Chapter Two: Victory Has Been Paid For

Jianxia unplugged the laptop. The screen stayed on. The black window remained in the center, its cursor blinking like a patient eye. She held the power button for ten seconds. Only when the fan stopped did the white words vanish. Three minutes later, she restarted the machine. There was no suspicious application, no search result for “calibration,” and no trace in the system logs. Deep inside the drive, however, she found a new folder named ZERO. It contained three documents. The first predicted the one-nil victory over the Blue Whales. The second gave a three-two win against the Red Foxes in their next away match. The third held only a date, as though waiting for something.