Shuyin helped distribute the portions personally, moving from room to room with serving trays. Most children stared at the food with confused hope, uncertain whether eating was allowed, whether this was so new form of torture disguised as kindness.
"You can eat," she told them softly in each room. "Small sips. The doctor says to drink it slowly, but you can have all of this. And tomorrow there will be more. And the day after that. You’re never going to be starved again."
So children drank imdiately, desperately, having to be gently slowed by dical staff to prevent them from consuming too quickly. Others needed coaxing, needed to see adults drink from their own cups first to believe it wasn’t poisoned. A few were too sick or too traumatized to eat at all, requiring continued IV nutrition until they could accept food orally.
Shuyin was in one of the rooms, helping a small girl hold her cup steady enough to drink, when her phone rang. The hospital. She stepped into the hallway to take the call.
"Miss Lin, this is Dr. Wang from St. Catherine’s Hospital. I’m calling with an update on your mother’s condition."
Shuyin’s heart clenched. Her mother. In the chaos of discovering and rescuing two hundred children, she’d almost forgotten her mother lay in a hospital bed across the city, recovering from fifteen years of imprisonnt and the magical healing Shuyin had perford.
"How is she?" Shuyin asked, her voice tight with worry.
"Stable," Dr. Wang reported, his tone professionally reassuring. "Her vital signs are strong, all her indicators are improving steadily. The recovery is progressing better than we had any right to expect given the severity of her condition when she arrived."
"But?" Shuyin heard the hesitation in his voice.
"But she hasn’t regained consciousness yet. We expected her to wake within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. It’s been longer than that now. There’s no dical reason for the continued unconsciousness that we can detect, her brain activity is normal, her body is healing. She’s simply... not waking up."
Shuyin closed her eyes, understanding what the doctor didn’t. Her mother’s body was healing from physical trauma, but her mind was processing fifteen years of captivity, torture, deprivation. Sotis the mind needed longer to heal than the body did, needed more ti to feel safe enough to return to full consciousness.
"Keep monitoring her," Shuyin said. "Let know imdiately if there’s any change, positive or negative. I’ll co visit tomorrow."
"Of course, Miss Lin. We’ll continue providing the best care possible."
" And what about the other girl?" Shuyin asked worriedly. If she hadn’t been working for Shuyin, she couldn’t have been implicated.
" She is recovering well and also haven’t woken up but she will soon." The doctor responded politely.
"All right, take care of them.... I will drop by later if possible." Once she was done with what was at hand, she would go and see her mother.
"Okay Miss!"
The call ended. Shuyin stood in the hallway for a mont, torn between wanting to rush to the hospital imdiately and knowing she was needed here for the rescued children. Her mother was stable, safe, receiving excellent dical care. The children were newly rescued, traumatized, requiring imdiate presence and reassurance.
Her mother would understand. Would want Shuyin to prioritize the children who needed her right now.
She returned to the feeding operation, helping ensure every child received their carefully asured nutrition, watching as two hundred starving bodies began the long process of learning to accept nourishnt again.
---
anwhile, across the city at Black Water Ridge Penitentiary, Lin Feng and Madam Chen were experiencing their own version of hell.
The transport van had delivered them to the facility in late afternoon. They’d been processed through intake with chanical efficiency, photographed, fingerprinted, stripped of their expensive clothes and jewelry, dressed in rough prison uniforms that scratched against skin accustod to silk. Their belongings were catalogued and stored. Their identities were reduced to prisoner numbers shouted by guards who didn’t care about status or wealth or connections that ant nothing inside these walls.
The maximum security wing of Black Water Ridge was designed to break people. High concrete walls, minimal natural light, constant noise from other inmates, air that always slled of sweat and desperation and violence barely contained. Guards who’d seen every type of criminal and had long since stopped caring about individual suffering.
Lin Feng and Madam Chen were separated imdiately, n’s and won’s sections divided by protocols that allowed no contact between prisoners of different genders. For the first ti in their marriage, they faced their nightmare alone, unable to draw strength from each other’s presence.
Lin Feng’s cell was six feet by eight feet. A narrow cot with a thin mattress. A tal toilet with no seat. A small sink that provided only cold water. Nothing else. No privacy, no comfort, no acknowledgnt of humanity beyond bare survival.
His cellmate, because of course there was a cellmate in this overcrowded facility, was a man in his thirties with tattoos covering most visible skin and eyes that assessed Lin Feng with predatory interest. He’d been assigned to this cell deliberately, Lin Feng realized with sinking dread. Soone had made sure he’d be placed with exactly the wrong kind of person.
"Well, well," the cellmate said, his voice carrying dark amusent. "They put a businessman in with . How much you worth on the outside, old man?"
Lin Feng didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. His throat had closed with fear so profound he could barely breathe.
"Don’t matter," the man continued, standing and moving closer. "Inside these walls, you’re worth whatever I say you’re worth. And right now, I’m thinking you’re worth quite a lot of entertainnt."
The first blow ca without warning, a fist to Lin Feng’s stomach that doubled him over, gasping. He tried to call for guards, tried to scream for help, but the air had been knocked from his lungs and by the ti he could draw breath to yell, a hand clamped over his mouth.
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