Chapter Twenty-Nine: Who Is Recording Me?

The bathroom light finally clicked off, and darkness surged in, wrapped in damp mist.

Shen Mo’s phone screen glowed a ghostly blue in his palm, illuminating the distorted handwriting on the mirror as it gradually faded, as if wiped away by an invisible hand.

He heard Su Wangying’s breathing behind him; she had stood by the door at some point, her knuckles pressing white against the frame.

“Do you need me to stay?” Her voice was as light as a wisp of vapor.

Shen Mo looked down and wiped the droplets from the edge of the mirror with his cuff. In the reflection, his movements were finally synchronized with his image.

“No.” He tucked his phone into the pocket of his white coat, the metal clasp clicking sharply. “Eight o’clock tomorrow morning, in front of the Forensic Center. Bring little Wu.”

Su Wangying did not ask why. She knew Shen Mo’s rhythm too well—when he specified a time and place, it meant the plan had already run through his mind three times. As she turned, her hair brushed the door frame, carrying a faint, lingering scent of sandalwood—the fragrance of the old jade pendant she always wore at her collar.

The next morning, as sunlight crept onto the glass curtain wall of the Forensic Center, little Wu arrived with a backpack full of equipment. His dark circles were heavier than the day before, and there were coffee stains on his glasses. “Brother Shen, I brought the camouflage camera you asked for. It has local storage, automatic angle switching, and even an independent lithium battery for power. It’s completely air-gapped.”

Shen Mo took the device, the metal casing still holding the warmth of little Wu’s body heat. He looked up at the surveillance camera on the roof, then adjusted the angle of the camouflage camera so it covered the path from the main entrance to the autopsy room.

“I will walk back and forth seven times in my lab coat.” He tapped the camera with his knuckle. “You are responsible for checking the storage every hour. If there are any abnormal data fluctuations—”

“I’ll back up the raw files immediately.” Little Wu pushed up his glasses, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Brother Shen, that mirror yesterday…”

“Now is not the time to discuss the mirror.” Shen Mo’s voice was as sharp as a scalpel slicing through bone. “We need to test the hypothesis: whether the image generated by the reverberation relies on real-time observation.” He turned and walked into the building, the hem of his white coat sweeping over the steps. “Start recording.”

Twenty-four hours later, the lights in the autopsy room stretched the shadows of the three of them into long, thin shapes.

Little Wu’s laptop screen glowed as his fingers flew across the touchpad. “Thirteenth take, 14:07:23. There’s a 0.8-second stutter at the edge of the frame.”

Shen Mo leaned closer to the screen, his pupils slightly contracting. In the video, his own back was walking toward the autopsy room with a steady gait, until a certain frame suddenly froze—as if an old videotape had been pressed to a halt by a finger. When it played again, the neck of that figure twisted backward at a grotesque angle, the chin nearly touching the shoulder, while the eyes in the video glowed with a cold, white light.

“Data layer analysis.” Shen Mo’s voice dropped an octave.

Little Wu pulled up the spectrum, his fingertips trembling. “This frame isn’t from the original input; it was injected post-production.” He opened another string of code. “I traced the injection source back…” The green light on the screen jumped across the map, finally stopping in a shadowed area of the old medical school campus. “The power was cut there five years ago; it’s an abandoned laboratory building.”

The old medical school campus was filled with the pungent scent of rotting leaves late at night. Shen Mo held a flashlight, its beam sweeping over the "Keep Out" warning tape. Little Wu walked in the middle, carrying the detection equipment, shrinking his neck every time he snapped a dry twig. Su Wangying brought up the rear, her canvas bag bumping against her thigh, containing a portable evidence kit.

“The distribution room is on the basement level.” Little Wu’s detection pen suddenly emitted a beep. “Current fluctuation… the frequency isn’t synchronized with the main grid.”

The three of them followed the stairs down, damp wind carrying the smell of mold into their collars. The iron door to the distribution room was rusted shut; Shen Mo pried it open with a scalpel, the sound of metal scraping echoing in the empty hallway. The beeping of the detection pen grew shrill. Little Wu suddenly grabbed Shen Mo’s sleeve. “The ventilation duct—there’s light in the crawl space!”

As the flashlight beam rose, they saw the old video recorder. It was embedded in the crawl space of the ventilation duct, its casing covered in dust, yet the indicator light flickered red with stubborn persistence. A broken piece of tape was jammed in the cassette slot, like a snake flicking its tongue.

Su Wangying donned anti-static gloves, her movements as gentle as if she were touching a fragile ancient painting. As she removed the tape, the handwriting on the label made her pause—"Human Anatomy Records: Class of 2016, Lecture 7." It was the very lecture the suicidal student had recorded last.

“Play it.” Shen Mo’s voice was like a taut string.

When the portable player’s screen lit up, the scene of the autopsy room sprang to life. In the footage, Shen Mo was explaining a liver section, the faces of the students below flickering in and out of the light. When he said, “The person holding the blade must be absolutely objective,” the screen suddenly skipped. On a 0.3-second black frame, blood-red characters seemed to bleed out from the screen: “You aren’t dissecting a corpse; you are dissecting me.”

“This frame wasn't in the raw file.” Su Wangying’s finger pressed the pause button, her fingernails turning pale. “It was inserted later.”

“We need to verify the transmission mechanism.” Shen Mo turned to little Wu. “A double-blind experiment. You will watch three videos: one of the reverberation tape, one of a standard lecture, and one blank.” He paused. “You won't know which is which.”

Three hours later, little Wu’s computer emitted a “beep.”

The camera turned on automatically. On the screen, behind the back of little Wu’s chair, a blurred figure in a white coat was raising its hand, its movements overlapping with little Wu’s gesture of adjusting his glasses.

“Observation is activation.” Shen Mo wrote this line in his notebook, the pen tip nearly tearing the paper. “The observer becomes a new node of transmission.”

The Electrical Education Building was colder at night than during the day. Shen Mo stood before the old video recorder, a lighter in his white coat pocket. He spoke into the air: “I know you’re watching.”

The surveillance screen lit up in response. In the footage, “Shen Mo” walked from the end of the hallway, every step identical to his own footprints from the day before. Shen Mo suddenly tore off his white coat and threw it at the camera, the hem of his black jacket sweeping past his knees.

On the screen, however, the shadow was still wearing the white coat. Its footsteps faltered, and its head began to twitch irregularly, like a marionette with its strings cut.

“You are imitating the image.” Shen Mo raised the lighter, the flame dancing in his palm. “But I am not.”

The shadow’s mouth opened in an exaggerated “O,” but no sound emerged. The recorder began to rewind frantically. Amidst the clicking, the broken end of the tape suddenly popped out, carving a silvery arc in the air.

Shen Mo bent down to pick up that piece of tape; his fingertips could feel the dense scratches on it—as if something were desperately trying to claw its way out. As he tucked the tape into an evidence bag, the seal at the opening emitted a faint tearing sound.

“Tomorrow,” he said to the darkness, “send it to the evidence laboratory.”

Moonlight leaked in from outside the window, shining on the evidence bag and making the "Human Anatomy Records" label gleam. For a fleeting moment, Shen Mo felt as if the tape inside the bag had moved, like a living creature struggling to break free from its bindings. He closed his briefcase, the click of the lock echoing through the empty building.