The Last Person Anyone Would Recruit

Following the coordinates, she entered an abandoned esports hall. The giant screen turned on. A scrimmage from three years earlier played on a loop. Han Shuang’s teammates deliberately surrendered four kills, yet the system assigned the entire defeat to her support metrics. An encrypted download code hid in the final frame. Lin Zhou photographed it. The power died. Someone caught her wrist in the dark. She twisted free, then heard, “Don’t move. Same side.” Emergency lights revealed Han Shuang. White edged her short hair, but her eyes were steadier than they had been during her professional career. “The locker was a test,” Han Shuang said. “If you took the file without watching the match, you’d be no different from Gu Chen.”