The girl who had survived was called Xiao Mei. She was nineteen years old, a pickpocket by trade, and she had been marked for purging with a predisposition score of 82.4. Her offense, according to the psychological profile that Chen Mu's algorithm had compiled, was "compulsive recidivist theft with escalating audacity indicators." She had been caught three times stealing wallets in the Haizhou Central Market, released twice with warnings, and detained once for forty-eight hours. The algorithm had determined that her trajectory pointed toward more serious crimes: burglary, perhaps, or armed robbery. She was, in the cold language of the data, a latent threat.
But Xiao Mei was not dead. She was sitting in a cramped safe house in the city's Shimen District, a basement apartment with barred windows and a single bare bulb swinging from the ceiling, her knees drawn up to her chest, her eyes wide and wet with tears that refused to fall. She was the only person who had ever been taken by The Verdict and released alive.
Lin Xi sat across from her, a cheap recorder on the table between them. Deng Kai stood by the door, his arms crossed, his face a mask of professional skepticism. The safe house belonged to the Haizhou Police Department's organized crime division, but it felt more like a hiding place than a bastion of authority. The walls were thin. The city outside was a powder keg.
"They came for me at the market," Xiao Mei said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Two of them. Grey coveralls. Masks. They grabbed me from behind while I was working the crowd near the east gate. I thought... I thought it was the police at first. But the police don't use a van with no plates."
She paused, her fingers picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. The gesture was nervous, childlike. Lin Xi waited.
"They took me to a room. It was... I don't know where. A basement. Concrete walls. There was a chair, a metal chair, and they strapped me to it. There was a screen on the wall. It showed my profile. My score. All the things I'd stolen. All the times I'd been caught. And a prediction. It said I had a seventy-three percent chance of escalating to violent crime within five years."
Her voice cracked. "I'm a pickpocket. I never hurt anyone. I never even thought about hurting anyone. But the screen said I would. It said it was inevitable."
Lin Xi leaned forward. "What happened next? How did you survive?"
Xiao Mei's eyes met hers for the first time. "I cried," she said simply. "I was so scared that I couldn't stop crying. I wasn't even trying to save myself. I just... I couldn't hold it in. I cried for my mother, who died when I was twelve. I cried for my little brother, who I haven't seen in three years. I cried for every stupid thing I'd ever done. I just... broke."
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "And then the screen changed. My score started dropping. It went from 82.4 to 79.1 to 74.8. There was a man in the room, a tall man with glasses. He was watching the screen. He looked... surprised. Like he hadn't expected this to happen. He said something to the others, something I didn't understand. And then they unstrapped me. They gave me a bottle of water. They told me I was being released because my 'emotional recalibration' had demonstrated a capacity for change that the algorithm had not predicted."
Lin Xi felt a cold, sharp clarity. The algorithm was monitoring emotional responses in real time. It wasn't just a static assessment; it was a living system that adjusted its scores based on how a person reacted to the threat of death. And genuine, uncalculated grief—the kind of raw, helpless emotion that Xiao Mei had displayed—had somehow caused her score to plummet.
"They told me to leave the city," Xiao Mei continued. "To never steal again. To disappear. They said if my score ever went back up, they would find me. And then they let me go."
"Did you see the tall man's face?" Deng Kai asked from the doorway. "The one with glasses?"
Xiao Mei shook her head. "He wore a mask too. But his voice... his voice was different from the others. Calmer. Smarter. Like a doctor. Or a teacher. He was the one in charge."
Chen Mu, Lin Xi thought. He was there. He witnessed the recalibration himself. And he let her go because the data told him to. He was a true believer. He trusted the algorithm even when it contradicted his own expectations.
After the interview, Lin Xi stepped outside into the narrow alley behind the safe house. The air was cold and damp, carrying the faint, sour smell of the river that wound through the city's industrial heart. Deng Kai followed her.
"This changes things," he said quietly. "If the algorithm can adjust scores based on emotional response, then it's not just predicting behavior. It's testing people. It's creating an experiment."
"That's exactly what it is," Lin Xi said. She was thinking of Dr. Wen, still missing, still somewhere in the hands of The Verdict. "Chen Mu isn't just punishing people. He's studying them. He's refining the algorithm in real time. Every execution, every survivor, is data. He's building a better machine."
She pulled out her phone and called Old Chen. "I need you to publish something," she said when he answered. "A story about Xiao Mei. Not her name, not her location—protect her identity. But the core fact: that The Verdict released someone because genuine emotional breakdown lowered her score. The public needs to know this. If people understand that the algorithm responds to authentic emotion, they might... they might learn how to survive."
Old Chen was silent for a long moment. "You're telling people to cry their way out of execution."
"I'm telling people that the algorithm has a vulnerability. It responds to empathy. To grief. To things that can't be faked. If we can prove that the system is not infallible—that it makes mistakes, that it can be moved by human emotion—we can start to dismantle its credibility."
After she hung up, Deng Kai looked at her with an expression she couldn't read. "You think credibility matters to a man like Chen Mu? He's been killing people for weeks. The public is terrified. The police are paralyzed. Credibility isn't going to stop him."
"No," Lin Xi agreed. "But understanding the algorithm's flaws might. Dr. Wen was working on a full technical analysis before she disappeared. She told me the algorithm has a fundamental circularity problem. It defines criminal potential based on traits found in actual criminals, then identifies people with those traits as potential criminals. It's a closed loop. But if we can prove that the loop is based on a flawed premise—that the latent criminal and the actual criminal are not the same—we can break the logic entirely."
"And how do we prove that?"
"We find Dr. Wen. And we find the original data. The Social Harmony Index files that the PSB tried to delete." She looked at him. "You said the list of operatives included former police officers. One of them might have access to the old Bureau archives. Someone inside the system who knows where the data is stored."
Deng Kai's face tightened. "There is someone. An archivist named Feng Yucheng. He worked for the PSB for thirty years. He was in charge of records management when the Social Harmony Index was active. He retired six months before Chen Mu's project was officially scrapped. He might know where the original files are—assuming he's still alive."
"Find him," Lin Xi said. "Before Chen Mu does."
She returned to her apartment that evening, her body aching with exhaustion. The message from Chen Mu had been clear: Phase Three begins in less than twenty-four hours. And Dr. Wen was still missing. The professor's disappearance had not been reported in the media; the police were keeping it quiet, afraid of sparking more panic. But Lin Xi knew that Dr. Wen was the key. She was the only person who fully understood the algorithm's technical architecture. If she was dead, the knowledge died with her.
Lin Xi sat at her kitchen table, staring at the photograph she had taken from the orphanage: the twelve-year-old boy with the model airplane, smiling in the sunlight. She thought of the mural on the orphanage wall. "Justice begins with the forgotten." Chen Mu had been forgotten by the system that was supposed to protect him. And now he was making sure that no one would ever forget him again.
Her phone buzzed. An email. She opened it with trembling fingers.
It was from Dr. Wen.
"Lin Xi. I have been detained but not harmed. Chen Mu has brought me to a facility in the mountains outside the city. He wants me to validate the algorithm. He believes that if I, a skeptic, can be convinced of its integrity, the world will have to accept it. I am playing along, buying time. But I have found something. A critical flaw in the data set. The original Social Harmony Index was trained on a population that was overwhelmingly male, low-income, and from specific urban districts. It was never calibrated for the general population. The algorithm is not predicting criminal potential. It is predicting demographic similarity to a population that has already been criminalized by a biased system. Chen Mu does not see this. He does not want to see it. I am sending you the evidence I have compiled. Use it. And find the original Bureau files. The proof is there. — Wen."
Attached to the email was a compressed folder of documents: statistical analyses, demographic breakdowns, and a scathing critique of the algorithm's methodology. Lin Xi scanned them quickly, her heart pounding. Dr. Wen had done it. She had found the smoking gun. The algorithm was not a mirror of truth. It was a mirror of a broken system, reflecting its own biases back at itself.
But Dr. Wen was still a prisoner. And the clock was still ticking.
Lin Xi forwarded the email to Old Chen with a single message: "Publish this. Now. Before Phase Three begins. This is how we stop him."
Then she picked up her phone and dialed the number that Chen Mu had given her at the observatory. He answered on the second ring.
"I was wondering when you would call," he said. "Dr. Wen has been very cooperative. She has been telling me about the flaws in the algorithm. She believes they will convince me to stop."
"They should," Lin Xi said. "The algorithm is biased. It was built on bad data. You're not purging latent criminals. You're purging poor people, marginalized people, people who were already targeted by the system you claim to be correcting."
There was a long silence. Then Chen Mu spoke, and his voice was different. It was not angry, not defensive. It was... tired.
"I know," he said.
Lin Xi felt the floor drop out from under her. "You know?"
"I have always known. The algorithm is imperfect. The data is biased. The system was built by flawed human beings who were shaped by a flawed society. I told you this in the observatory. The thirteen percent error rate. The margin of acceptable loss."
"That's not acceptable loss!" Lin Xi shouted into the phone. "That's innocent people being murdered for a lie!"
"No," Chen Mu said quietly. "It is not a lie. The bias is real. The errors are real. But the core insight is also real. There are people who will commit violence. There are people who are predisposed. The algorithm is not perfect, but it is better than nothing. It is better than the system that let my father die. It is better than a world where no one is watching, no one is preventing, no one is remembering."
"Dr. Wen has proof that the algorithm is fundamentally broken. I'm publishing it. The world will know."
Chen Mu's voice hardened. "Then Phase Three will begin with you. Your empathy index no longer protects you, Lin Xi. You have chosen obstruction over witness. Your score has been recalculated. It is now 94.2. You are no longer a latent threat. You are an active one. Dr. Wen will be released—her data is invaluable, and she is not a target. But you... you are now at the top of the list. I suggest you use the remaining hours wisely."
The line went dead.
Lin Xi stood in the middle of her apartment, the phone still pressed to her ear, the silence ringing. She was now a target. The architect had turned his algorithm on her. And somewhere in the mountains outside the city, Dr. Wen was being released, carrying the evidence that could bring Chen Mu down—if only Lin Xi could survive long enough to publish it.
She looked at the photograph of the twelve-year-old boy one more time. Then she grabbed her bag, her laptop, and the USB drive containing the data that could destroy The Verdict. She was no longer just a witness. She was a combatant. And the battle was about to begin.
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