The elevator chimed softly as it reached the top floor, sliding open with a mechanical sigh.
Lin Xie stepped into the penthouse in silence, her footsteps muffled by the thick carpet. The place was still—pristine, polished, curated like a museum. Shen Rui was still out of the city, but his presence lingered in the clean lines and muted colors, in the glass shelves that held nothing personal and everything expensive.
She dropped her bag by the corner without looking and walked past the sleek kitchen, ignoring the blinking coffee machine that still startled her occasionally.
The television mounted across the living room caught her attention.
She paused in front of it, remote in hand. Her reflection stared back at her from the black screen—blank eyes, stiff posture, like she wasn't entirely sure what to do.
It was strange. In the facility, screens were only used for mission briefings, surveillance footage, kill confirmations. But she remembered once, faintly, a technician murmuring about an actress in the capital—someone famous for her smile and tears.
Lin Xie had never seen an actress cry.
She pressed a button.
The screen came to life in a flood of color and sound.
A film had been left paused on the home interface—likely by a bored assistant or Shen Rui himself. She didn't recognize the title, didn't care. She clicked play.
A woman was running barefoot through the rain on-screen, mascara smudged, hair tangled. A man chased after her, yelling her name like it was the only thing he'd ever known.
Lin Xie blinked.
They were both soaked. They looked ridiculous.
Then the man caught up to her and said something stupid, like "I should have never let you go."
And the woman cried. Loudly. Sloppily. Like her heart had exploded inside her chest and left all its pieces behind her teeth.
Lin Xie stared.
So that was what acting looked like.
So that was what it looked like when people got to scream without consequence. When they got to chase. Be chased. Break things without being punished. Cry without being recorded in their sleep cycles.
She leaned back into the couch—not to relax, but to observe better. The movie was absurd, filled with overly dramatic music and people touching each other constantly, but she didn't look away.
There had been actors and actresses in the futuristic world too—performers for the elite, faces programmed to trigger emotion. She'd seen their photos in files. Sometimes on magazine covers when on missions.
But she'd never been allowed to watch them.
She didn't have the right.
Experiments didn't watch movies. They were watched.
She tilted her head, studying the actress's face as she smiled through her tears.
It was messy. Undisciplined. Human.
Lin Xie didn't understand it.
But something in her chest twisted anyway.
Maybe curiosity.
Maybe something else.
The movie played on. She didn't move.
Didn't cry.
Didn't blink much, either.
But she watched it until the very end—like it was a mission. Like it was data.
And when the credits rolled, she reached for the remote again…
…just to play it one more time.
The screen faded to black.
Lin Xie sat still for a few more seconds, the movie credits scrolling past names she didn't recognize—producers, directors, stunt doubles, costume designers. All these people… working together just to tell a story.
A fake one.
And yet, it had stirred something foreign in her chest. Not emotion exactly. But interest.
Acting.
Pretending to be someone else, on purpose. With approval. With applause.
It wasn't so different from what she'd been trained to do—take on roles, slip into identities, adjust speech, behavior, posture. But in her world, those things ended in silence or gunfire. Never lights. Never flowers. Never interviews where you smiled and waved and people said things like "she was brilliant."
Could she… try that?
It felt stupid the second the thought crossed her mind.
But the fact that she had the thought at all—
That was new.
She stood up slowly, the motion smooth, soundless. The remote dropped onto the couch as she turned, eyes scanning the penthouse with sudden restlessness.
She needed to move. Process. Think.
And the only routine she'd clung to since arriving in this strange, noisy city… was food.
Delicacies. Dishes she found on the internet, saved screenshots of, studied and bookmarked like targets.
She crossed the room toward the kitchen.
The cupboards were still stocked by Shen Rui's assistant—organized in a military-grade way, everything labeled and aligned. Imported rice. Dried noodles. A packet of truffle salt she had no intention of using.
Lin Xie opened the fridge and stared at the array of ingredients like they were variables in an equation. She didn't feel hunger in the way most people did. She ate to stabilize, to prevent faintness, to keep numbers in range. But here, she could… try things.
Like acting.
Like dinner.
She set a pot on the stove.
The dish tonight: braised pork belly with tea eggs and rice. Something she'd watched a cooking video for earlier that morning. The chef in the video had laughed while chopping garlic. He said things like "a splash of soy sauce" and "don't be afraid to burn your fingers a little—it's part of the charm."
Lin Xie measured everything with surgical precision. Garlic minced to millimeter consistency. Sauce ratios exact to the decimal. She didn't burn her fingers.
But she did watch the meat caramelize, bubbling in the thick sauce, and thought:
Maybe pretending wasn't so useless.
Maybe she could learn what it meant to be someone who smiled, who laughed, who wept in the rain like it meant something.
Maybe.
She plated her food with a care that almost made it look restaurant-worthy. Then sat by the window, where the city lights flickered in soft golds and cold silvers.
And took a bite.
Sweet. Salty. Umami.
Different from nutrient packs. From protein pills. From the powdered rations of the facility.
Different from anything she'd ever earned the right to taste.
She chewed slowly.
A girl with no past.
A future she hadn't chosen.
And now—possibly—an actress with a spoonful of pork belly in her mouth and zero clue what she was doing.
But at least she was doing it.
One plate at a time.