Chapter Two: Ten Seconds Ahead

By morning, no one in Linjiang was discussing the meteors that had flown upward. The news blamed a minor ionospheric disturbance. Videos online were either corrupted or showed an ordinary night sky. Cheng Ye checked his own recording frame by frame. It contained the city and his window, but no meteors—as if the sky refused to leave fingerprints in evidence. The red thermos was changing too. If he left it in the kitchen and turned away, he forgot it. A label reading PROPERTY OF THE OLD MAN IN THE CORRIDOR faded within minutes. Finally, he carved four words into his forearm: REMEMBER THE OLD MAN. The wound remained, but the man did not.