Chapter 8: Day Three
Chapter 8: Day Three
Chapter 8: Day Three
HEAVENLY DEMON OF THE DEAD GATE
Volume 1: Risen from Suicide
***
The most dangerous thing about an unexpected message is how badly you want to answer it.
Yun Zhou sat motionless on the floor for four full minutes, his back against the bed frame, the phone lying face-down on the table like a coin he hadn’t decided whether to flip.
Who is this?
He turned the problem over, examining it from each side, the way a jeweler studies a stone.
One: it came to my real number, not the burner. Which means whoever sent it already had this number.
Two: the question isn’t “why did you send me that?” or “what do you want?” It’s “who is this?” Someone who knew I was the sender wouldn’t ask.
Three: two words. Cold, short, no emotion. A man who sends messages to a dozen people and wants one of them to flinch.
He exhaled slowly. The tightness in his chest unwound.
A net. Not a hook.
Gorman received the tip. He doesn’t know who sent it, and the sender’s number is a dead end. So he’s doing what a paranoid man does. He’s texting everyone who might plausibly know something. Stallholders. Debtors. Anyone whose number sits in his database.
He’s waiting to see who answers wrong.
A thin, humorless smile touched Yun Zhou’s mouth.
Clever, Mr. Gorman. But a net only catches the fish that panic.
***
There was a trap hidden inside the silence, and he saw it before he stepped into it.
If I don’t reply, I’m one of the people who ignored him. Ignoring a message from your creditor is odd. Suspicious, even. A genuine debtor, three days from a deadline, would answer in seconds, desperate for mercy.
But if I reply too fast, I look like I was waiting.
He checked the clock. It was 5:58 p.m.
Wait. Forty minutes. The length of time it takes a frightened kid to wake from a nap, read an unknown number, stare at it, and slowly work up the nerve to respond.
He used the time.
He put the kettle on the hotplate, boiled water, and poured it into a cup of the last ramen. He ate slowly, with his back to the window, and rehearsed. Not the words. The person.
Yun Zhou, twenty-one. Exhausted. Unsure. A little slow when scared. Reads the message and thinks: it’s the cooperative. Oh no. Is it about the payment? Did Marlo say something?
He let the fear come into his body piece by piece. A tightness around the eyes. A pinch in the shoulders. He checked his reflection in the dark window: the face of a boy who hadn’t slept.
Perfect.
At 6:38, he picked up the phone and typed with two fingers, as slowly as the character demanded.
Sorry, who is this? This is Yun Zhou from 4B. Is this about my payment? I know it’s due tomorrow. I’m trying, I really am. I’ve been sick, I couldn’t go out. Please don’t send Marlo-ge again. I’ll find the money somehow.
He read it once, deleted the word “please,” then typed it back in.
“Please” costs nothing and sells everything.
He pressed send.
***
The reply took eleven minutes.
Unknown number:
Disregard.
One word. Colder than the first message, if that was possible.
Yun Zhou stared at the screen, then slowly set the phone down.
He didn’t feel relief. He felt something closer to the satisfaction of a door clicking shut on the right side.
“Disregard.” Not “wrong number,” not “sorry,” not “what payment?”
Gorman knows who I am. He had my number from the debtor file. He sent the same two words to a list, and mine was one of many.
And my answer told him exactly what he needed: that I’m a frightened kid with no idea what’s going on.
He leaned his head back against the bed frame and closed his eyes.
Remove one name from the suspect list.
Good.
***
At nine, he left the apartment again.
There were three jobs left, and only one could be done in the dark.
He took a bus to a twenty-four-hour internet café on the edge of the old textile district, the kind with sticky keyboards and a clerk who wore headphones and never looked up. Yun Zhou paid for two hours in cash, took the booth in the farthest corner, and pulled his hood low.
On the screen, he opened a blank email.
Insurance.
That was the word that had been circling in his mind all day. A plan was only as strong as its worst-case failure. If Marlo got to him before Gorman moved, if the whole structure collapsed in the next twelve hours, he needed a lever that would fall on Marlo even if Yun Zhou wasn’t there to push.
He created a free account with a throwaway name. Attached the four photos from Eastgate: the locker, the keypad, the corridor, the worn buttons. Typed a short, flat note beneath them, in the same unsure voice as the tip.
The locker at Eastgate Station. Number 214. Code 0719. Look inside.
No signature. No explanation.
Then he opened the scheduling function and set the delivery time. He chose a moment with care.
Tomorrow. 9:00 a.m. Sent to the cooperative’s public address.
If I’m alive at nine, I’ll cancel it from my own phone. If I’m not, the email goes out on its own. Marlo is the one who’d have to explain why the man who owed him forty-eight million has just disappeared, and why his boss now has photos of the stash.
A dead man’s switch. Not elegant, but it works.
He logged out, cleared the history, and left the booth without looking at the clerk.
***
The second job took less time and more courage.
He took a different bus and got off three stops early, in a neighborhood he’d never been in. A row of low shops. A closed-down pharmacy. A pawnshop with its metal shutters half-lowered.
The pawnshop’s owner was a thick-armed woman with a cigarette tucked behind her ear. She looked up from a magazine when he came in.
“What?”
“I want to sell something.”
She eyed him. The hood, the scar half hidden under his collar, the thin hands.
He placed a small item on the counter: the cracked, outdated hunter’s wristband he’d found in the closet, a cheap piece of equipment from the pre-registration days, long obsolete.
She picked it up, turned it over, and made a disgusted noise.
“Twelve thousand.”
“Twenty.”
“Fifteen.”
“Eighteen, and I’ll never come back.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged. “Seventeen. Take it or go.”
He took it.
Not for the money. Seventeen thousand would barely cover two meals. But a pawnshop receipt, stamped with today’s date and time, was an alibi. Anyone who later asked where Yun Zhou had been that evening would find a record that placed him four districts away, selling off his last possessions in a panic.
A desperate debtor. Liquidating what he has. Exactly what Marlo would expect.
He folded the receipt, tucked it into his notebook, and stepped back into the night.
***
The third job came to him.
He was climbing the stairs to 4B at 10:50 p.m., one hand on the rail, the last of his energy draining away with each step, when he sensed it: a presence on the landing above, standing very still in the dark.
Yun Zhou stopped.
Oculus. He let the thread out, gently, a hair’s width.
A wave of anxiety washed over him. Not anger. Not malice. Raw, jittery nerves.
...shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t be here, Marlo will kill me if he finds out...
...but the kid, the kid doesn’t deserve it, he really doesn’t...
Yun Zhou drew a breath. His shoulders dropped, his eyes softened, his whole body slid into the shape of a tired, confused boy.
He climbed the last few steps.
The thin man stood against the wall beside the door of 4B, his arms wrapped around himself, his face pale under the dim bulb. Up close, he was younger than Yun Zhou had thought. Maybe thirty. His shirt was wrinkled and his hands, which were twisting at the hem of his jacket, had a faint tremor.
“Oh,” Yun Zhou said, in a small, surprised voice. “You’re... you were with Marlo-ge.”
“Lin.” The man’s voice cracked. “My name’s Lin. Look, kid, I’m not here to hurt you.”
True. He’s terrified of being seen.
“I know,” Yun Zhou said softly.
Lin blinked. “You do?”
“You looked like you didn’t want to be there. Yesterday. When he...” Yun Zhou let his gaze drop, his hand drifting to his stomach. “When he hit me.”
For a moment, Lin said nothing. His lips moved silently, as though he were arguing with something inside himself.
...he’s so young, he’s not even looking at me like I’m a monster...
“Come inside,” Yun Zhou murmured, unlocking the door with the paperclip. “You look like you need to sit down.”
***
They sat on the floor of the apartment, because there was only one chair and Yun Zhou had given it to the guest. A single bulb swung overhead. Lin held a chipped mug of tap water in both hands and stared into it as if it held the answer to something.
Yun Zhou said nothing. He wrapped his arms around his knees and watched Lin the way a patient animal watches a door.
Silence is a lever. Wait.
Seven seconds. Ten.
“He’s going to take you,” Lin blurted. “Tomorrow morning.”
Yun Zhou let his breath catch. A tiny tremor ran through his shoulders.
“T-take me? To... where?”
“The clinic.” The word came out like a confession. “The doctor, the one Marlo mentioned. I drive the van. I’m the one who picks people up. I didn’t want to, I swear, I didn’t, but I’ve got a kid, and Gorman said if I...”
He stopped, swallowing hard.
Reading: guilt. Fear. A daughter. Eight years old. Medical bills.
A man trapped inside a machine he hates.
Useful. Very, very useful.
“Why are you telling me?” Yun Zhou asked quietly.
Lin’s face crumpled.
“Because you didn’t scream,” he said. “Yesterday. When he hit you. You just kept... kept looking at the floor, like you were already dead. And I thought, God, he’s twenty, he’s the same age as my little brother was...”
He stopped again. A tear slid down his face.
Yun Zhou studied him. And somewhere beneath the pose of the frightened boy, in the cold, clear room where he kept his real thoughts, a quiet calculation finished.
He’s mine.
Not through cruelty. Not through threats. Through something far more durable: the weight of a conscience that has nowhere to go.
He reached out, slowly, and touched Lin’s sleeve.
“Thank you,” he said. His voice was barely a whisper. “I... I didn’t know. Nobody ever told me.”
Lin covered his mouth with a shaking hand.
“There’s more,” he said, after a moment. “Gorman called a meeting. Tomorrow, eight o’clock. All the collectors. Something about ‘irregularities in the weekly totals.’ Marlo’s been sweating through his shirt since noon. He’s been calling around, trying to find out who talked.”
Bingo.
“Marlo wants to take care of you before the meeting,” Lin continued. “Settle the debt his own way. Get some money in hand to show Gorman. Or if not money...” He swallowed. “If not money, get the clinic fee. Then he’d have something to put on the table. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I do.
Marlo is cornered. He’ll sell my kidney to cover his shortfall. Which means I’m no longer a debtor. I’m an emergency fund.
How wonderfully efficient.
“What time?” Yun Zhou asked.
“Seven. He’ll come with the baton guy. They’ll... they’ll walk you out, if you cooperate. Quiet. Nobody sees.” Lin’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Please. If you can run, run. Tonight.”
Yun Zhou lowered his eyes and let a shaky breath out.
“I can’t,” he said. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”
Lin sat in miserable silence. Then he fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a crumpled wad of bills, and pressed it into Yun Zhou’s hand.
“Take it. Please. It’s not much.”
Yun Zhou looked down at it. Nine thousand, maybe ten.
A man who sells people for a living gave me ten thousand. And meant every cent of it.
He folded his fingers over the money.
“I’ll remember this,” he said, and for once, he wasn’t lying.
When Lin left, an hour later, his shoulders were a little straighter, and his eyes were a little less haunted.
He didn’t realize he’d just stepped into a very quiet web.
***
Yun Zhou didn’t sleep that night.
He sat on the mattress with the lights off, his back to the wall, and ran every scenario in his head.
Marlo and the baton man arrive at seven. They’ll walk me out, quietly, to a van parked around the corner. Lin will be at the wheel, though Marlo doesn’t know he’s compromised.
The email goes out at nine, if I don’t cancel it.
Gorman’s meeting is at eight.
He looked at the timeline in his mind. An hour between the pickup and the meeting. An hour in which Marlo, desperate, would try to cash in on him.
Not enough time for the clinic. Marlo will realize that. He’ll want something faster.
Cash from my body? No. He’ll look for my money. And when he doesn’t find it...
His eyes narrowed.
He’ll want me gone, quickly and quietly. A dead debtor can’t talk. A dead debtor can’t point at a locker.
The thought was cold, clean, and almost comforting. It simplified everything.
So the question isn’t whether he’ll try to kill me. It’s whether I’ll still be alive at 8:00.
He pulled the folding knife from his sleeve, turned it over once, and slid it back.
Feign. Five minutes and ten seconds, my current limit. Eye. Sever. And a body that can barely climb a staircase.
Not much of an arsenal.
But I’ve killed with less.
***
At 6:52 a.m., he heard them on the stairs.
Two sets of footsteps. Heavy, unhurried. Not the bounding, cocky rhythm of two days ago, but something tighter. Quieter. The footsteps of men who were trying very hard to look calm.
Yun Zhou stood by the window, dressed in his gray jacket, hands loosely at his sides.
The mask slid into place. Bowed head. Shoulders curved inward. A faint tremor in the fingers.
Three days. The last one.
The door opened. No knock this time.
Marlo Chen stepped through.
He looked terrible. The sharp shark’s smile was gone, replaced by a gray, drawn face and red-rimmed eyes. His collar was crooked. His fake watch hung loose on his wrist, and his right hand, the one with the gold ring, twitched against his thigh.
Behind him, the baton man filled the doorway like a wall.
“Morning, Zhou,” Marlo said. His voice was raspy, forced into friendliness. “Ready to settle?”
Yun Zhou looked at the floor.
“I... I don’t have the money,” he whispered.
“I know.”
Marlo’s gaze slid over the room. The folding table. The empty cabinet. The ramen cup. The rope scar peeking from under the collar.
Yun Zhou let a thread of Oculus loose, very carefully, the thinnest filament he could manage.
...do it fast, out the back, van’s waiting, kid won’t make a scene, he’s too weak...
...if the boss finds out about the locker, I’m dead. Nobody ever finds out if there’s no kid...
...maybe I should just do it here. Quick. A pillow. No, too messy. The alley behind the building. The baton. One blow...
Yun Zhou’s face did not change. But inside the cold, still room of his mind, a very old, very quiet voice smiled.
Alley behind the building. Good. I know that alley. It has two exits, a broken streetlight, and a dumpster with a loose lid.
Now I only have to arrive alive.
“Come on,” Marlo said, almost gently. He stepped aside and gestured to the door. “Let’s take a walk.”
Yun Zhou raised his eyes. They were wide, wet, and terrified.
He nodded, small and obedient.
And as he walked toward the doorway, past the baton man, past the faint smell of cigarettes and sweat, a single thought settled in, clear as glass.
Nine hours ago, you were a debt collector.
Right now, you’re a corpse who doesn’t know it yet.
***
To be continued in Chapter 9: “The Alley”