Chapter Three: Confession Does Not Mean Lightness

The tank was light, but its valve was too heavy to turn. After Lin cut the lock, her first words were, “Don’t trust Lu Mi.” “He helped you escape,” Xu said. “And delivered me here. He said my disappearance would make Zhao reveal what he wanted. The car that collected me belonged to the response center.” Chenghai’s true product, she explained, was not medicine but a model for predicting group decisions. The city had funded it as disaster forecasting under the name Scale Zero. Zhao needed her eleven percent to approve citywide data access. When she discovered the plan before their wedding, he fabricated an affair and meant to use their prenuptial agreement to remove her. “The ring’s chip?” Lin asked.