Chapter Five: The Most Expensive Meal on the Moon

The skiff struck the arresting net. A woman in a torn lab coat fell through its hatch, metal buried in her abdomen. She pushed a black data shard into Zhou's hand. “Shen Yanqiu, quantum biologist. Don't trust your management core. Those rooms steal from other possibilities.” The interceptors demanded the “renegade employee.” Offline footage showed subjects strapped into metal replicas of Room 001. Helios owned the experiment; Han Tuo had approved it. Two subjects were the testers who vanished six years earlier. “Can the hotel save her?” Zhou asked. “Regeneration clinic remains locked.” “The restaurant rebuilds flavor and the purifier rebuilds dust. Give me an alternative.”