The morning sun filtered softly through the curtains as Xiao Mei awoke, her body tense, her senses unusually alert. Today, something felt different—off. She sat up slowly, glancing around her room. Her heart beat a little faster than usual, and a tight knot of unease settled in her stomach. Something told her she needed to be careful—more than ever before.
She stepped out of her bedroom, her bare feet making no sound on the wooden floor. With every step, she checked every shadow, every corner of her apartment, making sure no one was watching her or had broken in during the night. She had grown used to the feeling of being watched, but today that feeling gnawed at her more deeply.
It was a company-wide holiday, a rare break for all Zeyan Media employees. Most would use it to rest. But Xiao Mei had other plans. She couldn't waste any more time. She packed her laptop and a notebook into her bag and headed out into the city. Her destination was someone who had once worked within the belly of the beast—a former senior journalist who had vanished from the public eye just a year ago after working at Zeyan Media in 2014.
The drive took her out of the city, through quiet suburbs, and finally to a modest house nestled on the outskirts of town. The man lived alone now, surrounded by untrimmed hedges and the quiet chirping of birds. He agreed to meet her at a small café nearby. As she sat across from him, Xiao Mei could tell he was nervous. He looked around often, his fingers twitching slightly, and his coffee sat untouched in front of him.
"I need to know about Project Aegis," she said softly but firmly.
He blinked and frowned. "That project is buried. No one talks about it. You shouldn't either."
Xiao Mei leaned closer, her voice a whisper. "Please. People are still getting hurt. I need to know the truth."
There was a long silence. Finally, he sighed, shoulders slumping. "You don't give up, do you?"
She shook her head.
"Fine," he said, lowering his voice. "Project Aegis... was never meant to see the light of day. It was a corporate cleansing operation—strategic manipulation of media, forged documents, paid silence. It was all to cover up unethical practices and make certain companies appear squeaky clean."
Xiao Mei's pen trembled slightly in her hand.
He continued, "Lu Zeyan… he wasn't always the man he is now. Back then, he tried to expose it. He was a whistleblower—our only hope of bringing it all down."
She stared at him. "What happened?"
"We don't know for sure," the journalist replied. "One day, he stopped talking. He turned cold. Some say he was threatened. Others say he struck a deal. But ever since then, he's been working with the dark side. Or at least, that's what it looks like."
"Do you believe he's truly one of them now?"
The man looked at her, eyes tired but sincere. "I think he's playing a long game. He might still be on our side… or maybe he's on no one's side. Either way, he's dangerous."
After thanking him, Xiao Mei left the café, her mind buzzing with more questions than answers. But as she walked to her car, she noticed something odd—a sleek black sedan parked a few cars away. The same one she'd seen in her neighborhood a few nights ago.
She slid into her car and drove away calmly, pretending she hadn't noticed anything. But after a few turns, it became clear: she was being followed.
Her heart pounded. She turned down a narrow alley, then another, and quickly pulled into the parking area behind a run-down coffee shop. She ducked inside, ordered a drink she didn't intend to drink, and settled in the far corner.
There, she opened her laptop and accessed her encrypted cloud storage. A new message had appeared, untraceable in its source.
> "Meet me at Zeyan Media's first headquarters."
Attached was a single address.
No name. No explanation.
Her fingers hesitated over the keyboard. Who was this? Was it a trap? But something inside her—intuition or madness—told her she had to go.
She left quietly and drove across the city, following the map to a long-abandoned building. The structure loomed ahead, old bricks and shattered windows whispering secrets of the past. Zeyan Media's first headquarters had once been the heart of the media empire—before the glitter, before the lies.
She parked nearby and entered the building cautiously, every creak of the floorboards echoing through the silence. Dust coated the floors and sunlight streamed in through broken glass. As she reached the center of the wide, empty room, she stopped.
There, standing in the middle of the space, was a man in a dark coat… wearing a mask.
Xiao Mei's breath caught in her throat.
The man didn't move. "You came," he said.
His voice—deep, calm, and strangely familiar—sent a chill down her spine.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice steadier than she felt.
He didn't answer directly. "I've been watching you. Helping you. Guiding you when I could."
She narrowed her eyes. "Why? What do you want?"
"I want the same thing you do," he said. "Truth. But some truths are buried for a reason."
There was something haunting in the way he spoke—like someone torn between duty and regret.
And then, it struck her. That voice. She had heard it before. Not in person—but through recordings, through late-night calls cut short by static.
Her eyes widened.
"Lu Zeyan?" she whispered.
The man didn't deny it.