Chapter One: The Stranger on Open-Source Day

Wet footprints crossed from the glass counter to the back wall. They matched the flat shoes Chen wore in the surveillance footage. They did not stop or turn. Half of the final print was pressed vertically onto the wall. The boy called, “Mom?” Every umbrella in the stall trembled at once. Lin's phone lit. Chen's page was blank, her portrait replaced by a gray silhouette. The timer had stopped at 23:41:06. It had not reached zero. The sentence changed. First observation complete. Then his feed refreshed. A man in a red safety helmet appeared at the top. Zhao Bo, fifty-six, municipal pipeline inspector. No shared contacts. No common path. Perhaps you should look at him. A new countdown began at 24:00:00.