“I don’t mean you have to stay in a hotel room for the rest of your life, but no more of your little undercover missions near people of the List. In fact, don’t go anywhere near people who are involved in the List except for myself and Xingyu. If you run into someone important, you just turn around and walk away. If you’re so good with computers, that’s going to be your only role. I can get you most of the big names, so you should work on seeing if any of them have any weaknesses in their security systems. Even if Liu Baiyan and Sun Yue are good at protecting their involvement with the List, it won’t be true for every person. You’ll be the secret weapon,” Xiao-Xiao says with a pointed look at Weiran. “While Xingyu and I are climbing to the top and getting access to the List’s information and resources, you will be saving everything we get. The List will never see you or learn who you are, so if something goes wrong and we are caught, you will still have everything, and you can either continue the work or expose what you have, as long as it’s enough to do damage. If we’re lucky, the threat of the information you hold by then may even be enough to prevent the List from outright killing us for our involvement.”

“You’re assuming you’re going to get caught?” Weiran sounded baffled, but he at the very least seemed to be agreeing with most of what Xiao-Xiao was proposing.

“It would be a mistake not to assume that will eventually happen. We have to be prepared for the worst.”

“But if you get caught—I mean, if they catch you and figure out someone else is involved, they could just torture you for my name—”

Xingyu squeezed Weiran’s arm. He shook his head when Weiran looked at him.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“We can handle whatever they give us,” Xiao-Xiao said.

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“We do,” said Xingyu. “You don’t know the details of how we grew up. We don’t even know the details of how each other grew up.” He could feel Xiao-Xiao’s eyes on him. “But I know how I grew up, and if Xiao-Xiao went through even half of that…he’ll be able to handle everything they send our way.”

Weiran studied Xingyu, and then he looked at Xiao-Xiao, seemingly taking this reply as an acceptable answer. “What about the two of you?”

“The original plan was that Xingyu would climb to the top. He’ll keep doing that, and I’ll do the same. We’ll take the roles we were trained to inherit.”

“What—” Weiran glanced at Xingyu again, so fast he almost missed it. “What role were you supposed to inherit?”