Chapter Four: The Stripped Light

The man in white gloves folded the light from Daystar's chest into a thin sheet. She dimmed inside the frame. Her chains were not metal but scrolling comments: MARKETING, FRAUD, SYNTHETIC FACE. Each new phrase tightened them. Shen Zhao raised the Fixed Focus camera. Through its viewfinder the man's face remained overexposed white, but an old scale appeared along the bottom: subject, boundary, witness. “Bai Shu,” Shen said, speaking a name he did not remember learning. The man turned. He had the reassuring face of a television scholar, except that a blank negative flickered where his left eye should have been. “Gu Mian told you even my name? The Keeper's oath must be leaking light.” “She didn't.”