Marcus Shaw managed to get Sledge's old phone number. He called it—disconnected. The cooling-off period had passed, but at least the number hadn't been resold yet.
Early the next morning, Marcus Shaw headed straight to the Unicom branch office and had the security guard fetch the manager.
The manager was tall, dressed in black trousers and a white shirt with a yellow plaid tie, his hair slicked back with oil. When he saw Marcus Shaw, he flashed a professional smile. "How can I help you?"
Marcus Shaw showed his badge. "I'm looking into a suspect. I need to check a phone number."
The manager's smile froze. He looked Marcus Shaw up and down, taking in the basketball jersey. "Could I see your ID again, please?"
Marcus Shaw was used to this. He handed it over without a word. The manager examined it from every angle, glancing back and forth between the photo and Marcus Shaw's face.
A full minute passed before he returned the badge with an apologetic smile. "Don't mind my caution—there are so many fake IDs these days, some look more real than the real thing. I'm just doing my duty, protecting customer information."
Marcus Shaw said, "If you still don't believe me, you can call my unit." He reached for a business card.
The manager waved it off but still accepted the card, glancing at it quickly before grinning. "The police are catching bad guys, of course we'll support you. But please keep this confidential—this information didn't come from me." He slicked back his hair, which shone like chrome plating; a fly landing on it would slide right off.
"I'm worried about customers making a scene."
"Don't worry. I've been at this for years. I may not know much, but I know about confidentiality—you don't need to remind me."
According to the system records, the original holder of the phone number was named Quentin Magnus.
Quentin—join those two characters together, and you got "Qiang."
At Marcus Shaw's request, the manager pulled up the ID photo on file: a man with a buzz cut, square face, thick eyebrows, and hard eyes that commanded respect without trying. From the breadth of his face and shoulders, he carried serious bulk.
Marcus Shaw memorized the ID number and took a photo of the screen with his phone. "Could you check if he has any other numbers registered under his name?"
The manager didn't say a word but did the search, hammering on the keyboard loudly. Nothing.
Marcus Shaw, undeterred, had him run the search again. Same result.
The manager grinned. "Maybe try the China Mobile branch? A man like that might've switched carriers to cover his tracks."
Marcus Shaw hurried to a Mobile office and entered the ID number digit by digit. Nothing came up. He double-checked the string twice. Still empty.
Frustration coiled in his chest. He'd have to go back to the unit, fill out forms, and run an ID trace through the system.
After submitting the paperwork, he didn't sit idle. He dug out Shane Mercer's file and discovered the dead man had an older brother named Shane Mercer.
Wait—Sean Mercer. An older brother named Sean Mercer.
Both brothers were from the countryside, up in Millbrook, north of Beacon City.
But there was no contact information for Sean Mercer—just an ID number. Marcus Shaw cursed his own haste from earlier and had to fill out another form for another approval.
Nearly five hours later, the results came back. Marcus Shaw read them and felt the floor drop out from under him.
Sean Mercer and Quentin Magnus—both deceased, both removed from the household registry.
He checked the cause of death: Sean Mercer from illness, Quentin Magnus from drowning in a lake. Both occurred shortly after the food poisoning incident.
Another dead end.
He'd thought he was about to crest the peak, had pushed hard for two more steps, only to find the rock face crumbling beneath his feet—plunging him into a fog of bewilderment.
Marcus Shaw checked for relatives of both men. Nothing.
The Shan brothers had lost their parents young and had no close extended family—just the two of them against the world. That was sad but explicable.
But Quentin Magnus? Virtually no family information at all, no living relatives. Had he sprung from a rock? It defied logic.
Something was deeply wrong here.
Rather than stewing, Marcus Shaw decided to grab hold of whatever loose thread he could find and follow it until it led somewhere.
He traced the registry cancellations back to the local police station. So much time had passed that the female officer who handled household registrations had no memory of it, but they tried their luck reviewing the station's surveillance footage.
It was still there.
But what shocked Marcus Shaw was that the man who came in person to process the cancellation was Quentin Magnus himself. Who cancels their own household registration?
The female officer panicked, her face flushing. "That's really him? Are you sure?"
Marcus Shaw zoomed in on the man's head. "Look—fat face, big ears, wearing a hat. Matches my information exactly."
The officer scrutinized the footage for a long time, then murmured, "Looks a bit like him... but couldn't it be a brother? A twin? There are plenty of people who look alike."
Marcus Shaw shook his head. "No known family members."
"No known members doesn't mean none. Records could be wrong, or there could have been a data entry error. Either way, it's not really my mistake." She stared at Marcus Shaw without blinking.
He neither agreed nor disagreed.
He wanted to copy the footage, but the officer flatly refused.
Left with no other option, Marcus Shaw used the man's physical description from the footage to pull security cameras from nearby businesses. Most had long since overwritten their old recordings, but one high-end beauty salon still had theirs.
Though the angle was poor, they could just make out that the man, after finishing his business at the station, got into a black Land Rover, paused briefly, and drove east.
The plate was unreadable.
He pushed further, checking more cameras, but it was all for nothing—hours of effort yielded nothing.
Before he knew it, night had fallen. Marcus Shaw was heading back to the station when he passed a shop with a crowd outside, remembered that this place was famous for its walnut pastries—Nora loved them.
Without thinking, he pulled over, went in, and bought half a kilo. Wrapped in brown paper, the pastries were warm, heavy, and fragrant in his hand—like a newborn.
When he got home, Nora was eating dinner—a small mantou and a plate of vinegar-slipped shredded potatoes. Seeing him, she put down her chopsticks. "There are two more mantou, I'll steam them and make you a fried egg—"
Marcus Shaw was about to accept, then remembered the pastries. "Don't bother, I've already eaten." He set the bag on the table.
Nora opened it. "What's this for?"
He turned away to put away his shoes, saying offhandedly, "Viktor Dunn thought I was working late and might be hungry. I ate something else, so I brought these home. Seemed a shame to throw them out."
"Oh." She set the bag down.
"Want a piece?" Marcus Shaw asked, pretending to be busy organizing the shoe rack while stealing glances at her.
Nora hesitated, then broke off a small piece, put it in her mouth, and chewed with her head down before reaching for her unfinished mantou.
Marcus Shaw realized he must have misremembered—she didn't actually like them that much.
"Are you full? I can make you something else."
"Full, really. You go ahead." He hesitated, then retreated to his small room, leaving the door open and the window cracked, letting the cross-breeze flow through.
If Quentin Magnus had used his connections to cancel his own household registration, he must have acquired a new identity. He was no longer Quentin Magnus.
Everything had circled back to the starting line. His whereabouts remained a total mystery.
But then Marcus Shaw reconsidered: even if he had bribed someone inside the system and changed his name, fabricating an entire identity—he couldn't change his face.
Unless he'd gotten plastic surgery.
The next morning, Marcus Shaw gave a brief report and drove to the provincial department to find an old classmate from the Technical Division.
After hearing the gist, the classmate asked, "Got a photo?"
Marcus Shaw pulled up the ID photo from the Unicom office.
"Too low resolution. Need the original, not a phone photo."
Marcus Shaw hurried back to the Unicom branch and, after much persuasion, got the slick-haired manager to pull up the image again. He saved it properly and copied every file he could, just in case.
Back at the provincial department, it was already noon. Marcus Shaw slapped his classmate on the shoulder. "Let's go grab lunch."
No alcohol meant no raucous atmosphere. They talked in scattered fragments, mostly about their academy days. Toward the end, his classmate suddenly asked, "Got a girlfriend? Need me to set you up?"
Marcus Shaw hesitated, then looked down. "Thanks, but no. I... I've got someone I like."
His friend's eyes lit up. "Dr. Maren Frost? You still haven't given up on her?"
Marcus Shaw shot it down immediately. "That's ancient history. It's over." Fearing further questioning, he added, "She's with Lucas Lutz now—the intelligence studies whiz. They look good together, I think."
After lunch, the classmate loaded the ID scan into his computer and opened two or three programs Marcus Shaw had never seen.
Fifteen minutes later, the resolution had improved dramatically—every follicle on the man's face was visible.
"What's next?"
The classmate gave a sly smile and, without a word, gestured for Marcus Shaw to follow him into a server room. "This is our division's pride and joy—an AI facial recognition system we've been developing. AI is the future, and we can't fall behind."
"Nice."
He had the classmate demonstrate. "Of course, this only works if our subject's new identity is still in the local database. He might have changed his age, but probably not by much. Let's narrow the range first—that'll save a lot of work."
Marcus Shaw said, "His old ID shows forty-three. Let's add five years either way: search ages thirty-eight to forty-eight."
The classmate agreed, plugged in the USB drive, and dragged the processed photo into the system. Blue circles appeared across the face, connecting into a web that mapped every facial feature.
"The tech is still maturing, still in testing. If it doesn't pan out, don't blame me."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
The classmate clicked the red button, and a grid of faces began cycling rapidly across the screen.
Marcus Shaw watched without blinking. The classmate laughed. "Don't kill yourself staring. The system auto-flags and saves matches with similar features. Matches above seventy percent similarity trigger an alert."
Marcus Shaw, slightly embarrassed, said, "Great tech, really. Saves a lot of work."
They filtered district by district. Forty minutes in, Chaoyang and Nanguan districts were done—seven matches saved. Marcus Shaw couldn't wait, had the classmate open the back end and go through them one by one.
None of them.
One man had very similar eyes and brows, but his mouth and nose were too small, and he had no earlobes. Eliminated. Both men felt a wave of disappointment.
Marcus Shaw kept staring at the screen, faces flying past, until his eyes watered from the rapid scrolling.
He was rubbing his eyes when the room suddenly erupted with song: "You're just like, a ball of fire, burning bright, illuminating me—"
Marcus Shaw nearly jumped out of his chair, but his classmate was pounding the desk in delight. "Got him! Look, look!"
Marcus Shaw looked at the monitor. The screen flashed red, and in the center was a face.
It was Quentin Magnus—only somewhat heavier.
He pulled up the household registration. A name appeared on screen: Dominic Hale.