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墨書 Inktalez
Chapter 8: Betrayal Again
The torrential rain soaked the scab on the back of my neck, turning it pale. The reflection in the revolving door shattered into three pieces, each reflecting Lin Yichen, who was cleaning his gun behind the floor-to-ceiling windows on the eighteenth floor. The elevator mirror revealed the inflamed bite mark on my collarbone, and Zhou Yi's blood still lingered in my teeth from the night he kicked me down the ventilation shaft.
"How dare a wild seed use the front door?" The crystal-clad receptionist tapped her fingers against the marble counter, the rhythm echoing the military boots of last night's pursuers. Clutching a USB drive, I walked through the corridor, the reflection of the ceiling light from twenty years ago in the delivery room swaying and making me feel nauseous.
As Lin Yichen flicked ash from his cigar onto Su Ya's hand, I kicked open the bulletproof glass door. His slacks still held the angle from when he had gripped my neck, and the crushed diamonds on his tie clip resembled nails from Mother’s coffin. The scent of whiskey mixed with cigar smoke rushed into my nostrils, reminiscent of formaldehyde in a morgue.
The sound of a pen puncturing through reports made my gunshot wound at my lower back burst open, blood dripping down my pants onto the Persian carpet, matching the color of the embryo number circled in red on my prenatal report. Su Ya twirled an emerald on her ring finger; the laboratory code etched on its inner side made my retina ache.
"Did Zhou Yi feed the dogs?" Lin Yichen tugged at my collar, pressing the cigar tip against my collarbone wound with a sizzling sound. He crushed the tracking chip hidden in my bra, its fragments falling into the ripples of his drink, as filthy as the drainage ditch from that night when Zhou Yi was shot.
Su Ya's high heels crushed my fingers; a crack marred one of her dangling pearls—extracted by forensic tweezers during Mother’s autopsy. The sheepskin soles dragged my blood across the carpet, leaving long streaks: "Sister only picks up trash." The sandalwood bracelet pressed against my temple, its scent mingling with that of burnt flesh from a crematorium.
The floor-to-ceiling windows reflected twelve Benz cars arranged in an encirclement, precisely mirroring the tactical formation of last night's pursuers. Shredded pieces of an Equity Transfer Agreement floated down like Zhou Yi's arc as he threw a dagger to slice through a pursuer's throat.
"Can you escape?" He gripped my chin and slammed it against the surveillance screen; thirty-six split screens displayed Zhou Yi in ICU. The creases of the ventilator tube resembled patterns from Mother's hanging scarf, while the heartbeat monitor's curve mirrored tire tracks from when I was thrown out of our old home at five years old.
Suddenly, Su Ya knocked over her coffee; the brown stain blossomed on her skirt like a name crossed out from Lin Clan Genealogy’s list of illegitimate children. Her crimson-tipped nails scraped across my Adam's apple: "Brother Chen, look! This bite mark matches perfectly with our bodyguard."
The ringing of the shareholders' meeting blended with the sound of a bolt being drawn, piercing through my eardrums. Lin Yichen yanked my hair and slammed me against tempered glass; cracks spread along the signature on the embryo experiment Consent Form. Blood dripped onto his shoe tips, precisely where Zhou Yi had shielded me from gunfire.
"Bastard." At that moment when his platinum necklace snapped, the sound of its pendant rolling into a vent overlapped with that of an encrypted chip being read. As directors entered with their Oxford shoes stepping to their own rhythm, Su Ya tore open her shirt and screamed: "Lin Qingyu has gone mad!"
The bulletproof glass reflected my empty hand as Zhou Yi's fingers curled around the breathing tube in the intensive care unit. The sound of Lin Yichen unbuckling his belt echoed like the thud of Zhou Yi's tactical belt hitting the floor, a death knell. "You should be lying in a freezer with your mother." The pressure he applied to my wrist matched the pain from that night five years ago when the chains in the attic dug into my flesh.
Suddenly, torrential rain slammed against the glass curtain wall, soaking Su Ya's face with paper documents. I caught a glimpse of eyes in a pool of blood through the gaps between the retreating board members' shoes—eyes that mirrored my mother's as she gasped her last, fixated on the surveillance camera.
"Expelled." The sound of Lin Yichen tearing my shirt was reminiscent of Zhou Yi ripping off a blood-stopping bandage. Su Ya held her phone up to record, mimicking the motions of lab coats documenting embryonic development.
When the iron door of the fire escape crashed open, an LED screen displayed their wedding announcement. The third button of the groom's suit glimmered with the red light of my tracker, while the rain poured onto the asphalt, rising in a mist that smelled of sulfur.
I knelt at the crossroads, tilting my head back to drink in the rainwater, tasting gunpowder residue from Zhou Yi's combat uniform on my tongue. Suddenly, a news flash erupted from the convenience store television—amidst the flames at Lin's Laboratory, half of a blood-stained embryo label number appeared, dated a full ninety days before my birth certificate.
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