Hydropower Station Rainy Night

The iron door of the control room closed behind Lin Shen with a dull thud. The hum of equipment startup drowned out all sounds. Blue light rose from the bottom of the transfer pod, dyeing the entire room the color of deep sea. Outside the door, the sound of boots stopped. Then a voice rang out—calm, steady, brooking no argument. "Lin Shen. Let's talk one last time." Water dripped from cracks in the twenty-year-old concrete, drop by drop, as if the old building were slowly weeping.

The transfer pod emitted a low-frequency hum.

Lin Shen stood at the pod's entrance, looking back at Jiang Fei. She was guarding the elevator entrance, her gun aimed down the corridor. The blood on her arm had already dried, dark brown stains spreading all the way to the back of her hand. Her face was illuminated by the blue cold light, her gray-blue short hair like grass covered in frost.

"They're here," Jiang Fei said, her voice very low.

Above the elevator shaft, boots descended the metal stairs. Step by step, unhurried. Lin Shen could recognize that rhythm—just one person. The others had stopped upstairs. Only this one came down the stairs. He wasn't in a hurry. He was never in a hurry.

Lu Yan.

Jiang Fei retreated to the control room door, pulling the iron door shut behind her. The door was heavy—blast-proof design from twenty years ago. The sound it made when closing was like a deep sigh. She turned the lock—a mechanical lock, lockable from the inside.

"How long will the lock hold?"

"I don't know. But long enough for you to say what you need to say."

Outside the door, footsteps stopped in the corridor. Then silence. A long silence. Lin Shen could almost hear the dripping water in the hallway—the rainstorm outside had seeped into the old walls of the hydropower station, water trickling through cracks, drop by drop hitting the cement floor.

Lu Yan didn't knock. He just stood outside the door, separated by that twenty-year-old blast door.

"Lin Shen." His voice came through the iron door, muffled but every word clear. "If you open this door now, I can pretend none of this happened."

Lin Shen stood beside the transfer pod, his hand on the control panel.

"You can pretend none of this happened," Lin Shen said. "I can't."

Silence outside the door for a moment. The dripping sound grew clearer.

"You think you're saving her," Lu Yan said, his tone still calm, as if stating a law of physics. "But what you don't know is—when the channel opens, the membrane between the two worlds will tear open even wider. Every step you take inside, the裂缝 widens by another inch. By the time you find her, both worlds will already be incomplete."

"Then what?" Lin Shen said.

"Then there will be more transgressors. More projected people. More corrections. You think you're the endpoint, Lin Shen. You're the starting point. Once you go through, the chain reaction will drag in hundreds of innocent people. Are you willing to trade a hundred lives for hers?"

Lin Shen's fingers stopped on the control panel.

Jiang Fei leaned against the door, watching him. She didn't interrupt. She was waiting for him to answer for himself.

"Your wife," Lin Shen said.

The breath outside the door stopped for an instant.

"What did you say to her before she entered the channel?"

Silence. A longer silence than before. Water dripped on the cement floor like a second hand.

"I told her not to go," Lu Yan's voice finally came from behind the door, half a degree lower than before. "She said—this is for science."

"She lied," Lin Shen said. "It wasn't for science. It was for you. She knew the experiment was risky, but she went in anyway. Because only if she went in could you watch from outside the control room. If it were you going in, she'd have to watch from outside."

The silence outside the door grew heavier. Not ordinary silence—the silence of something being struck.

"Did she look back at you before entering the channel?" Lin Shen said.

No answer.

"Su Wan waited in the channel for half a year," Lin Shen said. "She dissipated a little every day, just waiting for me. You let your wife go in, and then she was gone. You turned all your anger and guilt into corrections. But have you ever thought—if it were you going in, and she stayed outside, would she do the same thing you did?"

The dripping continued. The breathing outside the door became uneven.

"You said one tear can't drown a city," Lin Shen said. "So can one person's guilt destroy two worlds?"

Jiang Fei suddenly straightened up from the door. She pressed her ear to it, listening, then turned back to Lin Shen and gestured—someone was picking the lock.

"Lin Shen." Lu Yan's voice regained its steadiness, but there was something new in it—not anger, more like exhaustion. "You have three minutes. In three minutes, my team will go around through the maintenance shaft to the ventilation duct and cut off the control room's main power. Then the transfer pod won't work either. Either come out now, or wait inside—dissipate slowly, just like your Su Wan."

Lin Shen looked at the countdown on the console. When he'd entered the key code earlier, the system had automatically started the warm-up procedure. The pod needed seven minutes to reach full power.

"Not enough," he said.

"What's not enough?"

Lin Shen didn't answer Lu Yan. He looked at Jiang Fei.

Jiang Fei understood. She walked over and looked at the warm-up progress on the console—thirty percent. Seven minutes to full power. But Lu Yan had only given them three minutes.

"I can hold them off," Jiang Fei said. "But you need to switch the warm-up to manual acceleration mode."

"Manual acceleration has risks," Lin Shen said. There was a small line of text on the back of Old Zheng's paper—"Manual acceleration may cause resonance frequency偏移, resulting in transfer target deviation."

"How much deviation?"

"Old Zheng didn't say."

Jiang Fei bit her lip. The sound of lock-picking outside grew louder. Metal scraping against metal, sharp and piercing.

"Deviation or not, it doesn't matter," Jiang Fei said. "It's not like you know what's on the other side anyway. Even if you deviate to a neighboring world, it's pretty much the same."

Lin Shen looked at her.

"Are you serious?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Jiang Fei walked to the console and pulled up the manual acceleration interface. "Look—manual acceleration can compress the warm-up to four minutes. In four minutes, you go in. I'll lock the door from outside. It'll take them at least two minutes to break through. That leaves two minutes—"

"What about you?"

Jiang Fei's fingers stopped on the keyboard. She didn't look up.

"I'm a transgressor anyway," she said. "If they catch me, they'll either correct me or lock me up. I have no family here, no friends, no one remembers me. Whether I exist or not makes no difference to this world."

"You do make a difference."

Jiang Fei looked up at him. The blue cold light hit her face, and for the first time, Lin Shen saw no guard in her eyes—no sarcasm, no sneer, no "What do you think you are, some kind of romantic hero?" Just something very calm.

"Lin Shen," she said, "the channel can only hold one person."

Lin Shen froze.

"What do you mean?"

"I've known from the beginning. Old Zheng's coordinate paper had it on the back—the channel resonance needs an anchor point, and the anchor point has to be someone who remembers her. But there was one more thing Old Zheng didn't write down. I saw it in his notebook." Jiang Fei's voice was very soft, but very steady. "A single transfer can only accommodate one consciousness. If two people enter at the same time, their frequencies will interfere with each other, and the channel will collapse."

Lin Shen stared at the jumping numbers on the console. Thirty-six percent.

"You've known from the very beginning."

"Yes."

"Then why did you still help me?"

Jiang Fei took the cigarette from her mouth—still unlit, the filter already chewed out of shape. She placed it on the console, then stood up and walked to the door.

"Because you deserve it," she said. "You deserve to try. And me—"

She didn't finish. The door lock gave a sharp crack. Not because it was picked—the person outside had switched tools, from a wire to hydraulic shears.

"Three minutes isn't enough for us to get emotional," Jiang Fei said, reverting to her usual tone. "Manual acceleration. Now."

Lin Shen's fingers moved across the control panel. He pulled up the manual acceleration protocol and entered the key code—those twelve hexadecimal digits. The system popped up a warning: Manual acceleration may cause frequency偏移. Continue?

He pressed confirm.

The hum of the transfer pod changed pitch. Low frequency turned to mid frequency. The blue light shifted to a deeper indigo. The warm-up progress bar on the console began jumping faster—forty-one percent, forty-five, fifty-one. The temperature in the room was rising; the heat from the equipment made the air distort.

Outside the door, Lu Yan's voice came one last time.

"Lin Shen. Time's up."

Then came a loud crash. Not lock-picking—an explosion. The hydraulic shears cut through the lock cylinder, and at the same time, someone attached a微型爆破 charge to the outside of the door. The iron door's hinges were blown off.

The door opened. But only halfway—Jiang Fei had moved a metal workbench behind it in advance.

Lu Yan stood outside the door. He was wearing a dark suit, his silver-gray hair dotted with a few drips of water from the ceiling. His right hand held a gun, his left hung at his side. The burn scars on the back of his hand glowed dully in the blue cold light.

Behind him stood at least six Correction agents, fully armed. Xiao Lu stood at the very back, his expression unreadable.

"Move aside," Lu Yan said to Jiang Fei.

Jiang Fei didn't move. She stood behind the metal workbench, her gun aimed at the doorway.

"When did you start to believe your justice was still justice?" she asked.

Lu Yan didn't answer her question. He looked at Lin Shen in the transfer pod.

"Once you go in, the channel will take you to Mirror A," he said, his voice suddenly very soft, as if talking to himself. "But you're the anchor. Every second you stay on the other side is an erosion of both worlds. You find her, bring her back—then what? The cracks between the two worlds won't close. More transgressors will emerge. More corrections will be triggered. You think you're saving one person, but you're starting a war."

Warm-up progress—seventy-two percent.

"So what?" Lin Shen said.

Lu Yan looked at him. In those ice-cold eyes, something akin to confusion appeared for the first time.

"So what?" Lin Shen repeated. "You've been telling me about the cost. But you've never asked me—whether I'm willing to pay it. All your calculations, all your logic, all your 'one tear can't drown a city'—they're all built on one assumption."

"What assumption?"

"That love can be measured."

Warm-up progress—eighty-six percent.

Lu Yan raised his gun. Not at Lin Shen—at the transfer pod's control panel.

"I can't let you activate it," he said. "Once the channel opens, the membranes of both worlds will be damaged. If you go through, you'll die. She won't come back, and neither will you. You'll both just dissipate together."

"Maybe," Lin Shen said. "But at least she won't be alone."

Lu Yan's finger rested on the trigger.

At that moment, Jiang Fei fired. She wasn't aiming at Lu Yan—she was aiming at the water pipe above the doorway. The bullet pierced the rusted iron pipe, and a high-pressure stream of water burst out, splashing the agents behind Lu Yan. The view was obscured by water mist, vision blurring.

Warm-up progress—ninety-four percent.

"Go in!" Jiang Fei shouted.

Lin Shen looked back at her one last time. She stood behind the workbench, her gray-blue short hair wet from the water mist, plastered against her cheeks. The blood on her left arm was flowing again—but she was smiling. Not her usual cold smile. A real smile.

He stepped into the transfer pod.

Blue light surged up from his feet, covering his knees, his waist, his chest. The temperature wasn't high, but it felt like being wrapped in water. The sounds outside became muffled—the water flow, the gunshots, Jiang Fei shouting something.

Warm-up progress—one hundred percent.

The transfer pod's door closed. In his last glimpse, Lin Shen saw Jiang Fei smash a fire extinguisher toward the doorway, then mouth something to him.

Same as last time at the elevator entrance—three words.

Hurry up and go.

Then the blue light swallowed everything.