Message in the Mirror

The cellar entrance led to a cement culvert, rusted rebar protruding from the cracks like exposed ribs. Above, the dull thud of boots crossing wooden planks echoed, each step drawing a few centimeters closer to the exit.

The cellar was pitch black.

Lin Shen landed first. His feet touched something soft—years of accumulated soil and decayed grass. A sealed-off odor rushed into his nostrils—earth, mold, rusted iron, and something more ancient, like the smell of time rotting.

Jiang Fei followed, letting out a muffled groan as she landed. Her left arm had collided with the wall, reopening the clotted wound. Fresh blood seeped through the strips of T-shirt fabric wrapped around it.

"Your arm—"

"Forget it." She turned on her phone's flashlight, the beam striking the damp cement wall. The space was larger than expected—not an ordinary cellar, but more like a half-buried corridor that extended deeper underground. Old cable brackets lined the walls, rust spreading like blood vessels. The cement floor had cracked, crunching underfoot with every step, crushing dried mud shells.

"This isn't a cellar," Lin Shen said.

"It's an old experimental backup passage." Jiang Fei swept her flashlight across the wall, illuminating a rusted nameplate—Yingzuiya Laboratory · Backup Passage 03. Below the nameplate, a faded line of text read: November 2006. Something from twenty years ago. She clicked her tongue. "Lao Zheng came prepared."

Footsteps sounded from above. Boots—at least four people. Then Lao Zheng's voice, muffled through the cellar planks but surprisingly calm—as if he were inviting a neighbor over for tea.

"Let's hold still for now." Jiang Fei switched off the flashlight.

In the darkness, Lin Shen heard his own heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump. He counted—by the twenty-fourth beat, the footsteps had shifted toward the back of the house. Lao Zheng had led the Correctors away.

Jiang Fei turned the flashlight back on and moved down the corridor. It wasn't long—about thirty meters—ending at a blast door whose warning stickers had long since peeled at the edges. The door had no lock but was heavy. Jiang Fei pushed it open with her uninjured shoulder, revealing a small room inside.

The flashlight swept across the room—an old monitoring and communications terminal, seven or eight monitors arranged in an arc, all dark. Several metal cabinets were stacked in the corner, doors half-open, revealing densely packed circuit boards and dust-covered fans. The air smelled of burnt electrical components—the odor of aging circuit boards.

"This was the monitoring station back then." Jiang Fei walked to the console, wiping dust off the panel with her finger. "It's been powered down for a long time. But the equipment looks like it might still work."

She crouched down and pulled a thick cable from behind the cabinet. The other end connected to a distribution box on the wall. She opened it, revealing old-fashioned knife switches. She tried pushing one—nothing happened.

"Give me a hand."

Lin Shen came over, and together they shoved the switch up. A low hum emanated from the distribution box, like an old beast waking from a long hibernation and yawning. A few indicator lights flickered, then died. The hum continued, but the monitors stayed dark.

"Not enough voltage." Jiang Fei said, pulling a palm-sized emergency power pack from her backpack and connecting it to the console's backup port.

The monitors lit up. One by one. Gray-green old CRT screens, resolution so low the characters were jagged at the edges. Lines of startup self-check information scrolled across the screens—

Mirror Project · Backup Monitoring Terminal v3.7

Self-check in progress...

All screens were on. Except for the one on the far right—its screen was shattered, cracks spreading from the lower left corner to the upper right, like a spider's web.

Jiang Fei tapped a few keys, and the system entered the main interface. The menu was simple but archaic: Real-time Monitoring, Historical Records, Channel Resonance Waveform, Signal Tracking.

"Signal Tracking," Lin Shen said.

Jiang Fei clicked into it. The system popped up a search box. She glanced at Lin Shen, who recited a number from Su Wan's diary—the channel coordinate number Lao Zheng had written for Su Wan.

Jiang Fei entered it. Pressed Enter.

The system began searching. A gray progress bar crawled slowly upward—one percent, three percent, seven percent. The fans hummed, and the heatsinks in the cabinets emitted faint clicking sounds.

"Bandwidth is too low," Jiang Fei said. "We'll have to wait."

When the progress bar reached thirty-nine percent, the screens suddenly flickered. Not a system failure—all the screens flickered at once, as if something had passed through the signal lines and brushed against every single pixel.

Then the image on the center screen changed.

It wasn't the system interface. It was a blurry image. Like looking through thick frosted glass, faint outlines barely visible. The image trembled, flickering bright and dim like a candle flame stirred by the wind.

Lin Shen held his breath.

The image showed a figure. Long hair, thin shoulders, wearing an oversized hoodie. Her silhouette flickered—sometimes clear, sometimes seeming to be pulled apart in different directions by something. She was saying something, but the sound was swallowed by noise, only fragments of waveforms reaching them.

Jiang Fei rapidly typed, adjusting the signal gain.

"...they said..." The voice came through, chopped into fragments as if transmitted from very far away. "The channel is collapsing..."

Lin Shen's hand pressed against the edge of the console, his knuckles turning white.

"I'm..."

The image shook violently. The figure stepped back half a step, as if something had tugged at her. She turned to look behind her—Lin Shen saw her profile. The left corner of her eye. That tiny tear mole.

"I'm... at..." Her voice was cut off by a sharp burst of interference.

All the screens turned to static at once.

Jiang Fei slammed the Enter key. The system tried to reconnect. The progress bar stopped at seventy-two percent and wouldn't budge. The fans were still spinning, the cabinet lights still flashing, but the signal—was completely gone.

Lin Shen stared at the screens full of static, breathing rapidly. His right hand unconsciously tapped the console edge—three times, three times, three times.

"Signal source location." Jiang Fei switched to another interface.

The system had automatically recorded a coordinate from that brief connection. It displayed on the screen—longitude, latitude, altitude. Exactly matching the numbers on the paper Lao Zheng had given them.

Yingzuiya Hydropower Station. Underground Level Three.

Jiang Fei stared at the coordinates for a moment.

Lin Shen noticed her expression. It wasn't relief. It wasn't confirmation of direction. It was something else—eyebrows slightly furrowed, lips pressed tight, eyes fixed on those numbers as if she were checking to see if she'd misread.

"What's wrong?"

Jiang Fei didn't answer right away. She leaned back in her chair, tapped the keyboard edge a couple of times, then pulled up another interface—the channel energy decay curve.

"Look at this." She pointed to a descending blue line on the screen. "This is the channel's energy. From the experimental accident two years ago until now, it's been steadily decaying. According to the decay rate—" She traced her finger along the curve, stopping at a point. "It should have reached zero six months ago."

Lin Shen looked at the blue line. It abruptly flattened near the middle of the screen, then extended almost horizontally to the right—no longer decaying.

"What does that mean?"

"It means the channel should have closed long ago," Jiang Fei said. She closed the curve chart and pulled up a waveform diagram—the channel's resonance frequency. "A normally closed channel would have its resonance frequency smoothly drop to zero. But this—" She pointed at the jagged spikes on the waveform. "Something is forcibly maintaining it."

Lin Shen said nothing. He stared at the jumping waveforms on the screen. Like a heartbeat. One beat. One beat. One beat.

"Maintaining a channel that should have been closed," Jiang Fei said, her voice much lower than usual, "requires a continuous supply of energy. A tremendous amount of energy."

She turned to look at Lin Shen.

"The coordinates are correct. The equipment works. But the channel shouldn't be open. If it's open, there's only one explanation."

Lin Shen knew what she was about to say. He didn't want to hear it. But he had to.

"Su Wan." Jiang Fei said. "She's over there, using her own existence to keep the channel open. Every second the channel remains open, she dissolves a little more."

The monitoring room fell silent. Only the hum of the cabinet fans, like the labored breathing of a sick person. The static screens flickered meaninglessly, light and shadow playing across both their faces, brightening and dimming.

Lin Shen looked at the center screen that had turned to static. Just moments ago, she had been there. Separated only by a layer of signal. Separated only by a collapsing channel.

She had looked back just now. What had she seen? The channel was already collapsing; she should have run, should have gotten as far away as possible. But she didn't. She was waiting.

Waiting for her only anchor. Waiting for the one who still remembered her.

Lin Shen's fingers tapped the console edge three times—the rhythm of a pencil. Then he stopped, because that rhythm suddenly reminded him of what Su Wan always said whenever she heard him tapping his pencil: "What are you agonizing over again?"

His hand reached into his pocket and touched the folded paper. The coordinates. The key code. The twenty minutes Lao Zheng had bought with his life.

"Let's go," he said.

Jiang Fei unplugged the emergency power pack. The monitors went dark, one row at a time. The last to go dark was the middle one—the screen that had shown Su Wan's image. As it faded to black, Lin Shen saw a faint residual glow lingering on it, like the last trace of daylight sinking below the horizon.

She stood up, took two steps toward the door, then stopped.

"Lin Shen."

"Yeah."

"Have you ever thought about one thing?"

Lin Shen looked at her.

"When the channel collapses, what happens to the person maintaining it?"

Lin Shen didn't answer. Not because he didn't know—because he knew too well. Lu Yan's wife, standing in the channel, split apart from the middle. A drop of ink falling into the sea. The outline still there, but the inside empty. In less than a second, nothing left.

"She dissipates," he said. His voice was very calm. Too calm.

Jiang Fei looked back at him. There was no pity in that look. No comfort. Only the unspoken understanding between hunters—you know what the price is, you know where you're going. Good.

As they walked back, muffled noises came from above—metal clashing, things being knocked over, and an aged yet remarkably calm voice saying, "You're too late."

That was Lao Zheng.

The voice was still there. He was still alive.

But then came a dull thud. Very muffled. Very heavy. Like a sack of rice hitting the floor.

Jiang Fei quickened her pace. Lin Shen followed, crushed cement grit crunching under his feet. The end of the corridor—the wooden door to the cellar entrance—was just ahead. Jiang Fei climbed up first, pushed open the wooden door, and poked her head out for a look.

The kitchen was empty. The Correctors had already left—they had passed through the cellar entrance and pursued into the channel.

From the main room came the sound of something being dragged.

Jiang Fei reached back and pulled Lin Shen up. They crossed the kitchen and stood at the entrance to the main room—Lao Zheng sat in his rattan chair, eyes closed, as if asleep. But his right hand hung outside the chair, blood dripping from his fingertips, forming a small puddle on the cement floor.

"Lao Zheng." Lin Shen called out.

No response.

Jiang Fei stepped forward, crouched down, and pressed two fingers against the side of his neck. She waited five seconds. Then she stood up and shook her head.

Lin Shen looked at the old man. The corners of his mouth were slightly lifted—not an expression of pain, but more like the relief of finally being able to relax after finishing a task.

"They've gone into the channel," Jiang Fei said. "We need to leave before they come back around through the back door."

Lin Shen didn't move. He looked at Lao Zheng for a long time. Then he bent down and gently placed the old man's dangling hand onto his lap.

"Thank you."

He straightened up and followed Jiang Fei out of the main room. In the yard, the persimmon tree was still swaying in the wind. The moon had come out, its cold light spilling onto the rusted iron gate.

Jiang Fei started the off-road vehicle. The roar of the engine tore through the silence of the suburban night. The headlights lit up the dirt road, gravel flying from under the tires.

"The hydropower station," Jiang Fei said, placing the coordinate sheet from Lao Zheng beside the steering wheel. "Forty minutes. Hold tight."

As the vehicle sped onto the national highway, Lin Shen glanced in the rearview mirror. Lao Zheng's courtyard shrank into the night, becoming a tiny shadow. The persimmon tree was still swaying.

He turned back to face the road ahead. The pitch-black highway, wheat fields on both sides, nothing visible.

But his fingers were clenched tight.

Before that static screen had lit up, he had seen Su Wan look back over her shoulder.

What had she seen?

The channel was already collapsing. Yet she was still waiting.

Who was she waiting for?