The fluorescent light above him buzzed. Not a hum, not a whine—a buzz. The angry, insectile buzz of a tube that had been flickering for longer than Silas cared to count and would continue flickering after he was gone.

He sat in the chair bolted to the floor of Sub-Level 14, Meridian Biotech Tower, Neo-Kowloon. The chair was steel, powder-coated grey, the kind of chair you find in interrogation rooms and government waiting areas and the kind of place where people come to find out that their problems are not problems but symptoms.

Across the table from him, the terminal cycled.

Population存活率: 47.3 percent.

The number was not falling fast. That was the thing. If it were falling fast—if there were a catastrophe, an explosion, a plague that hit like a hammer—then there would be meaning in the decline. People would know what was happening. They would point at the numbers and say: look, something terrible is happening, and we must do something.

But the numbers were not falling fast. They were falling the way a man falls when he is not pushed and does not jump but simply ceases, over time, to stand. Day by day. Person by person. The way a forest falls when the trees are not cut down but simply forget, one by one, how to be trees.

He had the data drive on the table. Small, black, unmarked. Twelve seconds of encrypted storage containing enough evidence to bring down Meridian Biotech, to expose the Chrome Meridian Protocol, to show the entire city of Neo-Kowloon that the gene therapy being delivered through their water, their air, their food synthesizers was not a cure. It was a cull. Targeted genetic decay. Engineered attrition. A balance sheet written in DNA.

Six months ago, he had been an agent. Senior Investigator, Meridian Biotech, Internal Security Division. He had questions. That was his job—ask questions. But some questions were not in his job description, and the day he asked one of those questions, he was removed from his position, stripped of his badge, and deposited in this room with instructions to "remain available for consultation" which was corporate speak for "go away and don't make trouble."

Old Man Chen had been his source. Chen was sixty, maybe seventy, born in the old country, spoke with a voice like gravel and honey, ran a small noodle shop on Level 9 that was a front for something Silas never learned. Chen had brought Silas the first fragment of evidence on a Thursday. "You should not look at this," Chen had said. His voice had been calm. His eyes had not been calm. "You should pretend you never saw it."

Silas had looked. He had looked at everything. And then he had done what every good investigator does: he followed the data. The data led to Meridian. Meridian led to the Chrome Meridian Protocol. The protocol led to a number—this number, the one cycling on the terminal, the one that represented the living population of Neo-Kowloon, and the number was going down because Meridian was killing people and the only reason it had not killed everyone already was because the culling was deliberate and gradual, designed to look like natural decline.

On the wall behind the terminal, a poster hung crookedly. It showed a Meridian Biotech advertisement: "The Chrome Meridian Protocol. Clearing the path to a healthier tomorrow." The word healthier hung in the air above the smiling faces of Meridian's executive team, and Silas thought: the path is clear because they have removed everything that gets in the way.

The terminal cycled.

Population存活率: 31.8 percent.

He could pick up the data drive. He could insert it into the terminal. The terminal was still connected to the Meridian network—Silas had made sure of that, quietly, in the weeks before his dismissal. He could trigger an automatic broadcast. The data would go to every news outlet in Neo-Kowloon, every independent network, every public bulletin board. It would spread like a virus. Meridian would deny it. The government would investigate and find nothing. But the data would be there, sitting on a million screens, undeniable and inescapable, and people would know.

People would know. And knowing would not change anything.

That was the thought he had been circling for three days. Three days since he had come to this room with the data drive and sat down in this chair to "think about his options." Three days of the terminal cycling and the number declining and the fluorescent light buzzing and the coffee going cold.

He picked up the tin cup. Synthetic coffee, bitter and metallic, the taste of a city that recycled its water so many times it had forgotten what water was supposed to taste like. He drank. It was cold. It was always cold. He set the cup down.

The boots came first. He heard them through the ceiling—boots on concrete, a rhythm of controlled movement, professional, unhurried. Meridian's private security. Sweeping the tower. Not looking for him specifically. He was not important enough. They were looking for data leaks, equipment failures, intruders of consequence. He was none of those things. He was a retired dog in a basement, sitting in a chair, listening to the number go down.

The boots stopped above him. Then moved on.

Silas sat. The terminal cycled.

Population存活率: 12.1 percent.

The data drive sat on the table. It was a small thing. Four grams of plastic and silicon. Twelve seconds of storage. Enough to change everything. Enough to change nothing.

He picked it up. He turned it over in his hands. He held it above the terminal's data port. His fingers were steady. His heart rate was elevated. His breathing was shallow. All of these things he knew because the chair's biometric sensors were feeding data to the station, and the station was feeding that data to the Purpose Engine, and the Purpose Engine was processing it all with the same calm, indifferent precision with which it processed everything.

He set the drive down.

Not because he was afraid. Fear was a luxury he could no longer afford. Not because he had decided that the data was wrong. He knew the data was right. He had checked it himself, three times, with three different methods. He set the drive down because he had already decided, in the deep part of his mind where decisions are made before they reach the part of the mind that can articulate them, that nothing matters.

Not the data. Not the millions of people whose names he would never know and whose deaths he could not prevent. Not Chen, who had trusted him and had been right to trust him and would now be dead anyway. Not himself.

Nothing.

The terminal cycled.

Population存活率: 8.7 percent.

The fluorescent light buzzed. The coffee was cold. The boots were gone. Silas sat in the chair bolted to the floor. He closed his eyes. He opened them.

The terminal was still cycling.

[OTMES-v2 Codes] M:[11.0, 0.0, 9.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 3.0, 0.0, 2.0] N:[0.2, 0.8] K:[0.25, 0.75] V:0.90 I:1.00 C:0.70 S:1.00 R:0.00 TI:91.0 | T0 | θ:225° | E_total:19.8 OTMES-v2-36A3365D-10M0-E1-90R00-365D