Chapter Four: Becoming Noise

Xu received an internal alert. Police were tracing the suspect who had hijacked the city's displays. Zhou Qishan was coordinating with Qiongjing, which claimed Lin had weaponized the open source release and supplied his live location. “He wants you fixed in public attention,” Xu said. Drones announced themselves below. The apartment lock turned red. Lin studied the agents' weight curves. Their peaks aligned with locations in Xu Xi's recordings. He projected them over Chen's hand-drawn map. Seventy-two intersections lit like an opening eye. Seventy-one pointed toward Lin. The last pointed toward the abandoned Linlan television tower—and to Cen Yao's broken phone, where characters pulsed beneath the cracked glass. Lin took the drive and laptop.