The city did not wake up the morning after the audit.
It recalibrated.
Lin Ze felt it before he saw it. The subtle lag in conversations, the way people checked their phones twice before speaking, the headlines that no longer shouted but hovered—careful, conditional, unfinished. The world had absorbed the shock of transparency, and now it was testing the boundaries of what it had learned.
He stood at the window of his apartment, watching commuters move along the riverbank. Runners passed in pairs, their breath visible in the cool air. Cyclists slowed near intersections, glancing at traffic lights as if the lights might change their meaning without warning. Everyone was still moving. No one looked calm.
His phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.
Three missed calls.
Two emails marked urgent.
One calendar update labeled simply: External Inquiry – Confirm Attendance.
He did not open them yet.
Instead, he poured water into a glass and drank slowly, grounding himself in the mundane. Volume One had ended with resolution—audits completed, power shifted, villains displaced but not destroyed. It had the shape of an ending. But endings were dangerous. They invited the illusion that consequences were complete.
They never were.
When he arrived at Harbor Tower, the lobby felt different. Not hostile. Curious.
People looked at him openly now. Some smiled. Some watched with an intensity that made him think of juries rather than supporters. A young intern hesitated, then bowed slightly before realizing that was unnecessary and straightening, embarrassed. Lin nodded politely and kept walking.
On the elevator, a man he didn't recognize cleared his throat.
"My daughter applied last year," the man said, eyes fixed on the numbers climbing above the door. "She didn't get in."
Lin waited.
"She applied again this year," the man continued. "After the changes."
"I hope she does well," Lin said.
The man nodded. "Me too." Then, after a pause: "I don't hate you, you know."
The elevator chimed. The doors opened. The man stepped out without another word.
Lin remained inside for a second longer than necessary.
Upstairs, the office buzzed with restrained motion. No celebration. No collapse. Just work—emails being drafted, meetings being scheduled, documents being versioned and re-versioned as if precision itself could hold the world steady.
Su Yanli was already in the conference room when he arrived, jacket draped over the back of her chair, tablet glowing with stacked notifications.
"You're late," she said.
"You started without me," Lin replied.
She smiled faintly. "I always do."
She flicked the tablet toward him. The screen filled with a list.
Ministry of Social Development – Request for Consultation
National Education Council – Invitation to Panel
International Data Ethics Forum – Emergency Session
Two provincial governments
One city mayor's office
Three NGOs
One unsigned request routed through diplomatic channels
Lin scrolled slowly.
"They want the model," Su said. "Or at least the idea of it. Everyone thinks if they talk to you first, they get to define the terms."
"And if I don't talk to them?" Lin asked.
"Then they'll define the terms without you."
Zhang Yu entered mid-conversation, legal pad under his arm, expression already tired.
"Before you say anything," Zhang said, "yes, we can attend. No, we shouldn't sign anything. And absolutely not without recording everything."
Lin nodded. "Which one is first?"
Su pointed to the calendar entry Lin had ignored earlier.
"That one," she said. "Government-adjacent. Officially exploratory. Unofficially? They want to know if this can be standardized."
Zhang winced. "Standardized is bureaucrat for controlled."
Lin leaned back in his chair. "Or legitimized."
"Same thing," Zhang said.
No one argued.
A knock at the door interrupted them. E. Liu stepped in, posture straight, eyes alert.
"There's something you should see," she said.
She placed a printout on the table. It was a screenshot—cropped, annotated, already circulating.
A job listing.
Hiring Criteria (Preliminary):
Cognitive Aptitude Index
Health Stability Projection
Longevity Risk Score (preferred)
Below it, a comment thread exploded with speculation.
Is this legal?
They're using that scholarship algorithm, aren't they?
So if you're predicted to live less, you're less employable?
This is eugenics with spreadsheets.
Lin stared at the phrase Longevity Risk Score.
"That's not our terminology," he said.
"No," E. Liu replied. "But the structure matches. They reverse-engineered from the white paper."
Su exhaled slowly. "That was fast."
"It's not illegal," Zhang said. "Yet. They're not using personal medical data directly. They're inferring from proxies."
"Which is worse," E. Liu said quietly. "Because people can't see how they're being judged."
Lin felt a familiar pressure build behind his eyes—not anger, not fear, but the weight of causality.
The thing he had built was no longer contained.
"This is exactly what Professor Qin warned about," Lin said. "Secondary use."
Su crossed her arms. "And this is just the first one we noticed."
The room fell silent.
Volume Two had begun.
That afternoon, Lin attended his first external meeting since the audit. It was held in a neutral building—glass walls, minimal signage, a room designed to suggest transparency without committing to it.
Across the table sat four people.
A policy advisor.
A statistician.
A legal consultant.
And a man who introduced himself only as liaison.
"We appreciate your time," the advisor said smoothly. "What you've accomplished has attracted attention. There's growing concern that without coordination, applications of longevity-based modeling could fragment… dangerously."
Lin listened.
"Our interest," the advisor continued, "is not in suppressing innovation. Quite the opposite. We'd like to explore frameworks—ethical guardrails, oversight mechanisms, perhaps even licensing."
"Licensing?" Lin repeated.
The liaison smiled. "Think of it as stewardship."
"Who holds the license?" Lin asked.
"That's what we're here to discuss."
Lin folded his hands. "You're asking whether the state should regulate predictive lifespan modeling."
The advisor nodded. "In essence."
"And if I say no?"
"Then others will say yes," the liaison replied calmly. "With or without your input."
Lin leaned back. He had expected pressure. He hadn't expected how polite it would be.
"I didn't build this to govern people," Lin said. "I built it to allocate scarce resources transparently."
"Intent is noted," the statistician said. "Impact is what concerns us."
Lin met her gaze. She wasn't hostile. She was curious. That was more dangerous.
"You can't put this back into the box," Lin said. "Even if I dismantle everything we've done, the idea exists. People will build worse versions."
The liaison nodded. "Which is why we'd prefer to work with the best version."
Silence stretched.
Lin realized something then—not as a revelation, but as an acceptance.
Refusal was no longer a moral stance.
It was a strategic choice with consequences.
"I won't give you control," Lin said finally. "But I'll give you access—to discussion, to critique, to limits. If you want oversight, it must be public. If you want standards, they must be contestable."
The advisor exchanged glances with the others.
"That may complicate implementation," he said.
"It should," Lin replied.
That evening, Lin walked alone along the river.
The city lights shimmered, reflected and fractured on the water's surface. He thought of the job listing. Of the father in the elevator. Of the meeting room where polite people discussed control as if it were a favor.
He thought of Mei Zhao.
She had not contacted him since the audit. That absence was not peace. It was repositioning.
Somewhere, she was speaking—on panels, in op-eds, in private rooms—framing the narrative not around corruption, but around morality. Who decides? Who benefits? Who is erased?
She would not attack the model anymore.
She would attack the premise.
His phone vibrated.
A message from Han.
: "You feel it yet?"
: "The shift."
Lin typed back.
: "Yes."
: "Good," Han replied. "That means you're still ahead of it."
Lin stopped walking, looking out over the dark water.
Ahead of it.
That was the new question—not whether he was right or wrong, but whether he could stay ahead of the consequences of being right too early.
Behind him, the city moved. In front of him, the river carried reflections downstream, indifferent to intent.
Volume One had been about exposure.
Volume Two would be about responsibility.
And Lin Ze knew, with a clarity that unsettled him, that the hardest part was no longer defending the data—
It was deciding what the world was allowed to do with it.