Chapter Four: The Door They Would Not Permit

On the screens, the East District model flashed red: water-level sensors showed abnormal reverse flow. The official response page still read, Low risk. Maintain traffic. Xu photographed the screens and downloaded the logs. In a hidden maintenance ticket, he found something worse: the gate-control program had been remotely overwritten at five o’clock. The authorization account belonged to the Harborfront Construction project team. Harborfront had built the project years ago. Zhou Qiming now worked for its parent group as a brand consultant. Footsteps sounded behind him. Two men in raincoats blocked the door. The first looked at Xu’s phone. “Mr. Xu, such weather. Why dig up old accounts for other people?”