The passenger drew his knife, but the man with the towel hit him before he could reach Manager Chen.
Zeyu saw the metal bar strike the passenger’s shoulder.
The man swung with both hands, nearly stumbling with the force of it. The passenger fell against the van but kept hold of his knife, slashing toward the woman beside the rear doors as she tried to move away.
"Stay back!" the passenger shouted, holding the blade out in front of him. "Get away from the van!"
At the driver’s window, Manager Chen ducked a blow aimed at his face. He lost his grip on the driver’s wrist but grabbed the door handle, pulling it open before the man could lock it.
Zeyu reached for his seat belt.
"Stay in your seat," Hanchuan told him before he could release the buckle. "We may need you to drive."
Zeyu stopped with his fingers against the catch. Outside, Manager Chen had stumbled against the open door, and two employees were running over from the fuel containers.
Zeyu wanted to do more than shout through a speaker. He wanted to get the knife away from the passenger and open the back of that van.
But his five friends were still inside the mobile base, depending on him to get them away if this grew worse. He brought his hand back to the wheel while Jingwei leaned toward the microphone.
"He has a knife," Jingwei warned the people outside. "Give him room."
The man with the bar was already swinging again. The passenger slashed his forearm, and he jerked back, losing the towel from his shoulders as blood ran toward his wrist.
A woman screamed near the showroom.
The injured man kept hold of the bar and brought it down on the passenger’s arm. At the same moment, another employee shoved the passenger from behind. The knife fell beneath the van, and all three men went down.
Zeyu couldn’t tell who was hitting whom. A shoe scraped across the pavement, and someone kept shouting that he hadn’t done anything. Another blow cut him off.
"Enough!" Zeyu called through the speaker. "He’s down. Get the keys."
The man with the bar looked toward him, blood dripping from his elbow. For a moment, Zeyu wasn’t sure whether he would stop.
Then Manager Chen backed away from the driver’s door with a key ring in his hand.
The engine had stopped. The driver hung halfway out of his seat while an employee held him by a fistful of his shirt. Manager Chen hurried toward the rear doors, struggling to sort through the keys until the woman waiting there caught his hand.
"Let me," she said, taking the ring from him.
She unlocked the door and pulled it open, then stepped back.
A young woman sat on the bare floor between an empty crate and a pile of folded blankets. Her ankles were tied together, and one wrist was bound to a metal seat mount. In her free hand, she held a torn piece of the paper that had covered the window.
The woman carrying the bag tied with electrical cord pushed past Manager Chen.
"Lili," she whispered, dropping her bag as she climbed inside.
She took the young woman’s face between her hands. Lili flinched, then leaned into her touch and began talking so quickly that the older woman had to ask her to slow down.
Manager Chen reached for the binding around Lili’s ankles.
"Tell him to cut it," Qinghe said from behind Zeyu. "He’ll hurt her if he keeps pulling."
Zeyu repeated the instruction through the speaker. Someone fetched the kitchen scissors from the car hood and passed them into the van.
The woman beside Lili cut her free, but when Manager Chen reached to help her down, Lili pulled her feet away.
"You told us it was a shelter," Lili said, staring at him.
Manager Chen lowered his hands without answering.
"Where did they take you?" Zeyu asked through the speaker. "Tell us what you saw."
Lili looked toward the mobile base. Her eyes moved to the company emblem on the van’s open door, then back to Zeyu.
"That’s Director Song," the woman beside her explained, gently rubbing her wrist. "He didn’t know."
Lili pressed back against the crate. She kept her feet tucked inside the van and watched Zeyu for a moment before speaking.
"There’s a workshop behind the freight warehouses," Lili told him. "They have generators and fans. They put us upstairs and said we had to earn our food."
"What did they make you do?" Zeyu asked.
"Sort batteries. Pull wires out of things. Whatever they brought in." Lili swallowed and glanced toward the driver, who had stopped fighting the employee holding him. "They lock the stairs at night. If someone doesn’t finish their work, nobody in the room gets water."
The woman who had opened the rear door stepped closer.
"My mother went on the first van," she told Lili. "She has short white hair. My daughter was with her. She’s twelve."
Lili stared at her before looking down at her freed hands.
"They split us up when we got there," Lili answered. "I didn’t see everyone."
"But there are other rooms?" the mother asked, gripping the edge of the door.
When Lili nodded, the woman closed her eyes. She stayed there for a moment, holding the door, and Zeyu couldn’t tell whether she was relieved or trying not to cry.
He looked toward the driver. The collar of the man’s company shirt had torn, showing a pale strip of skin beneath it. He was glaring at Lili.
"Why did they bring you back?" Zeyu asked her.
Lili caught the hand of the woman sitting beside her.
"They wanted me to tell everyone it was good," Lili replied. "They said you’d load the van faster if you heard your families were safe."
Zeyu looked at the cut bindings on the floor.
"They were going to untie you before anyone saw you," Zeyu said.
Lili nodded, still holding the older woman’s hand. "Then they heard someone important was here. They told me to be quiet until they knew what you wanted."
Beside the van, Manager Chen picked up the notice he had dropped. He started smoothing the plastic sleeve against his thigh, then stopped and stared at it.
The man with the bleeding arm approached him, dragging the end of the bar across the pavement.
"My wife was supposed to go tonight," the injured man said. "You gave her place to your brother’s wife."
Manager Chen looked toward the pregnant woman near the showroom. She had set her bag down and stood watching him.
Zeyu waited for the manager to answer, but he said nothing.
He had taken a place from a sick woman to give it to his own family. That hadn’t changed. Yet if the argument hadn’t delayed the van, his sister-in-law would have climbed into it believing he had helped her.
The radio in the cab crackled, and the driver turned his head.
Jingwei raised the volume. A voice asked for confirmation, then called the driver’s name.
"Manager Chen, get the radio," Zeyu said through the speaker.
The manager reached into the cab and unclipped it. He carried it toward the mobile base, holding it up as though Zeyu might open the window.
"Stay there," Zeyu told him. "Hold the button down when I speak, then let go so we can hear the answer."
Manager Chen nodded and pressed the button. Zeyu leaned toward his microphone, looking past him at the company emblem on the open van door.
"Distribution Manager Gao, this is Song Zeyu," he said. "Where have you taken my employees?"
Manager Chen released the button. For several seconds, they heard only static. Then a voice Zeyu recognized came through, sounding almost pleased.
"Director Song," Distribution Manager Gao said over the radio. "We’ve been trying to find you."
Zeyu waited for Manager Chen to press the button again.
"Give me the address," Zeyu said.
There was a pause after the manager released it.
"Before I do," Distribution Manager Gao replied, "tell me whether you’re willing to pay for them."