Wuyang, late autumn, November 17, 2016, at dusk. Everyone in the city looked up at the northeastern sky. Comet McNaught streaked across the sky screen, its silver-white tail tearing through the heavens. A cascade of cold white light poured down, frosting old apartment blocks, glass curtain walls, and sheet-metal rooftops. An elderly man out for a walk raised his phone with trembling hands. Students crowded onto an overpass, marveling at the sight. Chen Mo, at the police station, pushed open a window and gazed upward. The evening breeze swept down the plane tree leaves, but he did not notice.
Inside an abandoned factory on the outskirts, a multi-frequency radiation instrument overloaded, its screen shaking violently. Lin Zhengguo, wearing worn gold-rimmed glasses, held down the emergency pressure regulator with trembling fingers. A stream of particles drifted through the ventilation ducts and into the streets, merging with the comet’s radiation high above. Two forces collided, as fate had ordained.
In a basement downtown, Lu Mingyuan curled up on a moldy mattress. The agony of cancer cells gnawing at his bones reached its peak. His fingernails scraped through the concrete floor, cold sweat soaked his shirt, and all he could see was the white light leaking through the ventilation window. It was salvation, and a curse: the beginning of seventy-five years of lonely killing.
Below the newspaper office, trainee reporter Su Xiao held her interview notes and raised a hand to shield her eyes from the silver light. The blue ink on her fingertips was still wet. She had no idea the comet would pull the three of them onto two paths that would never cross.
Three hours after the comet shone down, it faded, and the city returned to its ordinary routine. Only the fates of the three had been rewritten. No one recorded this celestial event. The only trace was a photograph tucked into Lu Mingyuan’s old album: three blurry figures walking in different directions along a silver-lit street, toward three different lives.
The fate of the Southern Cross began with this falling star.
