"Get behind me," Ghost Claw commanded, her voice muffled but firm through the gas mask.
"Stay close. Don't make any noise noise. If I signal you to stop, you freeze immediately. Understand?"
Tòumíng nodded, positioning himself behind her as she approached the maintenance room door.
She pulled it open slowly, checking the corridor beyond before stepping through. Tòumíng then followed, and they emerged into a restricted basement hallway that was completely different from the polished luxury of the upper floors.
This was utilitarian. Unpainted Concrete walls. Industrial lighting with those fluorescent lights . The kind of space designed for function rather than aesthetics, the kind of area guests were never meant to see. It was giving backrooms.
"It's a lot bigger inside than it is outside," Tòumíng whispered, looking at the corridor that extended far beyond what the building's external dimensions should have allowed.
"Seventy percent of this building is probably underground," Cupid observed. "The visible structure above ground is just the entrance and presentation space. The real operations happen below."
Ghost Claw moved forward cautiously, her hand near the holstered handgun, her body language tense and ready. The corridor branched in multiple directions, but she seemed to know which way to go, following what was probably a memorized floor plan.
They reached a section with a line of identical doors—numbered one through nine, each one reinforced steel with electronic locks and small security keypads.
Ghost Claw stopped, scanning the doors with visible frustration.
"I can only hack one in time," she muttered, more to herself than to Tòumíng. "Need to guess the right door. If I pick wrong and trigger an alarm on the first attempt, security will be here in under two minutes."
She started doing some kind of mental analysis, her head tilting as she examined each door in sequence.
"Most operations wouldn't hide valuables in the first two doors, too obvious, too accessible. Not the last two either—standard reverse psychology, people check those second. Usually never in the middle—that's the most statistically common guess. Avoid even numbers—they're psychologically favored in Chinese culture, which makes them poor hiding spots for anyone with security training…"
She continued muttering calculations and probabilities under her breath, systematically eliminating options through some kind of analytical framework Tòumíng couldn't fully follow.
"Which means it's either door three or door seven," she concluded. "Both odd numbers, both in non-obvious positions, both matching the psychological profile of someone trying to hide something valuable in plain sight…"
She sighed, clearly frustrated by the fifty-fifty odds.
Tòumíng, listening to her complex analysis, decided there was a simpler approach.
He activated Ore Sense.
His vision shifted immediately, the walls becoming transparent, allowing him to see through the reinforced steel doors into the rooms beyond. Most were empty storage spaces. Some contained standard gemstone inventory—valuable, but not exceptional.
But doo, the first door Ghost Claw had dismissed as too obvious—contained something different.
Multiple high-grade specimens. Rubies. Emeralds. And in the back corner, a distinctive deep-red stone that practically glowed with density and value even through Ore Sense's X-ray vision.
The blood ruby.
"It's door one," Tòumíng said quietly.
Ghost Claw's head snapped toward him. "What?"
"The gems you're looking for. They're behind door one."
"That doesn't make sense. Door one is too obvious. No sophisticated operation would—" She stopped mid-sentence, her eyes landing on Tòumíng's face.
His eyes. Which were glowing bright blue, casting an eerie light in the dim hallway.
Tòumíng saw her shocked expression through the gas mask lenses and immediately panicked, shutting off Ore Sense. The blue glow vanished, his eyes returning to normal brown.
"I uh… I can explain!" he started, his hands raised defensively. "It's a—it's this thing I can do, it's not magic or anything weird, well it IS weird but it's not dangerous, I just—"
"I don't care," Ghost Claw cut him off, her voice firm. "You have some kind of ability that lets you see through walls. Fine. I have a gas mask I wear for reasons I won't explain. We're both keeping secrets. Deal?"
Tòumíng blinked, surprised by how quickly she'd accepted the supernatural weirdness. "Deal."
"Good. Now let's move."
She approached door one, pulling out what looked like a sophisticated electronic lock-picking device from one of her cargo pockets. She attached it to the keypad and started working, her fingers moving across a small screen with practiced efficiency.
The lock clicked open after about forty-five seconds.
Ghost Claw pushed the door open carefully, checking for additional security measures before stepping inside. Tòumíng followed.
The room was significantly more sophisticated than just gems sitting on shelves.
The space was large—maybe twenty feet by thirty feet—and filled with a complex system of safes built into the walls. Each safe was labeled with a number, and behind them, visible through small windows in the safe doors, Tòumíng could see a conveyor belt system. Automated. Probably designed to move gems quickly between different storage locations or to load them for transport at any time.
Extremely high-tech. Extremely expensive. The kind of security setup that suggested the contents were worth hundreds of millions, possibly billions.
Ghost Claw scanned the room, her analytical mind immediately working through the options.
"Sixty-three safes total," she muttered, counting quickly. "An important gem wouldn't be in the outer layers—too accessible during a breach. Wouldn't be dead center either—that's where people look first. But that still leaves thirty-nine potential locations…"
She started pacing, examining the layout, clearly trying to narrow down the possibilities through probability and security theory.
Tòumíng sighed and activated Ore Sense again, his eyes glowing blue as he scanned through the safe doors.
Most contained standard inventory. High-value gemstones, yes, but nothing exceptional.
But safe number thirty-two, almost exactly in the middle of the array, contained the blood ruby. The deep-red stone was unmistakable, its density and purity visible even through the compressed viewing of Ore Sense.
"It's number thirty-two," Tòumíng said, pointing. "The one almost in the middle."
Ghost Claw stopped pacing and turned to look at him, then at the safe he'd indicated.
"That's not in the middle," she said, her voice taking on a lecturing tone even as she approached the safe and started setting up her lock-picking device. "That's close to the middle, which is different. And frankly, a sophisticated billion-yuan trafficking and smuggling operation isn't going to pick a safe that close to the geometric center to hide their most precious gem. It's too predictable. Too obvious. They'd use a more complex positioning algorithm, probably something based on Fibonacci sequences or prime number distribution, anything to avoid the middle clustering that amateur security relies on…"
She continued her rant about proper security protocols and why safe thirty-two was a terrible choice from an operational standpoint, her hands working the lock-picking device even as she explained all the reasons this couldn't possibly be the right safe.
The safe clicked open.
Inside, mounted on a velvet stand, sat the blood ruby.
Deep red. Almost brown-red in certain angles. The size of a golf ball. Cut with expert precision that somehow made it look darker, more ominous than a normal ruby should.
Ghost Claw stared at it in silence for a long moment.
"You were right," she said finally.
"Yeah."
"They picked the one near the middle."
"Yeah."
"That's terrible security protocol."
"Apparently."
She reached in carefully and took the ruby, examining it closely before slipping it into a specialized container she pulled from another cargo pocket—probably lined with something that would protect it during transport.
"We have what we came for," she said, sealing the container. "Now we need to leave before someone notices the safe has been accessed."
Tòumíng nodded, already turning toward the door.
That's when the alarm started blaring.