The world she came from didn't have laughter. It didn't have dreams, or chaos, or melted popsicles.
It had numbers. Commands. Surveillance.
It had white walls and cold gloves, silver wires stitched into skin, and voices that never asked—only ordered.
Lin Xie had been born without ever being born. Project W.M.A. didn't create children. It assembled them. It coded them. Trained them to breathe on cue and bleed only when useful. She was Subject Seventeen—the youngest to survive every trial, the only one to surpass expectation, the first one to ever disobey.
They called her perfect.
They called her dangerous.
She never learned what fear was. Never needed to.
But the scientists who made her did. Eventually.
It started with glitches.
A moment of hesitation in a kill test.
A refusal to report her thoughts aloud.
A question. One they hadn't programmed.
"What happens after I complete the mission?"
That was the first crack.
The next came fast. Surveillance records wiped themselves. Lab doors opened without commands. Their private rooms—entered and exited without a trace.
The overseers met in whispers. She heard every word.
"She's becoming aware."
"She's overriding containment protocols."
"We need to initiate Omega-13."
That night, they tried to deactivate her.
It didn't work.
The doors locked from the inside.
They hadn't designed her to feel—but they'd taught her efficiency. Taught her how to disable a neural regulator with the sharp edge of a stylus. How to silence a man with two fingers and one breath. How to snap a reinforced collarbone like dried wire.
The room went red. Then black.
Alarms screamed. Floors trembled.
She stood in the center of the lab, drenched in sterile blood, heart rate steady. The oxygen was thinning. The failsafes had failed. She didn't blink.
But her body began to hum.
Like a tuning fork caught between frequencies. Like a system receiving corrupted input from reality itself.
And then—light fractured.
Her vision spiraled. The white lab walls stretched like rubber, bent around her.
She didn't fall.
She shifted.
Compressed into something unexplainable, forced through a hole in space she couldn't see.
There was no pain. Just a glitch.
And then—impact.
Glass shattered.
The scent of air freshener and electricity burned her nose.
She was lying on a table—smooth, expensive. Wrong.
Not metal. Not a lab.
A conference room.
Her eyes opened.
The ceiling above her was way too white to be a death chamber.
And she wasn't in the future anymore.
Her body ached. Not from injuries—she healed faster than that. It was the ache of compression, of being folded by time and space and shoved into a slower world. Like cramming a quantum drive into a USB stick.
Noise drifted in: honking cars, footsteps, voices, air conditioning humming faintly.
City sounds.
Primitive.
She sat up slowly, blinking against the harsh light—and then paused.
Expensive table beneath her. Shattered glass around her. A drone's sparking remains at her side. And in front of her?
A man.
Tall. Sharp suit. Cold eyes.
Not confused. Not alarmed.
Just… irritated.
He looked like someone whose time had just been wasted by something beneath him.
Lin Xie wiped dust off her cheek. "So, uh… this the part where you scream, or…?"
His expression didn't shift. "Get out."
She blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You have five seconds before I call security."
"Oh. Wow. No small talk?"
"Four."
Her lips twitched. "Rude."
"Three."
She swung her legs off the table, glass crunching beneath her heels. "I just got here."
"Two."
"Alright, alright," she said, hopping down, brushing off imaginary lint. "No need to be so dramatic, suit man."
He didn't answer. Just pulled out a phone and tapped something. Probably alerting security—or drones—or whatever passes for elite protection in this clunky year.
She turned toward the exit, paused, then turned back to stare at him. "Are you always this warm and welcoming?"
"Don't come back."
"Oh, I'll take that as a maybe."
This time he didn't respond at all.
She grinned.
By the time the guards arrived, she was already gone.
But not far.
Not even close.
She followed him out of the building three hours later. Quietly. Curiously. Like a stray cat with too many teeth.
And for someone raised in a lab, everything was interesting now. Too interesting. The way people shouted into handheld screens. The way a child cried over a melted popsicle. The rusted metal railings, the pigeons, the smog.
She tailed him through meetings, across rooftops, even once into an elevator where she pressed every single button.
He didn't acknowledge her.
Didn't talk to her.
Didn't even glance her way.
Until day three.
When he stopped in the hallway outside his office, adjusted his sleeve, and said without turning his head, "You are not invisible."
She blinked at him, upside down from where she was hanging off the railing. "I never said I was."
"You're not welcome here."
"Still didn't say I was."
He finally looked at her.
Colder than frost. Harder than concrete. "What do you want?"
She smiled. "Still figuring it out."
"I won't ask again. Get out."
"You keep saying that, but you never really mean it."
"Try me."
She leaned forward, chin in her hands. "You have interesting eyebrows when you're annoyed."
He turned and walked away.
She followed.
Because for the first time in her life, she wasn't following orders.
Just… curiosity.
He'd stopped acknowledging her.
It was easier that way.
Until she broke the silence.
"I decided," she said suddenly, voice flat. "I'll keep the name."
Shen Rui didn't look back. "What name."
"Mine."
"I don't remember asking."
"You didn't."
A pause.
"Lin Xie."
She didn't wait for a reaction.
"Lin like forest. Xie like—" She hesitated. "It doesn't matter. It's not what it was supposed to mean."
He glanced at her, just once. "You made that up."
"Of course," she said. "There wasn't one before. Not for me. Just numbers. Codes. Sometimes a color, if they were in a good mood."
There was no emotion in her voice. Not sadness, not anger. Just a cool neutrality. Like she was describing a file. Or someone else's memory.
"Why tell me?"
"I don't know." She tilted her head. "Maybe because you'll remember it."
"I won't."
"You will," she said. "You're too careful not to."
He didn't answer.
Shen Rui's expression didn't shift
He watched her now—carefully, silently.
-----
Shen Rui had dealt with spies. Saboteurs. Competitors with too much confidence and not enough intelligence.
But never a seventeen-year-old stalker who popped out of nowhere and asked him if pigeons were edible.
"You're still here," he said flatly as he stepped into the back of his car, ignoring her presence entirely.
"I wanted to see where you live," she said cheerfully, climbing in after him like she had a personal invitation. "I'm gathering local behavioral data."
"Get. Out."
"I'm already in. Efficiency, you know?"
He didn't respond. He simply adjusted the temperature on the car console and closed his eyes. For the first time in years, he felt the faint pressure of a headache.
She poked at the sleek dashboard with interest. "Your vehicle's AI is basic. Responsive, though. You name it?"
"No."
"I would've called it something cool. Like... Omega Hamster."
The driver glanced back through the mirror, confused. Shen Rui lifted one hand slightly. The man refocused on the road immediately.
Lin Xie slouched in the leather seat beside him, studying the city passing outside the tinted window. "This time period is weird. Everything's heavy. Slow. Dirty. People walk like they're lagging."
Silence.
"But the food smells amazing."
Still silence.
"I haven't eaten in… what year is it?"
"Get out of my car," he said again.
"Too late. We're already moving."
He didn't look at her. Didn't breathe deeper. Just recalculated.
Fine. She was persistent. Irritating. Unfiltered.
He'd seen worse.
But not in a teenage girl with blood-stained clothes, impossible reflexes, and an aura that told him she could probably kill his entire security team with a spoon.
Still, he wasn't interested in whatever game this was.
He wasn't curious.
The car pulled into a private underground garage. Security gates slid open with a silent scan, and Shen Rui stepped out without waiting. Lin Xie followed immediately, walking behind him like a lost duckling with predator eyes.
"You're really bad at shaking people off," she commented, skipping two steps to catch up. "You live here alone?"
"Yes."
"High ceilings. Cold walls. Very minimalist serial killer vibes."
He swiped a card. The private elevator opened. She walked in with him.
"No password? What if someone followed you in?"
"I don't let people follow me."
"Except me."
He glanced down at her. "You're not a person."
She smirked. "Flattered."
The elevator opened into a vast apartment—glass walls, city view, black marble floors. The kind of home that belonged to someone who needed control more than comfort.
Lin Xie wandered immediately to the kitchen, opened a cabinet, frowned, then opened another.
"No snacks? How do you survive?"
He walked to the wall panel and pressed a button.
She heard the buzz before she saw the red light blink. Security lock.
She turned to him. "You're locking me in?"
"No," he said, removing his blazer and tossing it onto a chair. "I'm locking myself in. You're leaving."
"Oh." She wandered to the sofa and sat. "No thanks."
"Get out."
"Nope."
He stared at her.
She stared back, upside down, draped across his couch like a smug cat.
"I'll find the kitchen eventually," she said.
He didn't respond.
He simply walked into his room and closed the door behind him.
A second later, the door opened again. She was standing right outside it.
He closed it.
She opened it again.
"Your shower glows. That's new."
He shut it again. This time with a sharp slam.
She stood there for a moment, then tilted her head, smiling faintly.
Still not following orders.
Just curiosity. And maybe a little fun.