Chapter Three: The Price of Attention

The next morning, Chen's badge failed. Payroll had no record of him, and HR insisted he had never filed employment documents. Tang frowned from the edit-suite entrance. “Which vendor are you with?” “I'm Chen Mo. I've worked for you for three years.” “There is no Chen on my team.” The confusion in Tang's face was real. Zhixia pulled Chen into a meeting room and locked the door. In last year's team photograph, the place where Chen had stood was now an unnatural gap. “I remember you,” she said. “But just now it took me five seconds to remember your family name.” On the rejected-cuts drive, every future Chen had altered now bore a tiny crown watermark. The greater the change, the clearer the crown.