Chapter Four: The One Who Came Back

The lights died one by one. The operating room spread beyond the mirror; rain rose toward the ceiling. The Shepherd opened a white umbrella from inside every shadow. "Seven," it counted in Shen Yao's voice. Gu connected a portable neural console to the old wiring. "This was the first Ebbtide door. I can open it for seven seconds." "What is outside it?" Lu Zhi asked. "The place where we abandoned her." "Six." The walls became mirrors. Each contained a different Shen Yao: seven, sixteen, twenty-five. The last showed the woman standing here now, white coat unmarked, no scar beside her eye. "The original Shen Yao suffered brain death," Gu said. "I caught a personality echo inside Lu Cen's silent band and wrote it into a host prepared for the trial.