Little Pink Starfish

Perhaps it was three seconds, or maybe four—Lu Feng’s fingers left the side of his face. That bit of warmth vanished into the night breeze, dissipating quickly.

An Zhe opened his eyes again and saw the departing figure—exactly the same as that day at the city gate.

At that moment, bright white lights suddenly lit up the plaza.

An Zhe squinted. Lu Feng’s figure blurred in his vision. When his sight cleared again, that black silhouette had already disappeared into the vast crowd. Soldiers from the Garrison Office came forward and carried away Du Sai’s body. Her brown hair flowed like honey under the lights, her eyes closed, expression peaceful. What she was thinking in her final moment, An Zhe didn’t know. Perhaps he would never know.

Many people looked over. After the soldiers left, they began whispering to one another. An Zhe’s hearing was good; he caught fragments. Many people recognized the woman from the black market’s third floor. Some were sighing over the death of a beautiful woman, but more were afraid—afraid of becoming hosts to monsters themselves.

Soon, the mechanical female voice sounded again.

“Please remain dispersed in your current location. In 30 minutes, the Tribunal will begin individual screenings.”

The voice was soft and pleasant, but no one had the mind to appreciate it. People glanced at each other in silence, then quickly realized: at a time like this, no one knew if the people around them were still human. The crowd shifted like an ant colony. Everyone tried to separate from those nearby, strangers or not. Eventually, the chaotic mass turned into a sparse grid. An Zhe stood on the very edge, beside the bloodstains Du Sai had left behind. His gaze swept over the fearful, trembling faces of the humans around him. There wasn’t much difference between the human base and the Abyss.

Suddenly, a shrill voice shouted in the distance: “There’s something on his face!”

Then came the sounds of a scuffle, followed by loud arguing, and thirty seconds later, a gunshot ended it all.

Dead silence. A chilling silence fell over the plaza—so quiet that even breathing stopped. If someone told An Zhe this place was actually a graveyard and the people were headstones, he wouldn’t doubt it.

He looked around, trying to spot Lu Feng, but there were too many people, layer upon layer. He couldn’t find him. Finally, An Zhe looked down at the marble ground, pale under the floodlights.

Suddenly, his gaze froze.

About five meters in front of him, near a man’s foot, there was a glint of brass.

His first thought was that the bullet casing hanging from his neck had fallen, and he quickly reached for his collar. Through his shirt, the small cylindrical item pressed against his hand—it hadn’t fallen.

He stared at the ground and stepped forward a few paces—the man beside him cursed and moved away.

“Sorry,” An Zhe explained, “I dropped something.”

He passed a few people and reached the spot, crouched down, and picked up a brass-colored cylindrical shell casing.

The moment he picked it up, his hand trembled slightly.

—It was a weight, texture, and pattern he knew very well. Holding it, he couldn’t tell it apart from the one on his neck.

His heart thudded violently. He clenched it in his palm and stood up.

He remembered five minutes ago, Du Sai had touched the blister on her forehead, realized she was infected and wouldn’t survive, and knew Lu Feng would execute her. But even in fear, she seemed to want to approach the Judge. She had taken a few steps toward him, but before she could get there, a bullet pierced her body.

Where had Lu Feng been standing at that moment?

An Zhe looked at the dark bloodstains not far away—Lu Feng had been standing exactly where he was now, or close by, when he fired that shot.

What was a bullet casing? It was the shell of a bullet. He knew this. An Ze’s memories had similar knowledge. When a bullet was fired from a gun, the shell would be ejected backward and fall to the ground.

Without a doubt, the casing he just picked up belonged to Lu Feng. Lu Feng was the head of the Tribunal. So what about the identical casing he’d found in the wild, at the place where he had lost his spores? Was that also connected to the Tribunal?

A difficult-to-name emotion surged in An Zhe’s chest—fear, clearly and precisely defined. If the spore was related to the Tribunal, retrieving it would be extremely hard. He couldn’t ask directly—asking about it would be equivalent to admitting he was a mushroom.

While he was lost in such thoughts, thirty minutes passed. The mechanical voice sounded again:

“Buffer time ended. Please line up in an orderly manner for infection screening. After passing, please leave on your own.”

The instruction played on loop. Then, a large light lit up at the far end of the plaza. People began moving in that direction for inspection.

Near An Zhe stood a man and a teenage boy—they looked like father and son. The older man had a beard, and the boy seemed about thirteen or fourteen.

He heard the boy ask: “Why do they wait thirty minutes?”

“The Judges aren’t machines,” the father said in a low voice. “You get bitten by a bug, you think they’ll know right away? The Tribunal says thirty minutes after infection, they can tell. Haven’t you been to the city gate? There’s always a thirty-minute wait.”

The boy replied, “Oh.”

Then he asked, “So how exactly do they tell?”

“Don’t ask me,” the father said. “How would I know?”

“I heard they just kill whoever they—”

“Shut up,” the father’s voice was short and tinged with fear. “You want to get shot now?”

As if to prove his point, a gunshot rang out from the far side of the plaza.

They both immediately went silent.

The Tribunal screened people rapidly, and the gunshots came at such regular intervals that people gritted their teeth. For a while, the rhythm was consistent—at least one shot every ten minutes. Sometimes, several in a row. After that flurry, the gunfire would pause for a long time. The father beside An Zhe said, “Probably done killing now.”

Just as he finished speaking, another shot rang out. The boy beside him shuddered.

Those deemed infected were executed on the spot. Those cleared were allowed to leave through an exit. The number of people in the plaza decreased steadily. People naturally formed a loose queue and slowly moved forward. An Zhe was at the very end. With each shot, he counted. By the time he neared the exit, the number had reached seventy-three.

He saw a stone pillar at the exit—Lu Feng stood leaning against it, his tall figure outlined under the lights. Two Judges stood beside him, and further out, armored soldiers of the Garrison Office. The ground before them was stained with blood.

Not just blood. Scattered around were brass casings.

The father and son passed safely. Then it was An Zhe’s turn. He stepped forward and stopped before Lu Feng.

Lu Feng was taller than him; he had to tilt his head up slightly to meet the man’s gaze—and then he felt Lu Feng’s eyes sweep him from head to toe.

“What’s in your hand?”

An Zhe hadn’t expected even such a small item in his hand to be noticed. Facing the Judge’s cold and superior gaze, he could only raise his hand, open his fingers, and reveal the casing in his palm—just like those scattered on the ground, representing a person killed by a Judge.

Silence stretched between them.

After a long moment, An Zhe heard Lu Feng say, “Go.”

The late-night wind was too strong; even voices were scattered in it. Lu Feng’s words entered his ears, lower than usual.

An Zhe turned in silence and walked into the deep darkness of the night.