The young woman stared at him with an unreadable expression for a while, then just sighed and turned.
"Let's go..your brother has bailed you out again.."
'Brother? Bailed? Jail?! But I don't have a brother..and what am I doing in jail.. Was I convicted for slipping on a banana peel?'
Finally, he spoke aloud.
"I don't have a brother.."
Without turning, the young woman just walked out of the room and gestured, for him to follow her.
"I'm not in the mood for tantrums Zeph.."
"I keep telling you I'm not Zeph! Lost your eyesight or something?!"
The young woman sighed and spun around. With impossible speed, she grabbed him by the collar, lifting him up from the ground and threw him across the silent, metallic hallway.
He flew past metallic doors and rolled on the floor. He tried to stand up but his whole body screamed in protest. Resisting the pain, he groaned and stood up.
Just before he could lash out the young woman, she was already standing in front of him, her eyes blazing with red fury. Her previous boredom was gone, replaced with immense anger and fury.
'How did she get here so fast..'
"I said.. I'm not in the mood for your tantrums.." she gritted her teeth.
Le Wei gulped a large amount of saliva and smiled weirdly.
"Yes.. Sure thing.."
****
The hallway stretched ahead like a metal tunnel. On either side, doors lined the walls.. some slightly ajar, others shut tight. Above, unstable bulbs flickered sporadically, throwing sharp, disorienting shadows across the cold steel floor. Each time a bulb blinked out, a brief darkness swallowed the corridor, leaving only the faint hum of machinery and the occasional echo of hurried footsteps from behind a door.
Le Wei's ears picked up faint murmurs, hurried whispers, and occasional grunts. Someone, or maybe several people, were moving behind the doors, their conversations overlapping into a dull, anxious murmur. The metallic clang of a dropped object here, a muffled shout there, made him flinch repeatedly.
His heartbeat seemed to sync with the flickering lights, anytime he was startled by a noise from any of the doors, the light would simultaneously flicker and go off as if trying to tell him he was in a horror movie.
The young woman moved ahead like she belonged to the hallway, her steps silent, precise and... calm? If calm was the right word. It felt as if she had been here for years.
Le Wei struggled to keep pace, the pain from his earlier throw still screaming through his body. He felt as if he was exposed to an unknown danger in the hallway. Maybe someone..or something might grab him and who knows what they'll do with him once he's dragged into the darkness.
'Positive thoughts Le.'
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of tense, narrow passage, the hallway ended.
There it was, at the end of the hallway, a massive, reinforced metallic door that towered over him. From the other side, voices filtered through, low and authoritative like a marketplace. All the voices seemed to be lost in their own lots..
The young woman stopped in front of the door and gestured sharply for him to move forward, her face flat, bored once again, as if the last few minutes had been nothing more than a tedious delay.
Le Wei's hand hesitated on the cold handle. When the door creaked open, a blast of sterile light spilled into the hallway. He blinked against it, trying to take in what lay beyond.
The space was vast, sprawling, almost industrial in scale. Rows of metallic desks and workstations were scattered across a concrete floor, interspersed with cages and holding cells. Officers... or guards of some kind.. paced back and forth, their faces impassive, some interacting with prisoners, others monitoring screens displaying surveillance footage from countless angles.
The architecture was sharp and utilitarian, cold steel and reinforced glass everywhere, with dangling fluorescent lights that buzzed incessantly, casting everything in a harsh, clinical glow.
It was some sort of police station? No.. It was a fortress giving that..dystopian stronghold of authority. Every detail screamed control: cameras in every corner, automated doors clanging shut behind patrolling officers, and a low, ever-present hum of machines working tirelessly to maintain order.
Le Wei swallowed hard, the weight of the place pressing down on him. This wasn't anywhere he had ever been. And judging by the woman's impassive expression, neither of them were strangers to its routine.
The woman simply walked past him, motioning for him to follow, her steps were confident and unhurried. She seemed perfectly at ease in this cold atmosphere Le Wei found scary and unpleasant, as though she had belonged to it for far longer than he could imagine.
Le Wei trailed behind, senses alert, stomach tightening with every step. This place… it was alive in its own way, it was unlike anything in New Kowloon and now he's starting to believe he's not in New Kowloon or rather..he wasn't on Earth or perhaps another world..something called an alternate dimension?
'Alternate my foot..'
The woman led him through the sprawling space, weaving between workstations and holding cells with an almost preternatural ease. Officers barely glanced at her as she passed, their attention fixed on their own different jobs.
Le Wei's eyes moved nervously around the room. He saw handcuffs hanging from belt, heard the clang of metal as prisoners were restrained, and felt the bright fluorescent lights make everything look sharp and cold.
Every so often, a prisoner would glance up at him, some with vacant stares, others with barely suppressed panic. Their expressions were frozen? More like they've lost every humanity in them.
He shivered involuntarily.
"Where… what is this place?" he asked quietly, his voice almost swallowed by the low hum of machinery and murmured commands echoing across the room.
The young woman didn't answer. She simply gestured for him to keep moving, her boredom was still fixed on her face like some sort of trait or personality.
Her eyes, calm and unreadable again, flicked occasionally toward the nearest officer, as if she knew exactly how far she could push without drawing attention.
They passed a row of cages containing people in various states of despair. Some were scribbling furiously on scraps of paper, others were pacing, muttering to themselves. The air smelled faintly of metal, disinfectant, and..fear creating a unpleasant aura that stuck to Le Wei's throat.
He couldn't shake the feeling that he had stepped into a different reality altogether. New Kowloon, Earth, those words now felt distant, irrelevant. The architecture, the technology, the sheer scale of control, it wasn't human in the usual sense. It felt like a carefully maintained simulation.
Come to think of it, he had heard about transmigration after death multiple times..if it was real.. Is that what was happening to him currently? Did he transmigrate? Wait if he did..does that mean he actually died?
"Alternate dimension.. " he muttered under his breath, the words tasting strange in his mouth. "Yeah… totally alternate… right…"
The woman turned her head slightly, as if hearing him but choosing not to respond. The gaze she gave him was a familiar gaze Le Wei recognized.. It meant:
"You're mad.. I don't care and I don't need to reassure you.. I would care less if your life was at stake."
'Damn you.. How do i get out of here though?'
They reached another corridor, narrower this time, lined with thick glass walls behind which more officers and prisoners moved.
Screens mounted along the walls showed live feeds of every section of the facility.. faces, movements, even vital signs were displayed in a sterile green glow. Le Wei realized with a sinking feeling that everything he did could be tracked, analyzed, cataloged. There was no slipping through unnoticed here.
Finally, they arrived at a smaller metallic door, less imposing than the previous one but no less significant. The young woman stopped, gave him a sharp look, and pushed it open.
Le Wei was expecting a kind of "sci-fi room" filled with holographic stuffs, men dressed in militant attire and obviously a tall, well built commander with scars on his left eye..and lest he forget, a black skinned female scientist, dressed in a lab coat showing other militants something on the holographic stuff. Then the moon will shake and aliens will pour down.. Wait what?!
'Aliens?! Really Le? .. Imagination does take you places..'
Instead, the office was calm, meticulously furnished. A young man with black hair sat in the visitor's chair, eyes immediately locking on him.
The young man in the visitor's chair had neatly combed black hair and dark, piercing eyes that seemed to weigh everything at once. His sharp features, high cheekbones, straight nose, strong jawline, hinted at both discipline and quiet confidence.
He wore a simple white shirt, sleeves rolled up slightly, giving him an unassuming yet strong presence. Even seated, he radiated a calm authority that made it impossible for Le Wei to look away.
Relief flooded the young man's face.
When he spoke, his voice was steady and warm: "Zeph… thank goodness you're okay. Your older brother is here."
Le Wei froze, his stomach twisting. Older brother? The words hit him like a jolt of electricity. Older brother? He doesn't even know him… how could he…
The young man in the office didn't rise from his chair. He simply leaned back slightly, dark eyes fixed on Le Wei with an intensity that made him instinctively step back. His voice was calm, almost too calm, but the relief in it was undeniable.
"Zeph… You should be thanking Riven here.. " the man scoffed, pointing towards the young woman.
" Only heavens know what would have happened to you…"
Le Wei blinked rapidly, trying to process ignoring the remarks about Riven.
"Older… brother?" His voice cracked, disbelief coating each word. "I… I don't have a brother. I.. "
The man turned to Riven with a confused gaze.
The woman barely shrugged and said: "You know he was found near a Grade S Miasma portal.. I think it had infected his brain.. Memory loss to be precise.. Thankfully he wasn't Ordained."
The man's expression slowly turned somber.
".. I've electrified his brain multiple rounds but he's not responding..."
'Memory loss? Wait that's what she meant by rounds... Ooh... Hey! She fried my brain.'
Le Wei's mind spun. Everything he'd known.. his memories, his identity, the city he'd grown up in. felt like fragile threads ready to snap.
'Maybe I'm Zeph? Maybe… someone erased my past? I actually transmigrated?'
He took a cautious step forward, eyes never leaving the young man in the chair. The man's gaze softened, but there was an unmistakable urgency in it.
"You were supposed to be careful.. " he said quietly. "After everything… I thought I'd lost you."
Le Wei swallowed hard, the room spinning slightly.
"I… I don't know what you're talking about.." he managed, his voice barely more than a whisper.
The man leaned forward, his hands resting on the arms of the chair. He smiled weakly.
"No matter. You're here now. That's what matters."
He gave a small nod, as if to signal that nothing else needed to be explained immediately.
Le Wei's mind screamed questions, but his tongue felt frozen. The woman beside him shifted slightly, almost impatiently, as if silently saying, 'Don't waste time arguing, just follow the story.'
"Older brother…" Le Wei muttered again, the words tasting foreign. He had never imagined such a phrase applying to him. His life had been his own until this moment.
If he had actually transmigrated? Where and who did he transmigrate to? What did they mean by memory loss? Miasma portals? All these mysteries where too choky even for him, a detective of high caliber..well it was "once upon a time" kind of a story.
Just when he turned, his gaze shifted to a mirror he had not noticed when entering the room. The mirror wasn't baffling.
It was the image the mirror brought. The image of.. him?