Chapter 8: Root

At two in the morning the restore script stopped at ninety-eight percent and stayed there.

Tang Yu glared at the progress bar on her left monitor.

It glared back.

She had been staring at it for forty minutes in the single room of her flat.

The desk lamp was on, every other light was off, and two cold cups of tea stood beside the keyboard.

"It was fine on staging," she said to the screen. "It was fine on Monday."

"It is fine," said a quiet voice behind her. "It is not fine."

Jiang Lü sat cross-legged on the bed in a borrowed grey T-shirt that hung off one shoulder.

She had arrived at midnight with a flask of soup and a firm refusal to be sent home.

Tang Yu had given up arguing at half past twelve.

"Don't quote the meme at me," Tang Yu said. "It's too accurate."

"May I look?"

"It's code. It's boring."

"I am not afraid of boring."

Tang Yu rolled the chair aside.

Jiang Lü came to the desk and bent over the screen, one hand resting lightly on the back of Tang Yu's neck.

The red auburn hair slid over her shoulder and fell across Tang Yu's arm.

She read the error slowly, with her lips moving.

"The restore opens a file," she said, "and then it hurries on to the next step."

"Here. It returns before it closes the first file."

"So the second step finds the first still open and cannot read it."

Tang Yu stared at the line.

She had read it twelve times.

"Line two-twelve," she said.

"Yes."

"How did you see that?"

"I read slowly," said Jiang Lü.

She sat down in the chair beside Tang Yu's and put out her hand toward the keyboard.

She moved with the stiff care of a person approaching a sleeping animal.

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