In 2047, in the Republic of Duong Lan pressed between the sea and limestone mountains, chief scientist Trinh Ky An signs his name to the White Blood trial file, certain that one injection will erase cancer. The first patient is cured in three days—then bites through the throat of the on-duty nurse, and the outbreak kills no one but turns the infected into pale, blood-thirsty creatures whose wounds close too fast to die from. Fleeing with the half-awake child who whispers numbers, Ky An discovers that White Blood was never a mistake: it works exactly as designed, by someone who wanted something far removed from a cure.
In 2038, Nguyen An sits before the ECHO machine in an abandoned Morrow building and sends her neural state back to June 1, 2025. For thirteen years, the conviction that she killed Khai has consumed her life, and she returns to prevent his death. Waking beside Khai, still breathing, she has seventeen days before the day he dies. But messages from an unknown number keep reminding her that last time she told him everything, and Khai died four days early. The more she pieces together her memories, the more she realizes she may be joining them with guesswork. The room where she remembers him dying was built only after the seventeenth. If memory can be planted, who wrote those thirteen years?
