The Amber List

My name is Chen Xu. I was kicked off the police force because of a rare condition called “olfactory hypersensitivity,” and ended up working the night shift at a convenience store.

Then one day, inside a case of tainted cooking oil, I found an “Amber List” bearing names and dates.

The final name on it was mine. Time of death: thirty days from now.

I meant to investigate alone, but was forced to team up with two others:

Su Xiang, an obsessive data analyst who is convinced her sister is still trapped on the island at the end of the list;

Lei Bao, a former SWAT officer who puts his plainspoken sense of justice into action with his fists.

We soon discovered that everyone on the list had once been an ordinary person who had accidentally obstructed some “big shot.”

A bottle of oil, a takeout meal, a routine medical exam... anything could become the perfect tool for carrying out “social cleansing.”

And the enemy we faced was a massive organization that called itself “the doctor of society.”

Using cold algorithms, they calculated each person’s “value of life.”

They smiled and told me:

“Remove one ‘problem,’ and you can save ten more valuable futures.”

“We’re the real philanthropists.”

Now there are only three days left on the countdown.

I’ll use the one weapon I have left, this nose that can smell death, to answer their final question:

Who has the right to decide whose life matters?