Chapter One: After the Fall

Cheng dragged backward frame by frame. Before the web touched Lin, a faint silver thread was already hanging beneath her, ending at the point her body would reach one second later. The hero had not reacted quickly. He had known where she would fall. Lin’s phone vibrated. An unknown sender had attached a forensic photograph. The dead woman was Lin herself: same coat, same scar through the eyebrow, chest collapsed, finger bent into her palm. The time of death was 9:17:43 p.m.—the instant the web had caught her. A second message arrived. “Don’t trust the scans. You have already died once.” Then an address: beneath North River Bridge, six a.m. The final message was a clock counting down. 71:08:19.