"We need a plan," Chenghai said as Luo Xin tried to check Rouxi without getting skewered by the vines wrapped around her body.
"We need to leave," Lingyun replied. His voice stayed light, but there was nothing light about the way fire flickered between his fingers every ti soone shifted too close to Yuche. "That is the plan."
Chenghai didn’t bother arguing with him.
It’s not like he was wrong.
The hotel was coming down around them one cracked support beam at a ti, and the longer they stayed underground, the worse their odds of breathing beca.
Luo Xin leaned in again, one hand lifted slowly toward Rouxi’s throat. The smallest vine around her neck rose with him, its leaf-shaped head opening enough to show a thin line of black poison.
The dic froze just as Yuche looked down at Rouxi, then at the vine. "Let him check."
For a few seconds, nothing happened, then the vine lowered by a single inch.
But even from where he was standing, Chenghai could feel the side-eye that the plant was giving the dic. He never knew, in either of his lives that plants could beco sentient like that... and it was shocking to say the least.
Luo Xin took what he was given. He pressed two fingers against Rouxi’s neck, waited, and let out a breath that seed to co from sowhere far too deep in his chest.
"Her pulse is becoming steadier," he started, his eyes going everywhere but to Yuche who was still glaring at him. "But her spine is broken. There is no nice way to put it. I have also found so nerve damage that suggests that she is completely unable to move the lower half of her body. I’m sorry."
The entire room paused for a second as if they needed the ti to fully understand those words.
Paralyzed.
That was a death sentence in this world.
Would it be more rciful for one of them to let her die? Better they kill her than a zombie.
But Yuche didn’t seem to so much as react to that.
Instead, he slipped one arm beneath Rouxi’s shoulders and the other under her knees before lifting her off the ground with the kind of care that made Chenghai look away for half a second. The vines tightened imdiately, then settled around Yuche’s arms as if they had decided he counted as acceptable support.
Nobody else tried to help which was probably the smartest decision anyone had made all night.
"Back to the holding room," Chenghai ordered. "Sa tunnel. No one spreads out. Luo Xin stays beside Yuche. Lingyun takes rear guard."
Lingyun’s smile was thin. "Who put you in charge?"
"Do you have a better plan?"
"Kill anything that moves wrong."
"That is not a plan," Chenghai countered with disgust.
"It’s worked so far..." replied Lingyun. But the way he was staring at the other man was beginning to make Chenghai uncomfortable. "That is... it worked up until you and Z there had a lobotomy and changed over night."
Chenghai ignored him and started moving. There was no point trying to pull Lingyun back from the edge right now.
It was clear to anyone with a brain that the man had already decided that the world had divided itself into two categories: Rouxi and threats.
Up until a few seconds ago, Chenghai was fairly confident that he and Zhenlan were on the right side of that line, but after what Lingyun had said, he had no intention of testing it while Rouxi was unconscious in Yuche’s arms.
The tunnel back felt longer than it should have.
Chenghai led the way at first, stepping over broken roots, cracked concrete, and slick patches of mud while Zhenlan kept close enough behind him that the moving air around his hands brushed against Chenghai’s shoulders.
Commander Li followed with two of his soldiers, while Luo Xin stayed exactly where Chenghai had placed him, close enough to watch Rouxi’s breathing but far enough from Yuche that the vines did not react again.
Behind them, Lingyun moved like a closing door.
Anything that tried to co after them would burn before it reached the group.
They reached the holding room to the sound of too many people panicking in too small a space.
Civilians shoved toward the stairwell in uneven waves while soldiers tried to force them into sothing resembling order. Several people from the lower chamber had already stumbled inside, dragging sli across the floor and babbling over each other about mouths in the ground and people disappearing whole.
Colonel Wei Guang stood near the stairwell, shouting orders with enough force that half the room obeyed before they seed to realize they were obeying at all.
"Children and injured first!" Wei barked. "If you can walk, you help soone who can’t. Stop pushing or I’ll throw you down myself."
A man near the stairs tried to shove past an older woman but Wei grabbed him by the back of the collar and slamd him into the wall hard enough to make the man gasp. "Congratulations. You just volunteered to carry her."
The man stared at him in shock even as Wei shoved the older woman toward him. "Move."
Good.
At least soone was handling the civilians.
Chenghai scanned the holding room once and imdiately marked the exits, the cracked ceiling supports, the number of soldiers still capable of moving quickly, and the civilians likely to beco problems before they reached the ground floor.
The main stairwell was slow but usable. The hallway behind the conference rooms had partially caved in. The elevators were still useless. The ergency stairwell on the far side might have been faster if half the ceiling had not dropped in front of it.
"Main stairs only," Chenghai called out. "Two lines. Keep the left side clear for the wounded."
Wei snapped his head toward him, recognized the logic, and turned back to the room without wasting ti on pride. "You heard him. Two lines. Left side clear."
Commander Li moved to Chenghai’s side while his n started reinforcing the flow toward the stairs. "We have vehicles north of the hotel and a temporary dical station three blocks out."
"No," Chenghai said.
Li’s eyes narrowed. "She needs treatnt now."
"She needs controlled access, supplies, and defenses that nobody can cross. Not to ntion, people who won’t panic when the vines move... and people the vines won’t see as threats." Chenghai looked toward Yuche, who had not put Rouxi down even once. "Your dical station gives her none of that."
"It gives her military dics."
"It gives her strangers."
Li did not answer imdiately.
He looked toward Rouxi instead, and Chenghai saw the exact mont the officer understood the problem.
The vines were not there for decoration. They were not passive. They were still guarding her even while she could not open her eyes. Put her in a crowded military treatnt center with exhausted dics, frightened soldiers, and too many hands reaching for her, and the room would turn into a slaughterhouse before anyone finished taking her pulse.
"We need to bring her back to the mansion," Chenghai said with a sigh. "We take her ho. To the one place that she truly feels safe."
Wei heard that and swore. "Of course you do. Why would anyone make the only sane decision tonight?"
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