The air changed almost immediately. The fish stink thinned, replaced by damp stone, old runoff, something chemical that prickled the back of her throat. The sounds of the docks dulled. Each rung was colder than the last. Her gloves came away orange-brown where she gripped, rust soft as powder. Suddenly, cold still water kissed the sole of her boot, then crept higher as she stepped down onto the floor.
The ladder ended in a low concrete chamber barely big enough to stand in. An old technical room, by the look of it. Junction boxes lined one wall, their covers missing or hanging loose, interiors gutted and repurposed. Someone had run new cable through the old conduits, sloppy but intentional, zip ties biting into insulation that didn’t belong to this decade, or this grid.
Wulong sat on a downed filing cabinet, already composed, tail wrapped neatly around his paws. He was cleaning one foot with meticulous focus, like this was the most ordinary place in the world to end up. When he noticed her staring, he paused and gave her that same look, the same faint, offended expression he wore around citrus and spoiled incense.
Iris closed her eyes for half a beat. She didn’t ask how. That was pointless.
She opened them again and rolled her shoulders, letting the moment pass.
The room hummed softly, a low electrical throb that came from no single source. Air moved through it in lazy drafts, carrying the smell of damp concrete and something metallic. A single emergency strip light burned above the far wall, its casing cracked. The floor was uneven where tiles had been pulled up and never replaced, cables disappearing into gaps just wide enough to catch a boot if you weren’t watching.
Opposite the ladder, a service door had been cut open with tools that didn’t care about clean edges. The concrete around it was chipped and scarred, old aggregate exposed like bone. Beyond it, the tunnel sloped away into darkness.
Crude markings crawled along the walls outside. Arrows daubed in spray paint and chalk. Numbers crossed out and rewritten. Symbols that looked half like transit signage and half like ward shorthand, layered until they blurred into intention rather than meaning. Everyone had a different idea of how this place was supposed to be organised.
Iris stepped through the doorway and into the tunnel.
Her boots rang hollow against the rails set into the floor, long since stripped of anything that could carry a train. Water dripped steadily from the ceiling, each drop hitting metal somewhere out of sight and answering back with a dull, patient echo. The air cooled fast, the kind of damp cold that came from being underground too long. The ceiling dipped low in places, forcing her to hunch, then rose again without warning. Pipes ran just above head height, wrapped in peeling insulation that brushed her shoulders when she passed.
She followed the markings without thinking. Left where the wall bulged. Right where the ceiling dropped low enough to force a duck. The path had been worn in not by feet alone, but by habit. People had agreed, silently, that this was the way through.
The tunnel opened abruptly, the ceiling lifting while the walls pressed in.
An abandoned station opened ahead, platforms stripped down to concrete ribs, tilework broken and patched with whatever had been cheapest at the time. Old signage still clung to the walls, station names scraped off, replaced by neon tubes and hand-painted boards that advertised nothing legal. Light spilled from alcoves and side passages, harsh in some places, warm in others.
Altars crowded the edges. Shrines built from milk crates, broken turnstiles, upturned tool chests. Incense burned in coffee cans. Extension cords snaked between them, taped down with black gaffer, power splitters dangling charms and cracked fuses in equal measure, red thread going through a surge protector. Someone had nailed a paper charm directly into a signal panel and wired a votive light to the grid beside it. A man slept beneath it, wrapped in plastic sheeting.
Voices overlapped in uneven bursts, some too close, others arriving late, echoes bending corners they shouldn’t have reached. Deals being whispered. Laughter snapping sharp and then cutting off. Music bled from somewhere deeper, bass crawling along the platform and into the bones.
A small courier unit threaded through the crowd at knee height, chassis scuffed to dull gray, one leg moving half a beat off. Its cargo pod bore three different logos, none of them current. It stopped at a stall Iris hadn’t clocked yet, extended a slim manipulator, and received a wrapped bundle no bigger than a fist.
“Thank you,” the unit said, voice soft, carefully modulated.
The vendor nodded and slid the credits away without comment.
The robodog pivoted, paused just long enough to avoid a puddle someone else stepped through without noticing, then continued on its route.
Iris shook her head, exhaled through her nose and kept walking. Old hardware. Custom firmware. Someone showing off. There were a dozen reasons that didn’t require thinking harder than she wanted to right now.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
She passed a lane with red lanterns bolted to corrugated steel walls, with bouncers standing at the entryway, big silhouettes with glowing armbands and expressions carved from boredom and threat in equal measure. One of them waved away a punk, while another watched Iris the way people watched traffic. He lifted two fingers as she passed, not stopping her, just marking the direction she was allowed to keep moving. They were alert enough to react, but did not care enough to intervene.
Jack Ma’s stall sat just far enough off the main platform that people had to choose to notice it.
No signage. No neon. Just a folding table bolted to the concrete, one leg shimmed with a prayer slip to keep it level. The surface was crowded with things that didn’t want to be grouped together. Blister packs. Glass vials wrapped in tape. Pill bottles with the labels scraped off and rewritten by hand. Small foil packets stacked by weight rather than name. A few syringes sealed in waxed paper, their needles capped with red thread.
A shrine had been wedged in the corner, feeling more like obligation rather than honest faith, incense burning low in a chipped cup. The ash wasn’t swept. It had been shaped instead, pressed into a shallow spiral with the flat of a thumb.
Jack Ma himself looked bored by all of it.
He was older than Iris expected. Not frail, just dried to the bone the way uncles dry out with age.
“What do you want,” he said, already reaching for nothing in particular.
“Something to shake off the nerves,” Iris replied.
That earned her a glance. Quick. Assessing.
“Everybody wants something,” Jack Ma said. “Be specific.”
“Man Mo issue.”
He snorted. “You are not the first one.”
He rummaged without ceremony, sliding items aside with the back of his hand. Pills clinked softly. A vial rolled and was stopped before it could fall. He set three packs on the table.
Iris didn’t touch any of them. Cheap lab-grown nicotine, infused with god knows what.
“No” Iris shook her head.
Jack Ma shrugged and reached again. This time, he hesitated.
He produced a single pack and turned it once before setting it down. Packaging was different, charm thread tied too right, knot wrong in a way you only noticed if you were all too familiar with a feeling of it between your fingers.
”That’s all I got,” he said. “Came in this morning.”
“From where.”
Jack Ma’s mouth twitched. “Does it matter.”
Iris picked it up, turned it once, then set it back down. Her eyes flicked to the other things on the table.
“Got pills if you want.” He tapped a small blister pack, the plastic etched with ward geometry so fine it looked printed until you stared too long. “Injectables too.” His finger shifted to the syringes. “No waiting. No monks.”
Her eyes landed on the last item, half-hidden beneath the table edge.
A strip of skin-colored film, floating in a shallow dish of clear fluid. Lines moved through it slowly, like ink thinking about where to go next.
Jack Ma noticed.
“Ink,” he said mildly. “Live ward. Same geometry your friends wear.” A pause. “Permanent.”
Iris stared at it for half a second longer than she meant to, measuring the thought. It was tempting. Too tempting. But to anyone who didn’t know, it would look like a triad mark.
”No,” she replied. Jack Ma didn’t argue. He didn’t look offended. ”Just the smokes.”
Iris picked up the pack again, showing which one exactly she wants. Jack Ma nodded, and watched her drop a wad of cash which was swiftly swept off the table without ceremony. Iris didn’t bargain. Jack didn’t push.
She stepped aside by a dead air intake and lit the stick she just got. She drew once, and felt the edge coming off her hands. She glanced down. The ember burned emerald. It was not clean, it was not sharp, but it was good enough.
Across the station, the small mismatched courier unit passed again, moving the opposite direction this time.
It moved with the patience of something that had never been in a hurry, threading between bodies that parted without realizing they had done it.
It stopped.
Right in front of Wulong, completely ignoring Iris.
The unit lowered itself with careful, mechanical precision. A slim manipulator extended, paused as if waiting for permission, then brushed itself along the top of Wulong’s head. The motion was slow, deliberate, almost gentle.
Wulong froze, affronted by the sheer audacity of it. Iris felt the moment stretch, as she looked from the machine to the cat.
”Good kitty,” the machine said, still ignoring Iris, then stood and continued on as if nothing unusual had happened. Wulong looked at her, and Iris absent-mindedly crushed the butt of the smoke on the air intake coffer.
”What the hell,” Iris muttered, and followed it through the wet market, more curiosity than concern, until the barricade bolted across the service tunnel. Yellow and black hazard stripes peeled away in long curls, old signs in multiple languages, bolted on and torn off over time. The air beyond the barricade felt off, and Wulong once more showed his disdain.
One sign remained clear.
VITRIFIED
DO NOT ENTER
STRUCTURAL AND MATERIAL HAZARD
Someone had added a skull beneath it with a paint marker. Someone else had crossed it out. Someone else had written it again.
The courier unit did not hesitate.
It slipped through a narrow gap at the edge of the barricade and vanished into the dark beyond, whine of hydraulics fading without echo.
Iris stopped at the line.
She stood there for a long second, green smoke still clinging to her fingers, feeling the calm settle where it had not belonged before. Wulong sat beside her, tail wrapped neatly around his paws, watching the darkness with bright, unblinking interest.
“Ah hell no,” Iris said quietly.
She turned away before curiosity could finish its sentence.
Not today.
