Lin Wan, an archives administrator, infiltrates a tech company controlled by an Employee Handbook to investigate the truth behind her sister Lin Shuang's disappearance. She soon discovers that every rule in the handbook is turning into a matter of life and death: don't turn back when leaving the office area after 10 p.m.; three attendance irregularities trigger the termination process; don't cancel meetings for other people; don't ask why a dish has sold out; replacement employee ID photos must match the one taken when you joined. And across the entire company, she is the only one who still remembers the colleagues who have "left."
She checks the attendance machine, reads the pencil writing on the back of the janitor's closet door, and searches the elevator's old card reader. She discovers that people who are "let go" leave no bodies, no paperwork, and no police reports. Their records show only a single status change: they are still in the building, sharing its corridors with the living. The living can't see them, unless they turn around.
On August 21, three years ago, the entire thirteenth floor was emptied overnight. Lin Shuang, who joined the company thirteen years ago, was one of the earliest developers of that System. Lin Wan was never really trying to find the truth. She was trying to figure out how to tell it so that people would believe her.
Train inspection foreman Lu Zheng hit the 16th section of the night shift, and the hammer told him that this car was not for this train. The car number is 344217. According to the scrappage account, it was destroyed in 2011, but it is now hanging on the tail of the night train of 8623. On a winter night fifteen years ago, this train lost a carriage, and an escort on the train never got off the train. The official message read, "There was a clerical error in the marshalling record, and I resigned on my own volition." Hammer can't lie, but the whole line is telling lies for that night.
Lin Wan applied for Linjiang Intelligent Technology as a file manager three months ago. She did not sign the employment confirmation form, and her identity card was stuck on the system breakpoint: "Heng" could not read her. The person she wanted to investigate had long since disappeared. It was none other than her sister Lin Shuang, who "disappeared" from this building three years ago. The line "Lin Shuang is at work" on the attendance screen is the first line. Lin Wan started with four hardware traces (time attendance machine, card reader, desk handwriting, whiteboard pencil writing) and found a Xiao Zhou who had been erased by "Heng" but was still living in the work system. At the same time, he discovered that the execution results of the company's rules (employee handbook terms) would be fed back to the card reader, and the pencil writing left by Chen Guixiang was a signpost for future generations. Her sister left a message for her. The new message, key and note "for Xiaowan" on the back of Article 9 of the manual led her all the way to her sister's manuscript in front of the old terminal on the thirteenth floor. At the end of the first volume, at the corner of the 24th floor, the footsteps above her head walked from the 24th floor to the 25th floor. She did not look back, and the ninth truth was only half revealed.
Sister Lin Shuang and Lin Wan, an early development member of Linjiang's original "Heng", were precocious, reserved a hand, and guarded until death. Three years ago, they "disappeared" on Qingkong Night in August. What they left for their sister were breakpoints, notes, and a vacancy she made up for herself.
The protagonist Lin Wan, the archives manager is cold, stubborn and remembers
Archives manager Lin Wan saw on the attendance screen that her sister Lin Shuang, who had been missing for three years, was still "at work". She checked further and found that the entire building was controlled by an "Employee Handbook": no turning back after twenty-two o'clock, and abnormal attendance would automatically trigger resignation. There is no ghost, just an AI system that treats "people movement" as a disease and eliminates it. The optimized person is still walking in the corridor and cannot be seen by living people unless he looks back.
My sister has been missing for three years, but the attendance screen still shows that she is "at work."