Chapter 47 — The Ship That Never Looks Back

The Unset Trap

The hallway light leading to the Old Garden flickered once and then stabilized again, a small glitch in the old lighting system that Khe Lam had been familiar with for many years, but tonight, she stopped walking for a moment, listened, paying closer attention than usual before continuing. The restless premonition from the night before had not yet dissipated, following her throughout the workday like a shadow she couldn't name.

Bach Van was waiting at the entrance to the abandoned hydroponics area, leaning against a rusty water pipe covered with wild vines, the weak light from the remaining lights illuminating his face with strange pale blue streaks.

"Do you feel anything unusual?" He asked as soon as she approached, without her speaking first, as if he himself was feeling the same invisible insecurity.

"I'm not sure." She replied, her voice lowering instinctively. "But something's not right tonight. Maybe I'm just too stressed after everything that happened."

They walked deeper into the Old Garden, between hydroponic beds that had long dried up, wild plants growing through the cracks of the metal floor, a dead garden that was slowly being swallowed up by the remaining artificial nature of its own accord. This was the place they chose to discuss their plan to search for old witnesses of the Night of Roots, farther from the familiar technical niche, because Bui Dac Sinh needed to meet them both to point out on an old map the areas he remembered the victims had lived in before that fateful night.

The air in the Old Garden carried a characteristic musty smell, mixed with steam leaking from the broken hydroponic system and the dry, synthetic soil smell of planting beds abandoned for decades. The artificial light that simulated the day-night cycle here had long since broken down, leaving only a pale blue light radiating from a few old motion sensor lights, turning on and off following their footsteps like dull eyes watching two intruders. Khe Lam had found this place strangely beautiful in her childhood years, a ghostly garden where wild plants grew through every crack as if trying to reclaim what humans had abandoned. Tonight, that beauty only made her feel more uneasy, every tree shadow swaying in the artificial ventilation wind was like a shadow lurking.

But as they approached the small shack where Bui Dac Sinh often sat, a sound made them both freeze — the steady, organized sound of footsteps, not one person but many, rang out from the main entrance of the Old Garden, the direction they had just passed.

"Patrol." Khe Lam whispered, immediately recognizing the characteristic footsteps of a disciplined moving squad. "It's not a coincidence, Bach Van. For the past three weeks, no patrol has passed through this area at this hour."

Bach Van held her hand tightly, his eyes quickly scanned around to find a way out. "We need to get out of here now, but not in the opposite direction they came from."

Khe Lam had calculated in her head, a mental map of this area that she had memorized since many years of wandering here as a child. "There's another way out, through the old air duct area behind Mr. Sinh's shack, down to a maintenance pipe that connects directly to the main Root Level corridor. It's tight, but passable."

They rushed towards the small shack, where Bui Dac Sinh had stood up from his old chair; his face was tense, and he had clearly heard footsteps in the distance. "Go." He gestured quickly, pointing toward a rusty metal grate that hid the entrance to a maintenance pipe known only to those familiar with the area. "You'll stay behind, pretending to be doing your regular work. No one would suspect an old man repairing things in an abandoned area."

"Will you be okay?" Khe Lam asked, hesitating for a moment even though time was running out.

“I have survived many more dangerous nights than this one, child.” Bui Dac Sinh said, gently pushing her shoulder towards the exit. "Go now, don't worry about him."

Khe Lam and Bach Van slipped through the metal mesh and into the dark maintenance pipe, the smell of mold and rusty metal engulfed them immediately. The tight space forced them to bend down to move, Khe Lam's hands groped along the tube walls, looking for the clinging points she remembered from many years ago, when she was a child who liked to explore forgotten corners of the ship.

Behind them, the footsteps stopped near Bui Dac Sinh's shack, and a voice rang out, clear enough to pass through the thin metal mesh separating them. "What are you doing here at this hour?"

"Repair the old chair, guys." Bui Dac Sinh's voice rang out, surprisingly calm, without the slightest tremor even though Khe Lam was sure his heart was beating as fast as hers right now. "What can an old man do with his free time other than odd jobs like that, guys?"

There was a soft laugh from one of the patrolmen, a lighthearted disregard for a seemingly harmless old man. "This area is about to have a routine inspection. You should go home and rest soon."

"I'll be home as soon as I'm done, thank you for reminding me." Bui Dac Sinh replied.

The footsteps continued to move, moving deeper into the Old Garden, in the right direction where Khe Lam and Bach Van were standing less than a minute ago. In the darkness of the pipe, Khe Lam held her breath, feeling each beat of her heart echo like a drum in the tight space, afraid that even a small sound would be enough to betray their location.

They continued to crawl along the pipe in absolute silence, not daring to say a word, relying only on light hand squeezes to communicate — one squeeze meant stop, two meant continue. After what seemed like an eternity but actually lasted less than ten minutes, they reached a manhole cover that led out to a secondary maintenance corridor, where Khe Lam knew there were no security cameras watching.

There was a bend in the pipe where the space suddenly narrowed, forcing both of them to lie down, pressing their bellies against the cold metal and crawling through inch by inch, Bach Van's breathing behind her was rapid, urgent, a sound she could feel more clearly than hear in that tight space. At one moment, the pipe vibrated slightly when a nearby pumping system started, startling them both. Khe Lam's heart almost stopped beating because she thought it was a sign of being discovered, before she realized it was just the normal operating cycle of the water circulation system that she herself had maintained countless times.

They emerged from the pipe, panting, their clothes smeared with dirt and rust, and stood against the wall in the dark for a long time to regain their breath and calm.

"We almost..." Bach Van said, not completing the sentence, just shaking his head, his whole body was still shaking from the aftershocks of the fear he had just experienced.

"I know." Khe Lam replied, her voice still shaking. "This isn't a random patrol, Bach Van. They knew we might appear in that area. Someone gave them a clue."

That new fear, sharper than anything they had experienced since the night of their escape from the Founding Archives, kept them both silent for a long moment, realizing more clearly than ever that the tightening siege was no longer an abstract worry, but a reality breathing right behind them.

"Mr. Sinh." Khe Lam said, suddenly remembering, a new worry welled up. "We need to know if he's okay."

They waited until dawn, borrowing an old communication device that Bui Dac Sinh used to signal safety according to a simple code the two had agreed upon in advance — three short taps, a pause, then two long taps, sent over an internal communication frequency reserved for old maintenance equipment that the Guard rarely monitored. A few minutes later, the response signal rang out exactly as the response code had promised, and relief filled Khe Lam's heart knowing the old man was safe, though that relief could not erase the new fear that gripped her—the fear that, even though they had narrowly escaped tonight, next time they might not be so lucky.

The next morning, when Khe Lam entered the maintenance workshop with dark circles under her eyes from staying awake, Trinh Yen My looked at her for a long time before speaking. "You look like you just had a sleepless night." Yen My said, her voice half joking and half worried, giving her a cup of warm water from her own meager ration. "Is something wrong?"

"Just didn't sleep well." Khe Lam replied, took the glass of water, and tried to force a convincing smile. She took a sip, feeling the warmth spreading in her chest, and in that moment, looking at her best friend's sincerely worried face, she suddenly realized that she had become so used to lying that it had almost become a natural reflex, a layer of armor she put on every morning before stepping out the door, and that, more than the fear of being arrested, was what made her most tired.

She glanced towards the back of the workshop, where Vu Khac Dang was reviewing the morning's roster with a more tense expression than usual, and wondered how many people in this team, even though they didn't know anything about Lam Chu or the Night of Broken Roots, were secretly feeling the same uneasiness that spread throughout the Root Layer these days, like an aftershock with no clear epicenter.