After leaving Amir's place, Bryan didn't head directly to District G where his quarters were. Instead, he took a detour through a different street toward the checkpoint.
Chen Shi, still unfamiliar with the layout, simply followed wherever Bryan went.
His eyes roamed constantly, drinking in the surroundings—people of every skin color passing by, soldiers on patrol, civilians with expressions ranging from grim determination to quiet sorrow to fleeting moments of joy. It was all so strange to him.
In that moment, Chen Shi felt like an outsider looking in, observing the full spectrum of human experience play out before him. Having arrived in this world only two days ago, he hadn't yet realized that he was already one of them.
Bryan kept his gaze forward but had been watching Chen Shi's every reaction from the corner of his eye. He said nothing, though. Some lessons could only be learned through experience.
When they turned onto a new block, a familiar scene caught Bryan's attention. Ahead lay a chaotic stretch of street that most people avoided like the plague. The two walked slowly through it.
After a short distance, Bryan spotted the familiar clinic up ahead. He steered Chen Shi to the opposite side of the street and stopped beside a utility pole, peering through the clinic's glass windows.
Inside, only a handful of patients were being treated—a pitifully small number. Most of the nurses sat idle in their chairs, resting with nothing to do.
It hadn't always been this way. In the early days, people with injuries, illnesses, or even common colds had flooded the clinic in droves. Lines would stretch out the door, patients waiting hours just to get inside.
But that had lasted only the first year or two. Once corruption ran rampant through the QZ and supply cards became desperately precious, people stopped coming. Got hurt? You toughed it out—recovery just took longer. Caught a fever? You powered through, no matter how miserable it was. Suffering beat going hungry.
Bryan scanned the clinic's staff but didn't find the two faces he was looking for. He wasn't in a rush, though. He simply stood there, patient and still, clearly waiting for someone.
Chen Shi watched him just... stop, completely baffled. What is this guy up to now?
But he didn't dare wander off. Language barrier—same problem as always. He silently swore to himself that he needed to learn English as fast as humanly possible.
About thirty minutes passed before Bryan suddenly straightened. Among the flow of pedestrians, he'd spotted a figure he knew well.
About a hundred meters to the right of the clinic, a blonde woman in a grimy, oversized coat came walking up the street. Her face was smudged with dirt, her body bundled head to toe in ratty clothes—but even dressed like that, her delicate features were impossible to hide. It was Anna, whom he hadn't seen in quite some time.
Beside her walked a rough-looking middle-aged man in a gray-white cap, equally unkempt. They moved together through the crowd, occasionally glancing at passing soldiers, apparently deep in conversation.
Bryan locked onto them the instant they appeared—but his attention went first not to Anna, whom he knew, but to the unfamiliar man beside her. His eyes lit up like he'd stumbled onto an unexpected prize.
His gaze swept quickly over the stranger. He pulled a palm-sized notebook from his pocket, slid out a pencil tucked alongside its spine, and began sketching rapidly. Within minutes, he'd produced a remarkably accurate portrait of the middle-aged man.
None of this was visible to Chen Shi, who barely reached Bryan's waist. He could only stare up with an increasingly bewildered expression, his questions about this person multiplying by the minute.
Snap!
Bryan closed the notebook and slipped it back into his pocket, pleased with this unexpected find. He rolled his shoulders, ready to leave.
Before going, he took one last look and saw that Anna had already parted ways with the man. She slipped into a narrow alley, and within minutes emerged in a clean nurse's uniform, her face freshly washed, wearing a pleasant smile as she entered the clinic.
...
Military Base.
Barracks.
Bryan pushed open the door to his quarters, tossed his backpack onto the table, and collapsed face-first onto the couch with a groan of pure relief. Finally, truly relaxed.
The room was exactly as he'd left it. Sarah clearly hadn't visited while he was away.
Now that the tension had drained from his body, exhaustion hit like a wave. He hadn't slept at all last night, then drove all morning. He was running on fumes.
Just as his eyes were about to close, he suddenly remembered something—or rather, someone. His eyes snapped open. Chen Shi was standing awkwardly in the doorway, unsure whether to sit or remain standing.
"Relax. Make yourself at home," Bryan said.
He pointed to the backpack on the table. "There's some food in there—today's ration. Help yourself if you're hungry. Don't go into my bedroom, but everywhere else is fair game. If you get bored, there are a few books in Chinese in the room to your right. Feel free to read them."
Instructions delivered, he stretched hugely, grabbed a pillow, planted it over his face, and was snoring within seconds.
Chen Shi stared at the man who'd rattled off orders and immediately passed out. He genuinely wanted to raise his tiny fist and punch Bryan in the face a few times.
Instead, he found a chair, sat down, and cradled his head in his hands. He'd been here two days and still knew practically nothing beyond what Bryan had told him on day one. He was completely in the dark.
"This is ridiculous—why did I have to transmigrate to a foreign country?!"
Complaining didn't help. Chen Shi drooped, let out a heavy sigh, and remembered what Bryan had said. He stood up and shuffled toward the room with the Chinese books.
When Bryan opened his eyes again, the sky outside had darkened. The room was dim. He sat up, rubbed his eyes until they focused, then retrieved a kerosene lamp from a storage cabinet by the door, turning the flame up to maximum to illuminate the area around him.
He scanned the room—no sign of the kid. But light was seeping through the crack under the study door.
Bryan walked over and opened it. Inside, a candle stood planted on the floor, an open book lying beside it—but no one was reading it.
He shifted his gaze and found Chen Shi pressed against the far window, staring out into the darkness. Beyond the glass, the QZ was mostly black, with only scattered streetlamps and a handful of buildings showing any light at all.
Bryan carried the kerosene lamp to the boy's side and joined him at the window. "Why are you standing here?"
Chen Shi just kept staring outside, not even reacting to Bryan's arrival. Then he asked a question that anyone who'd lived here would have found almost laughably naive.
"Why do those places have electricity, but we don't?"
Bryan hadn't expected that question. Something flickered across his eyes, but he answered evenly. "Because the people who live there are considered more important than us. More valuable."
Silence. Chen Shi had watched countless post-apocalyptic movies, but some things you couldn't truly understand until you lived them. In that moment, he realized that everything he'd seen so far was just the tip of the iceberg.
But he quickly caught himself—he was supposed to be a four-year-old. He shouldn't react like this. So he looked up at Bryan with a carefully constructed expression of childlike confusion. "Why is it like that? Isn't everyone supposed to be equal?"
Bryan scoffed. He ruffled Chen Shi's hair roughly, his lips twisted in a sardonic smile. "Kid, there's no such thing as equality in this world. Never was, never will be—past, present, or future. People are born unequal."
His expression gradually darkened. In a voice so low only he could hear it, he murmured, "The only 'equality' in this world... is that we all have the right to kill each other."
...
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