Chapter One: The Seventh-to-Last Second

The first time, she had been sixteen, holding her mother's hand after an overdose. Shen Yao had seen the final seven seconds: a bedroom door her mother had chosen not to open. In sixteen years, she had learned three rules. Everything here could lie. She would have only seven seconds. Before they ended, she had to find the way out. The speakers clicked. "Seven," Zhou Jiming's voice announced. At the end of the tracks, a figure appeared beneath a white umbrella. Rain fell only beneath it—and fell upward. "Six." A child's cassette recorder lay at Shen Yao's feet. It began to play. "Don't let her wake," a woman whispered. "Five."