Chapter Four: The Man Who Dies Tomorrow

Gu frowned. Wanxing smiled. Her certainty was no longer suspended over nothing; Jibai had secretly built it a foothold. “It will stop.” Her stars burned. The blade brushed an eyelash, sparks burst inside the arm, and it froze. No current jumped into the observation room. Nobody bled. The ledger opened by itself: EXISTING DEFECT UTILIZED. DEBT: ZERO. “Interfering with a test costs six months of clearance,” Gu told Jibai. “File it through the system.” Forty-nine hours remained when Wanxing wrapped bandages around the red lines on his arm. The wounds had been deferred, yet she covered them as if pain might lose the address. “Why help me cheat?” “It wasn't cheating. Revision becomes dangerous when you imagine reality has only one road.”