3. The Diver's Watch

Lu Chengen stared at the white nylon rope for a long, cold moment. The figure-eight loop at the end swayed gently in the current, as if beckoning him to reach out. He did not. Instead, he knelt—water lapping at his chest now—and examined the knot with the eye of a man who had spent forty years tying cables, splicing wires, and reading the silent language of tension and load.

The knot was not a sailor's knot. It was an electrician's knot—a modified figure-eight, used to secure heavy gauge cables to junction boxes. He had tied that knot a thousand times. And the tail end was trimmed with a clean, angled cut, using side-cutters, not a knife. The tool marks were unmistakable.

Someone who knew his trade had left this rope.

He pulled it free from the duct and climbed back up the stairs, his boots squelching with each step. The rope was six metres long, dry at the centre, which confirmed it had been placed recently—after the flooding began. He coiled it over his shoulder and returned to the control room, where the others had abandoned the wall-breaking debate and were now staring at a new development.

Duan had found a second waterproof bag, this one wedged behind the circuit breaker cabinet near the east corridor. It contained a hand-cranked radio, a flare gun with three flares, and a sealed envelope addressed to "The Group." The envelope was unmarked except for that salutation, typed in the same font as the earlier notes.

Jiang Feng had opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper, divided into three columns. The first column listed seven names: Lu Chengen, Mrs. Cheng (identified as "Cheng Meiying"), Duan ("Duan Guolin"), Qiu Wei, Tan Weiming, Jiang Feng, and Xiao Lan ("Xiao Lan—see note below"). The second column listed a "primary fault" for each person, related to the 1982 accident. The third column was blank.

Beside Xiao Lan's name, in handwritten ink, was a parenthetical: "Real name: Sun Yi. Former diving tender. Disappeared 1983."

The room went silent. All eyes turned to Xiao Lan—the young mechanic with the splinted wrist, the short-cropped hair, the crowbar that she now held like a lifeline.

She did not flinch. She stared back at them, her face unreadable, and said, "I wondered how long it would take."

"You're Sun Yi?" Duan's voice was a growl. "The apprentice who vanished? The one who—"

"The one who was on the recovery team. Yes." She set down the crowbar and raised her hands, palms out, a gesture of surrender that was also a gesture of defiance. "I changed my name. I cut my hair. I moved to a different district and took a job in a dry dock where no one knew my history. I've been waiting three years for someone to ask the right questions."

"Why didn't you tell us?" Jiang Feng demanded, his pen poised.

"Because none of you asked. And because I wanted to see which of you would recognise me. Only two people ever saw my face clearly that day—the foreman and the winch operator. The foreman is gone. The winch operator, Luo Peng, is somewhere in the south. None of you were on that barge. So I figured I was safe."

Mrs. Cheng stepped forward, her voice trembling but sharp. "You were the tender. You were responsible for the diver's air line. You were the last person to check the hose before he descended."

"I checked it. It was fine. The kink happened after I handed it off to the foreman—he took over the line while I went to fetch a spare clamp. When I came back, the hose was already wrapped around the propeller. I didn't see who did it. But I saw the foreman's hand on the winch lever. He gave the signal too early. He knew the diver was still in the drop zone."

"Then why didn't you testify?" Lu Chengen asked quietly.

Xiao Lan—Sun Yi—laughed, a hollow, bitter sound. "Because I was nineteen. An apprentice. No union. No backing. The inquiry board didn't call me as a witness. They called the foreman, the crane operator, and the captain of the repair barge. I was invisible. And after the report came out—'accidental entanglement'—I realised that if I spoke up, I'd be labelled a troublemaker. My career would be over. So I disappeared. I thought if I started over, I could forget."

"But you didn't forget," Tan Weiming said. He had been watching her with the flat, clinical gaze of an old investigator. "You came here tonight to confront someone. Or to collect something."

She nodded slowly. "I came to find the foreman's personal logbook. I knew he kept one—a second copy of the recovery record, separate from the official one. He hid it somewhere in this substation. I heard a rumour from an old dockhand that Ma Zhigang used to stash his tools and papers in the transformer pit. I came to search for it. And I found it—just now, before the door shut. I have it in my coverall pocket."

She pulled out a small, water-stained ledger, bound in brown oilcloth. The pages were filled with cramped, hurried handwriting. She opened it to the last entry, dated November 22, 1982, 15:06.

She read aloud: "'Diver down. Hose snagged on propeller. Ordered winch to reverse. Mistimed. Diver's line parted. Lost contact. Told crew to log as accidental cable entanglement. Burned the original signal log. No witnesses. Paid apprentice 200 yuan to keep quiet. He took it. All clear.'"

Duan's face went red. "He paid you off. You took blood money."

Sun Yi's eyes flashed with anger. "I was nineteen. My mother was sick. Two hundred yuan was three months of her medicine. I didn't know he would use it to cover up a murder—I thought he was paying me to keep a scheduling error quiet. I didn't learn the full truth until later, when I read the inquiry report. By then, Ma had retired and vanished."

Qiu Wei spoke up, his voice shaking. "So you're not the killer. You're another victim."

"I'm the one who survived. And I've been carrying this ledger for three years, trying to decide whether to hand it over to the authorities or burn it. Tonight, I chose to hand it over." She held the ledger out to Tan Weiming. "Take it. Read it. It has the foreman's signature on every page. It proves he falsified the record. It proves the accident was caused by his negligence—and his deliberate cover-up."

Tan Weiming took the ledger, his fingers brushing against the oilcloth with the reverence of a man handling holy relics. He flipped through the pages, his eyes moving rapidly. Then he stopped at a page near the middle. "There's a mention here of a second incident. Three weeks before the diver's death. A test drop—a dummy weight, no diver—that also snagged on the same propeller. Ma wrote: 'Propeller protrusion known. Marked as hazard. Did not report to superior.'"

"He knew," Lu Chengen said, his voice flat. "He knew the propeller was a hazard. He knew the snag risk. And he sent the diver down anyway."

"Because the repair contract had a deadline," Sun Yi said. "If they missed it, the shipping company would forfeit a bonus. Ma was under pressure from his supervisor. He chose speed over safety. And then he chose lies over accountability."

The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. The water had risen to the top of the floor grates, now covering the entire concrete slab with a dark, oily film. The candle flame was shrinking, the wax nearly gone. Jiang Feng found a second candle in his bag and lit it, but the light was feeble, despairing.

Duan broke the silence with a low, rumbling question. "So who wrote the notes? Who brought the coat? Who left the rope? It wasn't Sun Yi—she's been with us the whole time, except for the few minutes she was in the pit. And she found the ledger there, not placed it."

"The rope was placed in the pit after we started searching," Lu Chengen said. "I was with Sun Yi in the pit for most of that time. She didn't leave my sight. The rope was not there when we first entered. It appeared while we were examining the duct—after she moved away from me for maybe thirty seconds."

"You think I planted it?" Sun Yi's voice rose. "I was holding the crowbar in one hand and the flashlight in the other. I didn't have a free hand to carry a rope."

"She's right," Jiang Feng said. "I saw them come out of the pit. She had no rope."

"Then it was someone else," Tan Weiming said. "Someone who slipped into the pit while you two were distracted. The duct entrance is large enough for a person to crawl through. The rope could have been pushed in from the seaward side."

"That would mean the killer is not among us," Qiu Wei said, with a desperate, hopeful tone. "It would mean someone outside is orchestrating this. Someone who can enter and leave through the cable duct."

"At low tide, perhaps," Lu Chengen said. "But the tide is rising. The duct is flooded. No one could swim against that current. The rope arrived before the surge got too high. The timing—" He stopped, a puzzle piece clicking into place. "The rope was placed before the door shut. Before any of us were trapped. That means the person who placed it knew we would all be here. Knew the door would seal. Knew the water would rise."

Tan Weiming closed the ledger. "Then we are dealing with a planner. Not a spontaneous killer. A person who has been watching us, tracking our movements, and engineering this gathering for weeks or months."

Jiang Feng turned to Mrs. Cheng. "You said you wrote letters to the authorities. Did you ever send them to anyone besides the port office?"

She shook her head. "Only to the Haigang Maritime Safety Bureau. And to the local party committee. I received form replies. Nothing more."

"What about the demolition notice?" Lu Chengen asked. "That was published three weeks ago. Anyone could have read it. Anyone could have guessed that old stakeholders would come to visit before the wrecking ball."

Duan snorted. "You're saying the killer used a newspaper notice to bait us? That's insane."

"It's calculated," Tan Weiming corrected. "The killer knew that each of us had a private reason to visit this substation before it was destroyed. The electrician came to mourn his guilt. The widow came to photograph the site. The legal assistant came to destroy a file. The inspector came to burn old records. The journalist came for a story. The dockworker came to salvage parts. And the former tender came to find the ledger. Seven different motivations, all leading to the same place, at the same time."

"Coincidence?" Qiu Wei asked.

"There is no coincidence," Sun Yi said, her voice hard. "Only design. Someone sent each of us an invitation, in a different form. For me, it was an anonymous tip—a note left at my workplace, saying the ledger was in the substation. For you, Duan, what brought you here?"

Duan frowned. "I got a call from an old mate saying there was a stash of brass fittings in the west storage room. No name. Just a voice."

Qiu Wei: "I received an unsigned memo from the arbitration office, authorising me to retrieve 'archived files' from the substation. I assumed it was legitimate."

Tan Weiming: "I found a photocopy of the missing page from the inquiry report slipped under my office door. It had no return address. I came to compare it with the original."

Mrs. Cheng: "I received a letter from a 'concerned citizen' saying that the demolition would destroy evidence, and that I should come and take photographs for a public petition."

Jiang Feng: "My editor gave me a tip from an anonymous source—'decommissioned substation holds key to 1982 mystery.' He said the source was credible."

Lu Chengen's heart sank. Every one of them had been lured by a separate, personalised bait. The killer understood each of their weaknesses, their unhealed wounds, their private compulsions. This was not a trap; it was a web, spun with the patience of a spider that had been watching for years.

The candle guttered, then steadied. The water had reached the bottom of the control desk, lapping at the metal legs. Duan produced a plastic tarp from his duffel and draped it over the desk, creating a dry island for the ledger and the notes. It was a small, practical gesture, but it revealed a man who had prepared for adversity—who had packed more than just tools.

"Let's assume the killer is outside," Jiang Feng said, trying to impose order. "Then what do they want? To drown us? To expose us? To make us confess?"

"The notes are leading us somewhere," Lu Chengen said. "First the coat with the foreman's name. Then the note about Qiu Wei's signature. Then the toy boat with the missing page. Then the rope in the pit. Each clue has pushed us to reveal a new layer of the cover-up. The killer is not trying to kill us quickly. They are trying to make us witness our own guilt."

"And the rope?" Duan asked. "What does that represent?"

Lu Chengen hesitated. He had been avoiding that question. "A rope can be used to lift. To pull. To tie. To hang. The figure-eight loop is an electrician's knot—used to secure a cable before pulling it through a conduit. But it's also used to create a harness. For lowering a diver."

Sun Yi's face went pale. "That's the same knot I used to secure the diver's safety line. Every day on the barge, I tied that knot. The foreman mocked me for making it too perfect. He said 'just a granny knot is enough.' But I insisted. I tied it the same way every time. The day of the accident, I tied it, and then the foreman checked it—he untied it and retied it using a different knot. A slip knot. He said it was 'faster to release.'"

The implication hit the room like a wave. The foreman had deliberately replaced a secure knot with a slip knot—so that when the winch reversed, the line would slip free more easily? Or so that it would fail under tension, making the diver's death look like equipment failure?

Tan Weiming grabbed the rope from Lu Chengen's shoulder and examined the figure-eight loop. "This is not a slip knot. This is a standard figure-eight. It's secure. It's the kind a careful person would tie."

"Then the rope is a reminder," Mrs. Cheng said slowly. "A reminder of what should have been done. The killer is showing us the proper knot—to contrast with the improper one that killed my husband."

The water had risen another few centimetres. The group was now standing on the control desk, chairs, and any other elevated surface they could find. The emergency lamps had died completely; only the two candles remained, casting long, dancing shadows that made each person look like a puppet on fraying strings.

Lu Chengen looked at the chalk mark on the wall—"Aggrieved"—and it struck him with new force. The killer was not the foreman, who had fled. Not the shipping company, which had paid its way out. Not the widow, who had sought truth. The killer was the aggrieved party. Someone who had lost something far greater than money or career. Someone who had lost a person, a future, a reason to live.

And that someone had made a list. Seven names. Seven primary faults.

He walked to the control desk, where the envelope lay open. He read the list again. Under each name, the "primary fault" was written in a precise, clipped hand:

Lu Chengen: Falsified pre-dive inspection. Failed to report frayed insulation.

Cheng Meiying: Divorced the diver, causing emotional distress that impaired his judgment.

Duan Guolin: Moonlighted on the barge; failed to report the foreman's order.

Qiu Wei: Drafted the confidentiality clause that prevented criminal investigation.

Tan Weiming: Suppressed the witness testimony of the apprentice (Sun Yi).

Jiang Feng: Wrote a preliminary article in 1983 that blamed the diver's negligence; never published a retraction.

Sun Yi: Accepted the bribe. Remained silent.

He read Sun Yi's fault twice. She had accepted the bribe, yes—but she had also been invisible to the inquiry. The killer blamed her for silence, not for action.

And then he noticed something he had missed before. At the very bottom of the page, in microscopic handwriting, was a final line: "The seventh fault belongs to the one who set the stage. That one is not listed. That one is the judge."

The judge. Not the victim, not the avenger—the judge. The killer saw themselves as a judicial authority, presiding over a trial that had no courtroom, no lawyers, no appeal.

Lu Chengen felt a cold certainty settle in his gut. The judge was not outside. The judge was among them. Because only someone inside could have placed the coat, the notes, the rope, and the toy boat with such precise timing. Only someone inside could have moved through the shadows while the others argued, searched, and panicked.

He looked at each face in the candlelight. Duan, the gruff dockworker, whose calloused hands had handled that rope before—but whose alibi about the brass fittings was unverified. Tan Weiming, the inspector, who had the most access to official files and the missing page. Qiu Wei, the trembling legal assistant, who had the most to lose if the confidentiality clause were exposed. Jiang Feng, the hungry journalist, whose anonymous tip could have been self-generated. Sun Yi, the former tender, whose ledger had appeared suspiciously at the right moment. Mrs. Cheng, the widow, whose grief had been raw enough to motivate anything.

And himself. Lu Chengen, the old electrician, who had signed that false inspection report, who had carried a blank death certificate in his pocket for three years, who had come to the substation not out of nostalgia but out of a half-formed wish to confess.

He had been the first to arrive. He had been in the hall alone for a full fifteen minutes before anyone else appeared. He could have drawn the chalk mark. He could have hidden the coat in the tunnel. He could have—

No. He would have remembered. He was certain he had done none of those things. But certainty, he knew, was a luxury that drowning men could not afford.

The candle on the left sputtered and died, leaving only one flame to push back the darkness. The water was now knee-deep on the floor, and the group had retreated to the highest point—the transformer pit's access stairs, which led up to a narrow platform near the ceiling.

"We need to move," Duan said. "The control room will be submerged within an hour. The transformer pit is deeper—it'll fill faster. The east corridor has a collapsed section, but there might be an air pocket in the relay room above it."

They began to climb, a slow, cumbersome process of hauling themselves up the metal rungs, carrying their meagre supplies. Lu Chengen was the last to leave the control desk. He paused, looking back at the wall with the chalk mark. In the flickering light, the word "Aggrieved" seemed to shift, the letters rearranging themselves for just a fraction of a second.

He blinked. The word was unchanged. But now, beneath it, a new mark had appeared—a small vertical line, as if the tally of deaths had begun. One line. One death.

But no one had died yet.

He turned to follow the others, his heart hammering against his ribs. The platform above was cramped, barely large enough for seven people to sit shoulder to shoulder. The water below continued to rise, dark and hungry, swallowing every inch of concrete.

As he settled onto the platform, Sun Yi leaned toward him and whispered, barely audible above the roar of the water, "I didn't write that tally mark. But I know who did."

"Who?" he breathed.

She pointed to the far corner of the platform, where Tan Weiming sat with his satchel clutched to his chest. "He left the platform twice during our search. Once to the west corridor, once to the washroom. No one saw what he did in the washroom."

Lu Chengen looked at Tan Weiming. The inspector's hands were steady, his face impassive. But his satchel was bulging—more than it had been when they first met. Something had been added.

And on the floor near his feet, barely visible in the dim light, was a piece of white chalk, broken in half.

The water reached the platform's edge. And Tan Weiming smiled—a thin, cold, rehearsed smile that did not reach his eyes.

"Don't worry," he said, his voice calm and clear. "The judge will not let us drown. Not until the verdict is read."

The single candle flame bent sideways in a sudden draft—and then extinguished itself, as if pinched by an invisible thumb.

Darkness. Silence. And then, a soft splash from below, as something heavy slipped into the water.

Lu Chengen reached out in the blackness and touched empty air. Where Sun Yi had been sitting, there was only a damp patch and her abandoned crowbar.

"Sun Yi?" he called. No answer.

The tally mark on the wall below had just found its first count.