The noodle shop had the same fluorescent hum as the one from Gene's false memories, the same warped plastic stools, but the auntie spoke Shanghainese, not Hokkien. She squinted at him like she could see the crack down his center.
"Ni jin wan zi gan ma?" she demanded. *What are you doing tonight?*
Gene almost answered honestly. Zhao Xian intercepted.
"Ta gen wo yi qi." *He's with me.*
The auntie grunted, satisfied, and poured tea that steamed in the cold air. The cup warmed Gene's hands, but his shell felt thin tonight, permeable. He could feel the other timelines pressing in, the ones where he was still safe, still broken, still loved by ghosts.
"Tell me about the Potter," Gene said. He didn't have time for emotional negotiation. He wanted the puzzle naked.
Zhao Xian studied him, judging his stability. "He builds traps for people like you. Not weak people—fractured ones. He finds the cracks where reality hasn't quite set, where identity is still fluid, and he offers a place to harden. A safe shape. Pottery, therapy, a small life with clear rules."
Gene's knuckles went white around the cup. The ceramic began to vibrate, a low hum that had nothing to do with the kitchen's faulty wiring. "And then?"
"Then he uses their desire for that safety as fuel. Every person who accepts his timeline gives him the power to collapse another." She paused. "He's collapsing border territories. Three so far. We move tonight or the fourth goes."
The soup arrived. Pork belly, extra liver. Gene's stomach revolted at the smell of iron and memory. In the delusion timeline, Mei had taught him that clay needed blood to hold its shape. Here, the soup was just soup. He needed it to stay that way.
"How do you stop someone who offers what people want?" Gene asked.
"You give them something they want more." Zhao Xian pulled out a device that looked like a smartphone carved from single crystal. "The anchor is a woman. She thinks she's healing from grief. In reality, she's feeding him enough emotional energy to erase three worlds."
She showed him the screen. The face was Mei's, but not. Same features, same gentle eyes, but the expression was wrong. Too placid. Too still. The face of someone who'd traded volatility for peace.
"She's not real," Zhao Xian said, reading his micro-expressions. "She's a construct. A template he uses. He finds someone with unresolved loss and builds her to match."
Gene's anger projection surged. The teacup stopped humming and started to *sing*, a high-pitched whine that made the auntie shout from the kitchen.
"Ni nong po le!" *You're breaking it!*
Gene released his grip. The cup stilled, but a hairline fracture remained, visible only when the light hit it at certain angles.
"You're bleeding," Zhao Xian observed. Not physically. She meant the boundary sickness, the way his perception was leaking into the present.
"I'll hold."
"Doubtful. But you'll try." She stood, dropping cash on the table. "Midnight. The anchor shifts then. If we don't extract her construct, she becomes permanent. Another timeline dies."
"Extract her how?"
Zhao Xian pulled a tuning fork from her jacket. Not crystal, but bone—polished, ancient, humming at a frequency that made Gene's teeth ache. "You hold the boundary open with your projection. I cut the tether."
"That's your whole plan?"
"Simple plans survive contact." She met his eyes. "Complexity is where the Potter lives. He'll try to confuse you, offer you a timeline where you don't have to do this. Where you can be the person your parents wanted. Safe. Grateful."
Gene's palm found his pocket, where his parents' photo used to live. He'd burned it in the void, but the impulse to check for it remained—a habit, the shell looking for its ghost.
"I don't want safe."
"Good." She started for the door. "Because he's coming for you. He always comes for himself."
---
NEW SHANGHAI, WAREHOUSE DISTRICT, 11:47 PM
The warehouse looked like all the others from the outside—corrugated metal, rust stains, a blue light pulsing behind the door. But Gene could feel it: the boundary here was thin, stretched taut by something that wanted in. Or out.
Zhao Xian handed him the bone tuning fork. It was warm, resonant with his own frequency.
"He'll offer you the safe timeline," she warned. "The one where you stayed medicated. Where your parents were proud. Where you weren't dangerous."
Gene's knuckles went white around the fork. "I don't want safe."
"Everyone wants safe." She touched his shoulder, a rare gesture of contact. "That's how he wins."
They entered at 11:59.
Inside, she was waiting. Not his Mei. The Potter's Mei. Constructed from his grief, his guilt, his need for a guide who wouldn't ask him to become a weapon. She stood at a pottery wheel, hands covered in clay, the wheel spinning without power.
"Gene," she said, voice soft with concern. "You're early. The piece isn't ready."
Gene raised the fork. The anger wasn't a projection anymore—it was containment, a shell around the rage that would otherwise unravel everything. He could feel the boundary collapsing, the timeline trying to fold itself into the safe shape.
"You're not real," he said, and the words had weight, had force, had the authority of someone who'd already killed his parents to get here.
She smiled. She had his mother's smile. "Neither are you. Not yet."
The boundary began to collapse. Gene held it open with everything he had—the rage, the grief, the detachment that let him see the mechanics underneath the emotion. He felt Zhao Xian move past him, the bone fork singing as she severed the tether.
Mei's face flickered. For a moment, she looked like his mother. Then his father. Then the Gene who'd stayed in Irvine, medicated and safe.
Then she was gone.
The warehouse was empty. Silent. Real.
Zhao Xian stood in the center, holding a coil of something that looked like spun glass—emotional energy, harvested and neutralized.
"One down," she said.
But Gene was staring at his hands. They were shaking, not from exertion, but from absence. The angry part of him, the part that had driven him across dimensions, was quieter now.
He'd killed the Potter's anchor. But he'd also killed the last echo of the boy who'd needed his parents to be proud.
Zhao Xian touched his shoulder again. "The ghosts are quiet now."
"What do I feel like?"
"Like someone who's finally alone enough to become himself."
They walked out into the New Shanghai night. The city looked sharper now, more defined. One timeline, solid and chosen.
Gene's phone buzzed. Chen Lao: *Tomorrow, Phase Three begins. Be ready.*
He was. Not because he wanted to matter anymore, but because he finally understood what mattering meant. It meant carrying the ghosts without letting them steer. It meant the anger was a tool, not a master.
It meant his shell could hold multitudes, but only if he chose which ones got to live.
Zhao Xian drove him home in silence. At his building, she stopped the car but didn't turn it off.
"Tomorrow," she said, "we'll discuss payment."
"For tonight?"
"For surviving yourself." She handed him the neutralized energy coil. "Keep this. It's what you paid to get here."
Gene took it. It felt like nothing. Like a memory of grief.
He got out and walked into his building, the weight of his own soul finally his to carry.