The train appeared for only three seconds.
There was no engine noise.
No vibration from wheels grinding against the tracks.
It was like footage mistakenly overlaid onto reality, gliding silently past the window of Room 401.
When the last car disappeared behind the wall, the view outside became the rainy night on Heping Road again.
The streetlights were still on.
Cars continued passing through the intersection.
As if the subway train that had just passed beside the fourth floor of the apartment building had never existed at all.
But everyone in the room had seen it.
Thirteen empty seats.
Thirteen ringing phones.
And the placard bearing Ethan Lin's name.
No one spoke at first.
Claire Su was the first to look away.
She went to the window without touching the glass, observing the frame from half a meter away.
"No signs of vibration."
"And there isn't any temperature difference on the window's surface caused by airflow."
One of the officers continued staring outside.
"So it was a hallucination?"
Claire turned back.
"How many cars did you see?"
"Six."
"I saw seven."
The officer froze.
"That's impossible."
Another officer immediately said, "I only saw five."
Jason Huang's expression changed too.
"I saw thirteen."
Everyone looked at him at once.
Jason stood in the bedroom doorway, his face pale.
"There was one me in every car."
"Wasn't that the person from the hospital earlier?"
"At first."
He shook his head.
"Halfway through the train's journey, all their faces changed into mine."
"What about the last car?" Claire asked.
Jason was silent for two seconds.
"There were no seats."
"It was a hospital room."
"Thirteen beds."
Everyone had seen a different train.
That meant it wasn't merely a visual projection.
It generated different content according to the viewer's memories, identity, and even fears.
But everyone had seen the same destination.
Thirteen seats.
Thirteen phones.
And the nameplate bearing Ethan Lin's name.
Claire turned toward him.
Ethan's throat still hurt badly, so he could only type on his phone.
This is an invitation.
"It's more like an assignment," Claire said.
"It didn't ask whether you were willing."
"It already reserved a seat for you."
Ethan typed another line.
The switchboard wants us to go to Anhe Station.
"It wants you to go."
"The voice on the phone said 'the next investigator.'"
"We still don't know whom it considers an investigator."
Ethan raised his phone.
The screen showed the photo transmitted from the hospital's security camera.
Written on the hospital-room wall was:
03:44, see you on the last train.
The last-train schedule at Anhe Station had to be confirmed immediately.
An officer checked the official operating information.
"The last train at Anhe Station is at 12:47 a.m."
Claire looked at the burned-out phone.
"So 3:44 a.m. isn't part of normal operating hours."
"That train isn't on the official schedule."
"It might not even run on the existing tracks."
Zheng Jiawen was still sitting on the couch.
She hugged her knees tightly, her eyes fixed on the phone's remains.
"It will come," she said suddenly.
Claire crouched in front of her.
"Have you ridden it?"
Zheng shook her head.
"Thirteen years ago, after I killed that patient."
"Every day at 3:44 a.m., the nurses' station received a phone call."
"No one spoke on the other end."
"There was only the subway arrival announcement."
"For thirteen consecutive days."
"What happened on the fourteenth day?"
Zheng raised her eyes.
"The hospital disappeared."
The room fell silent again.
She continued:
"I remember leaving the hospital that morning."
"I went home and slept for four hours."
"When I went back to work that afternoon, the building had become a construction site."
"The construction fence said it was an Anhe Station subway project."
"I asked the security guard where everyone from the hospital had gone."
"He said there had never been a hospital there."
"I called my coworkers."
"Not one number connected."
"I went home and looked for my pay stubs, ID badge, and schedule."
"Everything was gone."
She looked at Ethan.
"Only the phone remembered."
Ethan typed on his phone:
Why did you only receive another call today?
Zheng read it, confusion appearing on her face.
"I don't know."
"Maybe because Room 404 has returned," Jason said quietly.
Claire looked at him.
"Why do you think that?"
"That equipment label on the phone."
Jason pointed at the remains on the table.
"13-344."
"The phone only started working after Room 404 appeared."
"It's like two systems have been reconnected."
Claire did not deny it.
Room 404 handled the identification, duplication, and replacement of identities.
344 handled calling, connecting, and transferring targets.
One established who.
The other decided where.
If both belonged to some project at Ren'an Sanatorium, then the so-called urban legends might merely be old equipment or experimental procedures resurfacing in a new form.
Footsteps came from outside the room.
An officer hurried up from downstairs.
"Captain Lin, the technical team is here."
"We also found information on Evergreen Asset Management."
He handed over a tablet.
The company had been established on April 14, 1998.
Its registered address was a nonexistent street number.
Person in charge:
Chen Guoqiang.
Ethan stared at the three characters.
He had no recollection of him.
At least in his current memories, he had never known this man.
Claire asked, "Is the company still operating?"
"Its registration status is normal."
"Tax records?"
"It files every year."
"Employees?"
"Zero."
"Assets?"
The officer swiped across the screen.
"It owns only thirteen properties."
Thirteen red dots appeared on the map.
They were scattered across different counties and cities.
Evergreen Apartments was one of them.
The other twelve included:
An underground parking garage that had been sealed off.
A hotel that had been closed for years.
An office building with no registered residents.
An abandoned kindergarten.
A subway station structure that had never been put into service.
The address numbers, floors, or lot numbers at every location contained figures such as 13, 404, and 344.
Claire quickly finished reviewing them.
"This isn't an asset-management company."
"It's managing the sites where the incidents occur."
Ethan pointed to the person's name.
Find him.
The officer shook his head.
"The household-registration system can't find him."
"The only record is a photocopy of an ID submitted when the company was registered."
The screen changed.
The photocopy had yellowed with age.
The man in the photo looked to be in his forties.
Short hair.
A weary gaze.
An unlit cigarette clenched between his teeth.
Ethan stared at the face.
A very brief stab of pain shot through his temple.
A basement.
A metal filing cabinet.
Someone placed an audio cassette on a table.
"Don't ask too many questions," the man said.
The image flashed away.
Ethan's fingers stopped at the edge of the tablet.
Claire noticed immediately.
"You know him?"
He didn't answer.
He wasn't deliberately hiding anything. He simply couldn't determine whether the image was a memory, implanted information, or an effect left behind by Room 404.
Claire took the tablet from him.
"Send me the photo."
"Then check surveillance footage, facial-recognition records, and immigration records."
"Start from the day the company was founded."
The officer nodded.
Once the technical team entered Room 401, they immediately sealed the old-fashioned phone and cassette tape.
Strangely, when the evidence technician placed the phone inside a shielded box, the box's scale showed that it weighed only two hundred grams.
Far less than a normal telephone unit.
When they opened it to confirm, the thirteen teeth were already gone.
So was the tape.
All that remained was a subway ticket folded into a thin strip.
Printed on the ticket was:
Anhe Station.
Entry time:
April 2, 2028 03:44.
Less than seven hours from now.
The exit field was blank.
The fare displayed:
One name.
The evidence technician read it aloud without thinking.
"One name?"
Every phone in the room chimed with a notification at the same time.
The same notice appeared on every screen.
Payment method confirmed.
Claire immediately looked up.
"Power off all phones."
Everyone did so quickly.
Some phones shut down normally.
But three remained stuck on the notification screen.
No matter how long they held the buttons, restarted them, or even removed the batteries, the words did not disappear.
One phone's notification began updating.
Passengers: 1.
The second:
Passengers: 2.
The third:
Passengers: 3.
The number increased once every few seconds.
It wasn't counting the number of people present.
It was as if people were continuing to enter a station somewhere else.
Claire looked at the clock on the wall.
9:41 p.m.
Six hours and three minutes remained until 3:44 a.m.
"Anhe Station has to be locked down immediately," an officer said.
"On what grounds?" Claire countered.
"A terrifying phone notification says a nonexistent train will arrive at the station at 3:44 a.m.?"
"We could say we received a bomb threat."
"Shutting down an operating subway station requires approval from headquarters, the subway police, the fire department, and the city government."
"Report it now."
Ethan typed on his phone.
Don't suspend service across the board.
Claire looked at him.
"Why?"
It needs passengers.
Emptying the station might make it pick people up somewhere else.
Claire understood his concern.
The Room 401 phone incident had already proven that the anomaly could connect a nonexistent platform to a residence.
Even if Anhe Station were shut down, that didn't mean the train would not appear.
It might enter from Evergreen Apartments, the hospital, the other end of the phone, or even wherever any person who answered happened to be.
"Then keep things normal on the surface," she said.
"Secretly lock down the relevant platforms and tunnels."
"After 1:00 a.m., clear part of the area under the pretext of equipment maintenance."
An officer asked, "Are we really going?"
Ethan looked at the subway ticket.
He did not answer immediately.
It was an obvious trap.
The other side had specified the time and place and even prepared a seat in advance.
But it was also the only way they currently had to make direct contact with the switchboard and Ren'an Sanatorium.
Claire answered for him.
"We are."
"But not on its terms."
She took out a notebook and drew a line on the paper.
She wrote 404 on the left and 344 on the right.
In the middle, she labeled the switchboard.
"We can confirm three nodes so far."
"404 generates identities."
"344 calls identities."
"The switchboard connects the two to another space."
Jason asked, "Then what is the train?"
"A transport procedure."
"It takes the people who have been identified somewhere."
"Ren'an Sanatorium?"
"Possibly."
Claire looked at Zheng.
"It could also be bringing Ren'an Sanatorium to the victims."
She drew a circle around all three nodes.
"We've been assuming the sanatorium is a fixed location."
"But what if it isn't?"
"What do you mean?"
"Room 404 can appear in a place that doesn't exist on a building plan."
"A subway platform can appear in a bedroom."
"A recording from 1998 can capture a conversation happening today."
"The thing these phenomena have in common isn't ghosts."
"It's that space and time can both be rewired."
She tapped the switchboard with the tip of her pen.
"Ren'an Sanatorium may not be a building."
"It may be a system that was cut apart but continues operating through different devices."
"Every urban legend."
"Is just one of its rooms."
Jason looked toward the door of Room 404, which had lost its designation.
"So we're not going from one case to the next."
"We're entering different areas of the same hospital."
No one contradicted him.
The theory explained the excessive consistency of the rules between incidents.
Names.
Designations.
Thirteen.
Responses.
And the way every anomaly tried to reclassify people as tenants, patients, passengers, or specimens.
Ethan pointed to the switchboard on the paper.
Find it.
"At 3:44 a.m.," Claire said.
"We'll ride in."
Zheng shot to her feet.
"You can't go."
Everyone looked at her.
Intense fear had returned to her face.
"The last train doesn't carry the living."
"You just said you've never ridden it."
"I haven't."
Zheng grabbed Claire's wrist.
"But I've seen the people who came back."
"Who?"
"That patient from thirteen years ago."
"Didn't you kill him?"
"I thought he died."
Her voice trembled.
"That night, I pressed a pillow over his face."
"I confirmed that he wasn't breathing."
"The hospital also pronounced him dead."
"But the night before the fire,"
"I saw him walk out of the elevator at the nurses' station."
"He was wearing a subway uniform."
"And he was holding a phone."
Claire did not pull free.
"What did he say to you?"
"He said I'd killed the wrong person."
Tears slid down Zheng's face.
"The one who died wasn't him."
"He had only answered the phone for him."
"The real Number Thirteen had been on the train all along."
Pain stabbed Ethan's temple again.
The boy in the hospital bed.
No name.
He didn't need one.
Now there was another patient known as Number Thirteen.
Were these Number Thirteens the same entity?
Or did every area require a Number Thirteen as its core specimen?
"He also said..."
Zheng's grip tightened.
"If the phone ever rings again,"
"don't ever go to the last train."
"Because the train's final stop..."
She paused, her throat seeming to close up.
"Is somewhere that hasn't happened yet."
Claire frowned.
"What does 'hasn't happened yet' mean?"
"I don't know."
"He only said..."
"The train won't take you back to the past."
"It will take you to a future that already remembers your death."
Everyone in the room fell silent.
Ethan picked up the subway ticket.
The entry date was tomorrow morning.
But there was no exit time.
If Zheng was telling the truth, the train's destination might not be a geographical location.
It might be the point in time when an event had already happened.
A point after they had died, disappeared, or been replaced.
Claire looked at him.
"We're still going."
Zheng stared at her in disbelief.
"Didn't you hear me?"
"I heard you."
"Then why—"
"Because someone is already waiting for us there."
Claire pointed to the photo of the hospital room on the phone.
The nameless man who had disappeared from the hospital had been taken away by the train.
He was carrying The Thirteenth File.
If they didn't follow him in, they would lose the only target they could currently contact directly at the core of the case.
And the train had already written Ethan Lin's name down.
Not going did not mean the invitation would become void.
It might only make the train come for him in a more dangerous way.
"What do we need to prepare?" Jason asked.
Claire looked at him.
"You're not going."
"Why not?"
"You've already been confirmed by Room 404 once."
"If the train confirms you again, it could cause an identity conflict."
"I don't even know whether I'm human anymore."
"That's exactly why you can't go."
Jason fell silent.
He knew it was a reasonable judgment.
But he continued staring at the ticket bearing the name Anhe Station.
"Every car in the photo had a me in it," he said.
"That train is calling me too."
Ethan typed on his phone:
You stay outside.
Confirm whether the people who come back are the same people who went in.
Jason stared at the sentence.
"How am I supposed to confirm that?"
Ethan paused.
Then he typed:
Don't confirm.
Just record the differences.
Jason froze.
Then he slowly nodded.
That was the most important lesson left by the Room 404 incident.
Once someone actively confirmed who was real and who was fake, they might complete the selection process the anomaly required.
So they would not judge.
They would only observe.
They would not acknowledge.
They would only record.
Claire began arranging the deployment.
Before 1:00 a.m., the technical team would enter the control room at Anhe Station.
The subway police would seal the maintenance passages leading to the unused areas.
All participating personnel would discard their names and use temporary designations instead.
Their real names could not be used over the radio.
No calls were to be answered.
If any announcement broadcast personal information, the power had to be cut immediately.
The most important rule:
After 3:44 a.m., no one was to respond to being called by name in any form.
Even if the voice belonged to a teammate.
12:20 a.m.
Evergreen Apartments had been placed under an initial lockdown.
Zheng was taken to the hospital for observation.
Jason was assigned to the command vehicle aboveground, where he would help organize the Room 404 rules and compare the footage.
Ethan received basic medical treatment.
There were no fractures in his throat.
But the area around his vocal cords was swollen, and he still could not speak normally for the time being.
The medical staff recommended at least forty-eight hours of rest.
He refused to leave the scene.
Claire did not try to persuade him.
Instead, she handed him a white writing board.
Four sentences had already been written on it.
Don't answer.
Don't acknowledge.
Don't confirm.
Don't look back.
There was a fifth sentence too.
The handwriting was slightly smaller than the first four.
Don't trust me.
Ethan looked up at her.
Claire slipped the pen into her pocket.
"After we board the train,"
"even if you see me, don't trust me right away."
Including what you're saying right now?
"Including that."
On the back of the board, Ethan wrote:
The same applies to me.
They looked at each other for a second.
Neither said anything else.
1:40 a.m.
Anhe Station.
The last train was still in service.
A few passengers remained on the platform.
The announcements gave the normal arrival information.
The convenience store was preparing to close.
A cleaner pushed a cart along the wall.
On the surface, nothing was different from an ordinary night.
But inside a maintenance passage beyond the reach of the security cameras,
thirteen specially selected officers had completed their deployment.
They wore no name badges.
Only designations were attached to the fronts of their uniforms.
01 through 13.
Ethan stopped walking the moment he saw them.
Claire noticed the problem too.
"Who assigned these?"
The officer in charge answered, "The system chose them at random."
"Cancel that."
"Why?"
Claire tore the 07 off her own chest.
"We can't use consecutive designations from one to thirteen."
"Change them all to irregular letters."
The officers didn't understand, but they quickly changed them.
Ethan's designation became K.
Claire's became R.
The others used letters such as M, T, B, and F.
Only one officer's sticker could not be removed.
It was the original 13.
No matter how they pulled at it, the paper seemed to have grown into the uniform.
In the end, they cut it away along with the fabric.
But the number still appeared on the bulletproof vest beneath it.
Black.
As if ink were seeping out from deep within the fibers.
The officer's face went pale.
"I'm dropping out."
Claire immediately nodded.
"Fine."
He clearly hadn't expected her to agree so readily.
"Now?"
"Leave the station immediately."
"Don't take any transportation."
"Don't answer your phone."
"Once you're aboveground, have two colleagues stay with you."
The officer turned to leave.
He had gone less than thirty feet when the public phone in the maintenance passage suddenly rang.
Ring—
Everyone stopped.
It was an intercom phone mounted on the wall.
The equipment had been decommissioned for years.
The line had been disconnected long ago.
Yet the ringing was perfectly clear.
The officer who was about to leave stood with his back to the phone.
Ring—
The second ring.
The small screen beside the phone lit up.
Caller ID:
13.
Claire raised a hand, signaling everyone not to move.
Ring—
The third ring.
The officer's radio switched on by itself.
His voice came through it.
"I've already left."
"Don't worry."
The officer standing there said nothing.
The radio continued:
"I'm aboveground."
"It's safe here."
The voice began repeating itself.
Each sentence sounded like a report to some unseen listener.
Claire pulled out a tool and prepared to cut the public phone's line.
But Ethan noticed the wall.
Water was slowly seeping through the grout beneath the phone.
The thin layer spread across the floor.
It went around everyone.
Then stopped at the feet of the officer who was about to leave.
His reflection appeared on the water's surface.
The reflection was not standing with its back to the phone.
It was facing forward.
It held the receiver in its hand.
"Don't look down," Claire warned.
It was already too late.
The officer saw his reflection.
The version in the water lifted the receiver to its ear.
Its mouth moved.
The officer in reality opened his mouth against his will.
Ethan rushed over.
He covered the man's mouth with one hand and dragged him away from the water with the other.
The reflection's mouth continued moving.
No sound came out, but the words were clear.
I'm here.
At the end of the corridor, a metal door that had not existed before slowly opened.
Beyond it was not a machine room.
It was an empty platform.
The walls were covered in old green tiles.
The station sign had no Chinese, English, or designation on it.
Only a single black number.
13.
The electronic clock displayed:
03:44.
But the actual time was only 1:43 a.m.
Deep on the platform,
a man in a subway uniform stood behind the yellow warning line.
His face
was the face of the patient Zheng Jiawen had killed thirteen years ago.
The man held a white phone.
He looked at everyone.
Then slowly raised the receiver.
The public phone on the wall immediately stopped ringing.
The man spoke across the two different platforms.
"The last train came early."
His voice came directly through every person's radio.
"Because one passenger"
"has already died at the terminal station."
The man raised his other hand.
He pointed at Ethan Lin.
"We have to send him there"
"before he dies."