At exactly 13:00 Universal Time, it was the deep of night at Venus Port on Beijing Beta Star.

Venus Port was a semi-abandoned interstellar port, with only a handful of workers drawing meager wages from the government, coming in each day to perform basic maintenance.

At this moment, the cold night was profound, and there was not a soul near or far around Venus Port. On the vast open ground, frost-covered dead grass, taller than a person, swayed lifelessly back and forth in the howling wind, rustling as it moved. Looking out, it resembled a no-man’s land, bleak and desolate in color. The port’s old buildings and launch pads stood among it all, like scenes out of an old science fiction novel, unspeakably ugly.

A narrow path ran through the white grass, likely the route workers used to enter and exit the port. A group of homeless wanderers was making their way along this path toward the port. During the day, the workers would drive them away, but at night, they could sneak in to shelter from the wind.

An old vagrant, his back hunched, was carrying a child in equally tattered clothes on his back. Suddenly, he stumbled and fell to the ground. The child on his back rolled off like a ball, oblivious, and turned over stiffly, revealing a small face mottled with blue and purple—the child had long since stopped breathing.

A trash bin by the roadside detected a carbon-based biological corpse on the ground and activated its automatic cleaning system, buzzing as it rolled over, extending its cold shovel and mechanical arms to remove the body. The old man hurriedly spread his twig-like arms over the child, trying to cover him with his own body, as if that could somehow share a bit of life with the dead child.

Unfortunately, though the trash bin’s system was outdated, it wasn’t so easily fooled. It continued to shovel, engaging in a cold tug-of-war with the old man in that small space.

Unsurprisingly, the trash bin won.

The frail old vagrant was knocked down by the rough trash bin, left kneeling on the ground. Overcome with grief, he burst into loud sobs. His companions glanced over at the sound, then, indifferent, continued on their way. Here, it was nothing unusual for the dead to be carted off by trash bins—hardly worth making a fuss over.

As the wanderers moved farther away, suddenly, a pair of hard-soled boots stepped out from the white grass, pausing briefly before heading toward the trash bin.

It was a man, tall, with neat, flaxen short hair, pale skin, and features so perfectly regular they seemed almost rigid. He walked with precise, even strides, his shoulders and back straight. Though dressed in casual clothes, he exuded an inexplicable military air.

The man silently reached out to open the trash bin’s backend program, bent down and fiddled for a moment. With a creak, the trash bin’s shovel slowly leveled out, surrendering the small corpse it had just swallowed.

He didn’t mind the dirt, lifting the child’s body in both hands and returning it to the kneeling old vagrant. “My condolences.”

The old vagrant stared at him in a daze. The man pointed in a direction. “Detection shows that at your three o’clock, about two hundred meters away, the soil is the loosest. You may choose to bury your child there. Again, my condolences for your loss.”

Not only were his strides identical, but the man also spoke with each word coming out at a steady, even pace, his tone almost devoid of inflection, like a machine. After reciting this set of formalities as if reading from a script, he clicked his heels together, gave the old vagrant a shallow bow, and turned to leave.

The old vagrant couldn’t help but stammer, “You are…”

He blurted it out without thinking and immediately regretted it. The stranger’s neat attire and understated air of privilege marked him as an “upper-class person” in the old vagrant’s eyes. From his drifting, rootless life experience, it was best to keep far away from such people, or risk their disdain and likely a beating.

But to his surprise, the man stopped at the question and answered earnestly, “My identity is an encrypted file, inaccessible. My name is Luke.”

The old vagrant looked at him in disbelief.

The man who called himself “Luke” asked again, “Do you have any other questions?”

Only then did the bewildered old vagrant come to his senses, hurriedly wiping his nose and shaking his head. The man strode off, following the tracks of the other wanderers.

There was heating in the Venus Port reception hall. The wanderers all unbuttoned their coats, rubbing their hands and feet to warm up as quickly as possible, seizing the last bit of night before dawn to snatch a few moments of sleep.

In less than half an hour, snores began to rise and fall throughout the hall.

At this moment, a small, sneaky figure stood up from a corner, carefully avoiding the others as he headed deeper into the port.

If the delinquent girl Emily Harris were here, she would have recognized at a glance that this was the “monster” who trafficked children, now in disguise. He had escaped through the back door of the “Shabby Tavern,” used a small spatial field to land near Venus Port, blended in with the wanderers, and planned to leave Beijing Beta Star from here.

The security passage between the reception hall and the launch platform was locked. The fake vagrant pulled out a palm-sized chip, pressed it to the lock, and after three seconds, the door’s program silently disengaged. The heavy doors slid open to either side. He glanced around cautiously, then slipped inside.