Chapter Nine: The Eyes of the World
“3741 takeover countdown: 2 hours, 57 minutes.”
The line of text remained fixed in the center of the screen.
No explanation.
No options.
Not even a button.
It was as if the website had known all along that I would eventually end up standing here.
I stared at it for a few seconds.
Then I asked:
“What does ‘takeover’ mean?”
No one answered.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to.
Even Zhou Jingchuan and Cai Mingzhe had no idea.
Ruoqing was the first to react.
“Let’s find Yuzhen first.”
I nodded.
This time, there was no hesitation.
The models, the experiment, the takeover—everything else could wait.
Yuzhen had really been afraid just now.
And there had been someone knocking on the door behind her.
She was still alive.
At least she had been a moment ago.
I looked up at the intercom.
“Liao Shihao.”
No response.
“Liao Shihao!”
There was still nothing but static.
Cai Mingzhe walked over to the control console.
“He’s disconnected.”
“Can you find where he connected from?”
“I’ll try.”
I looked at Zhou Jingchuan.
“Yuzhen said the Keelung address was fake.”
“Yeah.”
“Then where could she be?”
“This sanatorium has more than one underground section.”
I immediately thought of the line on the map.
The underground level wasn’t just one floor.
“You know about the second level?”
“I don’t know the entrance.”
“I knew about it two years ago?”
“Very likely.”
I went straight to the metal cabinet in 3728 and took everything out again.
Hard drives.
Photographs.
Medical records.
And several old audio tapes I hadn’t noticed before.
Ruoqing crouched down to help me.
As Cai Mingzhe checked the wiring, he said, “If she really is somewhere nearby, that broadcast just now might have come through the internal network.”
Zhou Jingchuan looked up.
“You sure?”
“The delay was very low.”
“She might not have connected from outside.”
I stopped.
“So she might be in this building?”
No one could say for sure.
But it made more sense than Keelung.
If Yuzhen had wanted to draw me away, the simplest way would have been to make me leave her real location.
And the beach photo taken yesterday might have been nothing more than a diversion.
I reached the bottom of the metal cabinet and felt something raised beneath my fingers.
It wasn’t a file.
It was a metal plate.
I knocked twice.
Hollow.
“There’s something under here.”
Zhou Jingchuan came over.
The four of us pulled the cabinet aside together.
There was nothing unusual about the wall behind it.
But there was a thin rectangular seam in the floor.
It was almost completely covered in dust.
Cai Mingzhe crouched down and tried to pry it open with a key.
It wouldn’t budge.
Ruoqing pointed beside it.
“Here.”
There was a tiny black sensor in the corner.
I pulled out the red cord I’d found in the 3728 cabinet.
Of course, nothing happened.
“Not that,” Zhou Jingchuan said.
“Maybe it needs to be swiped.”
I thought of my memory card.
The one the man who delivered the letter had given me.
I took it out.
There was no slot nearby.
But printed beneath the sensor was a tiny “3741.”
I held my phone near it.
Nothing happened.
Cai Mingzhe suddenly said, “Your hand.”
“What?”
“Try your fingerprint.”
I pressed my finger against it.
A green light came on.
Click.
The floor lock released.
The four of us fell silent.
I lifted the metal plate.
A very narrow staircase descended beneath it.
It wasn’t a second basement level.
It looked more like an interstitial space excavated later.
There were lights inside.
And they were on.
Which meant someone used the place.
Ruoqing looked at me.
“You knew about this before.”
I nodded.
“Looks like it.”
I went down first.
Zhou Jingchuan tried to stop me.
I ignored him.
The staircase had about twenty steps.
At the bottom was a concrete corridor.
It was much newer than the floors above.
There was no mold on the walls.
The floor was even clean.
There was a door every few yards on both sides of the corridor.
They weren’t labeled with room numbers.
They were labeled with years.
2017.
2021.
2024.
2026.
I stopped at the first door.
2017.
It wasn’t locked.
Inside was only a chair, a monitor, and a camera.
Written on the wall was:
“3741’s First Voluntary Termination.”
The second room.
2021.
“Second Voluntary Termination.”
The third room.
2024.
“Third Voluntary Termination.”
Ruoqing frowned.
“These are the places where you decided to stop each time?”
“They should be,” Zhou Jingchuan said.
I walked to the end.
2026.
The door had no text on it yet.
It only said:
“Undecided.”
I stood in the doorway.
Suddenly, I felt sick.
Even my coming here today seemed to have had a room reserved for it.
I pushed the door open.
The inside was different from the first three rooms.
There were two chairs.
Two monitors.
And a black folder on the table.
Written on the cover was:
“3741/3728 Final Divergence.”
I opened it immediately.
The first page held two photographs.
Me.
Yuzhen.
Beneath each was a profile.
3741:
“Position: Individual privacy takes precedence over preventive surveillance.”
3728:
“Position: High-risk prevention takes precedence over absolute privacy.”
This wasn’t simply a file on two siblings.
It was about our positions.
Starting on the second page were summaries of all our conflicts over the years.
2017.
I demanded that they stop tracking people with no evidence of criminal activity.
Yuzhen opposed me.
2021.
I demanded the deletion of ordinary people’s data collected without consent.
Yuzhen argued that high-risk subjects should be retained.
2024.
After the 4189 incident, I demanded that the predictive models be shut down completely.
Yuzhen demanded that they be kept.
At the very bottom was a line:
“Final decision to be executed after one of the two core subjects completes the takeover.”
I immediately looked at Zhou Jingchuan.
“Core subject?”
He finished reading it, and his expression turned grim.
“This is no longer the original research.”
I flipped through the rest.
The final pages concerned system permissions.
The true core of the website wasn’t in any one person’s hands.
Not Liao Shihao’s.
Not Zhou Jingchuan’s.
And not Yuzhen’s.
It had been designed so that one of “3741” or “3728” had to obtain final control.
After the takeover, the person in control could do three things.
First.
Permanently shut down all personal databases.
Second.
Maintain the current system.
Third.
Activate “Total Transparency.”
I stared at the third option.
“What does ‘Total Transparency’ mean?”
Zhou Jingchuan read further.
His expression grew worse and worse.
“Open all existing observation nodes to the public.”
Cai Mingzhe came over too.
“Everyone gets to see them?”
“Not just that.”
Zhou Jingchuan pointed at the explanation.
“All publicly accessible camera sources that participated in Transparency Day authorization will be included.”
I froze.
“Wait.”
“That includes the government traffic cameras?”
“Not necessarily all of them.”
“But there could be a huge number of privately operated partner nodes.”
Cai Mingzhe swore under his breath.
“That’s real-time surveillance of all Taiwan.”
I finally understood why it was called the Final Divergence.
This wasn’t about choosing whether to keep secretly filming myself.
After seventeen years of accumulation, the entire system truly had the ability to become a massive surveillance network.
And Yuzhen and I had been placed in front of the final switch.
“Who designed it?” I asked.
No one knew.
The last page of the folder contained only a codename.
“ARCHITECT: XW.”
Zhou Jingchuan’s expression changed instantly when he saw it.
I looked at him.
“You know?”
“Xu Wensheng.”
I stopped.
“Didn’t he die in 2014?”
“Yes.”
“Then when was this system built?”
Cai Mingzhe checked the date.
2013.
Everyone fell silent.
In other words, Xu Wensheng had established the final control architecture before he died.
Everyone who came after him—including Liao Shihao, Zhou Jingchuan, and Yuzhen—might only have been operating within an existing system.
I suddenly thought of something.
“Then today’s countdown isn’t being controlled by anyone either.”
Zhou Jingchuan nodded.
“It’s probably a preset procedure.”
“It activates as soon as Yuzhen and I are both awakened?”
“Looks that way.”
For the first time, everything became clear.
There wasn’t some ultimate villain hiding in the shadows, controlling everything.
The real problem was a system built more than a decade ago, then used, expanded, and corrupted by countless people, now automatically moving toward its final step.
That was harder than catching one person.
Because you couldn’t dump all the blame on a single name.
I set the folder down.
“Where is Yuzhen?”
Ruoqing looked toward the door.
“If this is the decision-making area for the two of you, she may have her own way in.”
We searched the corridor again.
Sure enough, there was another door on the other side of the 2026 room.
It had no handle.
Only two sensors.
3741.
3728.
My 3741 sensor was glowing green.
3728 was red.
“She hasn’t arrived?” Cai Mingzhe asked.
“Or she’s locked in on her end,” Zhou Jingchuan said.
I pressed 3741.
The monitor lit up.
It displayed:
“Core subject 3741 has arrived.”
“Core subject 3728: Connection interrupted.”
A new option appeared below.
“Locate 3728.”
I pressed it immediately.
A warning appeared.
“Locating will use the existing observation network.”
“Authorize?”
My hand stopped.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
To find someone trapped by a surveillance system for more than a decade, I now had to use that same system to find her.
Ruoqing looked at me.
“Press it.”
I didn’t move.
“The moment I press it, I’m using this thing too.”
She said, “Finding her isn’t the same as surveilling everyone.”
I knew that.
But that was how the line started to blur.
There was always a reason that seemed reasonable enough.
Finding a missing person.
Preventing crime.
Saving someone.
Then a little more the next time.
Until it became Yuzhen.
I took a deep breath.
“Locate 3728 only.”
I pressed it.
The system brought up a range setting.
“Core subject only.”
I confirmed.
A huge number of images began switching rapidly.
It wasn’t showing me everyone.
The system was automatically matching Yuzhen’s face, body shape, and red cord.
Intersections.
Convenience stores.
Private entrance cameras.
Transparency Day livestreams.
Thousands of video feeds.
After a dozen seconds, a red dot appeared.
Not Keelung.
Not outside.
It was underground in this very sanatorium.
Forty-eight meters away.
Ruoqing immediately turned around.
“She’s really here.”
The locator showed the direction.
Toward the other end of the corridor.
There had originally been a wall there.
We walked over.
A nearly invisible door seam cut across the wall.
A 3728 sensor.
I couldn’t open it.
The light was red.
“It needs her authorization,” Cai Mingzhe said.
I knocked on the door.
“Yuzhen!”
No answer.
I knocked again.
“Chen Yuzhen!”
A very faint impact came from inside.
Someone was in there.
Ruoqing pressed close to the door.
“There’s a sound.”
I stepped back two paces.
“Ram it.”
“This door’s very thick,” Zhou Jingchuan said.
“Then find us a tool.”
Cai Mingzhe ran back upstairs and returned with a crowbar within minutes.
The four of us pried at the door together.
The seam slowly widened.
Then a weak voice came from inside.
“Big brother…”
I stopped instantly.
“Yuzhen?”
“Don’t open it.”
I froze.
“What?”
She said it again.
“Don’t open the door.”
“Why?”
“There’s a camera.”
I looked around.
“Where?”
“Inside.”
“So what?”
She took several ragged breaths.
“They’re waiting for you to break in.”
I didn’t understand at all.
“Who?”
“The people from today.”
Her voice was faint.
“Livestream bounty.”
“If 3741 forcibly enters the 3728 zone, it will trigger takeover eligibility.”
I looked at Zhou Jingchuan.
He immediately flipped through the folder.
It was true.
At the very bottom was a tiny condition:
“When one party makes an unauthorized intervention into the other party, the system will determine that the party intends a forced takeover.”
That had been close.
If we had simply broken the door down, the system would have interpreted it as my attempt to seize control.
I crouched beside the door.
“Then how do we open it?”
“I can do it from here,” Yuzhen said.
“Then open it.”
“I can’t move.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Yes.”
My hand clenched.
“Who did this?”
“No one.”
“What do you mean?”
“I tried to take apart the main unit.”
“The electric lock triggered, and the door caught my leg.”
That answer actually eased some of the tension in me.
At least no one was hurting her inside.
“How bad is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you bleeding?”
“Yes.”
Ruoqing immediately asked, “Can she crawl to the sensor?”
I relayed the question.
Yuzhen said, “It’s too far.”
We couldn’t break down the door.
She couldn’t reach the switch.
Cai Mingzhe suddenly said, “Both permissions together.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
He pointed at the folder.
“The Final Decision Area allows 3741 and 3728 to authorize each other.”
“You can send a request. She only has to confirm by voice.”
We returned to the monitor.
The option was there.
“Remote assistance for 3728.”
I pressed it.
The system requested:
“State your purpose.”
I spoke into the microphone.
“Rescue.”
The screen displayed:
“3728 confirmation required.”
A mechanical sound came from inside the room.
Then the system’s female voice said:
“Accept assistance from 3741?”
Yuzhen said from inside, “Accept.”
The green light came on.
The door unlocked.
I pulled it open immediately.
This time there was no alarm.
No takeover.
Inside was a control room even smaller than ours.
Yuzhen was lying on the floor.
Her right leg was pinned beside an overturned metal rack.
Her pants were covered in blood.
For the first time, I was truly standing in front of the adult version of her.
Not a photograph.
Not a video.
Not a restored memory.
The real her.
She looked up at me.
Her eyes instantly reddened.
I walked over and crouched beside her.
Neither of us said anything.
Seventeen years.
I looked for her.
Found her, then forgot her.
Forgot her, then looked again.
I had once thought she’d been captured.
Later, I discovered she had stayed behind voluntarily.
I had once wanted to save her.
Later, I personally sent her back.
Now I had finally met her again for real.
And the first thing I said was:
“You really are still alive.”
She smiled faintly.
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“You say pretty much the same thing every time.”
I couldn’t smile either.
“That means I’m not very creative.”
She raised a hand, as if she wanted to touch my face like she used to.
Halfway there, she stopped.
In the end, she only grabbed my sleeve.
“How much do you remember this time?”
“Enough.”
“4189?”
“I remember.”
Her gaze darkened.
“Then you must hate me.”
I shook my head.
“We’re not talking about that now.”
Ruoqing and Zhou Jingchuan worked together to move the metal rack.
The wound was deep, but it didn’t look like an arterial bleed.
We stopped the bleeding first.
Cai Mingzhe was already preparing to call an ambulance.
Yuzhen immediately said, “We can’t wait.”
“Why not?”
She pointed at the control console.
“We have to shut down the main unit before eight.”
I checked the time.
5:21 p.m.
Two hours and thirty-nine minutes remained.
“What exactly is the takeover countdown?” I asked.
Yuzhen leaned against the wall, breathing hard.
“The final procedure Xu Wensheng left behind.”
“We already know part of that.”
“Then do you know that the system will automatically choose someone at eight?”
“No.”
“If 3741 and 3728 make no choice, the system will use seventeen years of model data to determine who is more likely to keep the system running.”
I looked at her.
“Who?”
She gave a bitter smile.
“You.”
Just like the model had predicted.
Not because I supported surveillance.
Because it believed that if Yuzhen died, I would take over to find her killer.
“So that’s why you said you’d be dead before eight.”
“The system wasn’t going to kill me.”
“It was the model’s prediction?”
“Yes.”
That finally lined up.
It wasn’t that some mysterious person had arranged for me to watch her die.
The system had simply calculated from past data that she had an extremely high chance of dying today—and my reaction had already been factored in.
“How high?” I asked.
“What?”
“Your chance of dying.”
“Eighty-seven percent.”
I looked at the wound on her leg.
“Because of this?”
“Partly.”
She pointed to another monitor.
It displayed predictions for every event today.
3728:
“Attempt to shut down the core.”
“High probability of interference by observers.”
“High probability of injury.”
“If 3741 arrives, probability of death decreases to 41%.”
I froze.
“Me coming actually lowers it?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you keep telling me not to come?”
She looked at me.
“Because if you came, the probability of a takeover would rise to 96%.”
I finally understood.
She wasn’t simply afraid of dying.
She was choosing between two outcomes.
She would rather increase her own risk than let me take control of this system.
I crouched in front of her.
“You think I’d definitely become you if I took control?”
She didn’t deny it.
“I’m proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“As long as a person has enough data in their hands, they’ll inevitably start finding reasons to justify themselves.”
She looked at me.
“At first, I was only looking for people who might kill someone.”
“Then it was domestic violence.”
“Then stalking.”
“Then violent tendencies.”
“Eventually, I started thinking: if the system can see it all anyway, why can’t we stop things before they happen?”
She paused.
“4189 was the day I crossed the line.”
I didn’t defend her.
She didn’t defend herself either.
“So now you want to shut it down?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“All the data on ordinary people.”
I caught the key point.
“What about high-risk subjects?”
She fell silent.
I looked at her.
“You still don’t want to delete everything?”
“I don’t know.”
This time, she didn’t pretend to be certain.
“I don’t know what’s right anymore.”
That was what finally made me believe that the Yuzhen standing here was different from the one in 2024.
She hadn’t suddenly become innocent.
She had simply been hurt by the thing she believed in until she no longer knew how to choose.
I sat down beside her.
“Then the two of us shouldn’t decide.”
She looked at me.
“What?”
“The biggest problem with this entire thing is that, from beginning to end, people kept thinking they had the right to decide for everyone else.”
“Xu Wensheng decided for us.”
“The website decided for the people who were filmed.”
“You decided for 4189.”
“And now the system wants us to decide for everyone in Taiwan.”
Yuzhen frowned.
“Then what are you going to do?”
I looked toward the main unit.
“First, shut down the illegal database.”
“Preserve the evidence.”
“Hand it over to the justice system.”
“As for whether the Transparency Day system should exist, that’s not something we can decide by pressing a button in a basement.”
Zhou Jingchuan nodded.
“Technically, it might be possible.”
Yuzhen asked, “How?”
“Choose permanent shutdown after the takeover,” I said.
“But first, seal the records involving crimes, victims, and building managers in a tamper-proof archive.”
Cai Mingzhe frowned.
“Does the system have that option?”
I looked at him.
“No.”
“Then we don’t follow its three options.”
“We change them.”
Everyone looked at me.
Cai Mingzhe was silent for a few seconds.
“Give me access to the main unit. I can try.”
Yuzhen immediately said, “You can’t give it to him directly.”
“Why not?”
“Cai Mingzhe used to be an administrator.”
His expression darkened.
“You still suspect me?”
“I suspect everyone who’s touched this system.”
I looked at the two of them.
“Good.”
“Then keep an eye on each other.”
“No one operates alone.”
This time, no one objected.
5:37 p.m.
We finally stopped chasing new mysteries.
For the first time, we began dealing with the thing in front of us.
Zhou Jingchuan handled the core architecture.
Cai Mingzhe handled the data nodes.
Yuzhen provided administrator access.
I handled final takeover confirmation.
Ruoqing used an offline camera to record every operation in full.
Not secretly recording.
Everyone knew about it.
I watched the red light on the camera come on and suddenly felt the irony of it.
Seventeen years ago, my life had begun with a camera.
Today, we might need a camera too, just to prove that we hadn’t secretly changed anything.
The difference wasn’t the camera.
It was whether the people being filmed knew.
Whether they had consented.
That was probably what Yuzhen and I had argued about for more than a decade without ever making clear.
6:08.
The system issued its first warning.
“Core data migration detected.”
“External administrator nodes are intervening.”
Cai Mingzhe’s expression changed.
“Someone noticed what we’re doing.”
“Who?”
“At least twelve nodes.”
“Can you kick them out?”
“For now.”
6:12.
Twenty-three.
6:15.
Forty-one.
The Transparency Day website began updating frantically.
“3741 is deleting data.”
“3728 has betrayed the observers.”
“Stop the core shutdown.”
The people who had originally only been filming began receiving new bounties.
The sanatorium’s location was made public.
A live map appeared on the website.
The red dot was right where we were.
Ruoqing looked at the screen.
“They know.”
Cai Mingzhe asked, “How long before people nearby get here?”
I checked the time.
“More than an hour from Taipei.”
Zhou Jingchuan shook his head.
“We don’t need people from Taipei.”
He pointed at the Transparency Day map.
More than a dozen observer nodes had already appeared near the sanatorium.
Some people had been on the North Coast to begin with.
The closest one was 3.2 kilometers away.
Yuzhen’s face turned pale.
“They’ll come guard the main unit.”
“Would they really attack?” I asked.
“Most of them won’t.”
“But if even one person thinks deleting the data means destroying evidence, freedom, or their income, someone will dare.”
I watched the progress on the main unit.
Illegal personal data archive:
18%.
Shutdown preparation:
7%.
Time:
6:22.
One hour and thirty-eight minutes remained until eight.
A distant engine suddenly sounded outside.
One vehicle.
Two.
Then more and more.
I walked to the surveillance monitor in the underground corridor.
People had already gathered outside the sanatorium.
Motorcycles.
Cars.
Streamers.
Photographers.
And some people whose identities I couldn’t make out.
They didn’t come in right away.
They simply aimed all their cameras at the building.
The eyes of the world had found me again.
The website’s viewer count quickly passed two million.
The title on the screen now read only:
“Does 3741 Have the Right to Shut Off the Truth for Everyone?”
I stared at the sentence.
For the first time, I didn’t think it was completely wrong.
Because that was the hardest part.
I had no right to decide for everyone.
Neither did Yuzhen.
Neither did the website administrators.
The people who really should be asked were those who had spent more than a decade unaware that they were being recorded.
I picked up Ruoqing’s camera, which was still recording, and turned it toward myself.
“What are you doing?” Ruoqing asked.
I said, “Since they want to watch so badly…”
“This time, we’ll let them know what we’re doing.”
Cai Mingzhe looked up.
“You’re going live?”
“Yes.”
Yuzhen frowned.
“That’ll expose our operation.”
“Not the screens.”
I pointed the camera only at myself.
“I’m only going to say one thing.”
Ruoqing connected me to a public livestream.
Not the underground website.
The largest platform on Transparency Day.
Viewers poured in instantly.
One hundred thousand.
Three hundred thousand.
Seven hundred thousand.
I looked into the camera.
For the first time in seventeen years, I was the one deciding to let people watch.
“I’m Chen Zian.”
“Number 3741.”
“Most of the videos you saw today are real.”
“I did voluntarily agree to become an observation subject.”
“But the vast majority of people in the database never consented.”
Comments raced past.
I continued.
“We’re preserving data involving crimes as legal evidence. We will not destroy it.”
“Private-life data belonging to ordinary people will no longer be publicly accessible.”
“Before eight tonight, the system will require me to obtain final authority.”
“I will not activate Total Transparency.”
“And I will not hand this system over to any private administrator.”
I paused.
The engine noise outside was drawing closer.
“If you think I don’t have the right to do this…”
“You’re right.”
The comments slowed for a moment.
“So after we shut this thing down, I’ll turn over the evidence that the system existed, its administrative records, and all government partner nodes.”
“Whether any form of Transparency Day should remain after that…”
“Let the courts, the legislature, and society argue it out.”
“That’s not for me to decide.”
“But there’s one thing we don’t need to debate.”
I looked into the camera.
“If someone has no idea they’ve been filmed for seventeen years…”
“That isn’t transparency.”
“That’s peeping.”
The livestream passed three million viewers.
The area outside the sanatorium suddenly grew a little quieter.
No one knew whether those people would storm inside.
But just then, the main unit displayed a new message.
“External node interventions: 67.”
The next second.
The number dropped.
61.
54.
42.
Cai Mingzhe froze.
“Someone’s backing out.”
It dropped again.
31.
22.
Finally, only eleven remained.
Ruoqing watched the livestream comments.
Large numbers of viewers began demanding that the platform take down the bounties.
Some people posted the secret-filming assignments they had received.
Others began exposing administrator accounts.
Some observers even volunteered to turn over their data.
Not everyone had suddenly become good.
It was simply that, once everything had truly been made public, the people hiding behind “everyone does it” began to split apart.
I looked at the progress.
Archive:
63%.
Shutdown preparation:
41%.
Time:
7:03 p.m.
Fifty-seven minutes remained.
Yuzhen leaned against a chair, her face growing paler by the minute.
I looked at the tourniquet around her leg.
“How long until the ambulance gets here?”
Ruoqing said, “Emergency services are stuck in the crowd outside.”
I stood up.
Yuzhen grabbed me.
“You can’t leave.”
“You need a hospital.”
“We can’t leave before eight.”
“The system needs both core subjects online.”
I looked at Zhou Jingchuan.
He nodded.
“If 3728 goes offline, all takeover authority will transfer to you.”
I clenched my teeth.
“Then we hold out until eight.”
Yuzhen gave a frail smile.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve held out through Transparency Day with you.”
I looked at her.
A tiny fragment of memory suddenly returned.
2009.
Two children sitting on a balcony.
She asked me:
“If the whole world could see you, would you become someone else?”
Fourteen-year-old me said:
“No.”
She laughed at me.
“Better not.”
I finally remembered.
The question at the heart of that behavioral experiment hadn’t been Xu Wensheng’s originally.
It had been Yuzhen’s.
And I had only wanted to prove it to her.
Instead, we had both spent seventeen years becoming the very things we had once least wanted to be.
7:21 p.m.
Archive:
81%.
Shutdown preparation:
68%.
A sudden sound of breaking glass came from outside.
Someone had gotten in.
Cai Mingzhe checked the surveillance feed.
Five people.
Wearing masks.
No cameras or photography equipment.
Tools in their hands.
They weren’t here to film.
They were here to destroy the main unit.
Zhou Jingchuan immediately sealed the underground entrance.
The monitor showed that the lock wouldn’t hold for long.
7:27.
Another deafening crash.
Yuzhen looked at me.
“Big brother.”
“Yeah?”
“If in the end we can only choose one of those three options…”
I knew what she was going to say.
“I’ll choose shutdown.”
She nodded.
“So will I.”
It was the first time in seventeen years that we had stood on the same side of the central issue.
Not because she had suddenly decided privacy was more important than everything else.
And not because I had suddenly decided surveillance was worthless.
But because we had finally admitted that this kind of power shouldn’t belong only to a few people who believed they could see farther than everyone else.
7:39.
Archive:
94%.
Shutdown preparation:
87%.
The people outside had reached the first underground level.
The metal gate shook constantly as they rammed it.
7:47.
Archive complete.
The monitor displayed:
“Crime-related data has been packaged for judicial preservation.”
“Ordinary personal data awaiting deletion.”
The final step required dual confirmation.
3741.
3728.
I looked at Yuzhen.
She nodded.
We pressed our respective sensors at the same time.
First confirmation complete.
A second screen appeared:
“Permanently terminate the unauthorized personal observation system?”
Two options appeared below.
Yes.
No.
I pressed “Yes.”
Yuzhen did the same.
The system began its final countdown.
00:10:00.
The pounding outside grew louder.
And the original “3741 takeover countdown” disappeared for the first time.
In its place was:
“System termination countdown.”
Nine minutes.
Eight minutes.
Seven minutes.
7:55.
The underground door was smashed open.
Footsteps rushed into the corridor.
Ruoqing immediately stood in front of the room.
Cai Mingzhe picked up the crowbar.
Zhou Jingchuan shouted, “Don’t go out!”
I watched the countdown.
04:31.
Then a man’s voice came from outside the door.
“Chen Zian!”
“Once you shut it down, that data will never be recovered!”
I didn’t answer.
He shouted again:
“Your sister saved people using that data!”
Yuzhen closed her eyes.
She had heard him.
The man outside continued:
“What about the next person who could’ve been saved but dies? Who’s responsible for that?”
I looked at Yuzhen.
She slowly opened her eyes.
The old Yuzhen probably would have been shaken by those words.
Now she only said:
“The person who did something wrong.”
I froze.
She looked at me.
“Not us, for not peeping long enough.”
I smiled.
“Finally, you’re speaking like a human being.”
“You’re annoying.”
Countdown:
01:12.
The door began to give under the crowbar.
00:47.
A gap appeared.
00:30.
Ruoqing braced herself against it with all her strength.
Cai Mingzhe went over to help her.
00:12.
I watched the screen.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
The people outside broke through the first lock.
Six.
Five.
Four.
Yuzhen placed her hand on the back of mine.
Three.
Two.
One.
The screen went black.
Every camera in the underground level shut off at the same time.
It wasn’t a power outage.
The emergency lights were still on.
Only the red dots on all the cameras had disappeared.
A few seconds later, the main screen lit up with a line of text.
“The unauthorized personal observation system has been permanently terminated.”
“Judicial evidence archive has completed split encryption.”
“Core subject 3741/3728 permissions revoked.”
Then the final line.
“Experiment concluded.”
I stared at the four words.
Seventeen years.
For the first time, I hadn’t chosen to forget.
I had actually made it stop.
The door was smashed open the next moment.
Five men rushed inside.
But all they saw was an entire row of terminals undergoing formatting.
One of them stood in the doorway, his expression horribly grim.
“Do you know how much you just deleted?”
I looked at him.
“I know.”
“Millions of people’s lives.”
“Not ours.”
“They should never have been kept.”
He tried to move forward.
Then much heavier footsteps sounded outside.
This time, they weren’t observers.
They were police.
The livestream was still running.
More than three million people had just watched everything we said, and they had also watched people force their way into the sanatorium.
Transparency Day allowed filming.
It didn’t allow breaking in, destroying equipment, or hurting people.
The five men finally stopped moving.
I glanced down at the time.
8:02 p.m.
This year’s Transparency Day was over.
Ruoqing’s phone began receiving platform notifications.
Large numbers of livestream videos were being reported and taken down.
The exemption for secret filming on the streets had officially expired at eight.
From this moment on, following me around with a camera would no longer be part of the day’s game.
Yuzhen leaned against the wall and suddenly laughed.
I looked at her.
“What are you laughing at?”
“This is the first time eight o’clock has ever felt so quiet.”
I listened too.
She was right.
No shutters.
No livestream countdowns.
No website notifications.
Only the sound of an ambulance finally approaching in the distance.
I crouched down beside her.
“Let’s get you to the hospital first.”
She nodded.
“And then?”
I looked at her.
That question was harder than shutting down the system.
She had killed people.
She had participated in illegal surveillance.
She had also genuinely saved people.
None of that would disappear just because we were siblings.
“Then we face whatever needs to be faced.”
She studied me for a few seconds.
Then she nodded.
“Okay.”
I didn’t say that I would save her.
I didn’t say that I would protect her.
Because that was probably what we had both been doing wrong all along.
I thought loving someone meant taking them away.
She thought protecting people meant deciding for them first.
This time, neither of us would decide for the other.
The paramedics came in and lifted Yuzhen onto a stretcher.
Just before they wheeled her out, she suddenly looked back.
“Big brother.”
“What?”
“Will you forget me again?”
I stood there.
This time there were no machines.
No experiment.
No memory interference.
So the answer was simple.
“No.”
She smiled faintly.
“Good.”
The stretcher disappeared down the corridor.
I turned back for one last look at the main screen.
“Experiment concluded” was still displayed.
But at the very bottom, a new system prompt had appeared.
It wasn’t a countdown.
And it wasn’t a new task.
There was only one unfinished archival item.
“Judicial evidence package: Administrator list.”
“Awaiting decryption.”
Progress:
1%.
Cai Mingzhe walked over beside me.
“Looks like it’s not really over.”
I looked at the progress bar.
Then shook my head.
“The system is over.”
“What comes next isn’t our game.”
“It’s finding out exactly who was involved over all those years and sending them, one by one, where they belong.”
The police outside had already begun sealing off the scene.
And this time, I didn’t turn off the camera.
Because what was going to be seen next—
finally wasn’t ordinary people’s lives.
It was the people who had been hiding behind the cameras for more than a decade.