Chapter Three: Wuyin Street

Chen’s silence answered him. Lin moved toward the drain. The black device began to hum. Xu opened her umbrella; blue-white sparks leaped from the copper wire. Every frozen object in the street trembled. Pale faces appeared behind windows. “Don’t wake them!” Chen shouted, losing his composure for the first time. Beside the manhole, Lacuna marked a rusted latch. [You escaped through here once.] Lin pulled it open. There was no sewer below, but a brightly lit child’s bedroom. Two children sat on the carpet with their backs to him. One was his seven-year-old self. The other, a girl, drew red lines in the margins of a workbook. She turned. Her face was his mother’s face when young. “Brother,” she said, “you finally see me.” The world inverted.