Lu Zhaoning had worked at the City Emergency Response Coordination Center for seven years. At 11:41 p.m., she received a recording of a woman “voluntarily withdrawing her report,” case number 0719, but the System had no record of the call. Eight minutes later, the same woman begged for help from behind the sound of running water: “They’ve already recorded it. Once I hang up, they’ll prove I never asked for help.” Lu Zhaoning dispatched a rescue team against orders, but at the scene the woman denied everything in front of everyone. The System records and dispatch orders had all been altered, too. Only after investigating did she discover that, in the past six months, 372 emergency calls had been withdrawn in exactly the same way.
