Kingdom of Without by Andrea Tang

Author:Andrea Tang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S Books for Young Readers
Published: 2023-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

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After Feifei and the rest of the crew arrived, Ning’er lost track of time for a little while. There had been a great deal of terse orders being barked, Feifei’s perfect red mouth pulling thin as she checked Cheng Yun’s vitals, and Zi’an helping Zhenyi load Cheng Yun into the back of the car he’d commandeered. Between them all, Ning’er found herself aimless, hanging back as the others tended to their friend.

A temporary safehouse in the Fourth Ring had been scoped out. It was owned by another pair of university-age students Ning’er couldn’t name—though she thought she’d seen their faces around the café where they’d all taken to meeting. Apparently, one was a classmate of Feifei’s, and the other was a contact who worked with Zi’an on other jobs. Neither asked questions.

The street around the safehouse had largely cleared by the time they arrived back on the block. Only a few telltale scraps of the chaos the gendarme had wrought remained: a few broken barricades, overturned trash bins, a discarded protest sign here or there. A few citizens still milled about, all frantic murmuring and tense bodies, the ghost of violence still lurking in the air. The streets had returned to tentative life, but it was a different life than the one that had come before: an edge of anxiety to the shouts of shopkeepers selling wares, the pedestrians hailing cabs or asking for directions to a train stop.

Feifei hadn’t said a word edgewise to Ning’er the entire time. If she knew what had poisoned him—or whether she had an antidote—Ning’er had no idea. With Zi’an’s help, Feifei had managed to bundle Cheng Yun upstairs. Ning’er could only assume with the way she hovered over him, murmuring to herself and checking his wound, that the medic didn’t consider all hope lost for her patient.

So Ning’er waited. Sitting alone on the bottom floor like a useless idiot, she waited.

It didn’t take long for the screams to start. It was a raw-throated wail, faint, but chillingly audible through the walls, even from downstairs. Ning’er’s heart slammed into her throat. A few minutes later, a rush of footsteps pounded down the stairs. Zhenyi, paper white, sweat beading her forehead beneath a riot of purple hair, clamped a fist around Ning’er’s arm. “Come upstairs.”

Ning’er let herself be led up the steps. The screams were louder now. Her prosthetic hand went tight around Zhenyi’s prosthetic fingers. Metal scraped against metal in an ugly screech. “Heaven help us. Is that him? Is that Cheng Yun?”

The other girl was silent. Ning’er wanted to throw up.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” offered Zhenyi at last. She freed her hand from Ning’er’s death grasp with a firm but gentle jerk of her wrist and began to drum her fingers against the banister, a nervous tic, as she stared down at the unresponsive grains in the wood. “You know those rumors about Lilium experimenting with developing new substances, right? Narcotics, both uppers and downers, but also… well.

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