Chapter Two: The Seven Seconds Every Camera Forgot

At four in the afternoon, seven minutes remained. The four cameras used independent lines. Zhao sat at the table, Xu inside the room, Lin before the monitor wall. They watched without interruption, staggering even their blinks. One minute. Nothing. Thirty seconds. Zhao began to shake. Ten. Video stable. Locator stable. Lock stable. Three. Lin noticed the digital clocks differed between feeds. Each camera lagged by seven seconds. Only the real clock on the wall behind Zhao had crossed zero. “Turn around!” Xu spun. Zhao was still seated, but he had become as thin as a photograph printed on air. White tiles showed through him. She seized his collar; her fingers passed through cold static.