Chapter Three: Gu Yan Is Dead

Worse, Ye Ning found that the original rescue list contained seventeen people. The public version contained sixteen. The deleted seventeenth line was numbered GY-0713. “The name was blacked out,” Ye Ning said that evening, sliding over a scan. “But age twenty-seven, AB blood, an old fracture in the left wrist—they all match you.” “I was twenty-seven.” “Then you were there.” “Or someone filled the line with my information.” They sat in the library's remotest reading room. Under a lamp, Gu Yan saw that the black field had a fine dot pattern. It had been printed over the name, not redacted later. Increased contrast revealed half of a Chinese radical beneath it: three strokes signifying water. There was no water radical in Gu Yan's surname.