Chapter One: The Encore Ten Thousand People Forgot

She did not take it. As he lowered his hand, however, the red cord brushed her knuckles, and an impossible image stabbed through her: moonlight, a burning mine, her hands covered in blood as she tied that same cord around a man's wrist. "Two minutes," he said. "You will still let us perform." "Do you know me?" "A little earlier than you knew yourself." She should have called security. Instead she noticed pencil writing on the back of the authorization: Let them finish, or you will forget again. That handwriting was hers, too. Shen Wu made the least rational decision of her career. At 9:50, the stage went black. There was no band, no opening video.