Passage Coordinates

The wheat fields on either side of the national highway surged like a silver sea under the moonlight, but two pairs of high beams appeared in the rearview mirror—the Correctors had come out through the small back courtyard. Jiang Fei yanked the steering wheel. The off-road vehicle veered off the national highway and charged into a mountain road not marked on any navigation system. Eagle's Beak Cliff was thirty-two kilometers away.

The mountain road was half as narrow as the highway. Dense locust trees lined both sides, their branches scraping against the windows, making a sound like fingernails dragging across a chalkboard.

Jiang Fei gripped the wheel with one hand while pressing the other against the wound on her left arm. The blood had clotted again, but her lips were pale. The in-car navigation showed thirty-one kilometers ahead, with an estimated arrival time of forty minutes—speed limited by the mountain road, no way to go faster.

"Old Zheng's passage coordinates." Lin Shen unfolded the paper and silently read the data on it by the light of the phone screen. "Eagle's Beak Cliff Hydropower Station, basement level three, the Experimental Backup Control Room. The coordinate key is—" He recited a twelve-digit hexadecimal number.

Jiang Fei glanced at it.

"That's not coordinates," she said.

"What?"

"Those aren't coordinates. That's the resonance frequency for the passage." She pulled out a cigarette, held it in her mouth without lighting it, just bit the filter. "We already got the real coordinates from the system positioning—latitude, longitude, altitude. That string of numbers is the key. To open the passage, you need to use a specific resonance frequency to excite the residual energy. If the frequency is wrong, the passage won't open. If the frequency is close but off by just a little—"

"What happens if it's off by a little?"

Jiang Fei didn't answer. She bit down on the filter.

"Passage Collapse." Lin Shen said it for her.

The off-road vehicle swung around a sharp curve. The tires skidded on loose gravel, the body sliding half a meter sideways. Jiang Fei steadied it. In the rearview mirror, the two pairs of high beams were still there, closer than before.

"Lu Yan's people got the coordinates too," Lin Shen said.

"Of course. Old Zheng's information isn't a secret to them," Jiang Fei said. "But they don't know the key. Old Zheng only gave it to you."

Lin Shen looked at the paper again. Twelve digits. A combination of Arabic numerals and English letters, some spots where Old Zheng's pen tip had punched small holes through the paper. He noticed there was another line on the back of the paper—fainter handwriting, written in pencil, erased but not completely.

He leaned in to look.

"Frequency resonance requires an anchor point. The anchor point must be someone who remembers her," Lin Shen read aloud, his voice very soft. "Otherwise the passage cannot identify the target world."

Jiang Fei was silent for a moment.

"So now you're a key."

Lin Shen folded the paper and put it back in his pocket. Deep in his pocket, his fingertips touched his wallet—inside the wallet's inner layer, that scrap of paper that had long since turned completely white was still there. He touched it once every day, to make sure it was still there. Even though there was nothing left on it, he had to keep it.

"I'm not just a key," he said.

Jiang Fei didn't respond. She glanced at the fuel gauge—half a tank left. Enough to reach the hydropower station, but not necessarily enough to get back.

"There's another problem," she said, reaching under the steering wheel to pull out an old tablet—her backup device kept in the car, with a cracked corner on the screen but still usable. She tossed the tablet to Lin Shen. "Open the map. Look at the terrain around the hydropower station."

Lin Shen opened the offline map and zoomed in on the area around the hydropower station. Eagle's Beak Cliff Hydropower Station was built at the bottom of a valley, surrounded on three sides by cliffs, with only one road in and out—the one they were on now. In other words, if someone blocked the entrance, anyone inside would be trapped like a turtle in a jar.

"This is a trap," Lin Shen said.

"Right. But Lu Yan doesn't have any other choice—the passage is here. He can only block us on the road."

"Is there another way?"

Jiang Fei thought for a moment. "There's an old maintenance catwalk along the cliff face on the west side of the station. You can go around from the side of the dam. But the catwalk is made of wood, abandoned for twenty years. No telling if it can still hold a person."

Lin Shen looked for that catwalk on the map. It wasn't visible on the satellite image, blocked by trees. But the contour lines showed the cliff slope was over sixty degrees.

In the rearview mirror, the high beams became three pairs. A third vehicle had merged in from a side road. Corrector reinforcements.

"They're catching up," Lin Shen said.

Jiang Fei stepped on the gas. The off-road vehicle bounced more violently along the mountain road, the suspension groaning with each jolt. She bit down on the unlit cigarette, sweat beading on her forehead. The wound on her left arm had probably torn open again; blood trickled down past her elbow, dripping onto the gear stick.

"Let me drive."

"Can you?"

"Yes."

Jiang Fei looked at him and didn't argue. She pulled over on the next straight stretch, and the two of them quickly swapped places. Lin Shen got into the driver's seat and adjusted the rearview mirror. He'd gotten his driver's license back in college, hadn't driven much, but this road didn't require skill—just nerve.

"There's a fork three kilometers ahead. Take the left," Jiang Fei said, leaning back in the passenger seat, fumbling to rebandage her wound. "The right leads to the mining area. Dead end."

Lin Shen pressed the accelerator. The off-road vehicle picked up speed again, the engine's roar echoing through the narrow valley. As they turned, the headlights swept across a roadside sign—Eagle's Beak Cliff Hydropower Station, 27km.

"Have you ever thought about something?" Lin Shen said.

"Go on."

"The passage is bidirectional. If I can go over there, something from over there can come here."

Jiang Fei stopped bandaging and looked at Lin Shen.

"In theory," she said.

"Then why don't the Correctors go over there directly? Do they have people on that side too?"

Jiang Fei was quiet for a moment. "Do you know why Lu Yan chose the hydropower station as his backup lab?"

"No."

"Because the hydropower station has a natural electromagnetic shielding layer. Groundwater, rock strata, concrete—three layers of isolation. If you open the passage anywhere else, the Correctors can track the energy fluctuations. But under the hydropower station, the signal gets blocked. That's why Old Zheng chose it." She paused. "Which means, in that control room, Lu Yan can't track you either. Once you go in, there are only two outcomes—success, or never coming out."

"A third possibility," Lin Shen said. "He follows me in."

A red light flashed in the rearview mirror—not a car light, a flare. The Correctors were signaling.

"They're alerting the vehicles ahead," Jiang Fei said. "There might already be people at the hydropower station entrance."

Lin Shen tapped his fingers on the steering wheel three times.

The fork arrived. He turned left, onto an even narrower road. This road had clearly gone years without maintenance, potholes everywhere, the shrubbery on both sides nearly swallowing the path. The headlights only reached a dozen meters ahead; beyond that were undulating mountain shadows and deeper darkness.

The navigation showed twenty-three kilometers remaining.

"Did she ever tell you—" Jiang Fei spoke suddenly, her voice softer than before. "Su Wan. Did she ever tell you which side she came from?"

Lin Shen shook his head. "She never mentioned it. I only know she came from Mirror A."

"The research institute on Mirror A's side is symmetrically positioned to the one in this world. Which means—" Jiang Fei opened the tablet and switched to a coordinate mapping diagram she'd drawn herself. "The experimental control room over there is also at Eagle's Beak Cliff Hydropower Station."

Lin Shen understood. "So she wasn't trapped inside the passage. She's trapped over there—in her own world."

"More precisely, trapped in that hydropower station's control room over there," Jiang Fei said. "When the Passage Collapse happened, she was pushed back into her own world. But she never left the control room—because she's been waiting. Waiting for someone to open the passage from this side."

"How long has she been waiting?"

Jiang Fei glanced at the passage energy decay curve—she had taken a photo of it earlier and saved it.

"At least half a year. Counting from the day the passage was supposed to close."

Half a year. Su Wan had been in the basement level three of Eagle's Beak Cliff Hydropower Station, a room without windows, without sunlight, for half a year. Waiting for a person who might not come. Waiting for a passage that might never open again.

Lin Shen's foot unconsciously pressed harder on the accelerator.

"Did you ever tell her—" Jiang Fei hesitated, as if choosing her words. "That you love her?"

Lin Shen didn't answer.

The mountain road kept unfolding in the headlights, curve after curve, like an onion that never peeled away. The locust trees grew denser on both sides, branches striking the windshield, showering down broken leaves.

"I never said it," he finally said. "I thought there was still time."

Jiang Fei was silent. She took the cigarette out of her mouth and placed it on the dashboard. It had never been lit, but the filter was already chewed flat.

"What about you?" Lin Shen said. "The world you want to go back to—is there someone there waiting for you?"

Jiang Fei gave a smile that wasn't really a smile. Her lips curved, but her eyes didn't move. "I came over three years ago. If I go back, no one probably remembers me anymore. And the Correctors won't let that side go either."

"Then why do you still want to go back?"

"Because that's my world," she said. "Even if no one remembers, it's still mine."

A massive concrete wall appeared ahead. The dam of the Eagle's Beak Cliff Reservoir reflected a cold gray light under the moon. The main building of the hydropower station was just below the dam, a concrete colossus with all its windows shattered, vines crawling up the walls.

Lin Shen turned off the headlights and approached slowly.

The iron gate at the hydropower station entrance was half open, the padlock cut through—the cut was fresh. There were fresh tire tracks on the ground.

"Lu Yan's people are already here," Jiang Fei whispered.

Lin Shen parked the car in the shadow of the dam's side and killed the engine. The surroundings fell quiet, leaving only the sound of water from the reservoir in the distance and the wind moaning through broken windows.

He took out Old Zheng's paper and confirmed the coordinates one last time.

"Basement level three. The entrance is behind the control room on the second floor. There's a service elevator that goes straight down."

"Is the elevator still working?"

"Old Zheng said it is. He said he came here last month and checked the equipment."

Jiang Fei pulled a flashlight and a folding knife from under the seat. She tossed the knife to Lin Shen.

"Know how to use it?"

Lin Shen caught the knife. He didn't. But he nodded.

The two of them got out of the car and moved forward hugging the shadows of the building. The concrete ground was covered in moss, very slippery. Lin Shen could hear his own footsteps—as heavy as his heartbeat. He remembered that deep breath he used to take before going home each time. This time he didn't do it. There was no need.

He no longer needed to prepare. He had waited long enough for this.

The iron door on the second floor was slightly ajar. Jiang Fei slipped through first, sweeping the flashlight around—the control room was large, walls covered with decommissioned instrument panels and distribution boxes. The service elevator was at the far end of the room, a rust-stained metal door.

Jiang Fei pressed the elevator button. The indicator light came on. Dim, but at least it was on. The cables began to run, making a creaking noise, but steady.

The elevator rose from below. The door opened—empty inside.

They stepped into the elevator. Jiang Fei pressed B3. The elevator began descending. The sound of the cables was especially clear in the sealed elevator shaft, each rotation like counting seconds.

Then came a sound from above.

Not the cables. The sound of boots on metal stairs, coming down from above. Many people.

Jiang Fei looked at the floor indicator—B1.

The boots moved faster.

B2.

The elevator door opened. B3.

Outside was a dark corridor, with an emergency light glowing at the end. Orange light. The control room door was at the end of the corridor, with faded lettering on it—"Experimental Backup Control Room · Unauthorized Entry Prohibited."

The sound of boots reached the top of the elevator shaft.

Jiang Fei drew her gun and aimed toward the stairs.

"Open the door. You have the key."

Lin Shen ran to the control room door. There was a keypad on the door, and next to it a palm-sized touchscreen. He pulled out Old Zheng's paper and entered the twelve-digit combination of numbers and letters.

The keypad lit up. A green light blinked. The door lock clicked with a dull thud.

The door opened.

Inside the control room, rows of equipment screens lit up simultaneously, blue light flooding the entire room. At the center of the room, a circular platform about two meters in diameter was glowing—the Transfer Pod.

Lin Shen turned around and saw Jiang Fei standing guard at the elevator entrance, gun raised. She shouted something at him, but the roar of the equipment starting up drowned it out.

He couldn't hear clearly. But he could read her lips.

"Get in there. Now."