The mercenary captain looked down at the middle-aged man sprawled on the ground, utterly wrecked, his eyes cold as ice. "What the hell are you? And what gives you the right to vouch for him?"
"Tonight, Ning Zhe and Lin Xun were at my house the whole time, looking after me! They only just left. Me and my kid can both prove it!" The man looked up earnestly at the mercenary captain. "My name's Zhou Xu! Everything I just said is true! If a single word of it is a lie, you can burn me alive!"
"Sir! Don't listen to his nonsense, Ning Zhe wasn't home tonight at all!" Hu Zhida shouted his defense.
"Hu Zhida's the one lying! He's got a grudge against Ning Zhe! He's just trying to use you to do his killing for him!" A shout rang out from somewhere in one of the houses.
"Thud, thud!"
Zhou Xu, still flat on the ground, kept slamming his forehead against the dirt. "Sir! I would never dare lie to you! Ning Zhe's been looking out for me all this time, plenty of people can vouch for that! They're good people, really! If you let Hu Zhida trick you, and Ning Zhe dies, I won't have anyone left to help me survive! I know you don't care whether I live or die, but you shouldn't let yourselves be used like this!"
"Is what he's saying true?" The mercenary captain turned to Hu Zhida.
"Sir! They're all in on it together, trying to fool you! I saw it with my own eyes, Ning Zhe and Lin Xun leaving the courtyard! I saw them go with my own two eyes!" Hu Zhida bellowed, worked up into a frenzy.
"He's lying..." Just then, a woman's voice came from behind them.
"Who are you?" The mercenary captain turned to see a girl standing in the doorway of a room further back. She looked to be seventeen or eighteen, dressed a little better than most refugees, her face relatively clean.
"I'm Ning Zhe's neighbor. I did see him go into Zhou Xu's house earlier, and I saw him relieving himself in the open too! About an hour ago, I saw him squatting deep in that alley, taking a shit." The girl pointed timidly toward a nearby alleyway.
"Zhao Yi! Shut your damn mouth!" Hu Zhida spat curses at the girl, his chest heaving as he turned back to the mercenary captain. "Sir, you can't trust her! This woman's nothing but a lying whore who'll say anything!"
"Go check." The mercenary captain shot Hu Zhida a glance, then flicked a finger at one of his men.
A mercenary turned and left, then came back quickly with his report. "Captain! There's definitely a fresh pile of shit in the alley. No warmth left in it, but it's recent."
Hearing this, Hu Zhida's arms began to shake.
"Sir, this man has a grudge against me. He's just trying to use your hands to get rid of me. I don't know how he managed to fool you, but I really am innocent." Watching Hu Zhida's state, Ning Zhe felt certain the man had no real evidence to pin anything on him, and might even have genuinely believed he'd been out hunting. He was just using the opportunity to get him killed.
"Do you know what happens to people who waste my time?" The mercenary captain rolled his shoulder, resting his hand on the grip of the multi-barreled pistol at his waist, his voice flat and indifferent as he addressed Hu Zhida.
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"Sir! Listen to me! This man's a murderer! He killed my son! You have to see justice done for me! He..." Hu Zhida, catching the dark look in the captain's eyes through the lens of his gas mask, dropped to his knees, trying to explain.
"Bang!"
Before he could finish, a gunshot rang out. Hu Zhida's skull burst apart, blood spraying across the wall.
"Pull back! We keep searching the other districts." The mercenary captain gave the order to his men, then turned to Ning Zhe and Lin Xun. "You two, clean up his body."
The mercenaries had arrived fast, and they left just as fast. Within moments, the courtyard held nothing but Hu Zhida's corpse and a pool of blood spreading across the ground.
"Whew!"
Once the mercenaries were gone, Ning Zhe, having survived by the skin of his teeth, let out a deep breath. He noticed Zhou Xu had already slipped back inside at some point, and turned instead to Zhao Yi. "Thank you."
"Thank me for what? For saving your life, or for climbing out the back window to fetch a pile of shit and leave it in the alley?" Zhao Yi leaned against the doorframe, looking at Ning Zhe. Though she was only seventeen, there was something about her that set her apart, a look in her eyes far from the clarity you'd expect at her age, carrying instead a worldliness and maturity that didn't fit.
"Both, I suppose." Ning Zhe smiled. "If you ever need help with anything, come find me."
"I know you're the kind of man who repays a debt. So if you really want to pay me back, then be my man." Zhao Yi pulled out a cigarette, struck a match with practiced ease, and lit it. "A woman with no man to look after her isn't safe, not in a place like this."
"We're not right for each other. I've always thought of you like a little sister." Ning Zhe had always known how Zhao Yi felt about him, and knew how much she'd done for him over the years, but he'd never once thought of her that way.
"Why? Is it because you still can't let go of Qin Xiaoyu? Or because you think I'm not clean?" Zhao Yi seemed used to this answer by now, but there was still a familiar flicker of disappointment in her eyes.
Ning Zhe shook his head, his voice steady. "In my eyes, anyone who fights this hard just to stay alive is clean."
"Don't lie to me! You think I'm not good enough for you! But is Qin Xiaoyu good enough for you either?! Don't forget, she's a city person now! And us, we're nothing but the lowborn! Lowborn trash!" Zhao Yi yanked the door flap shut, furious.
"Brother, you all right?" Seeing Ning Zhe fall silent, Lin Xun tried to reassure him. "Don't listen to her, she's nowhere near as good as Sister Xiaoyu!"
Ning Zhe sighed. "For a girl like Zhao Yi, who's had to fend for herself out on this wasteland since she was twelve years old, nothing she does is shameful. In a world this broken, just staying alive is hard enough."
"Brother, I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense, but you're still standing here butt-naked." Lin Xun pressed his lips together, glancing at Ning Zhe's bare body, and offered the reminder.
"...Shit!" Ning Zhe froze for a second, then bolted off with both hands clamped over his crotch.
After Ning Zhe and Lin Xun finished dealing with Hu Zhida's body, they made their way back into the courtyard and stopped in front of the most run-down shack of all. Ning Zhe reached out and pulled back the door flap.
"Who's there?!" A low, muffled voice called out from inside.
"Brother Zhou, it's me!" Ning Zhe called back, then bent low and ducked into the foul-smelling shack. A thin sliver of moonlight slipped through a gap in the roof, falling across Zhou Xu, and beside him lay a small boy, already asleep, thin as a stick.
"Xiao Zhe? What are you doing here! The smell in here's awful, come on, let's talk outside!" Seeing it was Ning Zhe who'd come in, Zhou Xu forced out an awkward smile.
"It's fine, we can talk right here." Ning Zhe waved a hand, glancing over at the father and son. "Your wife's on the night shift tonight?"
"No, she's... gone to sleep with someone else..." Zhou Xu lowered his head, his voice dropping to something barely above a whisper. "You know how it is, what she makes at the factory alone can't feed the three of us... I told her to take the boy and remarry someone else, but she's afraid no one would look after me, so she won't leave. She insists on staying, sticking it out in this dog kennel with me." Though selling one's body had long since stopped being anything shameful or hidden in the refugee zone, he still couldn't bring himself to say it plainly. It cut too close to a man's pride.
Even in an age like this one, where pride had long since become worth nothing at all.