Chapter 347: Too Evenly Scrambled

"Give me the envelope."

Shen Zhixia lifted the canvas bag onto the table, pulled the kraft paper envelope from the very bottom, and laid it flat with both seam seals facing up. Ning Ping didn't take it right away. She moved the desk lamp half a foot closer first, pressed her palm over the paper to flatten the old crease along the top edge.

"Two seals," she said. "Last time, this strip was applied on-site, in front of the person breaking the seal. Two names across the seam. This one's mine, and this one—"

"Mine," Shen Zhixia said.

"Yours says 'handler.'" Ning Ping turned the envelope around. "December twelfth. They opened it, did the work, resealed it same day. Two people on the paper: one's me, one's you."

"The drive's been lying in there over a year." Master Qiu came out of the inner room, sleeves rolled to his elbows, the old burn scar on the back of his hand pale under the light.

"Verify before breaking the seal," Ning Ping said. "No verification, no opening."

The room at the end of the hallway had two lights on today: one on the table, one in the corner. The corner light pointed at a tray. An old printer sat by the door, a plastic sheet over its lid, a stack of cardboard from delivery boxes weighing down one corner.

9:40. Ning Ping put on white cotton gloves, rotated the envelope under the lamp, photographed it from the front, photographed the seam seals, photographed the corners. The inspector followed her hands with the camera, stopping each time she moved. When she finished, she pulled out the previous preservation record and checked it line by line—dates, names—then wrote in her notebook: Two seam seals on envelope, signatures consistent with record, seal edge not lifted.

"Who's present."

"Me, one inspector." Master Qiu said. "The authorized client's representative, her."

"One more." Shen Zhixia spread out the three pages of the authorization letter. "Cen Shouye's daughter, Cen Hong. She's here today. The letter says it in this sentence—her presence counts as family presence."

"Then where is she."

"Downstairs. She said she'd only come up for the signing. Said she'd sit here all morning watching, asking everything."

Ning Ping didn't respond to that. She flipped to the last page, verified the purpose field, the signature, the thumbprint, and looked up. "The commission letter's written?"

"It's written." Shen Zhixia slid it over.

That single page was drafted to the wording agreed on the second: restore the unallocated space; attempt passwords from written clues provided by the commissioning party, recording every attempt; the appraisal opinion addresses only the files contained within the material and the recovery and decryption process, and does not opine on the truth or falsity of the matters stated in those files.

Master Qiu took it and read. When he reached the line about "clues," he stopped.

"'Every attempt recorded.'" He read it aloud. "Who added this sentence."

"We drafted it."

"Fine." He pressed the paper back onto the table. "Then I'll say the ugly part up front: if I can't crack it, I write that too. I write 'attempted these, all failed.' Not one word spared."

"How many days."

"Thirty working days. Thirty even if it doesn't work."

The front desk girl pulled out the acceptance form, her pen hovering over the header field. "Who do I invoice."

"All three heirs." Cen Hong's voice came through the doorway. She wore a blue cloth apron, the barcode scanner tucked in her pocket, hair blown sideways by the wind. "I flipped the sign at the courier hub this morning. It says afternoon pickup."

She listed three names, pausing on the third. "This one's my brother."

Ning Ping listened, then turned to Shen Zhixia. "These three people—their signatures are all on the authorization letter?"

"They are. First two pages signed and thumbprinted on March fourth; the Shenzhen page arrived by mail March sixth."

"Then the header takes all three names." Ning Ping said. "Acceptance form, invoice, opinion letter—all three names on every one. Later, if anyone shows up with a piece of paper asking 'who commissioned this,' one line settles it."

"Photograph it," Ning Ping said.

The inspector straightened the envelope again and pushed the tray to the center of the table. Small scissors, thin blade. Ning Ping lined the cut up with the seam-seal paper edge, let Shen Zhixia see the position clearly, then made the cut. The paper parted with a soft sound; the blade traveled an inch, and the flap loosened half an inch.

Shen Zhixia put both hands in her pockets. She remembered He Xiufen's words.

Master Qiu reached inside, two fingers extracting the hard drive without touching its base, and set it dead center on the tray. The scraped-off patch on the label showed white under the light.

"One of the front, one of the side panel, one of the ports underneath," he said.

When he finished, he slid the drive into an antistatic bag and walked toward the mirror-like screen on the wall. Halfway there he turned. "Wait in the hallway. I'm doing it twice. Won't be quick."

[Thud. The door is locked. The one prying isn't in this room.]

The hallway was colder than the room. Outside the window lay the old buildings of Chengnan, five and six stories packed tight, clothes-drying poles jutting out at every angle. Cen Hong stood against the windowsill, apron still on, the scanner sticking half out of her pocket.

"My mom asked me last night," she said. "She asked, 'Is that thing still locked up?'"

"What did you say."

"I said it's locked. Locked in the lawyer's hands, two strips of sealing tape." She shoved her hands into her apron pockets. "She stopped asking after that."

A moment later she added, "After my dad passed, my mom carried that iron case out from under the cabinet and kept it at home for two days, then took the bus back. I didn't know what was in it then. I just felt—it wasn't our family's thing."

"And now."

"Now I know it's ours." She smiled, brief. "Doesn't feel any better."

10:15. She went up again; this time she didn't come down, just stood by the inner room door.

10:20. The door was open. When the screen turned, the base swiveled first. Gray text filled the top rows, long names—the system's own data. One layer down, the unallocated space: the whole block's shading was uneven.

"I ran the image twice," Master Qiu said. "Both match."

He slid over a printed sheet with two lines of letters and numbers.

"This is the checksum from the previous session. December twelfth, we made an image." His finger moved to the next line. "This is today's. They're identical."

"What does 'identical' mean." Cen Hong asked first.

"It means that in over a year, no one has written a single byte to this drive." Shen Zhixia said. She stopped herself, then tightened the wording: "In over a year—from that last sealing until now."

"Correct." Master Qiu glanced at her. "Beyond that, I won't say. Whether anything was done before December twelfth—the answer to that question isn't in my hands."

Ning Ping's pen never stopped. She finished writing and looked up. "How do we phrase that."

"Two image checksums identical." Master Qiu said.

"Just that?"

"Just that."

"I won't write 'no one touched it.'" Ning Ping set down her pen. "I write two values. Whoever wants to can judge for themselves. Whether those two values equal 'no one touched it'—I'm not the one who confirms that for you."

[Thud. Paper only writes what paper can see.]

"That's enough," Shen Zhixia said.

"One more thing." Master Qiu dragged the screen down a notch; the uneven patch filled the display. "Last time I said garbled code. This time I reran those three sets. The output differs from last time by not one byte."

"Not one byte." She repeated.

"Corrupted things don't scramble like this." He took his finger off the screen and pointed at the area. "A bad spot, a bad sector—damage has boundaries. Edge here, and next to it, intact halves. This has no edges. The whole block is scrambled, and it's scrambled evenly. There's no thin spot anywhere."

No one in the room spoke. A cart rolled past in the hallway; the wheel sound came in under the door.

"Scatter a handful of sesame seeds, you'll get dense spots and sparse spots." He said. "This has none."

"Then what is it." She asked.

"Locked." Master Qiu said. "A locked thing comes out looking exactly this even."

[Thud. It isn't broken. It's shut.]

Cen Hong wiped her hand on her apron.

"Who locked it."

"I don't guess." Master Qiu said.

"Was it my dad himself."

"It was deleted," he said. "The deletion—that I can see. Who deleted it, I won't say. I can't say."

Shen Zhixia didn't respond. She remembered what this man said last time: Names are door plates. The house is empty, but the sign's still nailed up. The half-sentence he'd added today meant something else—that the ground inside the house hadn't grown empty on its own.

She spread her notebook beside the tray and wrote. When she reached the word "even," her pen dug into the paper before moving on.

"In the unallocated space—can you tell how many times it was deleted?" Lu Jibai spoke. He stood by the window; he'd been silent the whole time.

"I looked. I can tell there were deletions." Master Qiu said. "How many, I won't say for certain. The dates on a drive—I don't vouch for those. Delete once, alter once; when the altering's done, it looks like it was never altered."

"Do we write that down." Ning Ping asked.

"No." Master Qiu said. "One extra word is me drawing conclusions for someone else."

"Then we move on." Ning Ping flipped a page in the record book. "The next item I have to make clear: the words on this drive, I don't recognize; what lock it is, he won't say; the rest, you go on your own."

Five minutes to eleven.

"I don't guess passwords." Master Qiu pulled off his gloves, tossed them on the counter, and turned to face her. "You write them on paper. I test them exactly as written."

"Exactly as written."

"One per line: which one, where it was copied from, who gave it to me, what date. Every attempt recorded—success or failure."

"What if we test a hundred."

"Then a hundred lines." He said. "If none work, I write that too."

She reached into the canvas bag, fingers finding the notebook inside. Hard cover, the corners worn white. She didn't take it out.

"Can I think of a few guesses today, right here."

"No." Master Qiu said. "What you think of here today—is it for your father, or for the person who'll read this opinion later? Those two have to be separated. Think it through, then write. And when you write, include the source. If it's your own guess, write 'my own guess'—then I'll test it. But that line, you don't get to change afterward."

"Why hold to this so hard." She asked.

"To guard against me," he said. "And against you. One day someone holds up this opinion and asks 'on what basis did you test this one'—if that line's on the paper, no one has to remember for anyone else."

Lu Jibai walked over, stood at this end of the table, glanced at the paper, and asked: "If a clue is copied from somewhere else—do we record the source it was copied from."

"Yes." Master Qiu said. "Notebook, case file, someone reading it aloud to you—all recorded. Words with no origin—testing them is wasted effort."

"Then we need to add one more column ourselves," Lu Jibai said.

"What column." She asked.

"Who knows this clue."

She wrote that sentence into her notebook and looked up at him. He didn't speak again, just went back to the window.

The front desk girl came in carrying a plastic bin and collected the removed seal strips, the cut paper edges, the used tray. When she finished, she asked Master Qiu: "So this list—they take it home to fill out?"

Master Qiu pulled a sheet from the drawer, walked around the table, and laid it beside Shen Zhixia's hand.

A blank page. Several ruled columns across the top, none filled in, the edges pressed flat.

"Think it through before you write," he said. "Whatever goes on this paper—I'll remember who gave it to me."