Chapter 10

The iron doors of the Community Association groaned, a rhythmic, metallic shriek as the crowd outside hammered against them. It was no longer a protest; it was a siege. Inside the sanctum, the air tasted of ozone and stale incense. Auntie Li stood by the server rack, her hands trembling as she held a heavy iron bar, her eyes fixed on the reinforced vault door.

"They’ll tear the walls down before you finish," Li said. Her voice was thin, stripped of the authority she’d wielded for decades. "The elders are watching from the secure feed. They’re waiting to see if you have the stomach to kill the registry."

Mei didn't look at her. She stared at the console, a relic of Uncle Wei’s design. It was a digital cage masquerading as a community ledger. To erase the blood-price debt, she had to wipe the entire registry. If she succeeded, the residents would be free of the predatory loans, but their history, their property claims, and their established stability would vanish. They would be ghosts in a city that already wanted them gone.

"I’m not doing this for them," Mei said, her voice steady despite the adrenaline spiking in her veins. "I’m doing it because there is no other way to break the cycle."

She slotted the physical override key. The terminal shrieked—a high-pitched electronic whine that signaled a hard-lock. The sanctum’s heavy deadbolts slammed home, sealing them inside. The cooling fans died, plunging the room into a suffocating, unnatural silence.

Mei’s fingers danced across the terminal, pulling up the master index. The screen flickered to life, revealing the labyrinth of aliases Wei had curated. There, in cold, unblinking green text, was the truth: her own tuition, her first apartment, the quiet stability she had once credited to her own grit—a

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