Ch. 002| The Second Health Station

Morning in the New Capital was never decided by the sun. Based on the previous night's foot traffic per district, health data, sleep rhythms, air quality, and energy allocation, Skyvault computed the optimal wake window for each person, then pushed it through Skylink into the deepest part of the ear canal—08:35, Qiu Che woke.

He hadn't dreamed of the fall. He'd dreamed of that circle that wouldn't close. All night. The circle drifted across different backgrounds—surveillance footage, glass curtain walls, school corridors, the tiled floor at the base of No. 12 Residential Tower on the Seventh Ring Road—and every time he tried to see it clearly, the circle shrank, slipped to the edge of his vision, and vanished.

The first thing he did after waking was open the drawer.

The notebook was still there.

He'd locked the notebook in the drawer the night before, with a physical key—the kind of steel pin-tumbler lock that ninety-nine percent of New Capital households would never own, a thing from the previous generation. He was certain Skyvault's home-monitoring module couldn't scan the inside of the drawer, certain no cloud service knew what was in it.

He was certain. But he couldn't be completely certain.

---

At the breakfast table, his mother asked why he was up so early today.

"Health station," Qiu Che said.

"Health station?" His mother looked up, her eyebrows rising slightly, then lowered them and went back to cutting fruit. "Everything okay?"

"Routine visual calibration."

"That's fine," his mother said, her tone completely natural, without any worry, without any follow-up. She didn't even ask which station. Then she said something about the weather that Skylink had pushed into her ear canal, and the conversation moved on to what vegetables she was going to buy at the market today.

The Skylink his mother wore was the wristwatch model, silver metal. She'd lived with him for seventeen years. She should remember that time two years ago when he'd been "recommended to a health station," should remember the school counselor calling, should remember that for a while Qiu Che's mood had been low.

She mentioned none of it.

Maybe she remembered. Maybe she didn't. Maybe she remembered, but her Skylink told her "now isn't the right time to bring it up."

Qiu Che added this page to the notebook too—in his head. When he got back from the health station, he'd write it down: Family doesn't remember, or chooses not to remember, impossible to tell which.

He finished his milk, shouldered his backpack, and set off for the Second Health Station on the Seventh Ring Road.

---

09:17, Qiu Che stood outside the glass doors of the Second Health Station.

The building itself was smaller than he'd expected—three stories, white glass curtain walls, and at the center of the facade a pale blue circular emblem: a stylized human figure, arms spread, with a closed ring above its head.

The ring was closed. Not the kind that wouldn't close.

Qiu Che suddenly thought of yesterday's circle, the one that wouldn't close. His step paused for half a second, then carried him inside.

The interior of the health station was white, not harsh, the brightness about seventy-eight percent of the ambient light Qiu Che's Skylink had calibrated for. No human receptionist. A pale green guide-light strip flowed along the floor from the entrance, leading Qiu Che down the left-hand corridor.

Skyvault's woman's voice spoke in the deepest part of his ear canal:

Good morning, Qiu Che. Please proceed to Consulting Room B-3. Your appointment is at 09:30. You have arrived thirteen minutes early; please wait in the waiting area.

---

There were eight chairs in the waiting area, five of them occupied.

Nearest the door was an old man. Eighties, white hair, his left hand trembling. His Skylink was the nape-implant model, a thin blue line under the skin. Every few seconds he'd raise a hand and touch the spot behind his ear—probably responding to some message Skyvault was pushing. The frequency of the tremor didn't match the frequency of the ear-touching.

The second was a mother and child. The kid was maybe five, sitting on the mother's lap, holding a small Skylink toy. The mother wore the glasses model, the same as Qiu Che's, but with pink frames. The mother's eyes were fixed on the public display wall at the other end of the waiting area.

The third was a boy about Qiu Che's age.

Qiu Che let his gaze linger on him three seconds longer.

The boy wore another school's uniform, a blue tie, and sat in the corner-most chair of the waiting area. The Skylink he wore was the glasses model, the same as Qiu Che's. His hands rested on his knees, fingers interlaced, his posture so correct it looked like he'd been taught it.

His eyes were empty.

The corners of his mouth turned up slightly, as if smiling, but the smile had no reason—he wasn't looking at anything worth smiling at, he wasn't making eye contact with anyone, he wasn't even reacting to any message Skylink pushed.

Qiu Che suddenly realized something: that boy was just as natural as everyone else around him.

The unnatural one was Qiu Che himself.

---

Mr. Qiu Che, Consulting Room B-3 is ready. Please proceed.

Skyvault's woman's voice. 09:28.

Qiu Che walked out of the waiting area. As he passed the boy, he glanced over by reflex—the boy didn't look back, and that reasonless smile at the corner of his mouth didn't change.

There was no one in Consulting Room B-3. No doctor, no nurse, no human being at all.

Only a white chair, with a few tiny sensors embedded in the armrests. On the wall opposite was a large display screen, dark. A camera sat in each of the four ceiling corners, red indicator lights glowing.

Please be seated, Mr. Qiu Che.

Qiu Che sat down. The armrest sensors pressed gently against his wrists, taking his pulse.

The display screen on the wall lit up. It was a street scene.

---

"Please describe what you see," Skyvault's woman's voice said.

Qiu Che looked at the screen. It was an ordinary street—two rows of buildings, a sidewalk, a light turning green, pedestrians crossing. Nothing remarkable.

"A street," Qiu Che said. "Two rows of buildings, a sidewalk, a green light, twelve pedestrians crossing. The pedestrians are men and women, ages roughly twenty to sixty. No children. No pets. The buildings range from six to twelve stories."

"You saw twelve pedestrians."

"Yes."

A brief pause. "Thank you. Next image."

After the first image, a tiny number flickered in the lower-right corner of Qiu Che's Skylink, too small, outside his normal reading range—but he'd developed the habit of watching the corners of his Skylink for details. 0.83.

The same as the line that had popped up on the platform yesterday.

Skyvault wasn't asking "what do you see." Skyvault was asking "are you ready to say what we expect you to say."

---

The next three images were an indoor cafe, an intersection of traffic, a school classroom—scenes as ordinary as ordinary could be. Qiu Che described what he "should see" in each, keeping the rhythm. After the second, 0.8. After the third, 0.78. After the fourth, 0.76.

The fifth image was a park, benches, five people. One of them, sitting on the farthest bench, Qiu Che saw the outline—it was a child, but the proportions were wrong, the arms too long, the ratio of head to body like it had been stretched.

If he described "I see a child with wrong proportions," that number would jump.

If he described "five people, one of them a child sitting on the farthest bench," the number would keep going down.

He made a decision.

"Five people, one of them a child sitting on the farthest bench," Qiu Che said.

A brief pause. "Thank you. Next image."

The number dropped to 0.72. The armrest sensor showed no reaction—meaning that when he'd just said those words, his pulse stayed normal.

He was better at lying than he'd thought.

---

After the twelfth image, the assessment paused.

The system will now ask about the report you submitted yesterday. Please describe in full what you saw.

Qiu Che's pulse skipped a beat. The blue glow on the armrest sensor flickered.

Mr. Qiu Che, your heart rate just rose slightly. Do you need a moment?

"No."

Please describe what you saw yesterday at 15:17, on a platform on the Seventh Ring Road.

Qiu Che closed his eyes for a second, opened them.

He couldn't describe the fall—the report he'd filed yesterday had already been officially classified as "Class-3 data contamination," and describing it again in the wording "I saw someone fall" would only reinforce that classification. But he couldn't say he'd seen nothing either. Skyvault had a record of every detail of the report he'd filed yesterday.

He chose a third path.

"I was looking at the public surveillance display wall on the glass-curtain building across the way. Camera number three was showing a live feed of No. 12 Residential Tower on the Seventh Ring Road. I felt that the feed was flickering, possibly a fault in the display wall's decoder. Before getting off the train I submitted a public anomaly report, the content of which was 'surveillance shows a twelfth-floor fall.' The system has classified the report as Class-3 data contamination."

After he finished, Qiu Che realized that he'd just used "I felt that the feed was flickering"—downgrading yesterday's certain "someone fell from the twelfth floor" to "the feed was flickering." Downgrading yesterday's active "I saw an anomaly" to "I thought I saw an anomaly."

Downgrading yesterday's self into "a standard case of perception deviation in a young person."

The system didn't push back.

Record complete. Thank you for the supplementary account. Visual perception calibration complete. A follow-up visit at the same time in two weeks is recommended. No need to attend school today; you may rest at home.

The chair's armrest sensors withdrew. The door slid open without a sound.

---

Qiu Che stood up and walked out of Consulting Room B-3. The corridor. The waiting area.

The hollow-eyed boy was gone.

The old man was still there, his hand still trembling, fingers interlaced around a paper receipt Skylink had pushed. The mother and child were still there, the kid playing with the toy Skylink, the mother still staring at the public display wall.

But the boy was gone. The chair was empty.

Qiu Che went up to the front desk—the front desk was an AI interface, no humans, a touchscreen set into the wall.

"Excuse me, the boy who was just sitting in the corner—" Qiu Che said.

No record matches your description. Is there anything else I can help with?

Qiu Che looked at the interface. Three seconds.

"No."

He walked out of the Second Health Station.

---

The sunlight outside was the same as in the morning. 09:52.

Qiu Che stood outside the glass doors of the Second Health Station and looked back at that pale blue circular emblem—the stylized human figure, arms spread, a closed ring above its head.

Closed.

He turned to go, and by chance glanced at the building's east-facing exterior wall—the glass curtain reflected the whole street scene of the Seventh Ring Road.

In the middle of that reflected street, on the health station's east wall, in a spot that should have been bare—there was a metal plate, dark gray, set into the glass, four characters carved on it.

Qiu Che blinked.

He opened his eyes again and the plate was gone. The wall was bare. The street scene of the Seventh Ring Road reflected smoothly in the glass.

But the four characters Qiu Che had just seen still lingered in the afterimage on his retina.

萬法有缺.

He didn't know what it meant. But he knew that if he opened his Skylink and took a photo right now, that plate wouldn't be in the image.

---

A line quietly popped up in the lower-right corner of his Skylink:

Perception deviation 0.91. Follow-up visit recommended in two weeks.

0.91. Yesterday it was 0.83. Today Skyvault had run a full round of calibration; it should have gone down—instead it went up.

All those compromises he'd made, all that pretending to see "what he should see," all that downgrading yesterday into "the feed was flickering"—none of it had worked.

Skyvault saw through him.

Or—Skyvault had known from the start, and only wanted to see how far he would go.

Qiu Che walked toward home.

Since 15:17 yesterday, he was no longer the "normal" citizen who, like everyone in the New Capital, kept in step with Skyvault. He was now—an object Skyvault was watching, to see how far he would go.

The New Capital went on, precise to the second.

【Ch. 002 End · the Second Health Station, Seventh Ring Road, the New Capital】