Within the steel bones of the unfinished labyrinth, Jialin unfurled her tablet and coaxed a constellation of projections to life. Her voice settled into a smooth, exact register, the polished purr of well-tended machinery. A faint tremor rolled beneath their feet, the muted thump of some distant pump struggling in the flooded subway below, hinting at deeper fractures in the city's belly.
"Private equity in the south remains liquid. Restructure the current debt through a community-interest vehicle and we can purchase the Zhang site at fourteen pence on the pound. Phase One is immediate triage. We fund emergency water lines, patch critical roofs and pay every local labourer union rates for the clear-up. Money in pockets by the end of the month."
Kai watched, silent. On a toppled filing cabinet nearby lay a cracked parcel map, a broken red stamp reading Lot A-13 glared through the dust, its ink bled like an old wound that still refused to close.
She tapped again. A diagram blossomed. "Phase Two overlays modular housing, prefabricated for speed, façades tinted a sage green so the influencer crowd can call it resilient urban minimalism. Every tenant receives an apprenticeship voucher linked to the panels that enclose their own flat, so skills remain on site."
"Marketing launches before the first pour," she added. "Pop-up food vans, open-air film nights, an urban-arts residency broadcast on every feed. The atmosphere pulls visitors in. Their spending pulls margins up."
"Atmosphere," Kai murmured. A shredded advertisement flapped against a girder above, its surviving letters spelling out only the graffito Never Heaven, the same words now scattered across half the city.
"Listen," she pressed, scrolling to a chart. "Revenues flow through a social-impact bond. Investors are paid only when benchmarks are met: a clinic licensed inside eighteen months, a primary school enrolled inside twenty-four. Miss a target, investors forfeit half the coupon into a ring-fenced remediation fund. That means decontamination in the West Sector is baked into the contract, not postponed to some airy future."
She flicked to a bar graph. "Eight-point-three percent annual yield over five years, assuming median occupancy. Council retains a twelve-percent equity stake and receives business-rates relief from the provincial treasury for every kilowatt generated by the micro-grid. Your budget gap closes without raising local tax."
Kai looked away.
Beyond the girders the sky was unpicking itself, clouds parting like a wound reluctant to knit. Rainwater pinged into an old paint tin somewhere below, each hollow note ticking off the seconds of a city on borrowed time. A distant train sent a mournful call across the rust-coloured horizon.
"No schools," he said. "No clinics. No factories. No security of food. Without those, the city dies no matter how pretty the windows."
She pointed to another slide glowing soft aquamarine. "The south side allotments. Hydroponic arches over the walkways. Two thousand square metres of edible greens in Year One. The GP rooms are here, five modular pods ready to install. They plug straight into the grey-water loop. Nothing is cosmetic, Lin Kai. The polish is simply the lure that pays for the plumbing."
He turned back to her, eyes calm and hard as river stones.
"People live here, Jialin. Not projections. People who shiver through cold showers and boil tap water twice before drinking. People who patch their roofs with election posters and stay because they are too old, too proud or too broken to begin elsewhere."
She took a breath, lowering the tablet. "My aunt still lodges above the boarded chemist on South Hill. This scheme delivers her insulation and hot water in three months, a ground-floor lease she can afford in nine, and a medical pod within a year. I have written the milestones in ink."
He held her gaze. "And if investors grow bored. If the bond market sours again. If Phase Two stalls, who carries the cost. The same people who always carry it."
"It is not blind fantasy," she said. "It is a scaffold. You can climb it, or watch the building fall."
Silence stretched. Rain began to patter on distant tin. A lone feral cat balanced on a bent handrail, amber eyes fixed on them as if weighing the odds of survival.
"It still asks this city to barter its dignity for another story," he answered. "However refined the contract, it is still a gamble dressed in softer colours."
"It is not personal," she whispered at last. "It is survival."
"For you, perhaps."
She folded the tablet shut. Her heels clicked over the uneven concrete and stopped at the mouth of the stairwell.
"You still think you can save this place without selling any part of it. Noble," she said quietly, "and naïve."
She departed.
The echo of her boots lingered, then faded into the hush. Far below, the paint tin gave one final metallic drip, as if the city itself exhaled in resignation.
Kai remained alone.
Above him the sky offered no counsel, only the first slow patter of rain upon metal, stone and abandoned glass.