Cen Jin said, “I thought…”

Before she could finish, she rushed forward to support his swaying body. The weight exceeded what she had anticipated — her legs buckled and she nearly toppled forward with him. In the next instant, the weight lifted — Wei Lai braced himself against the wall and said, “You can’t manage alone. Call him out to help.”

Cen Jin caught on and called out the man from Ekho, and together they helped Wei Lai back inside.

Wei Lai gave her low, urgent instructions: “The first aid kit and the satellite phone — I stashed them under the chassis of the jeep. Go get them. And… keep an eye on things outside. Don’t get careless.”

Cen Jin nodded. Even without knowing the full extent of his injuries, now that he was back, she felt at ease.

She waited by the door for a moment, confirmed there was nothing unusual outside, then covered the distance to the jeep in three quick strides. She dropped low — almost rolling — beneath the chassis, and reached her hands out in all directions, feeling around. Her fingers suddenly caught a strap. Without thinking, she tore it free with one sharp pull.

Back in the room, she gradually regained her composure. She fetched a basin of water and had the man from Ekho use pillows and bed sheets to cover and block the windows, then lit a candle.

The moment the candlelight flickered to life, Wei Lai was smiling.

He said, “I was going to take care of it myself, but then I thought — you’ve handled Hu Sha’s head, you’re that professional. I deserve a bit of that attention too. Miss Cen, keep your hands steady. Don’t disappoint me.”

Cen Jin said nothing. She picked up the scissors and cut open his shirt. Wei Lai’s wounds were plainly visible — he had bandaged two places himself: one at the side of his shoulder, one at his side. The side wound wasn’t too bad, just a graze from a stray bullet that only needed debridement, hemostasis, and bandaging. But the shoulder…

It was a through-and-through wound. Entry and exit, in front and out behind. The entry was the size of a bullet hole; the exit wound was the size of a teacup rim, a mass of bloody, torn flesh.

Cen Jin could not bear to look. She cut a small strip of towel, rolled it up, and moved to put it between his teeth. Wei Lai refused: “Let me be able to talk. What am I biting a towel for? It looks terrible.”

Cen Jin turned her head toward the wide-eyed man from Ekho: “What are you staring at — turn your head. Watch the window!”

The man startled and quickly turned away. Cen Jin took Wei Lai’s hand and tucked it inside her clothing.

Wei Lai smiled, and made no effort at restraint. His burning palm traveled slowly upward, lingering from her back to her chest, then gradually withdrawing. He said, “If you’re trying to use that trick to distract me, it’s not going to work. When the pain hits, I’ll probably crush your bones… Come on. Don’t drag it out.”

He let out a breath and fixed his gaze on the ceiling above — a crack ran across it, splitting and forking like lightning in a rainy night, without rhyme or reason.

Cen Jin set her jaw and began the debridement.

Wei Lai talked the whole time.

“Don’t you believe anything you see in movies, where someone takes two or three bullets and still bounces around… Usually, one bullet is enough to take off a whole arm…”

He let out a low grunt. The tendons in his forehead stood out sharply. Cen Jin tilted her head back hard, forcing the tears to retreat, then used the forceps to carefully pick out the shredded flesh and bone fragments.

“Body armor is a scam too… At 200 meters, at close to medium range, an AK-47 can punch straight through body armor. So no matter how much you like me, don’t throw yourself in front of a bullet for me — most of the time it won’t do any good…”

His body convulsed once. For two or three seconds he went rigid and still, then suddenly laughed again.

“I saw an unlucky guy once — the armor stopped the bullet, but the shockwave shattered his ribs. The rib fragments pierced his heart. He died on the spot. Compared to him, I’m… still… pretty… lucky.”

Cen Jin gritted her teeth and quickened her hands. Either way it was going to hurt — faster meant less suffering overall.

…

While she was bandaging him, Wei Lai’s consciousness began to drift. His eyes closed, and he kept repeating the same sentence over and over, but his tongue was stiff and she couldn’t make it out clearly.

When she was wiping the blood from his body, perhaps the coolness of the water soothing the pain helped — his speech finally became just barely intelligible. Cen Jin heard him say: “Ke Ke Shu is going to die of envy. He’s never come face-to-face with a sniper, not even once. After this, he’ll never be able to hold his head up around me…”

Cen Jin’s tears fell alongside her laughter. She said, “Are you three years old?”

His hand reached out, grasping at nothing, as he murmured, “The phone… I need to call Ke Ke Shu…”

It wasn’t until Cen Jin pressed the satellite phone into his hand that the deep furrow in his brow finally began to ease.

When Wei Lai woke, it was still night. The room was hushed and still. Cen Jin slept beside him, curled carefully into herself, the cloth she’d used to wipe him down still clutched tightly in her hand. There was no one else in the room — she must have sent the man from Ekho somewhere, though he had no idea where.

He flexed his fingers and found a phone in his hand.

Good. He’d been meaning to call.

He dialed Ke Ke Shu’s number.

Ke Ke Shu answered with his usual sluggishness — if you were on your deathbed wanting to say a few last words to a friend, you’d probably have breathed your last before the call even connected.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. I caught a bullet.”

Silence on the other end for two seconds, and then Ke Ke Shu erupted.

“Wei! You were shot? Damn! Where? Are you crippled? Do you need me there? Who were they?”

A rapid-fire burst that made his head throb. He kept his voice very low: “Keep it down. Cen Jin is asleep.”

“What does it matter that she’s asleep? Wei! I’m asking you questions…”

Wei Lai said, “Quiet yourself for ten seconds, get your head straight, then talk to me.”

He pressed the phone against his chest and began counting silently. Around him, Cen Jin’s soft, steady breathing filled the dark. The lightning-like crack in the ceiling above was invisible now.

Sure enough — when he raised the phone to his ear again, Ke Ke Shu’s voice was considerably calmer, and his mind had caught up: “You can still make calls, so it can’t be life-threatening. Who were they?”

“A sniper.”

Predictably, Ke Ke Shu let out a sound of involuntary envy.

“Did you escape, or did you go head to head?”

“Head to head. I jammed him — even if he’s not dead, he took a hit.”

Ke Ke Shu was too jealous to speak. That kind of thing was rare luck, not something you could engineer — even given the chance, he wouldn’t dare go up against a sniper himself.

Which meant, for a long time to come, he’d never be able to hold his head up around Wei Lai.

His feelings were complicated: “You’re calling me in the middle of the night just to show off?”

Wei Lai said, “Am I that childish? I need you to look into something — urgently, tonight. It won’t be difficult.”

“Do you remember — the time Cen Jin and I got on the wrong speedboat? I told you then that one of the people on their side had a tattoo on his lower back.”

He remembered. Ke Ke Shu also remembered his own reply at the time: that tattoos were private things, difficult to trace — you couldn’t exactly go around lifting people’s shirts.

“Today I saw it again, and got a clear look — on a different person, same location. The tattoo is circular, with a clenched fist inside. My guess is, it might be this organization’s marking.”

Ke Ke Shu agreed: “That’s quite possible.”

Wei Lai said, “So far, everyone they’ve sent has been Black, and once we entered Africa, I could feel that their attack arrangements were very fluent — they knew the terrain. I moved from Sudan into Ekho and they tracked me quickly…”

Ke Ke Shu finished the thought: “You think they might be an African organization themselves?”

“Cen Jin’s aid work in Africa — she’s only been to Somalia and Ka Long. If they are an African organization, it should trace back to one of those two places. You have wide contacts here. Help me look into it urgently — start with the tattoo as the lead, and there should be a lead quickly.”

“Can’t you just ask her directly?”

Wei Lai was quiet for a moment.

Ke Ke Shu gave a cold laugh: “I’ll say it again: I don’t believe she doesn’t know. Wei — I don’t particularly like this Miss Cen. You should be careful of her.”

After hanging up, Wei Lai couldn’t sleep. The bandaging was firm and tight; the faint antiseptic smell of the gauze drifted through the air.

He reached out, the back of his hand lightly brushing her face.

Ke Ke Shu told him to be careful of her, but he didn’t know how one was supposed to do that.

A woman who had given her body to a man. A man who had given his life and his wounds to a woman. In a relationship like this, to still speak of wariness and caution — the whole world would become utterly joyless.

He couldn’t tell if it was the motion of his hand that disturbed her, but Cen Jin suddenly woke — she sat up reflexively, the movement too abrupt, and knocked the satellite phone off the bed. She bent to retrieve it, but Wei Lai’s arm curved lightly around her waist. “No hurry.”

He drew her close. Cen Jin carefully adjusted herself, trying not to press against his injuries.

Wei Lai asked her: “Where is the man from Ekho?”

“I gave him money and sent him to sleep in the room we had before. Told him to leave before daybreak.”

“Not worried he’ll talk?”

“I told him I knew his name, his family’s names, his village, his relatives, where they all live. I said if he didn’t behave himself, I’d come after him with a gun.”

“You know all that?”

“Two people, stuck in a room together for that long — what else were we going to do, sit and stare at each other?”

Wei Lai laughed despite himself, then said quietly after a pause: “Bullying an honest man like that.”

He looked at her eyes.

Cen Jin grew uneasy under his gaze: “What is it?”

Wei Lai said, “I want to ask you something.”

“I’ve asked this question twice before. This is the last time. Whatever you answer, that’s what it is. I won’t ask again after this.”

“Do you really not know who’s trying to kill you…”

Cen Jin suddenly cut him off.

“I know. I’ve always known who is after me.”

Wei Lai exhaled.

Strange — he found he wasn’t the least bit surprised. Of course she knew. Of course she would. Someone so sharp in every other respect, being slow about this — that wouldn’t have made sense.

“So are you going to tell me?”

Cen Jin turned it back on him: “Do I have a choice?”

Wei Lai smiled: “In front of me, you always have a choice. Even when the whole world has run out of road, I’m still your road.”

Cen Jin was silent.

Wei Lai waited until the tenth second, then stroked her hair gently and said, “It’s late. Sleep.”

He closed his eyes.

So exhausted. How could so many things happen in a single day?

The next morning it began to rain almost at first light.

They say April in Ekho falls between the minor rainy season and the major rainy season — this year the major rainy season had clearly come early. Water was pooling in the courtyard; someone had taken a shovel and dug a shallow drainage trench in the ground.

The water ran along the groove and drained away, flowing out into the rain falling beyond the inn.

At its heaviest, the rain reduced visibility to a white blur. Wei Lai felt an odd sense of comfort: in weather like this, even a sniper couldn’t work — and that sniper was now dead or severely injured regardless.

At midday, the innkeeper sent someone room to room asking about meal deliveries. They brought injera, the local staple — its flavour was intensely sour. Wei Lai had no appetite and couldn’t get it down. When asked what he wanted to eat, he couldn’t say.

Cen Jin said, “If I cook, would you eat it?”

“Is it bad?”

“A little.”

Wei Lai thought about it. “Given that I’ll be eating it for the rest of my life, I suppose I had better start adapting now. Go ahead — but stay where I can see you.”

Cen Jin wrapped herself tightly in a cotton shawl over her face, put up an umbrella, and headed to the front courtyard. When she returned, she was carrying a woven basket, from which she produced a kitchen knife, a cutting board, tomatoes, potatoes, raw beef, green chillies, and lettuce.

She said, “I’ll prep everything here in the room first, then just borrow their kitchen for a bit.”

It looked like there would be a Chinese meal today — a somewhat not-quite-right one, but a proper one nonetheless.

Wei Lai lay on the bed, watching with a smile as she peeled potatoes and sliced green chillies with an air of complete purpose. After she finished with the chillies, for some reason she absently wiped her brow.

Wei Lai said, “Don’t—”

Too late. The chilli stung her eyes. She hopped and teared up. Wei Lai laughed so hard it pulled at his wound, and he had to suck in a breath and hold it in.

It was at that moment the satellite phone rang.

Wei Lai picked it up.

It was Milu.

The voice was tense — unusually so, in a way he’d never heard before — and what she said was strange: “Wei, that Miss Cen — is she with you right now? If she is, just make one sound to say yes, then listen to what I say.”

Wei Lai made a sound.

A sense of foreboding began to rise slowly in his chest.

Milu said, “Listen to me. Ke Ke Shu called me. We talked it over and decided I should be the one to tell you. Wei — no matter how much that Miss Cen has paid you, and regardless of whether you’ve signed a new bodyguard contract since then, give her the money back and leave immediately. You cannot protect her.”

Wei Lai asked, “Why?”

He glanced at Cen Jin. She was slicing tomatoes — one cut at a time, very deliberate. The juice of the tomatoes, mixed with the pale yellow seeds, ran across the cutting board.

Milu said, “Can you leave first, and then I’ll explain everything slowly…”

“No.”

Cen Jin looked up at him, puzzled. Wei Lai smiled and winked at her.

Milu said, “All right then… Wei, have you ever heard of the Jewish Avengers?”

Wei Lai’s heart slowly sank. It was a long moment before he made a sound of acknowledgment.

After the Second World War, because the situation was so chaotic, a large number of war criminals — beyond the main ones who were prosecuted — escaped among the refugee population, and the Allied forces were unable to pursue them all. Some Jewish people vowed that the Nazis would pay blood debt for blood debt, under the rallying cry of: “Not a single Nazi war criminal shall be let go.”

They formed a private revenge organization on their own initiative — an organization that later became the foundation of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Their search and pursuit operations spanned the entire globe; more than thirty years after the end of the Second World War, their reach still extended as far as South America.

These people came to be known collectively as the Jewish Avengers.

“Ka Long was a similar situation. When the Kasi Liberation Front fought back, the international balance of power shifted, and many war criminals, sensing that things were going badly, fled in large numbers. It’s said the largest single destination was Europe. The April Tragedy killed over 200,000 people, but of the war criminals who were caught, the heaviest sentence handed down was only twenty years.”

“Some enraged Kasi survivors formed an organization. They named it ‘The Hand of God.’ Its symbol is a circle containing a clenched fist, conveying: the mighty hand will show no mercy to any devil.”

“Do you remember that Miss Cen was once implicated in a murder case — the victim was a wealthy French businessman? I looked into it: that man’s name was Re Lei Mi. Six years ago, he was also in Ka Long — he was Miss Cen’s colleague. They established a protected area together.”

“Wei — that protected area has a problem. The Hand of God has been settling accounts with those people. Miss Cen is, in fact, a war criminal.”

Wei Lai felt his mind go blank. He said, “What?”

He wasn’t even sure what he was asking.

The answer came not from Milu, but from Cen Jin.

She pointed to the sliced tomatoes on the cutting board and asked again: “I was asking you — should I make it into a soup, or stir-fry it?”