The carnival in Rio de Janeiro was like a bubbling pot of colorful soup. Qiyue was teleported to the mouth of a narrow alley, colliding head-on with the tail end of a parade—glittering floats, semi-nude dancers, and the deafening beat of samba drums. Confetti fell like a blizzard, sticking to his sweat-drenched shirt.
"Surveillance camera in the left alley," "Police ahead are wearing quantum scanners," "Two plainclothes officers behind are carrying neural weapons"...
Probability Vision activated automatically, but this time the information stream was accompanied by a piercing ringing in his ears. Qiyue braced himself against a wall; seven voices were filtering danger signals in his mind. Ghost Su Muqing was even more translucent than she had been in Tokyo, almost impossible to make out.
Chapter 18