Chapter Four: The Work Order from Age Seven

“What did you see?” Qiao asked. “My father's debt may not have been money.” Glass broke overhead. Relic 0007 had escaped its case before the auction began. The All-Sight Prism hovered in the Dome Hall, dividing the museum into transparent possibilities: Lin hidden in a drain, dead on a staircase, pinned beneath Shen Que, or led away by a woman in white. It did not predict one future. It calculated all of them. Qiao's voice tightened. “Obsidian found my van.” Four guards surrounded it. Her Echo Tag overlaid an empty image from fifteen seconds ago, but thermal optics still found her. Bullets punched through the door. Lin reached for the map. One requisition would save her and expose him within eight hundred meters.