Asteroid Prison, outer sector — the Warden's Conference Room.
He Dong gestured at the three-dimensional prison map projected on the wall behind him. "As you can all see."
"We have confirmed at least one hundred and twenty-three inmate casualties and four guard-staff casualties in the lower level, with an additional two technician-staff deaths in the mid-level."
"And the numbers are still climbing."
"We've attempted to consolidate the inmates in the decontamination chambers at the mine shaft entrances, but some of them are clearly trying to take advantage of the chaos."
"The lower level's signal network has been disrupted by the aggressive Spiritual Fluctuations naturally emitted by the Abnormality organisms. Our surveillance of the lower level has gone completely dark."
"The entire mid-level has also been thrown into disarray by the emergence of a small number of Blood Crystal Abnormalities. With the deaths of technicians Zhang Lang and Mao Yu, we're critically short-staffed. We've had to prioritize restoring lower-level surveillance, and progress has been poor."
"And the one responsible for all of this… is him."
He Dong rapped on the wall beside the projection, and a headshot of Xiang Yi appeared next to the display.
"Xiang Yi passed through the deepest section of the mine shaft, then the lower-level inmate shower block, then the mid-level technician workshop, and finally returned to his own cell."
"Every location he visited became a point of origin for a Blood Crystal Abnormality outbreak. He had both the means and the motive."
The Conference Room erupted into noise.
"Guy's out of his mind."
"How did he even pull that off?"
"Nobody noticed anything?"
"Wasn't he afraid of getting infected by the Blood Crystals himself?"
He Dong addressed the last question directly. "The Blood Crystals in the technician workshop have since been contained. We've confirmed that Xiang Yi took the workshop's Mind Pulse Generator — the only device we have on hand capable of suppressing Blood Crystals on a wide scale."
Before the words had fully settled, someone in the Conference Room rounded on He Dong. "Why would you ever let him be in charge of something that important?"
"If you were the only person in this entire prison who could repair that device, I'd hand it over to you too."
The room erupted again, the overlapping voices drowning He Dong out entirely.
The warden slammed a hand on the table, and silence fell.
He Dong gave the warden a nod and turned back to the projection. "We searched his cell. All we found was the wristband he'd taken off."
Nobody in the Conference Room had any questions about the wristband. Someone capable of repairing a Mind Pulse Generator could obviously remove a wristband without breaking a sweat.
They weren't here to find out how Xiang Yi had slipped off the grid. They wanted to know what He Dong intended to do about him.
"Fortunately, I had a Nanometer Positioning Chip injected into him in advance. The last reading before the signal cut out showed Xiang Yi heading back into the deepest section of Mine Shaft 21."
"We don't know his exact location right now, but the moment the Blood Crystals went out of control we sealed every external passage connecting the inner and mid levels of the shafts. He's still inside the prison — there's no question about that."
"We need to organize a team and move into Mine Shaft 21 to track Xiang Yi down and apprehend him. Lethal force is authorized if necessary."
The meeting wrapped up shortly after, once the warden had handed out assignments for the emergency response.
Everyone had their hands full because of Xiang Yi.
And Xiang Yi himself — the man who'd started it all — was pressed against the interior hatch in the cargo hold of a medical waste transport ship, ready to move at a moment's notice.
Not long after the ship had launched, he felt gravity return.
His first instinct was that the ship had turned around, but the automated announcement that crackled to life put that fear to rest.
"Simulated gravity system online. Operating normally."
"Life support system online. Operating normally."
"Autopilot system online. Operating normally."
Xiang Yi finally let himself breathe. He was well and truly gone from that asteroid.
He took the moment to dig out the medical tape from the small first-aid kit he'd brought along and patch up the tears in his protective suit. Then he leaned back against the hatch and closed his eyes to rest.
He had no idea what was waiting for him on the other end. He needed to be in the best shape possible when he found out.
Time ticked by. By his body's reckoning, roughly an hour had passed.
Xiang Yi's eyes snapped open as the ship's alert tone sounded. "Approaching space station. Transponder activated. Simulated gravity system shutting down shortly. Please fasten your seatbelt."
The ship had apparently linked up with the local station's signal, and the announcement followed immediately: "Welcome to the Liuyun Star System Waste Disposal Center."
"A space station? A disposal center?"
Xiang Yi groaned inwardly at the announcement.
The name was almost certainly exactly what it sounded like.
There had to be dozens of scattered human settlements across the Star System — places not unlike the Asteroid Prison — and most of them would have no way to process their own waste. There probably wasn't even a dedicated processing facility for every type of garbage in the entire Star System.
Sending individual ships to haul different kinds of waste from every settlement would be prohibitively expensive. So a consolidated hub like this had been the obvious solution.
Everything got funneled here first, then redistributed to whichever planet was actually responsible for processing it.
Which meant Xiang Yi had to move. Once the medical waste was offloaded, this ship would head straight back to the prison.
The ship eased to a stop inside the station. The rear cargo hatch sounded like it was about to open.
Xiang Yi pressed his ear against the hatch leading into the ship's interior and listened.
Silence.
He moved quickly but carefully, easing the hatch open, slipping through, and pulling it shut behind him.
It was a small ship — maybe twenty meters long, under ten wide, six or seven meters tall at most. The interior corridors were cramped as a result.
Still, it didn't take Xiang Yi long to get a feel for the layout.
The ship had two levels. The entire lower deck was taken up by the engines, with a small maintenance room tucked into one corner that housed a collection of tools.
On the upper deck, beyond the cargo hold at the rear, three rooms were arranged in a triangular formation toward the front — the cockpit at the tip, and behind it a rest room with a few suits hanging up and a small bathroom.
The pilot was sprawled in the cockpit chair with a sleep mask over his eyes, dead to the world.
Apparently the autopilot had handled everything, and the ship's announcement hadn't woken him — neither had the unloading, which seemed to be entirely out of his hands anyway.
The cockpit's forward viewport was also nothing like what Xiang Yi had seen before.
The glass had gone pitch black — completely opaque, impossible to see through from either side.
The pilot had probably switched it over manually to help him sleep.
Xiang Yi relaxed a little. In an unfamiliar place, avoiding a confrontation was always the better outcome.
He crept into the cockpit and reached toward the central console — that had to be the ship's main control interface.
The moment his fingers made contact, he yanked his hand back as if he'd touched a live wire.
A faint spike of pain had shot through his mind, and some deep instinct had stopped him cold before he could even try to take control.
He wasn't anywhere near strong enough to interface with a ship. If he forced it, there was only one outcome — his Spiritual Power would bottom out and he'd drop into a coma on the spot.
Xiang Yi exhaled quietly and let go of the idea, tempting as it was. He turned and headed into the rest room instead.
He'd already had his eye on the suits hanging there. They were noticeably thicker than the one he'd grabbed from the prison, more advanced by the look of them, and each came with a compact oxygen tank — clearly designed for use in open space.
After changing into one, he discovered he could even adjust the visor's opacity, which would make moving around considerably easier.
The pilot's work ID was sitting on the table in the rest room. Xiang Yi figured there was no reason to leave it behind, so he pocketed it.
Everything was in order. Xiang Yi moved back to the corridor behind the cockpit and slowly, soundlessly, cracked open the ship's exterior hatch.
He stepped down off the ship.
The first thing that filled his vision was a vast, sprawling Space Port.