Mei's Pov

Where… is this?

His feeble grasp continued trying—no, fighting—to hold on to my hands more tightly. His breath was rough, while hot and metallic blood slicked past my hands, pouring through the small fabric I had put against the sharp cut on his side.

"Could your name be... Rui? My voice broke somewhere between a whisper and a cry.

His eyelids were thick and fluttering. A dry rattling in his chest. “Yes.” just that thin response and that miserable effort at clinging on.

And then—

BANG!

My roommates stormed in.

“MEI?! What did you do–oh mamma miah!” Fen halted mid-sentence with a gasp that cleaved the air clean.

“He’s hurt! He needs help!” The words spilled out too quickly, too loud, as I pushed deeper into the incision, eager to stop the bleeding.

“H-Help?!” Xinyi fell back so violently she almost smashed the potted plant in the corner.“ Are you saying… you… want us to help a bleeding stranger? In our room?!”

Her voice broke upward pointing out towards the door nibbling her fingers. “According to those violent men storming the hall, he might be a criminal, and you—YOU—want us to help him?!”

“Well we can’t just leave him to die!” My throat felt raw, but the words tore out regardless. “Please—”

“Girls!” Jia’s voice was a bullet of power as she slammed the door shut behind her. “We don’t have time to debate. The soldiers are searching rooms and Ms. Shen is with them. We’ve got minutes, maybe less.”

Xinyi’s panic progressed from apprehensive to furious, murmuring rapid-fire on the tile with her bare feet. “Oh stars! Oh no, oh no no! We’re going to jail! Or exile! Or—or brain-scanned!”

Fen fell to a squat beside me, studying Rui with startling accuracy, then broadened with a sudden, absurd sparkle. “Wait… wait… oh stars, he’s cute.”

I glanced at her, twisting my lips into a fierce frown. “FEN?!”

“What? Look at that jawline, he looks like one of those mysterious bounty hunter types from drama movies.”

“Are you being serious RIGHT NOW?!” Jia swung her arms wide in a jagged arc of astonishment. “You want to help him because he’s cute?!”

“What’s wrong with that?” Fen twisted her hair casually. “I like handsome guys. He’s like... sad and gorgeous. A wounded rogue? Swoon.”

“Are you adding him to your dating list already, or are you going to Photoshop his mugshot first?”

“Oh? And are you intending to marry your quantum physics book?”

“Oh my goodness,” Xinyi, scared by everything interrupted. “This isn’t the time!”

“Focus!” I sliced through the bullshit. “Help me clean up the blood! We don’t have much time!”

Xinyi shouted beneath her breath, dragging the words out—“THEY’RE COMING!”

The sound of pounding boots thumped down the corridor. Each echo was a countdown.

Her eyes were glassy, near to tears, with rapid uneven breath, and her voice a shaky chant as she backed away from the door, biting her fingers to keep from shouting. “What do we do… what do we do?”

Jia, who’d been prowling near the window, abruptly froze—then lit up, widening her eyes wild with feverish clarity. “Hey—Mei. Do you remember that thing we were working on? That project... what was it called... Holo… Holo—?”

“The Holomimetic Jector?”My brows furrowed even as my hands kept frozen in place, pushing on Rui’s wounded side.

“Yes! That’s the one!” Jia snapped her fingers. “Do you remember where we left it? I swear I remember dumping it somewhere in this room.”

“We didn’t dump it,” I shot both eyes skyward. “It’s in the storage space under my bunk.”

Without wasting a single breath, Jia rushed across the room, pulling a chair with a shriek, and clambered atop it, legs trembling as she reached deep into the small underbunk compartment. Wires. Dust. A tangle of old folded uniforms—until—

“Found it!”

Fen arched a dubious eyebrow, even as blood spilled onto the floor near me. “Okay… but what exactly are you planning to do with that?”

Jia flicked up the lid of the dusty device—a matte-black box with jagged vents and flashing red borders.

“From what I remember, that thing only creates full-mass holograms. Like, whole-body reproductions. Not places to conceal a runaway. So how’s that supposed to help?”

Jia’s eyes flared. “Simple. We don’t need a body. We duplicate a portion of the wall. A person-sized slab. Project it in front of him and merge it with the genuine wall. Optical concealment. Problem solved. Just like what we did to get away from those men the other time.”

“That’s a big gamble.”

“It’s the only option we’ve got! Do it.”

Jia nodded. “Alright. I’ll reconfigure its scan algorithm to regard the wall’s surface as dead material. That’ll protect the holofield from flashing out with movement disturbance. I just need to invert its phase mapping input.”

Her fingers raced over the controls, activating it with a deep, sinister hum. A warm scanning light pulsed outward, moving spider-like over the base of the wall under the enormous window.

Outside, boots banged open doors. Metal scraped metal and orders barked.

“It’s done scanning, but I need a stable power source, or the projection will flicker. They’ll see right through it.”

“Try optimizing the display relay,”

“Mei,” Xinyi muttered, barely heard above the thunder in my chest.“ They’re already in the room next to ours. I heard them. They’re so close.”

She extended her neck to glance through the little opening at the top of the door, then quickly recoiled.

“What’s taking so long?!”

“If I run it with this current,” Jia whispered between tight teeth, “the display will glitch. One lousy flash and we’re done.”

“I’ve got it,” I snapped. “Fen—grab the spare security bot battery. It’s on the top corner of my bunk, behind the books.”

Fen tore through the clutter, throwing books, cables, and tiny metal fragments aside until—“Here!” She removed the thick, cell-sized battery—a blue-core plasma pack, still warm from its last charge—and flung it.

Jia seized it midair and smashed it into the Jector. The gadget hissed.

“Put him there,” Jia pointed firmly. “Horizontally. Right beneath the window. Parallel to the wall. Keep him flat—completely flush with the panel’s basic texture.”

We moved as one—Fen at his shoulders, Jia at his knees, and me wrapping Rui’s own long tie tight over the jagged incision in his ribs as we pulled him cautiously, fast.

The hologram sprang to life.

The air shimmered—then stabilized.

For a heartbeat, it appeared like nothing at all.

And then—

BANG!