Chapter Four: The Seventh Basement Does Not Exist

The old Jichuan Television Tower had been closed for twelve years, but its elevator was lit. Ye Lan pressed B1. The car passed B6 and displayed a floor that did not exist: B7. The doors opened on a corridor paved with television static. Missing-person photographs covered the walls. Ye Lan recognized victims of accidents the morning news insisted had never happened. Each photograph was stamped: DELETED FROM THE RELEASE CUT. “Are they alive?” “Being forgotten isn't death,” Bai Jin said. His ash-fire drew a residual image from one photograph: a woman opened her apartment door, and her husband asked who she was. In the next frame, even her slippers vanished.