Chapter Four: The Black Tower's Stomach

Hidden roads never ran straight beneath Linjiang. The route circled an abandoned subway loop, crossed a buried air-raid station, then followed the registered addresses of companies that no longer existed. Old street numbers surfaced on the walls like bones the city had swallowed but failed to digest. Cheng Cheng walked between them. She did not believe phones could eat people, or that her name was disappearing, but she believed the two inexplicable wounds on her brother's arm. “I can leave the ER for one hour.” “In forty-two minutes, the schedule will delete you,” Cheng Ye said, watching her price tag. “Then no one will let you back in.” She paused, then kept walking. “We solve it in forty-one.”