At three in the morning, food delivery rider Chen Xiaoman received an order.
Delivery address: Xingfuli, Building 13, Room 402.
But after three years delivering around the west side of the city, he knew Xingfuli had only twelve buildings.
His childhood friend Zhou Xu had vanished into thin air from a rental apartment locked from the inside, leaving behind only a phone and a rider account that hadn't been updated in years.
From that day on, every night at three, the account received a "Night Order": the addresses didn't exist on any map, and the customers weren't human.
The order notes were the rules. Run late and you die. Get a bad review and you die. Look back and you die.
Other riders could only follow the rules as carefully as possible. But hidden in Chen Xiaoman's old version of the app was a feature that had long since been deleted:
[Combine Orders: Merge two rules into one new rule.]
"I'll take this order. As for your rules... I'll combine them for you."
