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Someone’s screaming .
Yibo opens his eyes, wincing at the piercing neon lights. Everything hurts. He blinks a few times, waiting for the familiar routine of his system to kick in. Nothing happens. More awake now, he glances around the room he’s in, finding himself in a sitting position, limbs still intact, with a rather rust-covered shackle wrapped around his wrist. The chain connecting to a worn-down water pipe behind him. Strangely enough, the situation he’s in is a typical Friday night. Unexpected, but not that surprising.
Before anything else, Yibo turns to his free arm, tests the movement of his fingers. Then his wrist, gritting his teeth at the sharp burning sensation shooting upwards. Then his arm, then his shoulder, swallowing the ache from the socket movement. Weighing the risks, he fists his hand, and brings it down hard, to the left side of his head. The jarring pain enough for one side of his body to jerk in response, but also enough that a familiar whirring brings his system back to life. The initial scanning goes by quickly. Results shown inside his right eye, the body parts, highlighted in varying shades of red, indicate that with careful calculation, he has enough capacity to escape from the shithole he’s currently in.
Panting hard, he rests his head against the wall, and then examines the rest of the room, looking for any landmark that might help with the location tracker. The room itself is dark, the neon light coming in from the grimey slanted windows, as he could see the shoes of people walking by. The faint sounds of traffic. The echoes of clubs nearby. The sound of water pouring in from outside.
This must be the building’s basement then.
There are only stacks of boxes, haphazardly thrown sheets over them, from where he’s placed. Yibo yanks the chain, testing the limits. The rattling causing the pipe to groan ominously, the noise resonating to the huge water tank across him. The system flashes a warning, shutting his mid scheming in an instant. Yibo sighs. Only one way out then. The amount of yelling, and curses, and threats he’d get from Cheng Xiao already rings in a grim foreshadowing. Maybe she’d end up quitting as his mechanic too.
Yibo takes a deep breath. The information syncing into his mind at lightning speed. He feels his thumb, the base, and the saddle joint. In the blink of an eye, he tugs his thumb as far as he could, until he hears the resounding crack from the joint below. Thumb limply hanging, he easily slides the rest of the cuff off.
He stands up, shaking the rest of his body parts. Jumping a bit, until the sole of his shoes glows blue. Yibo paces around the room, mind humming at least ten different calculations, and playback of the incidents earlier that night. Might be a clue or two somewhere in there.
A gentle crooning interrupts his thoughts.
Yibo stops. The sound disappears.
Brows furrowing. Yibo taps below his ear, as his right eye switches the thermal heat sensors into night mode.
The crooning resumes. Shorter this time. Yibo turns to the source. The source being a large curved shaped cage, he’s assuming, based on the way the sheet fills in the gap of the bars, just a few steps away from where he woke up a moment ago.
Yibo touches the cage. A silhouette moves forward. The findings from the thermal sensor reveal a vague lumped shape... thing . With what seems to be... wings?
Fingers silently clutching at the sheets, he slowly drags the sheet down, avoiding any sudden movements that might startle the creature inside.
The creature tilts its head, a handsome face, all bright eyes and beauty marks scattered like constellations, mirroring Yibo’s expression of bewilderment.
Yibo’s not even sure if he should call it a creature , because of its clearly human head, its face, its torso, and its legs. The only nonhuman parts would be the gorgeous broad wings, sleek with black feathers in certain areas of its body, and a rather grotesque amalgamation of human feet being forced to appear as bird talons. A hybrid of a man and a bird. But which came first? The man, or the bird?
Before Yibo could finish taking in a closer look at the creature’s features, his right eye abruptly twitched, beeped once, and then revealed a blaring mark just below its collarbones.
203RB-XZ1AN
And with that, Yibo’s heart sinks .
At an early age, Yibo’s learned that you get what you put out into the world. And at an early age, Yibo already knows what he wants to be doing for the rest of his life, which is to dance . The coordination of moving your limbs to the beat. The rhythm and expression. The heat underneath the stage lights. The clamor of an audiences’ applause. Nevermind the bruises on his body from the practice. Never mind the insane hours, the fogged mirrors in the dance studio. Never mind the fact that dancing could also be isolating.
These are but small sacrifices in the long run.
He trains harder. Gets what he wants. But a star could only burn bright until it eventually swallows itself into the void. With a frail body, and poor health, Yibo didn’t think twice about joining the trendy body modification program. ‘ Upgrading to a better version of you’, as the ad would say. His stamina increases. Replaces his arm, and his leg. And then gets the R.M.M. program, an AI created to aid you in implementing and maintaining both the modified and natural parts of your body. As soon as he joins an international dancing program, rumors of his enhancements hit the press. And then, he’s done . And then he’s suddenly running around, doing underground dealings involving prohibited temporary enhancers, just to scrape by.
He’s heard of them of course. Another program. Far riskier. But with greater results. Biological modifications. There have been few types of research dedicated to it. But no news of success stories.
And now, as the system’s running through the databases, reading article after article, playbacks of interviews and videos, of the country’s once golden boy , the Chinese Nightingale , the media’s darling, with a voice so sweet , it has the power to bring spring in the middle of winter. Xiao Zhan .
Reduced to nothing but a bird in a cage.
Yibo’s heart sinks further.
These are but small sacrifices in the long run.
Xiao Zhan slants his head to the other side, recognition in his eyes. He opens his mouth, and hums a lilting melody. The cadence expressing happiness. If the system’s note value translation is accurate.
Yibo doesn’t understand, but something ignites in him. An irresistible urge to protect. To nurture. To help . Everything in his life, he’s achieved with a single-minded focus. Everything executed through the sheer power of his will. Never mind the things he’s given up, his home, his family, his friends, even his words . Back then, he thought that just to be able to freely dance is enough.
But for Xiao Zhan, Yibo thinks, there might be a more complicated story of how he ended up this way. Without even thinking twice, he raises his disjointed thumb, plucks it off, and grabs one of the tiny wires found inside. Inserts the wires, and picks the lock.
For him, just to be free would be the first step.