Chapter One: Deliver Noodles to a Dead Man at Midnight

He did not cry. The drawer held twenty-three yuan and a brass key. Old Zhou at the noodle shop stared when Lin named the abandoned station. His hand slipped, dropping three scallion rings into the bowl. Lin picked them out one by one, then ran into the rain. Huai'an Road had been sealed after a collapse three years ago. A Guanlan city camera turned toward him. The brass key opened a side gate. At 11:58, Lin reached the platform. A middle-aged man in a gray uniform sat beside the flooded tracks. His badge read ZHOU QIMING—GUANLAN OPERATIONS. “Professor Shen sent you?” Zhou stared at the bowl. “I only deliver.” Under the heat, numbers appeared on a plastic strip beneath the bowl. Zhou swallowed it as footsteps thundered above.