April 9, 2008: Shangahi, China

Hei woke with a start. He lay perfectly still in the dark room, all five senses straining to discover what had woken him. There was the general noise of the traffic outside, a cool breeze blowing from a small whirring fan. Then a door shut, and a thin line of light appeared near the floor.

He relaxed. She'd just gone to the bathroom.

Closing his eyes, he rolled onto his side and placed a hand on the still-warm sheets beside him, and settled into a light doze. After a minute or two, the sound of the toilet flushing stirred him again. Water splashed briefly from the faucet; the bathroom door opened and soft footsteps padded across the carpet towards the bed.

The mattress dipped slightly as Misaki climbed in. She scooted towards him; Hei raised his arm so that she could spoon tightly against him, then tucked his hand up under her sleep-shirt to press against her warm belly.

"Sorry," she whispered as she intertwined her fingers in his. "I didn't mean to wake you; I just had to pee."

Hei exhaled softly into her hair. "Don't worry about it."

"I do worry, though. You're such a light sleeper - I hate to think you don't get any rest because of me."

"I don't mind," he said, contented weariness tugging him back towards sleep. "It just gives me another chance to fall asleep next to you."

He could feel her smile, somehow, as he drifted off.

The sudden sound of splashing water jolted him awake once more. Heart pounding, Hei tuned his focus into his surroundings. The room was dark, the bed next to him cold and empty. There was a pervading scent of mildew in the air.

Ceramic scraped across a surface; turning, Hei saw the dim outline of Yin setting a bowl on the little table by the curtained window. He exhaled, forcing himself to relax.

Shanghai. They were still in Shanghai, in the industrial outskirts. The ship had docked…what, two days ago? Three? The days were starting to blur together.

"Yin, is everything alright?"

"My hand slipped," she replied softly. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright."

With a weary sigh, Hei shut his eyes again. There was about an hour left, he judged, before Yin would wake him for his turn at watch. With any luck, he would dream again.

When he did wake, however, he realized with a start that it was past dawn, grimy light filtering in through the even grimier curtains.

He sat up abruptly. "Yin, what's wrong - why did you let me sleep so long?"

"You needed to sleep."

He breathed a little easier when she answered; it meant nothing had happened to her, at least.

"That's not going to change any time soon, and you need to sleep too. It's past time for my watch." Then he squinted in the dimness; there was a collection of shapes, more than just Yin's bowl of water, on the table. She seemed to be struggling with something in front of her.

Stifling a yawn, as if to prove her wrong, he rose and peered out the corner of the curtain.

"It's safe," Yin said.

"You're not using your specter."

"It's still safe."

He glanced at her, then tugged the curtain open just far enough to let a little soft morning light spill into the room. Not enough for any prying eyes on the sidewalk outside to see in.

"Since when do you argue with me," he muttered, more surprised than anything else.

Yin didn't respond; instead she continued her fight with - his eyebrows rose - the can opener from their mess kit.

"What is that?"

"Soup."

"I can see it's soup - I mean, where did you get it?"

She tried to give the key another turn, but the can slipped from her hands and fell to the floor with a thunk. Hei stooped and picked it up, then held out his hand for the opener. For a moment he almost thought she wouldn't hand it over; then she passively let it drop into his palm.

"I walked to the store on the corner. While you were asleep."

His hand froze halfway around the can. "You - what? Why? Yin, that wasn't safe, you can't just walk out on your own!"

They'd dyed her hair last night; it had taken two of the do-it-yourself drugstore boxes. Up close it was still obvious that her facial features held no trace of East Asian ancestry, but from a distance, in a crowd, she would blend in. She hadn't commented when he'd explained the necessity of it, simply nodded her head like she did with most of his decisions. The only thing that she'd said was when they were rinsing the excess dye out, watching black ink swirl down the sink.

"My mother always said I held the moonlight in my hair."

Hei paused for a moment, then continued squeezing the water from her tresses. "The moon is still there; we just can't see it."

He wasn't sure, but he thought she nodded her head the barest fraction at that.

"I checked the perimeter first," Yin said now. "And did a grid scan. It was safe."

"Just because you don't see anyone suspicious, doesn't make it safe." He cranked the key a little too hard; the lid popped off with a messy splash. "I thought it was safe when we changed motels last night, and that contractor still nearly killed you."

Her hand brushed the bandage on her neck, where the air-funneling contractor's strike had barely missed slicing her throat open.

"You need to sleep," she repeated stubbornly. "I knew you would be hungry when you woke up."

Hei's stomach chose that moment to betray him and growl loudly. He bit back what he had been going to say, and instead said with a sigh, "Thank you. But don't go on your own next time, it'll only make me worry. Which flavor do you want?"

Yin blinked, and her hand hovered indecisively between the two protein shakes he held out. She'd decided, on her own, to walk two blocks to the store and purchase an assortment of ready-to-eat meals and snacks, yet when he offered to let her choose between two innocuous flavors it always seemed to catch her by surprise. Hei wondered if she would ever get used to her own autonomy. He wondered if he would ever get used to it.

After a long moment, Yin reached out and took the vanilla shake. Hei watched her open it and take a sip - he'd occasionally caught her not eating her portions so that there would be more for him - before digging into the cold soup himself.

It wasn't exactly the same as the hot, fresh meals he'd gotten used to on the ship; but at least it was calories. Yin's color had been looking better lately, her cheeks more filled out, now that she was able to eat again. If she minded the monotony of the shakes and soup, she didn't complain.

"My sister and I used to eat like this," Hei said abruptly, surprising himself. "Before the Syndicate found us."

"Soup?"

He stared at the shapeless mush in the can. "Whatever we could find or steal. Things that didn't need to be cooked or prepared. After three months of that…I promised her that I wouldn't let her eat that garbage again if I could help it. It meant I had to learn how to cook; it wasn't like we had money for restaurants. And they were a little harder to steal from."

He polished off the last of the…whatever it was supposed to be, vegetable-something maybe, then set the empty can aside and opened a tin of mackerel. "I don't know why I tried so hard. She might have learned to care about things again later, but she didn't yet, then. I knew she didn't. I tried anyway."

"You needed it. Not her."

Hei watched her take another small sip of the shake; he could eat three entire meals before she finished a single bottle. "Yeah. Maybe that was it." He turned and stared out the chink in the curtains. "We'll find someplace where we can stop running soon, Yin. I'll make you a real breakfast then."

"Not on a boat?"

A huff of laughter escaped his throat. "Not on a boat."

Movement outside the window caught his eye. Pressing himself against the wall, he twitched aside the corner of the curtain and looked out. The motel manager was pacing the narrow street, talking on a cell phone. But he was glancing in the direction of Hei and Yin's room far too often for Hei's comfort.

"Time to leave?" Yin asked.

"Time to leave," Hei told her; she was already scooping up her water bowl to empty into the sink.

April 10, 2008

Hei crouched beside the door, his entire attention focused on the faint jingling of keys that was slowly but surely growing louder.

He and Yin had taken temporary refuge in a storage room in the back of a train depot. They would have to move on before dawn, before the early morning commuter trains started running and staff would need to start using the room. For now, though, it should be safe enough.

They had made it out of the motel without incident. Hei wasn't sure if it was because he'd picked up on the signs early enough, or if it was because it truly was a false alarm. That motel had still been fairly close to the Nangan Waterway docks where the ro-ro had moored. Hei didn't think any of the crew knew enough to out him to anyone, but maybe Taro had talked, said something over drinks that gave the right things away to the right listener.

Or maybe the answer was more simple. He'd removed Yin's tracker before they'd even left Tokyo, but there was still his star. He had been forced to use his power in the last fight, and of course any observatory with the right type of telescopes would be able to track his star. He had no idea if the Chinese had as sophisticated a setup as Japan, but it was probably safe to assume that they could at least identify the city he was in. And he knew for a fact that the Syndicate had always had a not-insignificant presence in this country.

A safe place; that was what he needed. Shanghai was a crowded city full of people with his same coloring; with her hair dyed, even Yin didn't stand out that much. Yet a contractor had found them the night before, and now a second - potentially a second, he forced himself to remember - had found them yesterday.

Yin was asleep behind a shelf a cleaning supplies, curled up under his coat with their gear bag as a pillow. Hei had positioned himself across the room; not only to be near the door in case of trouble, but also to lower the chance that an extraneous movement would wake her accidentally - she was almost as light a sleeper as he was these days.

He and Xing had hidden in a train station like this once, he seemed to recall. Back before the Syndicate had found them, and his life had been one long waking terror - not understanding what was happening to his baby sister and frightened that the police would find her and take her away. Or worse.

The jingling sound continued to approach down the long hallway. It was almost definitely a security guard making his rounds; a contractor wouldn't be so carelessly noisy. Unless it was a contractor disguised as a security guard. But Hei didn't think so. Even a contractor in disguise would take care to be as silent as possible. He would, anyway.

As the footsteps neared, he found himself holding his breath, keeping as quiet as possible lest the guard have any reason to check this storeroom. The jingling drew abreast of the door, then abruptly ceased.

Hei gripped the hilt of his knife. The door handle rattled. He reached for his power, not quite drawing on it but prepared to grasp and unleash it at any moment.

The handle stopped rattling. Apparently satisfied that the door was locked, the guard continued down the hall, keys jingling on his belt.

Still, Hei didn't dare exhale.

"Hei?"

He'd spun, knife in hand, before his mind registered that it was just Yin. She was sitting up in her corner, his coat still draped over her. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"Where are we going?"

Hei blinked, then relaxed the slightest bit. "Away from here."

There was an expectancy in Yin's silence. He added, "I don't know. We'll keep heading south, I guess; the more often we move, the harder it'll be to find us."

"After that?"

He knew what she was asking. This constant running, reacting rather than acting, was only going to wear them down. Was wearing them down. The problem was, they had no resources - no money, no contacts - and no solid idea of how the Syndicate's contractors kept finding them.

"A country without the Syndicate's presence," he mused out loud. "There has to be one."

But Taro had been right; without papers, they weren't going to get very far. Hei wouldn't be able to afford any kind of quality forgeries; not unless he stole some money, the way Xing had used to do. Those uncomfortable memories - and the thought of Misaki's disappointment in him - made him hesitate to suggest it, however.

"Let's just see what trains are leaving when the station opens," he said. "I'll figure something out from there."

They snuck out of the storage room and through a back exit of the depot as the first blush of a smoggy sunrise graced the sky. After picking up a quick breakfast of fresh steamed buns from a street vendor, Hei led Yin back into the depot - through the front entrance this time.

Even this early, the main terminal was rapidly filling with people. Gripping Yin's hand, Hei strode up the Departures board. This station was Shanghai's largest hub; trains traveled from here all across eastern China. His stomach seized when he spotted one destination: Xi'an.

No. It was far, far too dangerous to go there.

What they needed was a place they could disappear into. He scanned the board. The first train leaving the station was headed to Guilin. That was an out-of-the-way city; with no real reason for them to want to go there, their hunters might not even consider the option. But only one train was headed that way; if they picked up a tail, they'd be sitting ducks.

Four trains to Beijing, leaving within the next two hours - heading back north might confuse their trail. But Hei had spent quite a lot of time in Beijing, just after Heaven's War. It was several years ago now, true; but he had no allies there, only potential enemies.

He read further down the board. Hong Kong…Hong Kong…twelve trains to Hong Kong, all leaving before noon? With that many, even if one of their hunters guessed that they'd be heading there, there was an eleven out of twelve chance that they'd guess the wrong train and miss them. Hei and Yin would be reasonably safe; until they arrived in the city, at least.

Once they arrived, it would be a different matter entirely. Hong Kong would be almost as dangerous for Hei as Tokyo was right now.

Still, Hei did have an old contact there. He didn't exactly trust Qin, but the man did owe him a favor. Qin had never been formerly attached to the Syndicate; with the organization on the verge of exposure, Qin would be looking to distance himself even further. As far as risks went, this one might just be worth it.

Hei squeezed Yin's hand. "How does Hong Kong sound?"