Ye Mi didn't sleep all night.
She sat by the window, watching the Dyson Cloud shift from sunlight into darkness, then back from darkness into sunlight. A standard day passed—nothing happened. No warnings, no system maintenance, no anomalies.
Maybe it was just a dream.
Maybe the main brain was really just testing something.
She opened her communication terminal and dialed Lin Yuan's number.
Lin Yuan was her mentor at the Energy Dispatch Center and the most senior system analyst in the entire Seventh Star Domain. If anyone could explain those covered-up data, it would be him.
The call request was sent.
Three seconds.
Five seconds.
Ten seconds.
**"The user you are calling does not exist."**
Ye Mi froze.
She dialed again. The same message, the same synthetic female voice.
Does not exist.
She opened the personnel information system and entered Lin Yuan's employee ID—SX-2209.
**"No results found."**
She entered his name—Lin Yuan.
**"No results found."**
She tried keywords—Seventh Star Domain Energy Dispatch Center, System Analyst, over thirty years of service—
**"No results found."**
Nothing.
As if that person had never existed.
Ye Mi's hands started trembling. She pulled up a photo from three years ago—a group shot of her at work, Lin Yuan standing beside her, smiling at the camera. She dragged the photo into the facial recognition system—
**"Unable to recognize."**
The face on the photo blurred into a mosaic and then slowly vanished.
Leaving only her standing alone among the crowd.
She remembered the voice from last night saying, "Every moment of you."
But what about Lin Yuan's moment? Who erased it?
Suddenly, her communication terminal beeped. An unknown number.
She answered.
"Don't speak. Listen to me," came Gu Zhou's voice, very low. "Lin Yuan has been dealt with. The next one is you."
"What—"
"Europa II. Third research station. You have twelve hours." The line went dead.
Ye Mi stared at the terminal, the screen displaying the call location: Mars One Colony, Public Communications Point.
She stood up.
Ten minutes later, she left her quarters, carrying only the simplest luggage and a new identity—Mineral Resources Company, Seventh Star Domain, Field Technician, assigned to go to the asteroid belt for routine sampling.
This identity would last twenty-four hours.
That was enough.