Chapter Two: Thirteen Milliseconds Before the Prophecy

He illuminated it with his phone. Thirteen subtle locator points ran around the code. Scanning it opened no website, but connected to a local address: 10.4.9.22. B-04-09. W-22-01. Ye Ning's father had left a route, not four locations. Gu Yan accessed the nodes in sequence. The lock released. At the same moment, the log changed: OBSERVER GY-0713 RETURNED. “It thinks you came back,” Ye Ning said. “No.” Gu Yan stared at RETURNED. “It thinks I've been there before.” Before dawn, he returned to his apartment. Nothing had been forced. On the table sat a security trophy that should still have been in his box. Beneath it was a blank access card. He held the card near his phone and read its NFC text: THE NEXT TITLE CONCERNS YOU.