I Want To Play A Game

Taylor recoiled as Jack Li's sudden outburst shattered the tense silence. The usually composed man now gripped Dr. Lee's collar with white-knuckled intensity, his breathing ragged. Moonlight filtering through cracked windows painted jagged shadows across their haggard faces.

"You want me calm?!" Jack Li's whisper carried the razor edge of someone clinging to sanity. "I've watched twelve people die today. Twelve." His gaze flickered to the bloodstain where Tony's head had exploded hours earlier. "Each corpse chips away at what's left of our humanity here."

The anthropologist's glasses slid askew as he stammered, "W-we didn't know Officer Liu's plan—"

"Bullshit." Jack Li shoved him against mold-speckled walls. "You heard them board up the door. Let them walk into that bull-headed game alone." His free hand gestured at the makeshift barricade - splintered shelves nailed across the entrance. Through gaps, distant scuttling sounds echoed like cockroaches skittering over bones.

Emma emerged from shadows, face smeared with grime and desperation. "They chose their fate! Unlike you, some of us want to survive this hellscape!" Her trembling hand clutched a shiv carved from chair leg, edge glinting dully.

Before tensions escalated, Taylor interposed herself. The firelight danced across her face as she gently pressed a palm against Jack Li's chest. Through his threadbare shirt, she felt the rabbit-quick pounding of his heart. "We need clear heads. Whatever's out there..." She nodded toward the barred windows where pale, emaciated figures occasionally flitted past, moving with insectoid jerks. "...it's worse than our squabbles."

As if summoned, a bloodcurdling shriek tore through the night. All four froze. The sound wasn't human - more like metal scraping bone. Through cracks in their barricade, they watched a nightmare unfold.

A hairless creature with backward-jointed limbs dragged its abdomen across asphalt. Where eyes should be gaped twin craters weeping black ichor. Its jaw unhinged like a serpent's, releasing another metallic wail that set teeth on edge. Behind it, a dozen similar abominations skittered up walls in perfect synchronization, their movements mirroring the cricket chorus swelling outside.

Dr. Lee's whimper broke the trance. "The...the Three Pagodas of Dali...in Luck's story..." He pressed shaking hands to his temples. "Don't you see? These aren't random mutations. Someone's reconstructing China's landmarks through human suffering."

Jack Li's grip slackened as pieces clicked. The earthquakes spanning multiple provinces. Stories interlocking like puzzle pieces. This room's grid-patterned walls resembling game boards. He met Taylor's widened eyes - she'd reached the same horrifying conclusion.

"We're not survivors," he breathed. "We're components in some deranged ritual. Each 'game' room represents different regions, the players..." His gaze fell on Emma's strange surgical scars, now recognized as crude map coordinates. "...living coordinates pinning disaster zones."

The realization hung thick as the stench of decay permeating the room. Outside, the cricket-people's chorus reached fever pitch. Something massive shifted in the darkness beyond their feeble firelight - a skyscraper-sized shadow undulating like the segmented body of a centipede.

Taylor's hand found Jack Li's, their fingers intertwining. Survival no longer mattered. Understanding did. As the first pale fingers began probing through barricade gaps, she whispered the question haunting them all:

"What god needs corpses as building blocks?"

The dim morning light filtered through cracked windows as Jack Li studied the crude symbols scratched into the wall. His calloused finger traced the jagged lines resembling a distorted 'S' and 'Z'. "Lawyer Liu's initial," he murmured. "But why this specific junction?"

A commotion erupted from the nearby Go Parlor before he could ponder further. The familiar bellow made his jaw tighten. "That's Lao Lü's voice." 

They arrived to see the rotund man sprawled on the pavement, cursing at a porcine-faced dealer arranging black and white stones. "Double or nothing, you swine!" 

Jack Li stepped over Lao Lü's flailing limbs. "Still gambling with your life, I see." 

"Eh?" The man scrambled up, grease-stained shirt flapping. "If it isn't the walking corpse! Come to lose more than your shirt this time?" 

Ignoring the jibe, Jack Li peered through the Parlor's grimy windows. Inside, the pig-masked dealer hummed tunelessly while arranging two ceramic bowls. Each contained fifty stones - jet black and bone white. 

"New game?" Taylor whispered. 

"Same predator," Jack Li observed. "Different prey." 

Lao Lü seized his arm. "Help me bankrupt that hog and I'll tell you where your friends went!" Spittle flew as he described the rules: blind selection, pure chance, escalating bets. 

Jack Li's thumb brushed the hidden 'Liar' card in his pocket. "Probability manipulation," he muttered. "Not luck." His eyes narrowed at the dealer's trotters - the left hoof slightly raised when shuffling black stones. 

As Lao Lü's reek of desperation thickened, Jack Li made his decision. "Five Dao," he announced, striding inside. "But we play my variation." 

The pig head tilted. "Variation?" 

"Add a third bowl." Jack Li produced an empty tin can from Taylor's cookpot. "And use these." He scattered fistfuls of street debris - rusted screws, broken glass, cigarette butts. "True randomness requires more variables." 

A dangerous glint entered the dealer's beady eyes. Across the table, Jack Li's smile didn't reach his own. Somewhere beyond these walls, Officer Liu's trail grew colder by the minute. But here, in this den of poisoned chances, a different game demanded his full attention - one where the real stakes weren't Dao stones, but the fragile alliance keeping Taylor alive.