The neon lights of the capital's central district blurred into long, electric streaks of violet and amber as Chen Ying maneuvered her rented SUV through the suffocating evening congestion.
Her knuckles were white against the leather steering wheel, her mind running at high speed sorting through the information she had gathered at the mountain gates.
She had a single destination in mind: a modest, aging apartment complex in the old sector of the city, where the buildings stood like weary sentinels of a bygone era. According to the fragmentary records she had pieced together, this was the home of 'Lin Feng', one of the children who had been pulled from the dark Jiulong ravine alongside her seventeen years ago.
She found him sitting on a rusted bench in a small, quiet park near his building. He was a man now, perhaps twenty-four, with a tired face and eyes that seemed to constantly scan the shadows for threats that weren't there.
