Chapter One: Another City in the Sky

Police blamed research pressure and said she had left voluntarily. Shen Yan never believed them. He removed his headset and switched to continuous shooting. With every eight-second exposure, the hidden city sharpened. A bridge appeared across the skyline in the third frame. People gathered on it in the fifth. In the seventh, a woman emerged from the mist and walked toward the lens. She wore a gray coat, her hair tied back, a faded red cord around her left wrist. Her face occupied only a few dozen pixels. But Shen Yan recognized the slight dip of her right shoulder. When Xingyao was twelve, she had shielded him from a falling bookcase and broken her collarbone. She had carried herself that way ever since.