Chapter Three: The Sentence That Was Erased

[OBSERVER DETECTED. CONFIDENTIALITY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.] [AN UNRESOLVED TEST MATCH PRECEDES THE CALIBRATOR'S FIRST FORMAL CONNECTION. PENALTY WILL NOW BE APPLIED.] Shen Yan surged to his feet. The hospital room returned. His mother had finished peeling the apple and cut it into small pieces. She looked up and said something, but there was no sound. The red bar jumped from one percent to one hundred. The image vanished. Shen Yan remembered that day's sunlight, the pale yellow of the apple as it oxidized, and his mother's death two weeks later. But he could no longer remember her final words. In his memory, her lips moved inside a muted recording. “Shen Yan?” Lin Qi caught his arm. “What did she say?” “Who?”