Chapter Five: A Stranger’s Relics

Her apartment was again a single room. Their cat had never existed. Tang Li wept over the altered phone. “You lost him to bring me back?” “It wasn’t an exchange. The tide chose.” “You knew it would choose someone.” Xia Mi had no answer. At three in the morning, Wen Yu sent a message. Why do you have my red cord? They met in the hotel laundry room, a place without speakers or any sound of the sea. Wen Yu brought the metal box. Its contents had changed again: a casualty list, eight programs, a set of tapes marked TIDAL SAMPLES, and a copy of Xia Mi’s death certificate. She had died on July 29, two years earlier, at 9:08 P.M. Location: Linwan Tidal Stage. “I don’t know you,” Wen Yu said, “but I’ve investigated you for six years.”