Chapter Four: The Drawer at 3:17

After every blackout, the younger Shen stood closer. Shen finally read the composition. The drawer filled the foreground not to conceal the killer, but to create a blind cut. Whenever the lights died, the shot joined another timeline. He ran for the breaker while Lin covered him. In the last blackout, the younger Shen held a scalpel over Zhou’s heart. Shen did not kill the lights. He threw on every internal lamp in the refrigerated drawers, flooding the shot with white from all sides. The blind cut failed. Younger Shen froze like a frame pinned to a reel. Looking at Shen, he almost seemed sorry. “You think you’re saving people,” he said. “You’re choosing my cast.”