Chapter Four: The Man Who Dies Tomorrow

The bounty in the Deviation Layer lasted forty-seven seconds. On the forty-eighth, Zhou Jibai shot a vending machine at the end of the platform. No drinks fell out. Silver mist burst through the broken glass, and the first deviants to inhale it forgot why they were there. “Obsidian memory suppressant,” he said, pulling Wanxing onto an arriving train. “It erases one minute.” “Why wait forty-seven seconds?” “It's expensive.” The train had no driver and no tunnel, only luminous red threads racing backward beyond the windows. The Zero Ledger growled inside her bag. Jibai checked his watch: seventy-one hours, forty-two minutes until settlement.