Chapter Five: One Lie Across the City

He pressed the Míror chip and found the shared second in the previous night's citywide streams. Into that second, he inserted the seventeen paper statements. Every live screen in Linjiang flickered. In cooking pans, game maps, shopping-mall walls, and police body cameras appeared the same handwritten sentence: There was a passenger. It lasted seven seconds. Seven seconds was enough for millions of screenshots. Gu lunged for the evidence. Wen trapped his wrist with her umbrella. Lu dropped the white chip into the shredder. The system decided all evidence was digitized and opened the fire exits. They escaped with the file. Behind them, Gu did not pursue. He spoke into his earpiece. “Confirmed. Seven has broadcast reframing permission.”