Chapter Four: The Door They Would Not Permit

” The call died. The system offered no route, only gray text. [Crucial conditions do not always arrive as permission.] Behind the building, a fallen branch had jammed the ventilation grate open just far enough for him to squeeze through. It looked like a convenient answer from the system. His hand stopped on the cold metal. Don’t believe alone, Lin had said. So he sent her his location and Gu’s recording. He uploaded the reports and a timeline of his actions to the firm’s cloud, set to publish on a timer. Only then did he enter the narrow passage. The second basement smelled of wet metal. The data room at the end of the hall was unlocked, as if someone had deliberately left it waiting.