She didn’t make it ten strides out the door before Jin landed in her path.

“Sis,” he said, voice low. “Slow down.”

“Get out of my way.”

“You have that look on your face,” he said.

“What look?”

“The one that says you’re about to do something very stupid.”

“Jin, I swear...”

He held up his hands. “Look, sis, I care as much as you do, but you can’t just run off into a warzone—”

“I lied to you.”

“…What?”

“Mei lied to you, too. She didn’t leave the Cult.”

Jin just stared at her, uncomprehending.

“Cao—the Cult Leader—he asked her to be a vessel, Jin. And she accepted.”

“Rue,” said Jin slowly. The color was draining from his face. “This isn’t funny.”

“I’m not joking! Get out of my—”

He was sprinting down the road.

“WAIT!” She screamed after him. “You can’t go through the Middle Wall—it’s barred, remember? There’s another way in! I’ll show you.”

***

Sometimes when traffic through the Middle Wall got too heavy, especially during the evenings when all the servants and merchants and careworkers made their ways back home, it could take hours to go through. Mei had shown her another way. The long way around—there was a crack in the city walls near the South Gate, the one facing the ocean. It was ill-maintained; the crack was made first by the weather, then chiseled out by smugglers. First they left out the North Gate, followed the curve of the wall all the way to the sea, passing cornfields and thickets of cypress trees and four sets of beam bridges, and then snuck their way through. It took nearly an hour, then another half hour to make their way to the bakery.

Enough time for a creeping dread to grasp hold of Ruyi. She didn’t want to arrive. Jin just smiled when he saw her face—a forced one. “She’ll be fine,” he said. “You’ll see. She’s smart, she’s resourceful, she’s the most resourceful person I know. No one knows these streets better. They couldn’t catch her if they had ten thousand men.”

It sounded to Ruyi like he was trying to convince himself.

Happy Cookie Bakery had always seemed to her like a face—the windows made the eyes, the mouth was the door. The windows were shattered; the eyes poked out. The door gaped in dark shock and the afternoon light threw a red haze over its insides, and Ruyi could see tables lolling on their sides, stools with fractured legs. They made their way in and found the counter broken clean in two. There was nothing in the cabinets. Qi burns blackened the walls and a chunk of the floorboards had been torn out, leaving a jagged maw. “Mei?” croaked Jin. “Mei! It’s… it’s me. Are you there?”

“Jin…” She wasn’t there. It was so obvious she wasn’t there, but Jin went peering into the maw like she might be hiding in the dark. “Jin—”

“Shh! I hear something.”

A soft high wail, like a baby’s crying, drifted out from the staircase.

“Mei!” Jin was up the stairs in two bounds.

It came from Mei’s personal quarters. Ruyi had never been. There was her room, and across from hers, another. The door was thrown wide open. Jin threw on the light. The creature huddled in the corner cried out, raising a withered hand to shield his face.

An old man with wispy white hairs, whimpering in the dark.

“Mei-ling?” he sniveled. “Is—is that you?”

Jin looked crushed.

“No, Pa. This is Ren,” he said, going to kneel by the man, reaching out a hand. “Do you remember me?”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Ren?” said the man, uncertain.

“Yes, Pa. Ren. Mei’s friend, Ren—”

The old man slapped his hand away. “I don’t want you!” he cried. “Where’s my Mei-Ling? What’d you do with her?”

“Pa,” said Jin. His fingers trembled; he was cracking a little. “Pa, I need you to listen to me. I need you to focus. Do you remember what happened last night?”

“I want my Mei-ling—”

“You’ll get her!” screamed Jin. “You’ll get her, if you’ll answer my fucking questions! What happened last night?!”

Ruyi gaped at Jin. The old man burst into tears.

“She didn’t come,” he sobbed. “It was so loud… she didn’t come, she said she would, I was so scared, so scared—”

“What did you hear?”

“I don’t know!” cried the old man, covering his ears. “It was so loud!”

He curled into himself, rocking back and forth. “Ah-ah-ah…”

Then he caught sight of Ruyi. “Mei?” he croaked. “Mei-ling?”

“Wait,” Ruyi protested. “I—”

But he’d scrambled over and caught her in a bony hug. She didn’t know what to do. He sagged into her, his tears dribbling onto her robe. “Thanks Heavens… oh, thank Heavens! I thought—I thought—”

At first Ruyi just stood there, arms stiff at her sides. He needed something solid to hold onto; all she could do was be there for him. Awkwardly, she patted him on the back.

Eventually Jin managed to pull the old man off. “This isn’t Mei,” he said softly. “This is my sister. Mei went into hiding, Pa. We’ll go find her and bring her back—you just stay put, okay?”

***

“Have you seen Mei?”

It was a question Jin must’ve asked two dozen times in the past four hours. Each time he was met with a shaken head. The first places they’d tried were rooftop hideouts—hollowed-out chimneys, hidden garden terraces at the tops of skyscrapers, an abandoned penthouse atop a gambling pagoda. Ruyi came along, though she felt uncomfortable, like she was intruding on something private, these places only he and Mei had shared. Mei was nowhere.

Now they were going around asking on foot. They asked where the street hospital had been—many of the sick and dying had made a home of it. They stubbornly stayed, even as the Cult pulled back, making tents of worn tarp and meals of roast street rats. But they didn’t know. They asked two neighbors, but they didn’t know either—they’d gone into hiding at the first sight of the Guards. They said they heard screaming. Then Jin and Ruyi checked Mei’s dough suppliers. They wandered Main Street asking about. They even went to the Underground. No luck anywhere.

Jin was sure she was in hiding. “She knew she had to make herself hard to find,” he explained. “She’s always had plans for stuff like this. She’s clever—you’ll see. She wouldn’t let herself be caught, certainly not by some Imperial Guard buffoons.”

“Right,” said Ruyi hoarsely.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I mean… I just… I don’t know, Jin. It’s getting late…”

“You don’t know her like I do,” he insisted.

Three more hours came and went, hours of marching. In three more hours they’d brush up against the Emperor’s curfew.

“Where could she be?” Jin muttered. “I’ll bet she’s laughing at us how silly we are right now. I’ll bet it’s somewhere obvious. Somewhere we’d never think to look.”

He gave a frail little smile. “She might not seem it, but she liked playing little jokes, in her own way. Subtle ones, you know.”

“Jin,” said Ruyi, gently as she could. “Would Mei just leave her Father like that? I don’t know… maybe—maybe it’s time to consider if—”

“Rue?” he said, and something in his voice made her freeze. “I’m going to need you to stop talking. Can you do that for me?”

She nodded.

He ran a hand through his hair, dragged in a breath, put his smile back on. “Sorry. It’s just—you don’t know her like I do. Trust me. She’s here somewhere. We just have to find her.”

***

An hour later, they were on the path to the bakery. Jin remembered it must’ve a day since Mei’s father had last eaten; he bought him a steamed bao on the way back.

“She’ll be back, you’ll see,” he said. He wasn’t even talking to her anymore, just mumbling.

Their steps echoed in the silence.

“If—if she was caught, they must be holding her somewhere, for ransom. Or—or maybe she ratted out some of the other cult members, so they’ll set her free. There’s still dozens at large, I heard, maybe hundreds—she’d talk her way out, she was always good at that.”

Silence. Miserable, horrible silence.

“Why else would she be missing?” he went on. “There was no blood, right? So they didn’t want to hurt her—if she was even caught.”

The bakery was dark when they made it back. The edges of the yard where it sat were cloaked in shadow. As Jin went in Ruyi paused a moment to stare. Happy Cookie Bakery, it was called. She put this howling mess side-by-side with the Bakery of her memories. She’d always thought of it as such a warm place, a place earthy smells, where every little object was treated with care, put where it belonged—

She glimpsed a round shape peeking out from the back of the bakery. She stepped closer, her heart suddenly in her throat. It resolved in the dim light; it was a garbage bin, just a garbage bin, with a leather sack sticking over it—too big to fit neatly in its mouth.

It smelled like the field hospital.

She couldn’t bring herself to believe it. It was so careless, so blatant. Like they wanted it found.

When Ruyi got close, peered over the edge, she saw the sack’s bottom was stained a red so dark it was nearly black.

“Rue?”

Jin, behind, moving closer. “Do you want to come in?”

“Rue? What are you—Hell that smells! What—Oh.”

Heavy breathing, behind, beside, rushing forward. His trembling hands undoing the string.

Ruyi couldn’t bear to look. She had to look.

“….oh….” said Jin.

She looked, and instantly regretted it.

They couldn’t fit Mei in like that. So they’d left her in parts. Ruyi could still make out the patterns on her cut-up dress, the happy dancing cookies Mei had sewn on. Happy Cookie Bakery.

Jin began to cry.

He didn’t let himself go; he just stood there, shoulders silently shaking. Then he was on his knees, and he couldn’t hold himself together anymore.