On the night disaster struck the T2 test track, Shen Yan was welding car D4 in the repair bay. His right ear worked fine, but he was deaf in his left. He felt three irregular thuds through the ground, coming from the east district, and received half a message from his sister Shen Kui, who was at the cafeteria. He chose to finish the weld and tidy the edge before heading back. At 2:17, he switched off the welding torch. The eastern sky was red, the smoke black, and people were fleeing west. Shen Yan dragged an angle iron over to wedge the door, then spot-welded the rolling shutter shut on the left, in the middle, and on the right. The people pounding on it twice were human, so he pointed them toward the stairs behind the cafeteria kitchen. After that, he used the base of a drill press to listen for movement: three footsteps, a scraping trailer, and two engines missing cylinders passing by. A woman kicked the door seven or eight times, then stopped. In the distance, a transformer exploded. He went down into the inspection pit and inventoried the supplies in six trailers: a torque wrench, sealant, counterweight sand, wire rope, strobe lights, industrial salt, and low-temperature grease. He carried everything in eight trips, hiding the industrial salt farthest inside and using the sealant and rope to set up obstacles. The lights were still on, and the main engine was still running. He checked his phone. Shen Kui's message was still at the very bottom. But what came after those half-finished words, "Over here at the cafeteria..."?
