Chapter One: The Ninth Photograph

At four-thirty, they sat beside a vending machine on the hospital's seventh floor. Through the glass, Lin watched her mother sleep. Without the armor, she was a tired young woman in an old gray sweatshirt. She edited short videos by day and took performance jobs at night, she said, and hated when people asked whether she dreamed of being a hero. “You didn't?” Shen asked. “As a child. Then I learned heroes don't pay medical bills.” At 5:16, brakes screamed on the bridge. A refrigerated truck broke through the barrier, its cab hanging over the river. The cries of morning runners reached them through the ward windows. Shen seized his camera. His telephoto lens crossed six hundred yards of mist and found the bridge.