I woke up on a morgue gurney, the taste of blood in my mouth and a half-closed eye on the back of my hand. The All-Seeing Eye System activated: seven days of life remaining, with thirty years of life owed.
This eye can see through anyone’s secrets, but every use burns away some of my life.
The black market is plastered with wanted posters for me: ten years of life for Chen Du, captured alive. My medical records are locked away in an underground archive, file number SG0177. Zero personally wrote that I was to be reclaimed in a year. Dozens of donors are locked in glass cages at Dongshan Sanatorium. Shen Zhao, the first Host, has hollow eye sockets and no life remaining. Fang Ting, deputy district chief of the Night Watch, is waiting for a life-source attractor: my younger sister, Chen Nian.
Fang Ting wants to resurrect the first Host and reshape every rule. Zero says this eye is no gift, but a shackle. Lin Zhaoyang has waited in the archives for a whole year, waiting for someone who can carry the evidence out alive. Shen Du stole a hundred and twenty years of life to buy the seventh Host, who was near death, a ticket to survive the auction block.
Everyone’s debts are linked. Zero owes Shen Zhao a lamp. Lin Zhaoyang owes his sister a life. Bloodhand owes his brother, Song Zhiyuan, a life. This chain of debts has been passed down for so long, and now it has reached me.
The bounty has risen to a hundred years of life. Life thieves corner me in hospital corridors, and enforcers chase me through the sewers. But I’m not running alone. The morgue attendant uses his last informant’s favor to shield me from a search. The Night Watch deputy district chief uses his tracking signal to draw the scanners away. The leader of the life thieves leaves a string of prayer beads outside my sister’s hospital room.
Fang Ting is still waiting for the eyeball that will never come. And I’ve already gotten the thing he’ll never get: the east
