Chapter 225

Chapter 225: Growth

“The Orphanage stood up,” Li Lin said quickly over the call. As a top agent, though not very senior yet, he was good at staying calm. But this time, what he was seeing had gone past all his training and fieldwork.

“To be exact, the two buildings did. They’re ‘growing’ like some kind of plant, making huge noises while twisting together. We’ve requested backup. We’re pulling back to outside the wall. Nearby blocks are evacuating. Just now something also rumbled from underground…”

The call suddenly broke up, like heavy interference. The next moment, Yu Sheng heard a baby crying, plus a blaring alarm, sharp and harsh. At first he thought it was the noise inside his head again, but then he realized it came from the phone speaker.

The crying from the phone and the noise in his mind overlapped, making him dizzy.

Irene’s loud fuss finally snapped him out of it: “Hey! Yu Sheng, Yu Sheng! What’s going on? What is it? What?”

“Anka Aila,” Yu Sheng sucked in a breath and summoned a Door to a far place, “the Orphanage is the container for the Dark Angels. Foxy, Irene, come with me!”

Then he froze, hand still raised. He had just thought of something.

He looked around at the Little Houses. Through the link made by blood, he felt almost every child had fallen asleep. Some were already in the Sanctuary Wasteland.

“Irene,” he turned to the Doll, “split yourself in two paths…”

“Is that even human language?!”

“Don’t interrupt. Split your focus. Go to the Sanctuary Wasteland. Remember how we opened the Portal to the Black Forest last time? I just thought of something that might help me break through those Wolf Pack lines in the forest. I need your power…”

He paused. A strange light came into his eyes.

It was the look Irene knew well, the look of “Yu Sheng has a plan.”

“I’m going to hit Anka Aila with something big.”

…

In the dark night sky, weird rumbling and shrieks echoed, as if an unbeatable force were tearing and piercing the world. A giant structure of concrete, steel, and strange black matter was rising like a limb that was growing fast and out of control. As it rose, it twisted and wrapped, shaping something like a spiral.

It looked like a twisted Umbilical Cord sewing earth and sky together.

But once you stepped outside the Orphanage walls, the noises and terrifying scene disappeared. From nearby streets, everything still looked normal. The awful change and erosion seemed trapped inside the wall, like an Illusion Arts show locked in a ring.

Li Lin knew it was spilling over. He could see the wall bulge now and then, like a baby stretching in the womb. After he pulled back outside, he still sometimes heard strange sounds from the sky. When he looked up, every minute or two he would see that spiraling Umbilical Cord flash into view for an instant. Each time it returned, it was bigger and more twisted.

Sensors left inside the wall were spewing chaos. The monitors showed scenes that no longer looked real. Many unnamable shadows were rising around the two buildings. They looked like swaying crowds, struggling limbs, and worse, things not human at all.

Just then, from the corner of his eye, Li Lin saw a hazy The Door open in the air nearby. The Door swung wide, and the Hotel trio stepped through.

He felt relief for no clear reason, like finally seeing Bureau backup.

Yu Sheng walked out quickly, his brutal staff in hand. He looked back once at the Orphanage’s Door.

In the dark, the Door warped now and then, like something kept ramming it, trying to break out of the no go zone sealed by the wall.

“How is it now?” Yu Sheng drew his eyes back to the agent. “I can see the two buildings are still…”

“The change is confined inside the wall, visible only if you go in, but it’s spilling over,” Li Lin cut in, talking fast. “Before we pulled out, we tried to rush into the two buildings to set emergency monitors, but the buildings changed their structure almost in a blink. It felt like they sensed our plan and ‘erased’ their Doors, then sent out a lot of twisted shadows to block us. So we had to fall back.”

“Got it,” Yu Sheng nodded. “You stay here. The three of us will go in.”

Li Lin stared: “Wait. Just you three? You’re going straight in?”

Yu Sheng had already started forward. He glanced back: “Yeah. What else?”

“I thought you’d have a more detailed plan, or wait for Bureau backup so we could coordinate. At least some kind of battle plan…”

“Ah,” Yu Sheng scratched his chin, thought for a second, then shook his head, “we don’t plan that far. We’re an amateur club.”

With that, he strode ahead and walked through the Door that bulged and warped in the night, right in front of the stunned agent team.

Then Yu Sheng saw the “truth” inside the wall.

The upper halves of the east and west main buildings had become piles of monstrous fragments. Inside the broken walls, weird black fibers held the pieces up. The lower halves still kept some shape, but now they were drowned in heavy shadow. Outside the two buildings, shadows and pulsing black stuff swelled everywhere. The swings and slide where Cursed Children once played were swallowed up. Sand pits and flowerbeds rippled with ink like liquid. And the crying of a baby came from both his mind and the real world at once.

“Gross…” Irene clutched Yu Sheng’s hair, the little Doll tense all over. “I suddenly feel like rushing in was not a great idea.”

Foxy’s fur stood on end. Her nine tails flared like spears: “Benefactor, it feels like we can’t move forward…”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer. He stared at the two main buildings twisted together like a giant Umbilical Cord.

He realized he could see something Li Lin, Irene, and Foxy could not.

Between those two rising, coiling buildings, across the black tide in the yard, there was a path.

Faint glowing traces ran along the shattered ground and stretched toward the spiral that had been the east building.

Heat swelled at his chest, stronger and stronger, with a light burn and a throb.

Yu Sheng reached into his coat and found the source.

A bullet with a spiral tip.

It was hot, as if it had just been fired, still following its mission to fly to its target.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the black shadows in the yard turning into ranks of trees. Flowers from a Dense Forest began to bloom over the swings and slide that had been swallowed.

Little Red Riding Hood must walk the country path.

The Big Bad Wolf must attack the girl on the path.

Wolf Granny waits in the last Little House for her prey.

And the Hunter, the Hunter must cross the Forest and reach the Little House.

“Come with me,” Yu Sheng said softly. He closed his fingers around the bullet and, guided by instinct, walked toward the two main buildings that still “grew” into the night.

Foxy followed without a pause, though her nine tails still stood bristling like a field of swords.

Irene hugged Yu Sheng’s head with one hand, eyes wide. Then she flung out her other hand: “Ugh, fine, whatever! I’m the Doll from Alice’s Little House!”

Black threads unspooled from her hands and floated close, wrapping the three of them in a shifting guard.

Yu Sheng moved as if he heard nothing around him. Guided by his sense, he walked on. Bit by bit, the surging shadows and sticky masses faded from his sight. The crooked walls and blocked Doors and windows were gone from his eyes too. In his view, he moved along a deer path only he could see, slipping past shadows and what looked like sealed walls and Doors. To Irene, who kept gasping softly, it seemed like he walked straight through them. To Yu Sheng, they were only patches of forest light and shade.

Dense Forest filled the first floor hall. Shrubs clogged the doorway of what had been the reception. A dead trunk lay across the stairs to the second floor. Vines drooped from the ceiling. Cracks split nearby walls. Inside a classroom, golden evening light poured out.

Yu Sheng climbed a slope wrapped in vines, slipped through a dry tree hollow that was once a window, and used his staff to push aside the grass. He slowed at the end of a narrow path and looked down at a plaque in the dirt and leaf mold by his feet.

The plaque said “Reading Room.”

“Yes, the reading room,” he whispered. “For kids who grew up in the Orphanage, every ‘story’ leads back to this place.”

He muttered it under his breath.