Chapter Five: The Black Scoreboard

Han Duo led them along a passage absent from every staff map. His card opened each door. Harborshade, he explained, had been built over an old tidal station, and early corridors had never entered the modern system. Though the walls were dry, a child's wet footprints remained ten steps ahead. “What happened here in 2004?” Lin Xi asked. “An evacuation accident. Seven died. The news called it a crush.” “What was it really?” “The doors returned them to the crowd.” Six technicians occupied the control room. All had drunk. Smiling into their headsets, they watched hundreds of feeds in which every spectator moved half a second late, as if the footage came from the preceding loop.