Chapter Two: An Eighteen-Hour Chain of Evidence

It belonged to an unreleased tidal forecasting project and became the heart of the accusation against him. Chen had never cloned it. He had assumed someone planted it remotely. Now he saw another possibility: the code itself was bait. At six in the morning, he called Su Wanqing. “If this is about your noncompete, I charge by the hour,” a woman's voice answered, far too alert for dawn. “What if I can prove Hanhai fabricated the evidence?” A brief silence. “Don't touch the original device. No screenshots, no copies, and don't send me a file. Eight o'clock, Linjiang Digital Notary Center.” Su had once been outside counsel for Hanhai.