1988: Working for the Gang

In October 1987, the crash of the Hong Kong stock market shattered the morning mist over Victoria Harbour. Su Chen coughed as he lifted his head from the sandpit on the police academy's physical training ground. Coffee stains from 2023's Financial Crime Investigation Division still marked the elbows of his training uniform. He had been reviewing a report on the 1987 stock market crash when his computer screen suddenly erupted in a blinding white light. When he opened his eyes again, he was inhabiting the body of a seventeen-year-old police academy recruit.

The boy named Su Chen was supposed to be expelled on the eve of the crash for owing money over football bets. Now, he felt the three crumpled Hong Kong dollar bills in his pocket, while fragments of financial news from the next thirty years still echoed in his ears. While his fellow recruits carefully budgeted their allowances for the end of the month, he strode through the blood-red dawn as the Hang Seng Index plunged below 3,000 points. Using forged identification, he broke into the exchange and bet all the money he'd borrowed on blue-chip stocks that were about to rebound.

Three months later, Su Chen walked out of the bank with a check worth enough to buy up half the shops in Causeway Bay. Yet his conduct record at the police academy still bore a red “Under Observation” mark beside his name. No one knew that this recruit, who often sat staring blankly at the radio late at night, had the financial lifelines of Hong Kong from 1987 to 1997 mapped out in his mind.

At the 1988 graduation ceremony, the principal personally pinned a police badge on him. Then he pulled him into the archives room. “The Organized Crime and Triad Bureau needs a clean face.” Su Chen looked at the two characters “Hung Hing” in the file and unconsciously rubbed the stock trade confirmations in his pocket dimension...