Chapter Three: The Abandoned Fall Back Into Formation

Tang Ye moved first, driving Xu Duo against the wall. The phone hit the floor. An anonymous message filled its screen: Confirm Lin Mo will not play before 7:00, or the next person to lose their hearing will not be a player. Beneath it was a photograph of Xu Duo’s ten-year-old daughter sitting in her school shuttle. The photographer’s black cap was reflected in the window. “The account is yours. You sent the data,” Zhou Yan said, his voice glacial. “How long?” “Six months.” Xu Duo did not resist. “At first it was a league-mandated training-data interface. Two months ago, I learned it was copying complete strategies, so I began feeding it false information. You lost that North American scrim because I planted the wrong routes in the system.”