Link Click: Instinct (Part One) [5/5]

[jordannamorgan]

Title: Instinct (Part One) [5/5]
Author: jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG for fantasy violence.
Characters: Cheng Xiaoshi, Lu Guang, Xiao Li, original characters.
Setting: Post-season two, after our heroes have had enough time to make a full recovery. (While leaving aside any possible Lu-loop drama for now. My heart can’t take it.)
Summary: Hired to solve a wealthy client’s personal mystery, Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang discover there are even darker powers in the world than they realized… and the damage left in the fallout will not be easily fixed for anyone.
Disclaimer: They belong to Li Haoling, LAN Studio, and Haoliners Animation League. I’m just playing with them.


V. Restitution


By ten o’clock, Cheng Xiaoshi had pulled himself together. He dressed, splashed water on his face, hastily combed his messy hair and retied his ponytail, and just had time to choke down some leftover rice downstairs before the door alarm squawked its familiar greeting. As Captain Xiao strode into the shop, the two proprietors were there to meet him together by the front counter.

“Good morning,” Xiao greeted Lu Guang, and then turned a much more interrogative eye upon Cheng Xiaoshi. “How are you holding up, Cheng?”

Xiao had more than enough justification to worry about them in all the wrong ways. He’d seen what their powers could do, and he was more adept than most would be at grasping the possible implications; yet the concern in his voice and eyes was purely for Cheng Xiaoshi as a person, not a walking paranormal phenomenon with the potential ability to unmake the world as he knew it. He was not only fond, but genuinely protective of both young men. Whatever it was he’d seen in them that earned such trust, Cheng Xiaoshi felt a flash of gratitude—and not for the first time—that the ruggedly grounded yet improbably open-minded policeman had learned and accepted their secret.

“I’m fine now,” he answered meekly. “Sorry you didn’t exactly see me at my best the other night. It’s just…”

“You don’t have to explain.” Xiao grimaced and shook his head. “For most people, only finding someone dead would be enough to shake ’em. But after what you must’ve been through—”

“We’re ready to give our statements, Captain,” Lu Guang spoke up, eyeing Xiao cannily from beneath the fringe of his snowy hair.

He was protective too.

Whether or not Xiao took the cue, he shifted subjects easily. “That’s fine. It should all be simple enough. We’ll sit down, and I’ll record your accounts of that evening in your own words, with just a few further questions.”

“But—we can’t just tell the truth on the record,” Cheng Xiaoshi realized with a frown. “Not about the fact that Sang Zhaojun hired us to look into the past for him. And not that the real reason he killed himself was…” He grimaced and averted his gaze, still unable to say the words.

At the corner of his eye, Xiao smiled grimly. “On the other hand, a marketing exec consulting with the staff of a photo studio about doing work for an ad campaign… now, that sounds perfectly normal and above-board to me.”

Even as Cheng Xiaoshi’s eyes widened and his heart soared with relief, Lu Guang raised an eyebrow. “As plausible as it sounds, a lie is still a lot for you to be responsible for, Captain.”

“It’s necessary. I’m not willing to let the faintest whiff of your powers get into department records. And even after what we’ve dealt with already, claiming we have werewolves running around the city too would get the new task force kicked to the curb before we can start.” Xiao shook his head. “Listen. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but we’ve identified three other cases over the last two years that match the details of the attack in Xiàngshù Park—the one you say is the only killing Sang Zhaojun committed. If we can prove another werewolf was responsible for even one of them, that’ll open the door for us to take this on officially. And, well… one more death attributed to that killer instead won’t make any difference in how their case is handled. If Sang was an innocent man caught up in something he didn’t deserve, then his name doesn’t need to be connected to all this.”

Cheng Xiaoshi only half-heard the last few sentences. His brain seized up all over again at the one most pertinent fact Xiao delivered so casually; and as the color suddenly drained from the world, his breathing quickened into short, harsh gasps.

Three other cases…

Another werewolf was out there, if not more than one—and perhaps not only across the world in France where Sang Zhaojun had been bitten, but close. If the beast that committed the killings Xiao spoke of had not moved elsewhere by now, then it was a ticking time bomb that could go off within their city on any full-moon night, leaving death in its wake.

A now-familiar visceral terror bubbled up within Cheng Xiaoshi, as his heartbeat lurched into a pace of nearly-painful rapid thuds. He wasn’t sure if his sudden desperate urge to run or to hide was even entirely human, or something amplified by the lingering animal imprints of Sang Zhaojun’s wolf form; but for a moment, he felt as if the pressure of it in his chest would physically choke him.

“Cheng Xiaoshi!”

He snapped back to the world to find Lu Guang gripping his shoulder. Piercing gray eyes stared at him with grave concern.

“Easy. Deep breaths.” Lu Guang steered Cheng Xiaoshi unprotesting to the sofa opposite the front counter, gently pushing him down to sit. The time traveler obeyed, only barely resisting the urge to curl into himself by sitting rigidly with his hands braced on his knees: hands that were now visibly shaking, he realized with a stab of humiliation.

Lu Guang made the rare gesture of covering one of those hands comfortingly with his own.

After a few seconds, the contact belatedly sent an even sharper jolt of embarrassment through Cheng Xiaoshi. It was gutting to appear so weak in front of his best friend—not to mention Captain Xiao, who remained near the counter but stood looking on with obvious concern. Hastily he pulled his hand away from beneath Lu Guang’s and sucked in a breath through his teeth, struggling to shove all the distress and fear back into whatever primordial place it came from. “I’m okay—”

“No. You’re not.” Lu Guang’s hand moved firmly back to his shoulder instead, as if consciously trying to anchor him. “And you’re not going to be for a while. You can’t just get over what you’ve been through in a few days—or on your own. But that’s not your fault, and it doesn’t make you weak.” The tight grip slowly relaxed. “For now, just remember that you’re safe. Even if another monster like that is out there, it doesn’t know anything about us. In spite of what you experienced when you relived that part of Sang Zhaojun’s life, nothing has changed in our lives—except now we know how to avoid a danger we didn’t even know existed before.”

Cheng Xiaoshi knew the reasoning made sense, even if his mind wasn’t quite in a condition to fully rationalize it himself. He let out his pent-up breath, easing the tightness in his chest, and slowly nodded.

“The force has a safe house, you know.” There was an undercurrent of kindness in Captain Xiao’s cool and steady voice. “If a few days away in a private secure location could help you work through all this, I can make it happen.”

“…No. I need to be here.” Although he didn’t feel like it, Cheng Xiaoshi smiled wanly. “Just wait and see! Qiao Ling’s nagging will have me whipped back into shape in no time.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Xiao chuckled quietly in a fond tone, before his expression grew focused again. “Anyway, let’s get this over with, so you can put it behind you. Is there anything else either of you want to know before we start with your statements?”

“I’ve been curious how Sang Zhaojun’s suicide is going to be handled publicly by his company,” Lu Guang pondered. “Since no one would believe the truth, how will it be explained in a way that won’t raise questions?”

“He was careful to think ahead to those questions himself,” Xiao replied. “There was a note on his desk, along with several letters to superiors and colleagues—and his story in every one of them is the same. He claimed to believe he was starting to suffer from an early onset of dementia. Must’ve done his research too, because he checked all the boxes of what they usually say in real cases like that: he was afraid of losing his ability to work, he couldn’t live without his career, and so on. …In a sense, I guess it’s not that dissimilar to the truth.” The lawman shrugged pensively. “Regardless, it paints his suicide as a personal decision based on his own emotional state, without casting any negative light on Yujian Electronics. That’s obviously what he wanted.”

Choosing death over facing an illness that would rob him of himself… Yeah, maybe that really is close enough, Cheng Xiaoshi thought with a pang in his heart. At least most people may rightfully see his death as a tragedy instead of an act of shame.

“Regardless, the company’s public image is their problem. My only concern right now is keeping the involvement of you two to a minimum.” Xiao looked back and forth sternly between his two favorite headaches. “So which one of you wants to talk first?”



They sat in the peaceful environment of the sunroom to give their statements. Not surprisingly, Lu Guang volunteered to speak first, giving Cheng Xiaoshi the chance to hear their slightly altered account laid out in a calm and logical way. As Captain Xiao suggested, the seer framed their meeting with Sang Zhaojun as a consultation about photography for product advertisements. Their leaving and returning was explained away as a trip back to the studio to fetch more specific examples of their work.

It was all so short, simple, and sanitized that it nearly turned Cheng Xiaoshi’s stomach. Even so, he carefully repeated the same details when his turn came. It was easier when he reminded himself that these white lies were not just for their own protection, but that of Sang Zhaojun’s honor and final wishes. The man hadn’t meant for them to become involved by going back and finding his body; he never wanted to cause them trouble or pain. In the end, that was as important to accept as his determination to spare anyone else from harm by his hands… or claws.

Yet afterward, when Captain Xiao had asked everything he needed to and they were about to see him out, the policeman’s revelation came back relentlessly to haunt Cheng Xiaoshi again.

Three other cases. Was there even a remote chance they were committed by the same werewolf that had attacked Sang Zhaojun? Could it possibly have been a fellow traveler who returned to the city at the same time he did… or even one of his own colleagues on the business trip with him?

Cheng Xiaoshi wanted to ask Captain Xiao to let him help. He wanted to use his power in any way he could to hunt the beast down, to bring justice to the client he had failed and prevent it from hurting anyone else. He wanted to—

He wanted to lock the doors, draw the shades, and curl up in a corner. He wanted to never face anything like that again.

And there it was, the latest variation of the visceral, crippling fear that had haunted him since he shared Sang Zhaojun’s transformation. Every time he began to think he was conquering that trauma, something seemed to resurrect it in a new form. He hated feeling this way, but it had rooted itself someplace deep down and primal. Someplace where it could wrap its claws around his heart and squeeze any time he remembered that night—much less when he thought of coming face to face with the kind of savage creature he’d felt from the inside out.

Of course, after he and Lu Guang had already stumbled into the case deeply enough to have to obfuscate their way out of police records, Captain Xiao might want to keep them as far from it as possible anyway. Much as the lawman was intrigued by the potentials of their powers, he was even more invested in seeing them not draw attention to themselves—and he knew how personal this entire situation had become to Cheng Xiaoshi. Probably far too personal, in the eyes of a man who would have been trained to believe objectivity was key. When the time traveler knew that even he couldn’t trust his own emotions right now, surely there was no way Xiao would.

Either way, even if Cheng Xiaoshi was involved no further in the case, the prospect of a werewolf on the prowl raised terrifying possibilities. He would have to make sure he and Lu Guang stayed safe at home on full-moon nights. Qiao Ling as well; she would believe the incredible truth if it came from them, so he needed to warn her.

But what if he found the monster one of these days without even trying to look for it?

It might come to them as a client. Or it might be a mere random person whose identity Cheng Xiaoshi dived into, just because a picture on social media put them at the place and time he needed to visit for a job. There were brief minor missions like that almost every week. Out of the entire vast populace, the odds of him coming across the werewolf that way were small, but it was possible… and if he found them, he would know. He was sure of it. If he didn’t glimpse their own knowledge of what they were in a stray memory, he would feel it within their body, because he remembered.

He wasn’t sure how he would react if it happened, but he knew it wouldn’t end well.

Stop thinking about it. Cheng Xiaoshi shook his head briskly, trying to shake the dark thoughts and feelings out, as he followed Captain Xiao and Lu Guang towards the door of the studio.

Three steps from the threshold, the unlocked door was opened from the outside, and the too-cheerful alarm heralded the arrival of a guest.

The woman was of middling age: perhaps in her forties or even past fifty, yet still youthful for her years. Her features, thin and refined and somewhat sharp, were what Cheng Xiaoshi would label more as the feminine kind of handsome than beautiful. Her raven hair might have been long, but it was pinned up in a severe style that exposed the full graceful arch of her neck. She wore a crisp black business dress, and carried a slim leather attaché case under her arm.

Staring at her as she stood framed in the sunlit doorway, Cheng Xiaoshi felt his breath freeze in his chest, because he knew her…

Or rather, one of the ghosts he had collected inside him did.

Let’s meet for lunch the day after tomorrow. I’m afraid it’s all the time I can spare right now.

That blouse. Is it new? …It looks quite good on you.

I’m taking a business trip overseas next week. I’ll bring you back some tea to add to your collection.

…Yajing, you worry about me too much.

As fragments of memories swirled around him like snowflakes blown through the doorway with the woman’s entry, a pit opened up in Cheng Xiaoshi’s stomach—because that was Sang Zhaojun’s voice in his head, echoing mundane moments with an open warmth the time traveler had never heard from him in their brief living acquaintance.

“Miss Hua?” Captain Xiao blurted in surprise, at least marginally dragging Cheng Xiaoshi’s awareness back to his own life in the present. “What are you—?”

“Captain. Why am I somehow not surprised to find you here?” The woman’s expression was cold, and it only became more witheringly icy as it passed over Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang. “Gentlemen. Since the man investigating my oldest client and dearest friend’s death just happens to be here, I believe he can introduce me.”

Cheng Xiaoshi winced in genuine hurt at the harsh strain of anger and contempt in her tone. It was a reaction that belonged to the other much more than to him—and that made his pulse quicken with alarm, knowing he needed to get a lid on the uninvited memories and feelings Sang Zhaojun had left with him right now.

Seeking balance in the anchoring sight of his own best friend’s face, his eyes shifted away to Lu Guang—to find that the seer was not looking at their hostile guest, but watching him very intently.

He knew. Of course he did. Because he always knew.

Oblivious to the silent drama playing out between his two paranormally gifted problem children, Captain Xiao obliged the woman’s request. “Cheng Xiaoshi, Lu Guang—this is Miss Hua Yajing. She was Sang Zhaojun’s attorney.” He turned back to her before either young man could speak, an irascible frown on his face. “As for why I’m here, I came to take these two men’s statements. The question is, why are you here? I assured you when we spoke yesterday that we cleared them of any suspicion in your client’s death. They’re only witnesses. They were visiting his apartment on completely legitimate business when they found his body, and they even tried to help him.”

She knows we were there, Cheng Xiaoshi followed dizzily as Xiao spoke. She knows there was more to our visit than the Captain has told her… and she’s suspicious of us, no matter what he says.

That fact was painful in ways it damn well shouldn’t have been, because the ache he suddenly felt in his chest wasn’t his own, and the scent of her perfume was so familiar to someone else. He was used to feeling clients’ emotions like this while he inhabited their bodies, but nothing had ever made the lingering shadows of them in his head slam into his senses so strongly when he was himself.

Sang Zhaojun…

He loved her. He loved her and he could never say it.

…Not even when he visited her on that last day, knowing he could be saying goodbye to her forever. I’m sure of that, even if it isn’t a part of the memories I gained from him.

Cheng Xiaoshi needed to sit down; and heedless of what anyone else in the room might think, he did exactly that. He abruptly stepped over to the sofa and sank down on it, gripping his knees and drawing a few deep slow breaths to center himself.

Xiao gave him a slightly worried look, and Hua Yajing glared at him. Lu Guang, meanwhile, knew him well enough not to react at all.

Then the whole room mercifully took to ignoring him, as Hua Yajing turned back to the policeman. “Yes, I heard you yesterday, Captain—and I don’t believe it any more now than I did then. I know for a fact Zhaojun was as brilliant and as passionate about life as he’d ever been. He didn’t have dementia, and nothing would ever have made him commit suicide. …He was too much in love with his career to throw everything away like that.” The last sentence was tinged with the faintest note of bitterness, piercing Cheng Xiaoshi with a strange secondhand guilt.

You didn’t know him like you think, he thought miserably. You don’t even know the way he really felt about you.

“Miss Hua, I’m sorry, but the forensic evidence speaks for itself,” Xiao declared grimly. “There was no possible way anyone else could have been holding that gun when it was fired.”

“But you of all people should know physical force isn’t the only way to coerce someone into doing things they don’t want to,” Hua Yajing countered.

Frowning a little more deeply than usual, Lu Guang quietly repeated the same lie they had crafted for their official statements. “Miss Hua, please believe me when I say we were only there to consult for photography work. As we were walking down the hall after we left, Cheng Xiaoshi thought he heard something and was concerned, so we decided to go back and check on Mr. Sang. That was when we found him and called for help. We’d never met him before that day, and we had no reason to want him harmed in any way.”

“You say that,” the lawyer retorted, her eyes narrowing. “And yet the fact is that hardly more than an hour before he died, my client left me a very specific set of instructions regarding you and your partner—by name.”

Cheng Xiaoshi snapped his head up to stare in astonishment at Hua Yajing. Even Lu Guang’s pale lips parted to gasp out a small breath of unadulterated shock.

“…You never mentioned that yesterday,” Xiao ground out.

Hua Yajing’s smile at him was pure venom. “If these two are only witnesses, how does my late client’s further business with them concern the police?”

“What were the instructions?” Lu Guang asked. It was the first time in Cheng Xiaoshi’s memory that his voice had ever sounded so small and unsure. For once, even the cryptic seer who knew more than he ever let on had no answer for what would come next.

Now thoroughly presiding over the sudden tense silence in the room, Hua Yajing stood straight and tall. Her dark eyes shifted back and forth between the two young men, watching both of their faces with an intensity that made even Lu Guang’s most cutting stare look casual.

“He asked me to hold a letter for you, and a check made out to this photo studio—which I’ve since learned amounts to forty percent of the net worth of his estate.”

Cheng Xiaoshi heard but barely felt the wheeze that escaped from his lungs. His gaze immediately shot to Lu Guang, and he saw his unflappable partner standing slack-jawed, one hand subtly gripping the edge of the front counter for support.

Sang Zhaojun, why…

What the hell is even going on here?

Forty percent of the fortune earned by the chief marketing executive for one of the largest electronics manufacturers in the country… Cheng Xiaoshi couldn’t fathom the number of zeros that would be written at the end of that check, but he was certain even a half share of such wealth would let him repay his debt to Qiao Ling and her father several times over. More than that, it would let him finance a search for his missing parents: something he’d never imagined could be possible. It would allow him to bury his own regrets for once instead of everyone else’s, to leave behind the work that carved out another little piece of him with every dive, to forget he even had a damn power and just live a normal life—

“No,” he heard himself say quietly, hanging his head.

He remembered the way his fingers had burned when he accepted Sang Zhaojun’s original agreed-upon payment. It would be unbearable to feel his very soul burn like that.

“We completed the job Sang Zhaojun asked of us… but we still couldn’t save him,” Lu Guang said ruefully. The words were in perfect agreement with the emotions boiling inside Cheng Xiaoshi—yet the seer had to know he was only confirming to Hua Yajing that they were far more involved than the official record would show. “We don’t deserve anything from him.”

Silence stretched through the room until it felt like it would shatter. At last Hua Yajing said very softly and simply, “I see.”

Her voice was entirely different then, and Cheng Xiaoshi looked up to see that her face had changed too. Its harsh expression had faded, softening the lines of it until she looked almost like a different woman.

This is really the woman Sang Zhaojun fell in love with, he thought with a pang.

“So you really didn’t know,” she concluded, and in place of her previous temper, there was only a weary sadness. “Your reactions proved that to me. I still don’t know what Zhaojun really hired you for, or just how your visit relates to his death. But from his voice and his expression when he made these arrangements with me, I know it was incredibly important to him… and now I know you were telling the truth when you said you wanted to help him.”

Captain Xiao lowered his brows suspiciously at the woman. “Hold on. If this was your idea of a test for these two men—”

“It wasn’t. Both the letter and the check are very real.” The lawyer unfastened her attaché case, reaching inside to withdraw an envelope sealed elegantly with red wax. Her gaze shifted back to Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang. “But you misunderstood the purpose. The money isn’t a gift or a bequest left in Zhaojun’s will; it’s a reserved payment for a second commission of work. That’s all I know.”

Cheng Xiaoshi’s heart dropped. For a moment he met Lu Guang’s equally startled eyes, seeing his own foreboding reflected in them; and then he drew a deep breath, rising to step forward and accept the envelope Hua Yajing held out. He could scarcely breathe as he broke the seal and opened it. At his side, he was aware of his partner moving closer to read the contents with him.

The folded letter within the envelope was accompanied by a smaller slip of paper. Knowing exactly what it was, Cheng Xiaoshi staunchly avoided even touching the check, and eased out the letter alone. He unfolded the single sheet of Yujian Electronics letterhead, crowded with precise and elegant handwriting that felt hauntingly familiar to him… and a single unexpected photograph escaped, falling out onto the counter.

A choking sensation of déjà vu swept over him as he stared at the image of a receipt lying on a bar—but the text of this one was printed in French.

With trembling hands, Cheng Xiaoshi spread the letter on the countertop beside the photo; and as they read their client’s posthumous final wishes together, he felt Lu Guang’s hand clutch his arm almost possessively.



To Mr. Cheng Xiaoshi and Mr. Lu Guang of Time Photo Studio:

If you are reading this, it means your investigation confirmed my worst fears, and I have done what I felt necessary to ensure I will never bring harm to anyone else.

I apologize with all my soul for the burden I leave upon you. Please never think it was the answer you brought me that drove me to my response. If you had not proven my suspicions, I would have come to the truth by a much harder way eventually—and quite possibly with the loss of more innocent lives. Considering that, please know that I feel nothing but gratitude for your sparing me any more guilt. The last thing I would wish is for you to feel guilt instead.

That said, it is with a different sense of guilt that I write this letter, for I have one more request to make of you. I loathe the thought of burdening you further, but if your abilities are true—as you have obviously proven to me if you are reading this—then you are the only ones who can carry it out.

I took the enclosed photo on the final night of my business trip in France, less than two hours before I was attacked and bitten. I have no concept of how your talents work, but if the photo can serve for you as a window to that night, then I beg you to do me one last service. I implore you to look into the past for me once more—and uncover the human identity of the beast that cursed me, so it can be stopped from further killing in the present.

Please know that I ask this not for myself, but for the lives that monster may threaten in the future. While I can accept my fate, the thought of others having their lives destroyed in the same way is unbearable. If my case can help guide you to an answer that will spare anyone else from this, then I will feel that what has happened to me has served a purpose.

What hardship this task would be to you personally, I do not know. You have every right to refuse, but I can only hope you will be moved by the prospect of saving lives. In any case, if you agree to accept this request, a significant reward awaits you to express my gratitude.

Please forgive me for my weakness. Perhaps there was a better way… but for myself, the only answer I can see is to eliminate the danger I pose, and leave to you what remains. I have faith in you.

Thank you both once more, from the depths of my heart.



Having reached the end of the letter, Cheng Xiaoshi found himself staring with a soul-deep numbness at Sang Zhaojun’s neatly signed name. He didn’t move for a long moment, but on the inside, some part of him was screaming.

All the thoughts he’d had already about hunting the monster, about bringing to justice the creature that ultimately destroyed Sang Zhaojun. All the rationalizing that it was a bad idea, that he was emotionally unfit for the task, that he couldn’t do it… and in the end, that politely merciless little self-sacrificing bastard he’d allowed to die just had to ask him to.

Lu Guang’s fingers were clenched on his arm so tightly it hurt. Turning toward him at last, he glimpsed his partner’s head already shaking back and forth in urgent negation; but before their eyes could meet, Captain Xiao’s voice drew their attention to him.

“Cheng, you just turned nearly as white as Lu Guang—and I’m pretty sure I can guess why.” The policeman’s grim gaze flickered from Cheng Xiaoshi’s face to the photo on the counter and back again. He may not have been able to decipher the image from his position, but he clearly understood the intended purpose in its presence.

“It’s…” the time traveler began thickly, before his eyes darted to Hua Yajing. A far cry from her earlier aggression, she stood looking suspenseful and a little confused, clearly waiting for them to say something about Sang Zhaojun’s last wishes expressed in the letter. As not only his friend but the executor of his estate, she would expect to be informed on the last piece of worldly business he left behind.

She deserves an answer for why the man she loved is dead, he thought bitterly, but he knew he couldn’t tell her. Even if she could have believed it, he couldn’t put her through the pain of knowing what Sang Zhaojun had suffered in silence over the last month of his life. She didn’t need to spend the rest of her life imagining the horrors Cheng Xiaoshi could have described to her, or wondering why her oldest friend hadn’t turned to her for help.

Instead, he settled on one fragment of truth that would have to be good enough—and he forged on with saying it in spite of Lu Guang’s fingers squeezing even tighter, and the fiercely warning objection in his eyes.

“Sang Zhaojun asked us to find the person who was the reason he took his own life… and we have the ability to do it.”

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© 2023 Jordanna Morgan