Flames shot up from beneath the collapsed floor.
There was no heat.
Yet they carried an intense smell of burning.
As if tens of thousands of sheets of paper had been burned at once, ink, plastic laminates, and old medical records all reduced to ash.
Ethan Lin was kneeling on the floor.
His throat throbbed from the blow he had just taken.
Every breath felt like a serrated blade scraping along the inside of his windpipe.
He raised his head.
Beneath the floor.
The boy sitting on the No. 13 iron bed was also looking up at him.
Around ten years old.
Short hair.
Pale.
Dark red marks circled his wrists and ankles, left by years of restraints.
His face was almost identical to Ethan Lin's in his childhood photographs.
But his eyes were different.
There was no fear in them.
No confusion.
No emotion a ten-year-old child should have had.
Only waiting.
As if he had been sitting on that iron bed, waiting for twenty-nine years.
“Give me back my name.”
The boy said it again.
Ethan couldn't make a sound.
He planted his palm on the floor and forced himself to stand.
Beside him, Claire Su was still being held from behind by another “self.”
The figure's arms were wrapped around her shoulders, its face pressed beside her ear.
The movement didn't look like an attack.
It was more like someone familiar comforting her.
Yet the figure's arms were slowly sinking into Claire's body.
Her skin wasn't tearing.
There was no blood.
Their outlines were like overlapping images, gradually merging together.
Claire's face grew paler and paler.
An abnormal tremor began in the pupil of her right eye.
For an instant, it was her own eye.
The next instant.
It became blank.
Ethan reached out and grabbed the figure's wrist.
His fingers passed straight through it.
There was no physical form.
Only a bone-deep chill that surged from his palm into his arm.
The figure turned to look at him.
Its face wore the exact same calm expression as Claire's.
“Don't touch me.”
It spoke.
Its voice was Claire's, too.
“You can't tell us apart.”
The real Claire clenched her teeth.
“Left.”
She forced the word out of her throat.
Ethan immediately looked to her left.
At the point where the shadow overlapped her, the outline of its clothing was minutely misaligned.
The real Claire was wearing a waterproof jacket.
But at the shadow's left shoulder, a pale shirt remained from its earlier imitation.
Ethan snatched up the metal sample case from the floor.
Its red indicator light flashed frantically.
Dozens of voices came from inside the case.
Crying.
Laughter.
Shouts.
And his own voice, repeating over and over:
“I’m here.”
He didn't hesitate.
He slammed the sample case into Claire's left shoulder.
Bang!
The case didn't touch her.
Instead, it struck some kind of invisible barrier.
The air rang like shattering glass.
Crack!
The shadow holding Claire suddenly twisted backward.
Its arms were yanked out of her body by some unseen force.
Features reappeared on its blank face.
Then, like a sheet of paper being torn apart, it split down the middle.
A shrill scream filled Room 404.
Claire lost her support and dropped to one knee.
Ethan grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the collapsed section of floor.
The figure didn't disappear.
Its two halves pressed themselves against the left and right walls.
Like two smears of ink crawling upward along the concrete.
The one on the left became Claire.
The one on the right became Ethan.
Both faces turned toward the boy beneath the floor.
The boy didn't even look at them.
His gaze remained fixed on Ethan.
“You don't remember me.”
“I remember the ward.”
Ethan could manage only the faintest breath of sound.
Every word came with stabbing pain.
The boy understood.
“That isn't your memory.”
He said it.
“It's mine.”
Ethan stared at him.
The boy raised his wrist.
The restraints came loose on their own.
The charred straps fell on either side of the iron bed.
“You remember the fire.”
“You remember the man giving you the file.”
“You remember him telling you to live as a person.”
The boy's voice remained calm.
“Because that night, I was supposed to be the one who got out.”
He pointed at Ethan.
“You only left carrying my memories.”
Claire had recovered her breathing.
Standing beside Ethan, she quickly examined the boy, the iron bed, and the burning ward around them.
“He's establishing a premise.”
She lowered her voice.
“Don't accept it.”
Ethan looked at her.
“It wants you to believe that your current identity was taken from him.”
“Once you admit it.”
“Room 404 can turn the return of the name into a valid procedure.”
The boy turned to look at Claire for the first time.
His expression didn't change.
But the flames around the ward suddenly leaned toward her.
“You're not one of the parties involved.”
He said it.
“You have no right to judge.”
Claire took a step forward.
“Neither are you.”
“I am Ethan Lin.”
“You said you don't have a name.”
The boy fell silent.
Claire seized on the contradiction.
“That man in the white coat just said Number Thirteen doesn't need a name.”
“But you said Ethan Lin was yours.”
“Which one is true?”
The flames in the ward thrashed violently.
The two figures on the walls stopped at the same time.
The boy lowered his head and looked at himself.
As if he were considering the question for the first time.
“The name was given to me later.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“What year?”
The boy didn't answer.
Claire continued questioning him:
“You said Ethan left carrying your memories.”
“Then how do you know what name he used after he left?”
“You've been trapped here the entire time.”
“Unless someone has been continually supplying you with information about him.”
The boy slowly raised his eyes.
At last, a trace of something strange appeared on his previously emotionless face.
Not anger.
A delay.
As if the question lay beyond the range of memory he could access.
“Don't answer her.”
The voice of the man in the white coat came again from above the ceiling.
The upside-down hospital corridor had already collapsed halfway.
He stood at the broken edge.
The manifest was still in his hand.
“She is disrupting the recovery procedure.”
Claire looked up.
“So you're the one supplying the information.”
The man in the white coat didn't respond.
“You made him believe Ethan Lin stole his name.”
“And you made Ethan see his childhood memories.”
She spoke rapidly.
Every sentence dismantled another rule in front of them.
“You need two people to acknowledge the same chain of causality at the same time.”
“One admits he is the original sample.”
“The other admits he is the replacement.”
“Only then can the transfer of identity take effect.”
The man in the white coat closed the manifest.
“Analysis is irrelevant.”
“The procedure has already begun.”
He raised a hand and pointed at Ethan.
The shadow on the right side of the wall immediately detached itself from the concrete.
The figure identical to Ethan stood in front of him.
It didn't attack.
It simply opened its mouth.
In Ethan's voice, it said:
“I admit it.”
Claire's face changed.
“It can answer in your place.”
The shadow continued:
“I am not the original sample.”
Ethan swung the sample case at its head.
But before contact, the shadow collapsed inward.
The metal case passed through empty air.
The next second.
The shadow pressed itself against Ethan's back.
An icy sensation shot through his spine.
His body locked up.
His lips opened on their own.
A current of air that wasn't his own rose from his lungs.
“I…”
The sound was forced from his throat.
Hoarse.
Distorted.
But sufficient to constitute an answer.
Claire immediately covered his mouth with one hand.
With the other, she pressed the stun device against his back.
Bzzzt!
The current instantly passed through both of them.
Ethan's muscles convulsed.
The shadow behind him screamed as well.
Forced out of his body, it shot backward and slammed into the wardrobe.
The doors sprang open on their own.
There were no clothes inside.
Only tightly packed medical-record folders.
Every one bore a different name.
But every photograph showed Ethan Lin.
The shadow fell into the pile of records.
Hundreds of files wrapped around it like living things.
The edges of the paper sliced into its black outline.
It began struggling wildly.
The medical records all spoke at once.
“Ethan Lin.”
“Ethan Lin.”
“Ethan Lin.”
The same name.
Different genders.
Different ages.
Different tones of voice.
The boy sat on the No. 13 iron bed and watched it all.
“You can't change it.”
He said it.
“The name has been used for too long.”
“It will come back on its own.”
Ethan wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
He couldn't speak normally and could only look at Claire.
They had worked together for years.
They didn't need complete sentences.
Claire immediately understood his question.
“A name isn't an object.”
She said it.
“You can't claim ownership of one just by saying you have it.”
The boy looked at her.
“A name remembers the person.”
“Wrong.”
Claire said it.
“People remember the name.”
She pulled out her phone.
Ethan's basic information was displayed on the screen.
His birth certificate.
Household registration records.
School records.
His police academy photograph.
Records of the cases he had worked over the years.
“An identity exists not because of a single piece of paper.”
“It exists because countless people have interacted with that person.”
“His teachers remember him.”
“His coworkers remember him.”
“The people he saved remember him.”
“Even the people who hate him remember him.”
Claire looked at the boy.
“Who remembers you?”
The boy didn't answer.
The flames grew even more unstable.
Claire continued:
“All you have is this ward.”
“One manifest.”
“And memories other people stuffed into your head.”
“So you're not the original sample.”
The boy slowly clenched his fingers.
“Shut up.”
“You're no different from the other things in this room.”
“You can only use a name to confirm that you exist.”
“I said shut up!”
The flames roared higher.
The entire No. 13 iron bed vanished into fire.
For the first time, the boy showed an obvious emotion.
His face began to twist.
It wasn't turning into a monster.
It was constantly changing.
Ethan's childhood face.
Jason Huang.
Zhang Bohsun.
The old woman.
Claire Su.
Each face lasted less than a second.
Then it returned to the face of the boy.
“I am Number Thirteen!”
He screamed.
“I am not a file!”
“Then what's your name?”
Claire asked.
The ward abruptly fell silent.
It was the question every anomaly had used to torment them.
Now Claire had returned it to him word for word.
The boy sat in the fire.
His mouth opened.
But no sound came out.
“What’s your name?”
Claire asked again.
The man in the white coat suddenly shouted:
“Stop asking questions!”
Every fluorescent tube in the upside-down corridor exploded.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
For the first time, the man in the white coat lost his composure.
“Number Thirteen doesn't need to answer!”
“He has no name!”
Claire immediately seized on the words.
“He heard you.”
The boy slowly lifted his head and looked at the man in the white coat.
“I have no name?”
The man in the white coat took a step back.
“That is what the procedure dictates.”
“Ethan Lin isn't mine?”
“You are Number Thirteen.”
“I’m asking you.”
The boy's voice dropped unnaturally low.
“Is Ethan Lin my name?”
The man in the white coat didn't answer.
The flames around the boy began turning black.
“You lied to me.”
“No.”
“You said he took my name.”
“That was to make you complete the recovery.”
The instant the man in the white coat finished speaking, he seemed to realize he had said something wrong.
But it was already too late.
The boy rose from the iron bed.
His feet stepped into the flames.
The restraints, patient clothes, and medical records around him all turned to black ash.
“So I’m not Ethan Lin.”
He looked at Ethan as an adult.
“And you didn't take my name.”
Ethan met his gaze.
He neither nodded nor denied it.
He couldn't make that judgment for the boy.
The boy had to reach the answer himself.
The boy turned toward the man in the white coat.
“Then who am I?”
The man in the white coat began backing away.
“You are Number Thirteen.”
“That isn't a name.”
“It's your designation.”
“I don't want a designation.”
The boy took a step forward.
Room 404 shook violently.
Cracks split the walls.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
Every medical record bearing Ethan Lin's name began to burn.
The man in the white coat raised the manifest.
“Number Thirteen.”
“Get back in bed.”
The boy didn't stop.
“That is an order.”
“I am not your patient.”
“You are a sample.”
“I am not a sample, either.”
His body began to grow.
Not through normal growth.
The outlines of different ages overlapped at the same time.
Ten.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Dozens of faces that might have belonged to him interwove in the flames.
“I am not a designation.”
“Not a patient.”
“Not a sample.”
“And not Ethan Lin.”
Each time he denied an identity.
Part of the ward collapsed.
The iron bed twisted.
The manifest caught fire on its own.
The man in the white coat's body began turning transparent as well.
“Stop!”
He shouted the command.
“If you have no name, you can't leave!”
The boy stood directly beneath the collapsed floor.
Through the flames, he looked up at Ethan and Claire.
“If you have no name.”
He asked.
“Does that mean you can't become a person?”
Claire was silent for a moment.
This no longer felt like an inducement designed by a procedure.
At least not in that moment.
The boy genuinely wanted to know the answer.
“Yes.”
She said it.
“A name is only how other people find you.”
“It isn't proof that you exist.”
The man in the white coat jerked his head up.
“Don't answer him!”
But the boy had already heard her.
He slowly looked at his own hands.
“Then can I choose one for myself?”
Claire said:
“Yes.”
The boy raised his eyes.
For the first time.
A child's bewilderment appeared in them.
“How do I choose?”
Claire didn't name him for him.
She only said:
“First, get off that bed.”
“Then stay alive.”
“When you know what kind of person you want to become, decide what you want other people to call you.”
The boy stood in the flames.
He didn't move for a long time.
The man in the white coat raised the burning manifest.
“Number Thirteen recovery failed.”
“Begin destruction.”
Flames surged from every wall around the ward at once.
This time.
Ethan felt the heat.
True, searing heat rushed up from beneath the floor.
The curtains, bedsheets, and wardrobe in Room 404 caught fire instantly.
Smoke rapidly filled the space.
Claire grabbed Ethan's arm.
“An exit will appear.”
He questioned her with his eyes.
“Why?”
“This place has been rebuilding the space according to its rules.”
“The destruction procedure means it has to expel samples that have been confirmed invalid.”
She looked at the sample case.
“Right now, we're the invalid samples.”
The metal case's red light suddenly turned green.
The lid sprang open on its own.
There was no shadow inside.
Only a rusted silver key.
It was exactly the same as the one Jason Huang had taken from the key lockbox when he moved in.
New words appeared on the notice on the table.
Move-in confirmation failed.
The next line read:
Tenant, please leave before the fire begins.
The front door unlocked with a click.
Clack.
Ethan immediately grabbed the key.
He and Claire rushed toward the door.
When it opened.
There was no fourth-floor corridor outside.
It was Ren'an Sanatorium in 1998.
Thick smoke filled the air.
Alarms blared.
Children in patient clothes ran through the halls.
Some had no faces.
Some had cloth bags over their heads.
More stood inside the rooms on either side, repeating their names over and over.
“Chen Liwei.”
“Li Peishan.”
“Zhou Mingde.”
“I’m here.”
“I’m here.”
“I’m here.”
They seemed to still be waiting to be called during the fire.
Claire covered her mouth and nose.
“Don't look at them.”
The two of them rushed into the corridor.
Behind them, Room 404 began to collapse.
The man in the white coat's furious roar came from the flames:
“Number Thirteen can't leave!”
At the end of the corridor.
The boy was still standing inside the ward.
Flames surrounded his body.
Ethan stopped.
Claire grabbed him.
“You can't go back.”
Ethan looked at the boy.
The boy didn't call for help.
He simply stood there quietly.
As if making his final choice.
The man in the white coat lunged at him through the fire.
The boy suddenly raised a hand.
He grabbed the mask on the man's face.
And ripped it off.
There was no face behind the mask.
Only a stack of curled medical-record pages.
A black number was printed in the center of the paper.
13.
The boy thrust his hand into the documents.
He grabbed the manifest inside the man's body.
And tore it in half.
Riiip!
The entire sanatorium shook at once.
Every child stopped calling out names.
Slowly, they turned their heads.
For the first time, they looked toward the exit.
The boy stood at the center of the flames.
He said one thing to Ethan.
“This name.”
“You keep using it.”
Ethan looked at him.
The boy gave him the faintest smile.
“I’ll find my own.”
The next second.
The flames swallowed them both.
The ward, the man in the white coat, and the boy vanished together.
At the end of the corridor, the stairwell entrance of Evergreen Apartments appeared.
Ethan and Claire rushed through it.
As they took the final step.
A powerful force erupted behind them.
They were thrown out wholesale.
Bang!
They crashed onto the fourth-floor corridor of Evergreen Apartments.
Behind them.
The door to Room 404 slammed shut.
The numbers on the doorplate shook violently.
The first 4 fell off.
The 0 split apart.
The final 4 seemed to melt from the heat and slowly streamed down the door.
A few seconds later.
All that remained on the door was a wooden plaque without a designation.
The corridor lights returned to normal.
There was no fire.
No smoke.
The door to Room 402 was still open.
Inside was nothing but an abandoned unit left empty for years.
The backup officers lay beside the stairs.
One by one, they regained consciousness.
Jason Huang leaned against the wall.
He was clutching the document he had brought out of the ward.
The moment he saw Ethan and Claire, he stood up.
“How long were you in there?”
Claire looked at her phone.
9:33 p.m.
Only two minutes had passed since she entered the ceiling.
“What about the person downstairs?”
Ethan asked hoarsely.
An officer pushed himself upright against the wall.
“The ambulance just took him away.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Alive.”
The officer hesitated.
“But his face isn't Jason Huang's anymore.”
Jason lowered his head.
“Who did he turn into?”
“Don't know.”
“He doesn't know, either.”
Ethan walked toward what had once been Room 404.
The door could no longer be opened.
The key wouldn't go in.
It was as if the inside of the lock had been sealed with concrete.
Claire pressed her ear against the door.
There wasn't a sound inside.
She stepped back.
“It’s over for now.”
Ethan shook his head.
“It only rejected the move-in.”
“You think it will choose another tenant?”
“Not it.”
He looked at the document in Jason's hands.
“Someone is using it.”
Jason handed over the 1998 document.
Its edges were burned.
Most of the contents were still legible.
Name: Jason Huang.
Photo: A young man approximately twenty-four years old.
Date taken: March 13, 1998.
Status:
Replacement identity generation successful.
Memory implantation complete.
Estimated period of use: fourteen days.
Claire finished reading it.
“This document isn't yours.”
Jason's voice trembled.
“But the photo is me.”
“A photo resembling you doesn't mean the document belongs to you.”
“Then who am I?”
No one answered immediately.
The question had appeared too many times already.
Every answer.
Might constitute another confirmation of identity.
Jason looked at Ethan.
“Am I fake, too?”
Ethan's throat still couldn't produce a normal voice.
He took the phone Claire handed him.
In the Notes app, he typed a sentence.
The choices you made tonight were real.
Jason stared at the words.
His eyes slowly reddened.
Ethan continued typing.
Until we find more evidence, don't decide for yourself whether you're real or fake.
And don't let anyone else decide for you.
Jason nodded.
Just then.
The sound of an ambulance leaving came from downstairs.
Red emergency lights swept across the corridor window.
Bright.
Dark.
Bright.
Dark.
Each time the light passed over it, a black number briefly appeared on the door that had no designation.
The first time.
4.
The second time.
0.
The third time.
4.
After the final red flash disappeared.
The numbers did not remain.
But in the center of the door.
Thirteen tiny scratches had appeared.
Ethan stared at the scratches.
The boy's final expression flashed through his mind again.
He had said.
He would find his own name.
The question was.
After an unnamed existence capable of carrying countless identities left Room 404.
Where would it go?
And in whose form would it continue living?
Claire's phone suddenly rang.
The caller was a hospital.
She answered.
“This is Claire Su.”
The person on the other end said a few words.
Her expression gradually grew grave.
“Are you sure?”
She looked at Ethan.
“We’re on our way.”
The call ended.
“The person taken to the hospital downstairs is awake.”
Jason immediately asked:
“What did he say he was?”
Claire shook her head.
“He doesn't remember anything.”
“The hospital ran tests.”
“DNA, fingerprints, dental records—they don't match anything.”
Jason fell silent.
“There’s one more thing.”
Claire said it.
“The doctors found something in his stomach.”
“What?”
“A folded piece of paper.”
“There were no injuries from swallowing.”
“It was as if the paper had been inside him from the beginning.”
Ethan took the phone.
Claire opened the photograph the hospital had sent.
The paper had been soaked through with stomach acid.
Several lines of writing were still visible.
At the top, it read:
The Thirteenth File.
In the middle was a string of numbers and words.
It wasn't the address of Evergreen Apartments.
It was a subway station.
At the bottom was a single sentence.
The next name will answer the phone at 3:44 a.m.
Jason stared at the photograph.
“What does this mean?”
No one in the corridor answered.
In the distance.
A phone suddenly rang inside one of the apartments.
The sound passed through the walls.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then.
Someone answered.
A woman's voice came faintly through.
“Hello?”
After a brief silence.
She asked in confusion:
“How do you know my name?”
Ethan and Claire turned at the same time.
The voice came from Room 401.
The next second.
A barely audible whisper came from the other end of the phone.
Even through the door.
Everyone heard it clearly.
“Don't look back.”
Inside Room 401.
The woman screamed.
The lights abruptly went out.
And the electronic clock on the corridor wall.
The time changed from 9:34 p.m.
Instantly to—
03:44.