Chapter Five: A Debt of Pain

Zhou tracked Red Tide through wireless ventilator signals. With four minutes left, Red Tide detonated three floors. Twenty-three life lines plunged. Wanqing took out the black injector. “No,” Gu Chen said. “Transferring it to an enemy could kill them.” “Who said anything about an enemy?” She drove the needle into her arm and selected the central life-support machine. The patients' agony, her injuries, and the burning pain shared by Gu Chen poured into the machine. It screamed like a person as red lines covered its shell. The system had never defined whether a machine could bear pain—or whether pain could not become energy. Wanqing pressed both palms against it and converted every red line into healing. All twenty-three life lines rose.