Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, 07:11 a.m.
Null Boundary Energy – Conference Room A, 10th floor of a building that had not existed four days ago.
The room was glass on three sides, Shanghai's morning smog pressing against the windows like dirty cotton. Eight people sat around the oval table, seven of them sweating.
Lin Kexin sat at the head, legs crossed, black silk blouse and narrow trousers, hair in a low knot that looked effortless only because Hassan had pinned it for her twenty minutes ago. Her restored beauty made the venture capitalists avert their eyes too quickly, then glance back, unable to help themselves.
Hassan stood behind her right shoulder, hands clasped behind his back, expression neutral. The air around him was three degrees colder than the rest of the room; no one had commented yet.
Across the table: three partners from Sequoia China, two from Hillhouse, one senior director from CATL's investment arm, and Dr. Gu Weiming—former chief scientist at BYD, poached yesterday with a signing bonus that could have bought a county.
They had come for the battery.
They were leaving with religion.
Dr. Gu finished the nail-penetration demo on the third prototype cell. The 4680 cylinder sat on a steel tray, a ten-inch masonry nail driven clean through it by a hydraulic press. Temperature readout: 24.6 °C. Voltage: 4.197 V. No smoke, no swelling, no hiss of electrolyte.
The CATL director's hand trembled as he set down his pen.
"Miss Lin," he said, voice thin, "if this cycles three thousand times at that density, the entire supply chain collapses. You understand that."
"I do," she answered.
Sequoia's lead partner, a woman named Xu Jin, leaned forward. "Series A valuation. We're prepared to lead at fifteen billion RMB pre-money, provided you keep the core IP in the PRC and grant us—"
"No," Lin Kexin said.
The room went very quiet.
"I'm not raising at fifteen. Or fifty. Or at all, actually." She tapped a single key on the laptop in front of her. The screen behind her lit up with the State Grid logo and a red header stamped 绝密级.
"State Grid has signed an exclusive strategic cooperation framework with Null Boundary, effective this morning. Capacity reservation: two hundred gigawatt-hours per year starting 2027, priority grid-scale. The Central SASAC office called personally."
She let that settle, watching pupils dilate.
Dr. Gu found his voice. "How… the qualification process alone takes eighteen months."
"I'm very persuasive," she said.
Hassan shifted half a step; the temperature dropped another degree. The CATL director rubbed his arms without thinking.
Xu Jin recovered first. "Then why are we here?"
"Because I still need people who can build factories, not just balance sheets." Lin Kexin slid eight folders across the table. "Equity incentive pool, total 12 %. Vesting over four years, strike price one mao. Take it or leave within twenty-four hours."
No one reached for the folders yet. They were still processing the fact that a twenty-six-year-old nobody had just rewritten the future of global energy in a long weekend.
Lin Kexin stood. The meeting was over; she had decided it thirty seconds after walking in.
As the investors filed out in dazed silence, Hassan murmured at her elbow, too low for microphones, "Two tails outside. Black Hongqi, plate ending 077. And a drone on the roof across the street."
She didn't break stride. "Handle it."
He was simply gone, no sound, no blur, just absence. Thirty seconds later her phone buzzed with a single text from an unknown number:
077 plates now parked in Kunshan.
Drone in the Huangpu River.
No bodies.
She allowed herself half a smile.
Back in the private office, door locked, blinds drawn, she sat at the empty desk and opened the definition window again.
She had questions.
Definition request:
Complete, unambiguous explanation of energy accounting mechanics and future limitations on off-world extraction.
The white text appeared faster than ever, colder.
[NULL]
Clarification:
1. Energy equivalence is absolute.
2. Local extraction (biology, memory, geography) scales linearly.
3. Non-local extraction (extrasolar) scales exponentially due to entropy gradient across Hubble volume.
Second extrasolar event will trigger automatic punitive equilibrium.
Punishment parameters:
- Random removal of one fundamental constant from Blue Star local causality bubble, duration 0.3–30 planetary rotations
- OR immediate and irreversible termination of host
Choice is mine, not yours.
You have been warned once. There will not be a second.
The text hung there, unblinking.
Lin Kexin felt the room tilt, just slightly. For the first time since the pier, real fear touched the back of her neck, cold, precise, inevitable.
She stared at the warning until the letters burned after-images.
Then she closed the laptop, leaned back, and spoke to the empty air.
"Hassan."
He stepped out of the shadow in the corner as if it had given birth to him.
"Kexin."
"No more off-world costs," she said. "Not ever again. From now on we pay retail."
His ancient eyes studied her face. "Understood. The price will be closer to home."
"I know." She rubbed the place where her missing toe had been, perfect skin over perfect bone. "But at least I'll see it coming."
Outside the window, Shanghai kept breathing, eight million breakfasts, eighty million ambitions, none of them aware that the woman on the tenth floor had just drawn a line even she was not allowed to cross again.
She exhaled, slow.
"Next move," she said. "We find out who sent the Hongqi. And we make them regret waking up this morning."
Hassan's smile was thin and very old.
"With pleasure."
End of Chapter 4
Daddy, Chapter 5.