Chapter Two: Three Seconds From Now, the Bullet Fires First

For the first time, Lin Mo did not turn around to make sure. He drove into the core beside Zhou Yan while Su Cheng sealed the exit. With two tenths of a second remaining, Emberstar seized the beacon. No one cheered. The four of them merely looked at one another as if glimpsing, for the first time, what this broken team might become. Su Cheng tapped her display. Beside the firmware symbol, she had found hidden records: every player’s reaction time, preferred route, injury fluctuations—even the number of micro-tremors in Zhou Yan’s right hand per minute. All of it had been uploaded into an external model. Its codename was TIDE. Its latest forecast read: EMBERSTAR FINAL LOSS—97.4%.