Chapter Three: The Deleted Man

heavy smoke. He had always believed the second was a nightmare after the gas explosion. Now he saw a man wearing a silver mechanical watch, its face split diagonally. The same broken-line emblem was carved into the portable drive. “Dad!” the child Shen Zhou screamed inside the memory. He had never remembered his father being at White Tower. Authentication succeeded. The walls, his mother, and the false child peeled away like failed renderings. Shen Lan remained for one final moment beneath the kitchen light. As if she knew this reality was ending, she calmly covered the soup. “Don't keep someone else in a dark room just to keep me,” she told him. “Are you real?” She did not answer.