Chapter Three: Gatekeepers in the City

They had hidden inside a cold-storage room in her university's old laboratory building, where lead sheeting and insulation blocked most scans. Six apples, three gyroscopes, and a cage of laboratory mice occupied the center table. It looked like a physics lesson designed by a lunatic. "There will be no seventh test." Su took away the gyroscopes. "We need the limit." "Wu Hai already proved the ruins charge for everything." Lin fell silent. He could still see the body held against the garage ceiling. Su handed him a printed file. Before her access was revoked, she had searched global anomaly archives. Over seventy-two years, thirteen cities had reported unexplained incidents of localized weightlessness: the Shanghai weather tower, a Cairo