Chapter Five: Locker B17

Applause sounded overhead. Gu stood before a broken mirror, two guards drooping behind him as if asleep. “Shen Chong joined to destroy it. During the first test, he broke the beat and closed the gate for thirteen seconds.” “What happened to him?” “Everyone forgot him. Including his son.” Gu started the tape. A thin man faced the camera. “If Yanyan remembers me, I failed. If he does not, tell him forgetting his father was never betrayal.” Behind him, a boy practiced. Whenever his father offered a hand, the boy reached half a beat early. Shen Yan's instinctive timing was an escape route his father had left inside his body. “Why keep this?” Lin Wu asked. “Because forgetting does not make me innocent. I need proof of whom I sacrificed.”