Chapter Two: No Such Person

“That is what the official record says.” The conduit ended at an abandoned cold archive. Zhou kept the city’s only offline construction plan there, printed on thin plastic sheets. They overlaid the wheel’s coordinates. The target was not deep in the mines but directly beneath Maintenance Spine, labeled VERTICAL SHAFT 0-A. On the official digital map, the same location was thirty meters of solid rock. Zhou circled the access point. “The shaft door is in Bay Three.” “So is the wheel.” “Security will have sealed it.” Lin touched Han’s nut. Her memory had faded again. She could no longer assemble his whole face, only the three fingers tapping her helmet. The cold archive speaker turned itself on.