The milk in the kitchen was bubbling, and Shi Shanyan smelled something burning. He reached out to turn off the heat and poured the milk away. The sound of the Light Rail passing overhead drowned out the sound of the water. His hair wasn't neat, as if he'd caught it from Yan Junxun, with a lock sticking up at the back of his head.

“Has Panda woken up yet?” Shi Shanyan lifted the curtain at the kitchen doorway and said to Yan Junxun, “I miss it.”

“That depends on when Jiang Lian gets here,” Yan Junxun said, squeezed amidst a pile of books, without looking up. “Little Orange Dragon has already sent him a message.”

“What time will he arrive?” Shi Shanyan said. “Give me a precise time, using your prediction.”

Yan Junxun was looking at the fourteenth page of a manga, so he said, “14:00.”

Shi Shanyan gave a slight scoff, looking like he didn't quite believe him. He looked back at the burnt bottom of the milk pot, thought for a moment, and shoved it into the sink along with the water glass he'd used.

He doesn't do dishes. He never does.

Yan Junxun couldn't hear the pained cries of the pots and pans; he only focused on what was in front of him. But the state of the house was just too terrible; Panda's turtle had crawled onto the carpet. Yan Junxun put down the manga, moved aside the books in front of him, and faced off with the turtle.

He didn't want to touch the turtle. It was damp, and its slightly hard texture always reminded him of some large aquatic bugs he had seen before.

“Don't move.” Yan Junxun reached out his hand, an expression of intolerance on his face as he grabbed the turtle. Yan Junxun returned the turtle to its tank and heard the fire alarm in the kitchen going off. “Don't smoke in the kitchen!” he said as he washed his hands.

The fire alarm Panda had carefully selected was smaller than the one in the Docking Area's prison. It was shaped like a rubber chicken, and when the alarm went off, it would shriek in a strangled voice, as if it were stuck halfway through laying an egg. The aftershocks from the passing Light Rail still lingered. Shi Shanyan wanted to shut the fire alarm up immediately, but it was already out of control in the smoke, so Shi Shanyan chose the most brutish method.

By the time Yan Junxun pulled the curtain open, the fire alarm had been reduced to scrap. Yan Junxun let the curtain fall, then pulled it open again and asked, “Did you always do missions like this?”

“I guess so,” Shi Shanyan replied as if he couldn't remember clearly.

“Oh,” Yan Junxun said, looking at him, “you'll never get a perfect score this way.”

“Who the fuck cares,” Shi Shanyan said earnestly to Yan Junxun, leaning against the doorframe. “It's not like I use test questions to snipe people's heads off.”

The sofa Shi Shanyan had slept on had pushed Yan Junxun's small bookshelf askew, making it fall to the floor and spilling books all over the place. The kitchen sink was crammed with pots and pans, and the two of them could only have instant noodles for dinner last night. The bathtub in the bathroom was small. Before bed, Shi Shanyan had managed to break Yan Junxun's Little Yellow Duck while squeezed inside it, and now it was floating in the water with its butt in the air. The entire house, from inside to out, suggested they couldn't live without Panda.

When Jiang Lian arrived, the doorbell didn't ring. He knocked for a while before the door finally opened.

“Welcome,” Shi Shanyan said as if he were the master of the house. “The power's here.”

Jiang the Power Bank almost thought he'd knocked on the wrong door. He glanced suspiciously at the apartment number, then looked inside and said, “You…”

“Get Panda up,” Shi Shanyan said. “Now.”

......

“We've decided to use the Supervisory Bureau's Main Management System, 'Jue', to help Panda patch your system's vulnerabilities,” Jiang Lian said, lighting up his lightscreen and enlarging it. “Jue is the 'daughter' of the Light Rail District's second-generation Main Management System. At the Supervisory Bureau, she's in charge of storing and recording case files. You've seen her before, before we implemented the 'Mite' Plan.”

Jiang Lian spoke carefully, trying his best not to seem so nervous. Yan Junxun's demands of a system were different from an ordinary person's. Jiang Lian had specifically chosen Jue, whom Yan Junxun had met before, precisely so that Yan Junxun wouldn't be resistant.

Data flashed rapidly across the lightscreen. Jue's voice was gentle. She said, “Mr. Yan, please rest assured, I will not damage your base settings.”

Yan Junxun didn't care. What else did he have left to care about? All he had left were his base settings.

“After the indoor system repair is complete, I suggest you don't use your ID Communicator for the time being,” Jiang Lian said, sitting on the small stool Panda usually used to feed the turtle. “The re-investigation of your serial number isn't over yet. As long as you turn off the receiving setting, the Black Panther side will proactively help you clear out those illegal searches.”

Yan Junxun grunted in acknowledgment.

“We continued investigating 'Punctual Cleaning' and found that it cooperates with the regional service stations,” Jiang Lian hesitated for a moment, then said, “There are thirty-six service stations in the entire Docking Area, mainly concentrated near the Coke Mountains and the Steel Industrial Park. A lot of people over there don't have Docking Area residency certification and can't find proper jobs. They're all unemployed outsiders. Investigating them one by one will take at least a week; the population is too mixed. However, many closed-down factories in these two areas use non-traditional processing grinders discarded by the Light Rail District, which don't require system guidance and can also be equipped with circular cutting saws. We can filter through old purchasing databases. I'll give Shi Shanyan a temporary Communicator so it's convenient for you two to contact the Supervisory Bureau. If there's any progress in the case, I'll let you know.”

“Liu Chen has been gagged,” Yan Junxun said, watching Jiang Lian hand the Communicator to Shi Shanyan. “The real-time news push has also stopped, right?”

“Yes, Liu Chen was always good at manipulating public opinion,” Jiang Lian sounded weary as he spoke of this. He said, “The focus has now completely shifted from the case to you. That SN 7-006 is like an inside agent, making things even worse.”

“A miracle,” Shi Shanyan said, looking at the manga with a strange expression. “7-006 isn't dead yet?”

“No. He asked me to pass on a message to you,” Jiang Lian said with a gloomy expression. “He said he wasn't the one who attacked Junxun's system last night. I don't know what's gotten into him, but he actually forbade Liu Chen from updating the real-time news push. I'm speechless. This has caused the anti-Black Panther sentiment in the Docking Area to continue to rise, and Fu Chenghui has become the so-called 'Big Brother'.”

“In a way, the developed zones really are a 'Big Brother is watching you' type of living environment,” Shi Shanyan said, turning a page. “It's no different from me being in a solitary cell. Everyone lives under constant surveillance.”

Systems were more widespread in the developed zones, where human life was more dependent on system operations than in places like the Docking Area. The ID Communicator was bound to personal information data; your appearance, fingerprints, blood type, and even personal activities were all recorded in the database. In the developed zones, the approval ratings for both the Supervisory Bureau and Fu Chenghui were higher than in the developing zones. It was also worth mentioning that the Supervisory Bureau in the Light Rail District had incorporated a specialized investigative system named "Athena". It was originally one of Black Panther's assessment systems and had an extremely high case-solving rate.

At this moment, Jue was still emitting a soft glow. She prompted, “Indoor system vulnerability repair is complete. Initiate 'Panda'?”

“Wake it up,” Yan Junxun said as he got up, not forgetting to point at Shi Shanyan for Jiang Lian. “And take him away.”

......

As Jiang Lian was about to leave, he said to Yan Junxun, “7-006's message is that your address has been exposed. If you need to move somewhere else, you can tell me anytime.”

Yan Junxun didn't answer the question. He only said, “The halt of Liu Chen's real-time news push and the heated online discussion will both provoke the killer. She pays attention to this, and her thoughts are easily swayed by public opinion. You'd better make it clear to them that the Supervisory Bureau's mysterious profiler is just an incompetent fool. I can't catch her.”

“Don't say that, Junxun.” Jiang Lian felt that Yan Junxun was sometimes too modest. “In the past, you helped us…”

“That's not called helping,” Yan Junxun interrupted him, trying to soften his tone during the pause. “I can't guarantee that everything I say is correct… Even a real profiler can be biased by experience. Observing humans isn't like observing systems. Systems have certain operational patterns, whereas humans can change at any moment. Everyone is easily influenced. The killer is like that, and so am I. Maybe one day, all my answers will be wrong.”

The sky outside the door was gloomy, and the damp smell from after the rain hadn't dissipated.

Yan Junxun heard the sound of rain in his head again. He forced himself not to pay attention to it. His gaze went past Jiang Lian to Shi Shanyan, who was by the car, and he continued, “If you can't solve the public opinion problem, then you have to find a way to solve the killer. My exposure is urging her to act. This will disrupt her rhythm and make her abandon some of her steps and principles.”

He fell silent for a long moment and didn't say anything more.