I was there, the day the god-emperor moved through his congregation. I stood among the obedient, shoulder to shoulder in perfect rows, every face fixed in reverence, every breath inhaled in unison, all for one man. 1st of October, 2019. It was the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic. The sky was as blue as it could be in this accursed city. He walked out to the balcony ahead of us, our great helmsman, our embodiment of continuity, with that disgusting half smile on his face. Either smile or don't. You disgust me. If I had my way with you you'd be scourged and crucified.

  Jiang Zemin did not look any better. It took two men to hold up the corpse as it walked to the left of the Chairman. He repulsed me too, but still I took my place on the balcony, just one face among the hundreds of thousands gathered on that day. I clapped when I had to and I stopped clapping when I had to. Everyone had their part, and I played mine to the hilt. But make no mistake, I never believed in any of it. It took every ounce of my will to resist the delusion – after all, can the westerners say they have something like this? A sense of unity? A hero to unite them?

  But no. I do not believe in any of it. Communism. Equality. The wisdom of the masses. The benevolence of collectives. I certainly do not believe in the Chairman. I believe in China. I believe in an empire.

  When I was but a boy living on the outskirts of Harbin, my mother would sometimes have me sit in her lap and tell me where we got our surname from. The First Emperor of Qin declared his dynasty would last 10,000 generations. It lasted only 15 years. But in the shadows the blood persisted. Many members of the royal court of Qin Sanshi, the last official descendant of the Qin dynasty, fled and assimilated into new regions, hiding their lineage. Nobles became farmers, soldiers, clerks, until at last there was a woman sweeping the floors of the Party offices, and her little son. The one to make the First Emperor's dream come true.

  ?Greetings, comrades!“ the Chairman would say as he drove past the troops in his armored Hongqi.

  ?Greetings, Chairman Xi!“ the soldiers roared back.

  Did you ever wonder, just for a moment, if someone in that ocean of people, in that whole performance, felt something other than admiration? If there was someone who was not impressed by that man, his tanks, his missiles, the whole spectacle he'd put on for the benefit of the people and intimidation of the wider world? I felt something other than awe. I felt envy. Why should one Xi Jinping be seen as the embodiment of our nation? We were not made from the same dust, me and him, yet I was the one smiling and applauding and he was the one being adored by the millions. Not for long, though.

  That night, when the parade was at last over and the flags were folded away and the people all returned to their homes, I sat alone in my office, grappling with the same question I have grappled with for years.

  Am I really going to do this? Am I really going to go against it all? Out of... what, jealousy? Hatred? No. No, there was something much deeper beneath all those surface level reasons, older and greater than whatever emotions I, a mere link in the chain, might feel. An old shame begging to be corrected. I could not let things go on like this. Not anymore. The dignity of my very blood demanded to be defended. Those husks cannot have voices like that, they cannot stand on those podiums, they cannot command that power. Why should the eyes of the world turn to them? Why should history be dictated by them, descendants of revolutionaries, shaped from mud? Why not a descendant of nobles, shaped from fire?

  The choice was no choice at all.

  I opened a drawer in the desk. One of many burner phones in my possession. One number. Once dialed, there would be no going back. Not that I had any desire for going back. I dialed.

  One ring.

  Two.

  Then a click. Silence. A woman's voice, emotionless. ?Yes?“

  ?It begins. The records. Provincial level. 2012 to present. I want everything. Unfiltered. Quietly.“

  ?Understood.“

  The line went dead.

  I slumped in my chair. The plan had not yet formed in my head, but the seed had just been sown. It would take time to grow it. No matter. I would wait.

  But that was then. Now is now. The wait is over.

  There is a ring. A ring passed down to me from my long gone mother. It is old. Older than me, older than her, older than the Party and the nation it created. Older than the western civilization. I keep it hidden. I never put it on.

  My name is Zhao Wusheng. I'm a Deputy Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. I'm sixty-four years old.

  I wake up at exactly 5:00 AM. I need no alarm. Haven't needed one for the last twenty years. Though my first instinct is to lie still in the bed, maybe a minute or two to adjust, I don't. I get up immediately and cross the cold, sterile room to stand before a window and look outside. The black sky is faintly greyish in the east. The dawn is upon us, and the city is silent save for a car or two passing by in the street far below me.

  I stretch slowly, deliberately, then move from the window, from the bedroom, to the bathroom. My apartment bears no ostentation. Bare white walls, no art, no personal touches, not even any vegetation. I have no time for such distractions at home. I wash my face three times with cold water, then wash my teeth with an olive green folding toothbrush. No toothpaste; baking soda works well enough. I shave with a straight razor. Disposable ones would be faster, sure, but in this matter at least I set aside efficiency in favor of taking care of myself, the details of my personal appearance. Details, details... the devil in the details.

  Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

  I shower in near scalding water. I slowly adjust the heat, going lower and lower until the temperature goes from hot to lukewarm, to cold, to freezing. I tolerate it for as long as I can, then I slowly drive the temperature back up. It wakes me up better than a simple cold shower ever could. Makes me feel more alive, shall we say. When we sleep, we die. When we wake up, we are reborn. And today I am feeling very much alive. Beyond alive. But we'll get to that eventually.

  Every suit I own is identical, so I pick one without even looking once I am done with the shower. Charcoal grey, tailored in Shanghai. White shirt, black silk tie, a single dark overcoat, lined with wool. Inside the coat's inner pocket rests the ring. The only hint at the man beneath the mask. It brushes against my chest with each movement. It's a kind of pulse, more real to me than the beating of my fragile human heart. I do not wear it. I can't. Not yet.

  I drink green tea, no sugar. One cup, no more. I do not eat breakfast. Food before work slows and dulls the mind, and now of all days I must be sharp. Before I leave, I open a narrow drawer of my night table. Inside rests a pair of Bolon aviators. Some years ago, my eyes began to grow more sensitive to light. The specialists gave me diagnoses which I will not bother you with. Treatments, therapies, diets, and to cap it off, a pair of sunglasses. Simple mirrored lenses to keep the world at a distance.

  You'd be forgiven for thinking they were Ray-Bans or maybe even Randolph Engineering, American made. I still hear the whispers, from time to time.

  ?Thinks he's a movie star...“

  ?General MacArthur over there...“

  ?American affectation...“

  Idiots. The glasses are Chinese, but it is no wonder someone would mistake them for American. After all, where did the design come from? Not us, certainly. We just took it, imitated it, poorly. The word 'copyright' does not translate very well into Mandarin, it seems. Oh well. The glasses serve their purpose. They shield the eyes, they shield the gaze. No one can tell whether or not I'm watching them behind these lenses. I know this, they know this. Maybe that is why the glasses unsettle them so.

  But can I be honest with you? Can I be honest with myself for a moment? There is another reason to wear them. I like it. It's fun. I enjoy how they make me stand out. All those grey suits standing and clapping for Father Xi, who will you most likely remember? Another grey suit, or the man wearing aviators? I have many nicknames already. General, Crow, Comrade Sunglasses. I'm especially fond of that one, though it is meant in mockery. Imagine the headlines when the time comes. Imagine my face across the foreign media outlets. No Winnie the Pooh, who needs his ego placated at all times lest he turn into a screaming diva behind closed doors. A leader, an emperor in all but name, who will actually look the part for once. I vow that my people will see and hear as little of me as possible. And you know what?

  They will love it. As they always have.

  At 5:45, I put the sunglasses on and leave the apartment. I take an elevator down, down, down into the parking garage. I slip into the black Hongqi sedan assigned to me by the Party. The engine roars into life and the driver, with a slight nod, begins to drive.

  I envy the Parisians. How beautiful must a sunrise in Paris be? Beijing, on the other hand, is reluctant to wake up, and I don't blame it. The sunlight barely makes its way through the layers of smog. The PLA soldiers are the first to emerge, already standing statuesque at their checkpoints at 5:00 AM. Then the municipal workers, still half asleep, sweeping dust and cigarette butts from the sidewalks. Delivery trucks trudge ahead of the car, hauling who knows what. The city forces itself to awaken, a machine that must keep on moving, a piece of meat that must keep on living. There is ash and rust on one's tongue. Have you ever read the Song of Ice and Fire? Ever heard of Asshai by the Shadow? I live there.

  We arrive at the CCDI complex at 6:30. I nod once to the guards as I enter an anonymous mid-rise grey building in the Zhongnanhai district. The guards salute mechanically.

  I roam the sterile corridors. Third floor, east wing. This is where my office is located. Not too big, not too small. Just enough space for me to breathe comfortably. The white LED panel overhead flickers to life as I press a switch, bathing a dark room in dim white light. The walls are covered in beige plaster. At the far end of the room stands my desk of solid wood so dark it might as well be black, lacquered to a dull sheen. It is completely bare save for a mountain of old documents, a Lenovo ThinkPad, a leather-bound notebook, a silver brush pen, and a square black ceramic pot holding a single bonsai.

  Surprised? Yes, I said do not allow myself any distractions at home. But my home isn't my home. It is a place where I eat and sleep, nothing more. This office is my home. I have no spouse, no family. The Party is my family. At least, that is the message I wish to convey.

  A bookshelf dominates the wall to my right. A couple of classical texts, a couple of Party volumes, a couple of books in their original English, French, Russian. A tiny bamboo shoot accompanies them. Beneath it, a wall panel screen displaying live feeds from nearby Party officers.

  I glance to my left. A calligraphy scroll pinned there. Heaven and Earth in My Grasp, it reads. I ought to take it down soon. Someone might take it as a hint. But right now I move past it, toward the curtained windows at the far end of the office. I spread the curtains apart slightly to let the greyish sunlight in and I take a small white watering pot sitting on the windowsill. I tend briefly to the bamboo and the bonsai, then I finally take off my coat and hang it over my straight-backed, bamboo leather chair. I take a seat before the pile of documents, inhaling and exhaling deeply. A jolt of adrenaline hits me as I consider what I'm about to do, everything I have done, just to reach this point. Seven years of effort finally paying off.

  If I asked for all of it all at once, it would've been far too odd to ignore. A loyalist, a clerk eager to prove himself, an AI surveillance system might've flagged my request as suspicious activity. So the documents had to be gathered quietly and at random over the span of nearly six years, from 2019 to now. Routine audits of CCDI efficiency, the cover story was. A document for the Chairman exposing mismanagement in local anti-corruption efforts. Let them all think I'm just a tired bureaucrat, planning to retire and looking to leave his post in better shape than he found it. Let them think I'm cleaning their house for them. All the while I made sure not to have my name on any of the paperwork.

  And so here it was, at last. Raw, unfiltered disciplinary records and internal reports from all provincial-level branches of the Party spanning the Xi Jinping era starting in 2012, the year Xi assumed power and began his anti-corruption campaign. Internal corruption investigations real and fabricated. Whistleblower memos. Loyalty assessments. Rumors and allegations. Unpublished disciplinary actions. Confessions. Interrogation transcripts. Suppressed reports. Most of these files were never meant to see daylight. Certainly many were manufactured to eliminate rivals or secure promotions. Lies told under duress, inconsistencies between central and provincial directives, gaps between official punishment and actual loyalty... do you understand? Blackmail material so potent it could rewrite power hierarchies. And all of it sitting on my desk.

  Time to dig in.