Chapter Four: Death Certificate

“Seventeen people died, including me. But the tunnel is open.” “Because you made the accident never happen.” Zhou removed a plastic-wrapped sheet of thermal paper. A faded emergency triage list remained legible. The seventeenth entry read: LIN JIANWEI, FEMALE, 31, NO VITAL SIGNS. Images struck her—red alarms, falling concrete dust, a ring-scarred hand reaching through twisted steel. She caught the cabinet as suffocation tightened her chest. Zhou stopped his hand beside her shoulder without touching. “Breathe slowly. This is the archive, not the tunnel.” “You got that scar there?” “I was trapped on the other side. You saw my wish.” “What was it?” He met her eyes. “Live.”