Chapter 423 - 368: Dual POV: The Shriek That Pierces Fate

Chapter 423: Chapter 368: Dual POV: The Shriek That Pierces Fate

She had forgotten to keep her face in the right shape.

Brianna vaguely remembered screaming, raging, lashing out at things in the dark, talking to herself, asking herself questions no one could answer, clawing the walls until they were torn into deep, ragged furrows.

By the time she finally ran out of strength and slumped against Jacqueline’s corpse, gasping, too exhausted to so much as twitch a finger, she almost felt like laughing.

How thoughtful of the host.

As if afraid she might miss something in the middle of her breakdown, the broadcast had played over and over again.

Even though she didn’t want to listen, Brianna couldn’t bring herself to cross the room and turn the radio off. She couldn’t even turn away.

It was like being locked inside an iron box lined with spikes — thrash against the walls and you’d be torn to pieces; hold still and you’d slowly be crushed until you couldn’t breathe.

No matter how much noise she made tearing through that room, the broadcast kept playing, looping back through every moment of December 3rd in Blackmoor City — haunting her, relentless. Even without seeing it, even without wanting to see it, she watched the whole thing play out in her head.

So. Jin Xueli had taken the Original Liquid, been hunted down for it, and then been pulled out by Moran in a helicopter.

The helicopter had touched down near Central Bay. Moran and Qiao Yuyue had already made arrangements — they’d found Jin Xueli a place to hide nearby.

She hadn’t left. Jin Xueli had set foot on the ground, and Moran hadn’t left either.

Moran had stayed and stayed and stayed and stayed, sitting in that room with them, all of them drinking beer and chatting.

Apparently the reason Moran had been able to reach Jin Xueli in time was because she’d already been at Jin Xueli’s place before she ever went into the Nest. The two of them had even discussed where the Original Liquid had come from.

Brianna had believed that after becoming a half-resident, she’d be able to pick up Moran’s scent, trace the fresh impressions Moran left on the world — as long as they were recent enough. Apparently not.

When Moran’s scent was mixed in with someone else’s, she couldn’t tell them apart.

Over their beers, Jin Xueli had said quietly that it didn’t quite count — that she’d saved Moran once before.

Maybe because Qiao Yuyue was right there, she’d kept it vague. She’d only said "brought her home."

Qiao Yuyue hadn’t seemed to notice.

"Do you need backup on the 5th?" Moran had asked. "That notification was pretty vague — no specifics about what the actual move is. And with the Knight Family involved... it’s probably not going to be safe, is it?"

She’d sounded genuinely worried about Jin Xueli.

The action point in the Nest Dominance Game was nothing more than sitting there on the 5th and waiting for further instructions. And that was already worth worrying about?

Do you think you stumbled into some kind of tragic, sentimental story?

What about her, then — dragging herself forward, clawing her way to today, one step at a time? Had she been crawling through shadow the whole time? Crawling through gutters? Was the night sky just an illusion? Was there no sky inside the Nest, no stars, no —

"Let’s wait a bit," Jin Xueli had said. "See if Tian Xi has any news in a little while. This whole thing started with the Kai Family — blame goes where it belongs. Chaisi’s out of the picture, so whoever’s next in line has to step up."

Chaisi was out of the picture?

Brianna had expected to feel more satisfied by that.

Instead, the words landed like a dead leaf dropping into a dry well — hollow, distant, not even enough to stir the air.

Compared to the others — every single person who had ever crossed her path, everyone who had ever meant something — Chaisi was practically likeable, wasn’t he? He’d just been fighting over something he wanted. At least he wasn’t disgusting about it. Sure, they all had to die, but — no, wait, that wasn’t right — except for Moran, who had killed her —

"I get it now."

Brianna said it to Jacqueline’s corpse, there in the dim and silent room. "People like you. People like my father. People who actually meant something to me — those are the ones who feel good to kill. Satisfying, even. Wouldn’t you say?"

Jacqueline stared up at nothing with pale grey eyes. Her pupils had dissolved into a viscous liquid, running silently down her face like tears.

Brianna thought it over. "No. No, that’s still not right — I still can’t kill Moran."

The dead room waited.

"Not yet," she murmured. "Not yet. Wait. See how it goes."

Brianna sat in the dark. She sat there for a long time — she had no idea how long.

Eventually even Vulture woke up, standing at the half-open doorway, calling her name several times before she slowly came back to herself.

"You’ve been in there forever — what are you doing?" Vulture asked. "When are we going to Blackmoor City to kill someone? You’d better not be stringing me along. You are going to hold up your end of the deal, right?"

She really had spent too long in the Nest. Brianna picked up her phone and glanced at it — the date had rolled over to December 4th, 3:03 AM.

Time to go. She had to get to Blackmoor City.

She had a vague sense of what she needed to do, but she didn’t dare think it through all the way. Every time she tried, it dissolved into blank uncertainty.

Should she take the radio? If she took it, Moran would know she was still alive.

Because Jin Xueli was sure to receive a notification from the Nest Dominance Game. She’d figure out that the "Brianna" on the Westley Team was still active — and that she’d taken Jin Xueli’s target Illusion.

At this point, it was clear: whatever Jin Xueli knew, Moran would know too.

The plan was going so well. Too well. Almost funny. She’d been waiting for Moran to develop feelings for Jin Xueli, planning to kill Jin Xueli and step into her skin — she’d thought it would take ages, but it had happened so quickly. So quickly. She almost wanted to laugh. Should she keep going? She probably should —

She’d leave the radio here for now.

As long as Jin Xueli didn’t find out she’d been here, she could always come back for it later. Oh, right — the cabinet door. She’d torn it off.

She actually had to fix a cabinet door. Her, with nothing left to her name, fixing a cabinet door for someone who had everything —

Brianna laughed again.

"Alright. Time to put you back on," she said. Inside her ears, inside her skull, a low buzzing had taken hold — like every flying insect in the world had gathered there, beating their wings in unison. "Come on, Jacqueline. We’re going home."

She lowered her head and looked at Jacqueline in silence for a few seconds.

...Why did Jacqueline’s eyes look like that?

Hold on. Let me think. How do humans cry, again?

Water comes out of the eyes, right? What about the pupils? Do the pupils have to dissolve first before anything can flow out?

How strange. She was having trouble remembering. "Humans crying" — that concept suddenly felt very far away from her, as if she were straining to recall something she’d once skimmed in a nature article about insect reproduction years ago. Just a blurry, half-formed impression.

Huh? Did something happen?

She grabbed Jacqueline by the shoulder and tried to roll the body over — Jacqueline followed the motion of her hand, rolling over smoothly and cleanly, her face smacking flat against the floor.

Jacqueline’s skull, from the back, hadn’t moved at all. It was still lying face-up in the exact spot where it had been.

Brianna looked at the front half of the body. Then she looked at the back half, still sitting exactly where it had been.

She raised her head.

Something in the darkness let out a soft, amused snicker.

...Brianna understood.

How did this happen —

I was pressed up against Jacqueline the whole time I slept, I would have felt any movement, so when did this happen, who did this, what do I do, what do I do, what do I do, how do I tap into the Westley Family’s resources, how do I even get through their door —

How do I get back to Blackmoor City?

Why.

Why does this world go out of its way, no matter what, at every turn, just to watch me make a fool of myself?

When I think I’ve finally found a way out from under fate — and then walk straight into a glass wall — is there some creator sitting up there, laughing?

Why.

Brianna realized she was pressed against the radio, her mouth opening over and over and over again.

The last thread of shape slipped from her jaw. The final cord holding her to everything she had once been snapped. She opened her mouth toward the radio and let out a shriek — black and absolute, like a void that could swallow the whole world.

***

The shriek hit Mai Mingle head-on, nearly knocking her off her feet — she stumbled, caught herself, and her first instinct was to immediately reach up and feel her own face.

Still in one piece.

What was that?

It had felt like something trying to shred through her skin, splinter her skull, reduce her entire head to liquid — leaving nothing behind but a black hole where her soul had been. Thank god. Thank god it was just in her head.

And apparently no one else had heard a thing.

Mai Mingle steadied herself, waited for her heartbeat to settle, and looked around.

It was Saturday the 5th, midday — normally peak hours for foot traffic and cars.

But the sky was a heavy, oppressive grey. The cloud cover pressed down like waterlogged cotton, the kind that made it hard to breathe just looking at it. A downpour was probably minutes away. Despite it being noon, the world had gone dim and murky, as if the sun were already setting.

The threatening weather must have kept people indoors. The street was almost empty; those few who were out were moving with their heads down, clearly trying to make it home before the rain hit.

Besides, the area around the public housing construction site wasn’t exactly a place worth lingering in to begin with.

She really hadn’t expected to lose this much time.

After filing her report at the Central Police Station, she’d meant to come straight to the construction site — that naked man they’d mentioned in the report call might well have been Ivan, after all. But she hadn’t counted on realizing, nearly an hour after leaving the station, that her phone was gone.

She’d never made a habit of carrying it, which was why it had taken her so long to notice. She’d patted down every pocket, dug through her bag — nothing. No sign of that heavy green phone anywhere.

She must have left it at the station.

There was nothing for it. Mai Mingle had doubled back at a near-jog, bracing herself for bad news; to her relief, her luck held. By the third officer she asked, she found someone who recognized her.

"You’re Mai Mingle, right?" the officer said, standing up. "Give me a second — I’ll go get your phone."

Apparently an officer had taken it in for safekeeping — which was good news, as it turned out. They’d even been thorough about it: when the phone was brought back to her, she found it sealed in an evidence bag with her name written on a label stuck to the front.

She took the phone out of the bag and turned it over a couple of times, not entirely sure what she was looking for. Nothing about it looked different from the outside or inside.

Anyway. She had it back. That was what mattered.

But then the next problem caught her off guard.

"Public housing construction on Kaine Street? Miss, you must have the wrong address," the cab driver said, twisting around in his seat the moment she gave him the destination.

"Then... is it in the Lower City District?"

She remembered that at the station, the officer who’d taken the call had gone back and forth with the caller for a bit about exactly where the construction site was located.

"Definitely not," the driver said, already starting the engine. "I know exactly where it is — I drive past it all the time. It’s on Observation Point Street. Don’t worry, I’ll take you there."

The caller had the address wrong, and so did the cop?

That nagging suspicion dissolved the moment Mai Mingle stepped out of the cab.

The public housing project was right there on Observation Point Street, exactly where the driver had said — right in front of her.

Temporary panels had been put up along half the block to form a construction barrier. Behind them rose an unremarkable stretch of old buildings, the kind you could see anywhere.

Putting up missing person flyers here should be fine, right?

Mai Mingle pulled out the AI-generated portrait of Ivan, along with her tape and scissors. Fortunately, Hai Luwei had made plenty of copies — enough for several streets’ worth of walls. After sticking up a few flyers, she was walking along the barrier when she passed a narrow gap between two panels and, on a whim, decided to peek through and see how the construction was coming along.

She was in the middle of peering into that gap when the pitch-black shriek slammed into her and sent her lurching backward.

What on earth?

That shriek — it had to be connected to the Nest, didn’t it?

Mai Mingle took a breath, composed herself, and walked back to the barrier. She leaned toward the thin sliver of darkness between the two panels and looked through.

An eyeball looked back at her.