Chapter Five: The Station That Was Removed

Ye closed her eyes and listened for three seconds. “He inhaled first. This voice doesn't. It puts the breath at the end because all its training material came from interviews.” She stepped forward, raised the camera, and fired into the darkness. In the flash, the directional speaker and two ceiling cameras had nowhere to hide. “Cheng Shu,” she said to the lens, “you know his data. You don't know him.” The speaker fell silent. At the foot of the stairs was an old subway control room. Seventeen monitors played the same footage from seven years ago: after the crash, Gu Yan carried a blood-covered man through the smoke. At 02:14:08 the timestamp jumped to 02:29:09. Fifteen minutes were missing.