a problem. He’d given standing instructions to redirect bitten survivors in my direction, and he’d known enough about the connection to call it a tether.
He’d also expected me to notice it.
"Don’t," Yuche said.
I looked at him. "I haven’t done anything."
"You’re thinking about following it."
"That sounds like an accusation."
"It is."
Lingyun rested his chin against my shoulder. "I support following it."
Yuche looked at him.
"From a safe distance," Lingyun added.
"There isn’t a safe distance if the connection is already inside her," Zhenlan said from the floor.
That was the part none of them seemed interested in saying directly. Gu Han’s warning implied that the route could open from both sides, but one side had been open long enough for the Devourer to track me across the city.
All I had done so far was stand still while it looked.
I was tired of that.
"We need to know what the route does," I said.
Chenghai’s hand tightened around my ankle. "Not tonight."
"It’s already active tonight."
"You’re injured."
"I’m sitting on a couch."
"That hasn’t stopped you from making bad decisions before," Lingyun pointed out.
I turned to glare at him. "Whose side are you on?"
"Yours. That’s why I know how you operate."
Unfortunately, he also had a point.
I shifted my attention toward the plants surrounding the mansion. Their awareness waited beneath the walls, spread through the lawn, and curled around the garage where my bite twin remained locked inside his metal box.
The roots didn’t like the foreign pressure inside either of us, but they could feel it. That meant they could help me hold onto myself while I touched it.
"I’m not following it far," I said.
Yuche’s fingers closed around my thigh. "Rouxi."
"I only want to know whether Gu Han’s note is right."
"And if it is?"
"Then we’ll know he understands more about the Devourer than we thought."
"That isn’t what I asked."
I ignored him and pressed my palm over the scar beneath my pants.
The pain responded immediately.
It moved upward through my calf, but instead of pulling away, I reached for it with the same part of me that touched the plants. Roots tightened around the mansion’s foundation, anchoring my awareness inside the house as I pushed against the foreign presence buried beneath the scar.
For several seconds, I felt nothing except heat and old damaged flesh.
Then something shifted.
The sensation wasn’t inside the plants. It ran beneath my skin like a thread pulled through muscle, stretching away from me in a direction I couldn’t see. I followed it carefully, expecting distance to weaken it.
It didn’t.
The mansion disappeared from my awareness, replaced by layers of stone, buried pipes, collapsed tunnels, and something moving far below them. I couldn’t see a body, but I felt its weight pressing through the ground.
Other threads spread away from it.
There weren’t one or two threads. There were dozens, stretching through different parts of the city.
Some felt faint enough to belong to people who were dying. Others pulsed with the same sick rhythm beating beneath my scar.
The man in the garage screamed.
Yuche’s power surged through the house as the metal box shook around him. Chenghai caught my wrist, while Zhenlan’s wind pressed against my skin hard enough to remind me where my body was.
"Let go," Yuche said.
"Not yet."
The thread beneath my scar tightened.
For one second, I felt the enormous thing beneath the city turn. The movement dragged through every connection attached to it, and the plants around the mansion recoiled as though something had brushed against their roots.
Lingyun’s hand closed over mine. His skin was hot enough to hurt, but I kept my grip on the tether while the distant pressure moved closer.
It wasn’t coming through the ground.
It was coming through me.
I tore my awareness free.
The connection snapped back hard enough to throw me against the couch. Yuche caught my shoulders before my head struck the wall, while the plants outside thrashed against the barrier.
My calf burned, and somewhere in the garage, the bitten man continued screaming.
No one spoke until the roots beneath the mansion began turning north.
A second later, something on the other end pulled back.