Chapter One: After the Fall

When Lin Xian fell from the seventy-second floor, the first thing to vanish was the wind. The glass facade of Zenith Tower raced upward before her. Every lit office was a frame of film running backward: a man turning with his coffee, a woman pressing both hands to the window, someone already raising a phone. Below, the city opened its jaws. Three seconds ago, Lin had been in the executive archive, slipping a black memory card into her coat. Two seconds ago, a man behind the door had said, “Reporter Lin, you should never have seen that list.” One second ago, something struck her lower back and the safety glass broke like water. Now a journalist’s instinct performed the work terror could not. Seventy-two floors. Roughly twelve seconds.