---
Wade moved to follow Simon out, but Simon stopped him in the entrance hall with a raised hand.
"We should go separately," Simon said, his voice low. "If someone sees us together, it'll raise questions."
Wade hesitated, then nodded. "Smart thinking. You go first."
What Wade didn't know was that the moment Simon left the third floor, he went straight down to the first. His footsteps were steady now, the nervous energy he'd displayed upstairs gone. By the time he knocked on Jin's door, he was calm.
Lisa opened it. She and Mark had been waiting.
"Come in. Jin's in the living room."
Simon nodded, stepping inside. He closed the door firmly behind him before making his way to the living room, where Jin sat on the sofa, waiting.
Mark and Lisa took seats to the left. Simon dropped onto the couch across from Jin, the springs groaning under his weight.
Jin studied him for a moment. "How did it go?"
Simon let out a long breath. "They want me to stab you."
Jin's eyebrows rose. "Come again?"
"They're planning to ambush you tonight. Lure you up to the seventh floor with a fake monster sighting. I'm supposed to be the inside man—get close to you during the chaos, put a blade in your back before you can command your Summon. Once you're down, they hit Fidex with gasoline. Burn it alive."
Simon's voice was flat, but his hands were clenched into fists on his knees. "Josh is more vicious than we thought. He's not just looking to steal your secret. He wants you dead."
The room was silent for a moment. Then Jin laughed—a short, cold sound.
"Good. If he wasn't vicious, I wouldn't have a reason to hit him hard enough to make it stick."
Mark leaned forward, his expression troubled. "So what's the plan for tonight?"
"We turn the trap around." Jin's eyes moved to the window, where darkness was already gathering outside. "We get to the seventh floor first. And then we wait for them to walk right into it."
---
The hours crawled by. Outside, the fog pressed against the windows, blocking out any trace of stars or moon. The building settled into its nightly silence—the creak of settling concrete, the distant drip of a leaking pipe, the occasional muffled sob from somewhere above.
By midnight, the silence was absolute.
Then, soft as a whisper, a door opened on the third floor.
Josh emerged first, a meter-long steel pipe clutched in his hand. The end had been sharpened to a point, the metal glinting dully in the emergency lighting. Behind him came Wade, Chen Jun, Greg, and two others Jin vaguely recognized from the supply distribution. Each carried weapons—bone chopping knives, heavy wrenches, more sharpened pipes.
Wade was the exception. He carried a twenty-liter gasoline can in one hand, its green surface dark in the dim light. A black backpack hung from his shoulders, the glass bottles inside clinking softly with every movement. Molotov cocktails, improvised but deadly.
They moved through the building like wraiths, sticking to the shadows, avoiding the main stairs where their footsteps might echo. Josh had chosen the seventh floor for a reason—it had been Jin's original floor. Familiar ground. The last place Jin would expect an ambush.
When they reached the seventh-floor corridor, Josh held up a hand, signaling everyone to stop.
"Chen Jun, you and Greg take the room Mark used to use. Wade and I will take Jin's old room. The rest of you, find a spot near the stairs and stay out of sight." His voice was barely a whisper. "When Jin shows up, we surround him. No hesitation. We take him down fast, before his Summon can react. Understood?"
Nods all around.
Josh's eyes glittered in the darkness. "Good. Wade, pass out the Molotovs. Careful with them—we don't want the smell giving us away."
Wade shrugged off the backpack and began distributing the bottles. Glass jars of every size, filled halfway with gasoline, strips of cloth stuffed into the necks. The pungent fumes made Josh's nose wrinkle, but he didn't complain. Against a First Order High Summon, they needed every advantage.
Once the Molotovs were distributed, the group split up. Chen Jun and Greg headed toward the room at the end of the hall. The door was gone—Jin had stripped it months ago for metal, back when he was feeding Fidex everything he could find. The empty doorway was a dark mouth, waiting.
Chen Jun stepped inside first, moving carefully through the entrance hall toward the living room. His Summon followed close behind, its pale form barely visible in the gloom.
He was halfway to the living room when something moved in the shadows to his left.
"What the—"
The figure lunged. Chen Jun barely had time to raise his weapon before a fist caught him square in the face, sending him crashing to the ground. His Summon jerked toward him, but another shadow dropped from above, slamming into its back with enough force to drive it to its knees.
"Chen Jun!" Greg spun toward the commotion, but a heavy shape barreled into him from the side. A steel pipe cracked against his skull, and the world exploded into white light. He crumpled, blood streaming from a gash on his forehead.
On the other side of the hallway, Li Zijun and his companion had barely stepped into their assigned room when the ambush hit. A steel pipe swung out of the darkness, catching Li Zijun across the temple. He went down like a sack of bricks, his Summon lurching forward before a heavy weight tackled it from behind, wrapping thick arms around its throat.
"Tell it not to move," Simon growled, his knee pressing into the creature's spine. "Or I break its neck."
Li Zijun's companion froze, his hands half-raised, his own Summon hesitating in the doorway. He was young—barely out of his teens—and his face had gone white as paper.
"Don't. Please. Just don't hurt us."
Simon's grip didn't loosen. "Call it off. Now."
The young man swallowed hard. "Stand down. Don't move."
The Summons went still.
In the hallway, Josh heard the commotion and spun around. "What the hell is going on?"
No answer. The silence from the rooms was worse than any scream.
Panic spiked in Josh's chest. He took a step toward Chen Jun's room, then froze.
Behind him, the door to Jin's old room creaked open.
Josh spun. A figure stepped out of the darkness, tall and silhouetted against the dim emergency lights. Not human-sized. Not even close.
Fidex emerged into the corridor, all four arms spread wide. Its metallic skin caught the light, gleaming like oil on water. Its eyes burned red in the shadows.
Josh's mouth went dry. "You—how are you here?"
"Didn't you call for me?" Jin's voice came from the darkness behind the Summon. He stepped out a moment later, crowbar resting easy in his grip. "Or was that someone else who said there were monsters on the seventh floor?"
Josh's face drained of color. His mind raced, putting the pieces together. The ease of Simon's betrayal. The way he'd offered up the information without being pressed. The ring that was supposed to be Jin's secret weapon.
"You set me up," Josh hissed. "Simon was working for you the whole time."
Jin didn't deny it. He just looked at Josh with the same calm expression he wore when reviewing contracts—assessing weaknesses, calculating outcomes.
"Where's Marcus?" Jin asked.
The question caught Josh off guard. For a split second, his composure cracked. Then he smiled, thin and vicious.
"You want the boy? You let me walk out of here, and maybe you get him back in one piece."
Jin tilted his head. "That's not how this works. You tell me where he is, and maybe I let you keep your Summon."
Josh's smile faltered.