Chapter Four: The Name in the Empty Pod

The twelve metabolic pods were numbered not from one to twelve, but with twelve names. Shen Zhiwei recognized eleven from the missing-persons list. The empty pod bore Shen Zhixia's name. She hit the emergency release. Nothing happened. The screens displayed no heart rates, only NAME INTEGRITY. The highest was sixty-two percent. The lowest was nine. The man inside that pod lay awake, his lips moving as if he had forgotten how to ask for help. “Release them,” Zhiwei said. “Disconnect them now and they die in three minutes.” Gu Chenzhou pointed to the tubes. “The Wen family feeds the last group of clock-stopped guests with memories extracted from their loved ones. The machines keep these people alive while draining them. We need the master valve.”