Chapter Four: Scissors for Ten Minutes

The underground elevator had no buttons, only a palm reader. When Lin Yan touched it, all four echoes heated. The display listed wind, space, displacement, and vector, then showed an Old-Era message. INTERFACE AUTHORITY: BLANK. The doors opened. “Security arrives in forty-seven seconds,” Su Mi said. “Go down, or pretend we saw nothing?” Bai Qi went pale. “Level B7 is not for students. The Archive Bureau divides people who know about it into keepers and corpses.” “Which are you?” Lin asked. She did not answer, but entered first. B7 resembled a hospital buried inside the mountain. Its transparent capsules held no bodies, only frozen knots of light. Each bore a heroic family's name and a date.