LINKDING

<blockquote>“Zhan-jie,” Wei Ying whines, and Lan Zhan is appalled to realize that the sound sends a shiver down her spine. She wants to shut Wei Ying’s stupid mouth. She wants to tie Wei Ying’s hands behind her back and tell her exactly what she is and is not allowed to do. She. Hm. “Explain,” Lan Zhan commands her, voice going dark and heavy, and the startled look that Wei Ying gives her sends another zip through each and every one of Lan Zhan’s nerve endings. Hm, Lan Zhan thinks, again. “Well,” Wei Ying mumbles, darting glances at Lan Zhan, “well, the thing is, Baby sort of — it’s not her fault, but she, when she ran away, she sort of. She, uh. Well, she had a passenger.” “A passenger.” “The dinosaur took my nephew,” Wei Ying says, and Lan Zhan lays her forehead against the wheel and ignores the horn as it sounds. - OR: Lan Zhan, sensible museum curator and paleontologist, gets robbed, gets arrested, gets a headache, gets a wife.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Jingyi makes a sympathetic sound. “I’ve got a buddy in one of the Hefei labs, and he says there’s some evidence to suggest that people stuck in limbo develop, like, whole new neural pathways. And you go in and out of it all the time, right, so who knows what your brain is up to.” His eyes light up. “Oh man, would you let me — ” “Obviously no,” Wei Ying says, voice flat. “But you’re close enough to right. I can keep you all safely in the level, but it’s tiring. I can’t be both dreamer and extractor.” “I’ll do it,” Lan Zhan cuts in, before Jingyi can protest or Wen Yuan can ask any further questions. “It’s not a problem.” “Are you sure?” Wen Yuan asks, brow furrowing. “If your sub-security picks up that Xian-gege doesn’t belong — ” “They won’t.” Wei Ying frowns. “Not for nothing, ge,” he says slowly, “but the last time we were in your dream together, I fell off a cliff.” Lan Zhan looks up and over at him. There is something in his eyes that Wei Ying can’t quite read: something fierce, and faraway. “I remember,” he says, voice quiet. “Do you?” / Wei Ying takes a dream heist job with an old friend.</blockquote> ➤ Love the feeling of the depth of complicated history between the characters underlying everything