Chapter One: Two Characters at Midnight

Gu Yan wiped its rim with a tissue. There was no mud, only fine silver-gray powder. He smelled the sweet, metallic odor of data-center coolant. It did not belong in a drain. “What's your name?” Ye Ning asked. “Gu Yan.” Her expression changed. She pulled out a seven-year-old clipping. The headline read: NO CASUALTIES IN LINE FOUR TEST ACCIDENT. A younger Cheng Shu stood at the edge of the photograph beside a man whose profile looked remarkably like Gu Yan's. “Then you should explain,” she said, pointing to the photograph's timestamp, “why your household record says you were attending a funeral two hundred kilometers away when this picture was taken.” Gu Yan did not answer. He remembered nothing of fifteen minutes that day.