You are pulled into a city.
Everyone here is lying. It's not a choice, but a rule. Tell three truths in a row and the System will flag you. Yet the game's victory condition is always the same: find the truth.
Jiang Du, a former interrogation specialist with China's Ministry of State Security, can hear the “static” of a lie the instant someone speaks. On his first day in the city, he thinks he has the upper hand, until he discovers that forty-two other people in the city are just like him, each testing for lies in a different way.
Judgment Day comes once a month, and fewer than one in ten survive. Those eliminated don't die. They're sent to an observation room, where they can see who has lied, but every message they send back is automatically inverted by the System, turning truth into lies and lies into truth.
There are seven routes through the underground city, and each one ends with a truth.
The first truth: Someone is watching. The sixth: The exit is above. The seventh has never been found, until Jiang Du discovers the words hidden at the end of the twelfth level.
Waiting behind that door is his twin brother, who should have died twelve years ago.
The writers' room is behind the mirrors. The exit might not be a door, but a lie bigger than the entire city. Jiang Du clutches the last subway card in his hand. He must choose between “going back to save his brother” and “pushing open the future.”
