Ye Xuan forwarded the photograph to Detective Reed before answering its sender.
She called five minutes later.
“Do not reply. Don’t post it, and don’t run it through software that invents details the camera didn’t record.”
“There’s a door in the wall. It wasn’t on the revised plan.”
“That’s useful,” Reed said. “It doesn’t establish when the photograph was taken or whether Ms. Chen entered.”
“I know.”
“Good. Tell me when you know something else.”
He set the phone on his desk and looked at the rent notice.
It was difficult to feel like the center of a conspiracy with forty-three dollars in the bank.
The clinic’s payment had cleared, his ribs hurt, and he had not worked since waking in New York.
Mrs. Tang found him counting coins beside the bakery counter.
“If you’re thinking of skipping breakfast, don’t,” she said, and handed him a warm roll.
“Put it on my bill.”
“I know where you live.”
He almost smiled.
Dr. Price had invited him to an engineering demonstration at the institute. It concerned flood barriers and the limitations of Awakened responders.
At the front of the hall stood Nadia Solis, a licensed emergency worker. She wore a protective vest over ordinary clothes. Beside her was a transparent tank fitted with a damaged inlet, an undersized overflow pipe and several flow meters.
The tank filled faster than the outlet could drain it. Its water would reach the danger line within a minute.
Nadia held her hand above the tank.
A stream rose from the tank, curved through the air and poured into an emergency trough.
For twenty seconds the level fell.
Then Nadia’s fingers trembled. She stopped, and the stream collapsed back into the tank.
“That’s my safe sustained output today,” she said. “I can move more water briefly. I can’t maintain this all afternoon.”
A student raised his hand.
“Where does the energy come from?”
Nadia shrugged. “People much smarter than me are studying that. We can measure what happens. We don’t get to pretend we know what causes it.”
Price pointed out that the water had moved against gravity, but the meters still recorded volume and time. Nadia could alter the process. She couldn’t remove the risk of overwhelming the surrounding drains, and she could not work without rest.
Ye Xuan studied the intake pipe.
“Could you reduce the incoming flow instead of lifting the water out?” he asked.
Nadia looked toward him. “With my ability?”
“Or by isolating the damaged branch. The current demonstration assumes the inlet stays fully open. If the upstream supply can be redirected, you might need less ability output.”
Price turned toward the projected system diagram.
“Possibly,” she said. “But if we divert the flow carelessly, another branch could experience a dangerous pressure increase.”
“We’d need measurements and a model.”
“Yes,” Price said. “That’s what engineering is for.”
Afterward, Nadia approached Ye Xuan.
“Most people ask whether I can lift more,” she said. “You’re asking whether I can do less.”
“If doing less solves the problem, wouldn’t that be better?”
“For my wrists, absolutely.”
“Take care of yourself. You look like someone who won’t stop until the answer arrives.”
He watched her return to the tank. Her power was real, but her limits were real too. His own gift would be no different.
Price stopped him after class.
“I read the note you sent about the two pipe alignments. Your reasoning is much better than the report you submitted last month.”
He had no memory of writing the earlier report.
“I’ve been studying.”
“I can see that. But don’t let anyone mistake your new clarity for a recovered memory. They’re different.”
She took a thick book from her shelf and placed it in his hands.
Applied Fluid Mechanics and Failure Analysis.
“The library authorized a temporary loan,” she said. “It’s assigned next term. If you’re going to ask questions about the waterfront, learn enough to know which questions are useful.”
“What if I find something that’s wrong?” he asked.
“Bring a derivation. Not a feeling.”
After the bakery closed, Mrs. Tang left a lamp burning for him.
“You can study here,” she told him. “But if the book makes you forget dinner, I’ll take it away.”
He ate the noodles Wei had brought the previous night, then began reading.
The book covered pipe pressure, friction, pumps, emergency drainage and the danger of trusting simplified models under the wrong conditions.
He read every equation and example, working through unfamiliar terms and checking calculations against the solutions.
Reading still required time. His extraordinary gift did not turn the unread pages transparent.
At last he reached the final appendix.
Something inside his understanding shifted.
The material became whole.
The chapters became one coherent structure. He saw where approximations failed, where equations could be extended, and several possible explanations for the water at the pier.
But the answers did not arrive for free.
He lacked the original pipe dimensions. He had no confirmed pressure readings from the time Mara disappeared. The photographs showed a wet seam, but they could not reveal exactly what lay behind the wall.
He opened a fresh notebook.
Hypothesis A: leakage from an undocumented service line.
Hypothesis B: water entering from an adjacent compartment.
Hypothesis C: condensation or runoff collected at the seam.
He listed the evidence needed to distinguish them. The unknown could be divided into questions.
He remembered the sentence Ye Ming had left in the notebook back in Hangzhou.
If the result is impossible, check what you assumed.
His brother would have liked this book.
He remembered the cramped kitchen in Hangzhou, his mother asking whether he had eaten, the empty space at the family table.
He could master a book in an instant and still have no idea whether his mother had found his body.
Mrs. Tang appeared in the doorway.
“You’re crying.”
“Just tired.”
She set down a cup of warm water and did not ask again.
Near midnight, he checked his phone.
A message from Reed had arrived while he was reading.
We received the original inspection packet. Please call tomorrow. I have a question about a department identifier on the exception sheet.
He opened the seventh page. An abbreviated department code sat beside the project number.
Three letters, then a slash.
He copied the characters, refusing to guess what they meant.
Then Wei called.
“Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“I found an old institute directory, filed under the wrong academic year.”
“Does it mention the waterfront?”
“Not directly. It lists student observers who worked on municipal surveys.”
“Why are you calling me about that?”
Wei’s breathing sounded loud against the microphone.
“There’s a Chinese name in it. Same family name as yours.”
“Ye is not an uncommon surname.”
“Ye Xuan, listen. The given name is Ming.”
The words seemed to pull the floor away from under him.
“Spell it.”
Wei did. The record showed an old enrollment number and a note saying the student had withdrawn before the placement ended.
Ye Ming.
Ye Xuan held the phone so tightly his injured ribs protested.
His brother had disappeared three years ago in a different world. An identical name on an old university list was not evidence that the same man had crossed between worlds.
He understood that perfectly.
Yet the name would not let him go.
“When was the record made?” he asked.
“Last year.”
Ye Xuan looked at the date. Then he turned the phone facedown, counted slowly to ten, and picked it up again.
The letters had not changed.