Chapter Three: Twelve Water Stations

“The first pair is the seating zone. The middle pair is the match minute. The last isn't a seat—it's a scoreboard circuit. The caps tell them when to use which section's emotion to activate which switch.” “Then we pull the relays,” Cheng Ye said. “Cutting one line lit the fourth cell. It counted sabotage as an emotional peak.” The iron door bowed inward. Han's voice drifted down the stairwell. “Lin Xi, your father watched his final match here.” She froze. Her father had been dead seven years. Until the end, he had kept a faded ticket in his wallet. She had told none of her coworkers. The old scoreboard flickered from 04 to 05, then back, as though something beyond the door were testing a key. “It uses memory as bait,” Cheng Ye whispered.