Tour Ping An, seventy-fourth floor. Nanolithography lab, yellow light. Six German and Israeli engineers arguing about etching error rates: 2.3%. Unacceptable for Berlin, tolerable for Tel Aviv. The HuaXin consortium director watched. Silent.

Agent Kom listened, hands crossed. He pulled a sachet of Ngonda from his briefcase and a blue-and-white teapot. No words. Ground the beans, poured, served six cups. The ritual stopped the dispute.

Mei Lin drank first, publicly, before the Germans. A visible choice.

"Gentlemen. One question. What's the dielectric constant of the substrate the exact moment the chip signs a blockchain transaction?"

Silence. The Israeli frowned. The German checked his tablet. Nobody had measured.

Mei Lin translated into Mandarin for the director, voice steady. She was taking sides.

The technician launched the probe. Periodic fluctuation, 0.7 picofarad, synchronized to the millisecond with a bitcoin miner cycle from Guiyang.

"The chip no dey work alone, e dey listen to something for outside."

The chip generated nothing. It harvested. Clandestine capacitive channel.

The director went pale. Mei Lin didn't flinch.

7 p.m., hotel lobby. She brushed past him, slipped a note in his pocket. Shenzhen map, red dot on a Nanshan warehouse. One word: Come alone.

Want to know what a Chinese engineer hides in Nanshan? Messenger—we go together, but not alone. ☕