025 A Quiet Homecoming

The footsteps outside grew closer.

About five or six sets of them—patrol soldiers, by the sound. Soon they stopped right at the door.

Three heavy thuds against the door, then a shout from outside: "Who's in there?"

Annie immediately looked at Arthur.

Their eyes met. No words needed. Arthur drove an elbow straight into Qiu Wannian's neck.

The Beta let out a muffled grunt and crumpled, unconscious.

Inside the warehouse, that doll was still producing those indescribable human-like sound effects—absurd to the point of dark comedy in such a tense situation.

Arthur, thoroughly irritated, threw a punch.

The speaker embedded in the silicone toy shattered easily, and the noise died. The warehouse sank back into dead silence.

Boss He was stunned.

Even facing down Twilight's emergency sweeps, smuggling countless contraband items and live people into the city, she'd never witnessed anything this absurd.

Arthur Kane, meanwhile, seemed utterly oblivious to the bizarre atmosphere. He kicked the unconscious Qiu Wannian behind a shelf and strode over to Annie on his long legs.

The Alpha silently shrugged off his coat and tossed it over Annie.

She hadn't been wearing robes—need to stay agile. An Omega showing her curves outside would be punished, but fortunately Arthur's coat was long enough to cover most of her thighs.

"I can't go out," Annie said in a low voice. "You help Boss He."

The words had barely left her mouth when Boss He finally snapped back to reality.

"Coming, coming!"

She was still fairly composed. Facing terrorists banging on her door, she just cleared her throat. "Don't rush—there's an emergency situation here."

With that, Boss He walked over and prepared to open the door.

Arthur glanced at Annie.

He didn't say anything. He just bent down, reached past Annie, and grabbed a few boxes of condoms from the shelf behind her.

Clever.

Annie gave a small inward nod. If they claimed an emergency, nothing could be more urgent than this.

Except—

"Wait."

Seeing Arthur about to leave with them, Annie grabbed his arm. The Alpha was visibly impatient. "What?"

Annie glanced at the packaging. "Wrong size."

Arthur: "..."

Annie rose on her toes, pulled down two XL boxes, and shoved them into Arthur's hands. "Go."

At the same moment, Boss He opened the warehouse door.

Through the shelves, Annie could clearly make out the uniform of a Twilight officer. Her contact lenses zoomed through the gaps, and she recognized him at once—the officer who'd been meaning to approach Arthur at the banquet last night.

Thank goodness.

She breathed a quiet sigh of relief: the man clearly wanted to curry favor with Arthur, which would make things much easier.

"What's all the noise?" the officer said impatiently. He clearly knew Boss He. "Hey, He Yun, what are you up to in the middle of the night?"

"A… customer in a hurry to buy something. Please understand."

Boss He's voice carried a polite smile, and she pressed something into the officer's hand.

But he didn't take it.

The Twilight officer shoved Boss He aside. "Breaking curfew laws—I could execute you on the spot, you know that? What's so urgent that it can't wait till morning?"

Arthur: "Emergency."

The Alpha's cold voice reached the door along with his figure.

He stepped out from behind the shelves, his tall frame prompting the soldiers behind the officer to raise their weapons in unison.

"What—" The officer caught sight of Arthur's face and froze on the spot. "Mr. Kane? How is it you?"

"Shopping."

He was holding two boxes of condoms in plain sight. The officer wasn't blind.

But curfew was curfew, and the fact that even an officer was on patrol duty… Annie mulled it over. Twilight's lockdown policies were even stricter than she'd estimated.

Even eager to please this favored aide of Charles Lang, the patrol officer was a bit put out.

He rubbed his nose. "Not to say anything, Mr. Kane, but surely the Governor's Mansion has these. You could just have a servant—"

Halfway through, the officer's gaze landed on the packaging in Arthur's hand, where oversized, exaggerated lettering clearly marked: XL.

Uh.

The officer choked on his words.

Even if the Governor's Mansion had such things, they wouldn't have this size! No wonder he was the Alpha blessed by the Prophet.

"Buy and leave," Arthur said expressionlessly. "Or I'll go see the Butcher with you."

That would be a disaster! Charles's boss was currently in talks with Governor Hado himself!

He was just a patrol officer—if he disturbed those negotiations over the Prophet-blessed Alpha buying condoms, the Butcher would slaughter him.

Forget it, forget it.

Whatever the case, buying this stuff really was an "emergency." Especially since the whole City of the Radiant Sun knew this couple were the first in twenty years to hold a traditional wedding and pass the Ancient Temple's trial.

"Fine, I'll escort you back," the officer said, stepping aside. "Let's go together."

"Not done shopping yet." Arthur was terse.

Annie, hidden behind the shelves, caught on immediately.

She deliberately raised a hand and nudged other items on the shelves. The packaging crinkled sharply, drawing everyone's attention.

The officer finally noticed: there was someone behind those shelves!

His heart jumped, then he realized that figure draped in a man's coat was Arthur Kane's wife.

A blurry silhouette stood behind the shelves, surrounded by a rack of exaggerated leather goods and paraphernalia. Arthur Kane insisted he wasn't done shopping, and he'd brought his wife along, hmm…

Exactly what they were buying and how they'd gotten here—there was no way to ask.

Ask that kind of married-couple question out loud, and the Alpha was well within his rights to challenge him to a duel.

Not someone to provoke, and not someone to offend.

The officer could only withdraw his gaze, disgruntled.

"Make it quick," he said. "I'll pretend I didn't see anything."

"Thanks for understanding." Arthur squeezed out a token courtesy.

Boss He quickly added, "Sir! Let me see you out!"

Only then did Annie, still hidden behind the shelves, fully relax.

Once the patrol officer and his men were gone and the warehouse front door had closed again, Arthur Kane strode back to the spot. He bent down and dragged Qiu Wannian to the open floor.

"Come here." Arthur beckoned to Annie.

No need for him to say it—she already knew what to do.

Her slender fingers twitched, and the personal terminal at her wrist automatically released a cable that snaked around the floor and bound Qiu Wannian hand and foot.

By then, Boss He had returned from outside.

She hurried over. "What's going on—he's not a scientist?!"

Arthur let out a few cold laughs.

He'd intended to splash Qiu Wannian awake, but there was no water to be found in the warehouse. Arthur scanned the shelves, grabbed a bottle of lubricant at random, unscrewed the cap, and poured it over Qiu Wannian's face.

The sticky, cheaply scented fluid made Qiu Wannian sputter awake instantly.

"Wh… what the hell?!"

Qiu Wannian struggled to rise, coughing and dodging. In his daze he caught sight of Arthur's figure, and without a word, he twisted around and tried to crawl away.

Arthur stepped forward and planted a boot on the small of Qiu Wannian's back.

"Make another sound and I'll hand you over to Twilight for the bounty," he said. "Talk."

Qiu Wannian's scream caught in his throat.

Bearing the pain, he grinned and explained, "I never said I was a scientist! I just said I got the antidote formula. Stole it!"

Even Arthur Kane didn't know the bastard had escaped prison.

Not even the Federation's maximum-security penitentiary could hold him?

"What are you doing here?" Arthur pressed.

"The Federation wants me, the Empire wants me," Qiu Wannian whined, face twisted in misery. "I had to hide somewhere neither side could reach. So here I am! I don't know a soul on New Thebes, so I needed to scrape up some cash—I blended into Twilight as a grunt. And then—no, wait."

Mid-sentence, a realization hit Qiu Wannian.

He'd stolen the gene weapon's antidote formula, realized it was profitable, and risked everything to slip away from Twilight and contact the Resistance.

How important was this formula?

Important enough that Arthur Kane had come all this way for it!

So…

Qiu Wannian whipped his head around and glared at Arthur. "You little—you should be begging me! Bring this formula back to the Federation and I'll be a hero! Hurry up and—ow, ow, ow!"

Annie merely twitched a finger. The cable tightened sharply, and Qiu Wannian sucked in a sharp breath.

He didn't dare scream. He just writhed painfully on the ground.

"The formula can't go back to the Federation, and it can't fall into Imperial hands either," Annie said calmly once he'd settled down, letting the cable slacken a little. "You'd better cooperate."

"And who might this be…?" Qiu Wannian tested the waters.

Annie smiled. "I'm Arthur's wife."

Arthur twisted his head around, glaring hard at Annie.

But fear was plain in Qiu Wannian's eyes.

That mad dog got married? And he found an Omega at that?!

Annie didn't care about that.

Qiu Wannian had revealed plenty—more than enough, in fact. Her mind raced. "You stole the formula, so Twilight has already completed the gene weapon and developed a perfect antidote. Then why haven't they deployed it?"

"Because I deleted the master copy after I stole the formula," Qiu Wannian said, unabashed. "Otherwise what's the point of stealing it!"

Well, well.

The gene weapon that had both the Galactic Empire and the Interstellar Federation on edge—hijacked by a common thief, just like that.

Absurd! But a stroke of luck, too.

"So, what does the formula still need that's keeping you here?" Annie pressed.

Qiu Wannian went silent immediately.

He darted his eyes around, realizing Annie was no ordinary person.

If he had the formula and was still staying on New Thebes, there was only one explanation: once he left, the formula would be useless.

This petite, delicate-looking young woman had real skills—and she was more reasonable than the mad dog.

Judging the situation, Qiu Wannian decided to tell the truth. "It's missing two catalysts. They're at the gene weapon's research laboratory."

Damn.

Annie's heart sank to the bottom.

Boss He grew frantic, pacing back and forth in the warehouse. "To this day, we haven't been able to find out where that lab is. What do we do now?"

Round and round, it always came back to finding the laboratory.

And right now, neither the Resistance factions inside or outside the city, nor Annie and Arthur, had any leads at all.

They were stuck.

The warehouse fell into another tense silence.

Qiu Wannian, still lying on the ground, looked at this one, then that one, and said, bemused: "I know."

Annie: "..."

Boss He: "You—what?!"

"I know where the lab is," Qiu Wannian said. "Where else do you think I stole the formula from? I was a cleaner there for three months!"

Annie: "............"

Qiu Wannian test his luck cautiously: "If I tell you where the lab is, does that count as making up for my crimes? Can the warrants be dropped?"