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Chapter 11: No Turning Back
The Fetal Heart Monitor emitted a piercing buzz, like a rusty saw slicing through my temples. The zipper on Zhou Yi's Tactical Suit was stuck with clotted blood; as the third droplet rolled off, I hazily saw the handle of the scalpel that Mother had clutched when she fell—coded L-037, identical to the one now embedded in his chest.
"Prepare the adrenaline!" The nurse lifted the sterile cloth, and the heavy scent of blood mixed with iodine rushed into my nostrils. Lin Yichen's Crocodile Leather Shoes crunched over the tiles, splattering red mud from his combat boots onto the back of my hand, reminiscent of the dark red stain that never seemed to fade when the crematorium staff handed over an urn.
Zhou Yi's left hand suddenly twitched, revealing a dark blue tattoo through a tear in his Tactical Gloves. It was a twelve-digit code, perfectly matching the number at the top of the missing persons list from twenty years ago at the Embryo Laboratory. My hand trembled as I gripped the breathing mask; the rubber tube cast a distorted shadow on the Fetal Heart Monitor screen, resembling the Oxygen Tube that Lin Yichen had pulled out in the delivery room.
"The blood of an Inferior Alpha stinks." Lin Yichen's cuff brushed against my collarbone scar, a chill creeping up my spine. A pale golden liquid seeped from his palm and dripped onto Zhou Yi's neck, burning with a charred smell—an unmistakable fluorescent reaction from the Marking Remover used in Black Market Circulation.
I tasted the dried blood crust on my lips, its metallic tang mingling with the cedar scent from his cuff. Zhou Yi's lollipop rolled out of his pants pocket and came to rest in the corner; in the rainbow reflections of its wrapper, I recalled how he used to slip Cartoon Stickers through the vent while I was locked in the attic.
"The residual Pregnancy Pheromone is above standard." The nurse's Monitoring Device suddenly beeped, and the β wave curve eerily overlapped with the fetal heart monitoring chart from three years ago when I had a miscarriage. Lin Yichen pressed my neck down against the Observation Window; glass reflected bite marks oozing blood on his collarbone—identical to the wound I had bitten into his wrist that night in the delivery room.
As Surgical Scissors grazed his Adam's apple, Zhou Yi's heartbeat spiked twice. That rhythm precisely mirrored the Morse Code that Mother had tapped out on her pocket watch before she passed: SOS. A bloodied Cotton Swab jabbed into Lin Yichen's suit pocket as yellowed Experimental Records fluttered down; within a Culturing Solution floated an infant with crescent-shaped eyes, just like Zhou Yi’s smile when he shielded me from bullets.
"The third layer of the safe contains samples with a 99% match, right?" I tore off his tie clip; the sharp edge of platinum cut into my palm, reminiscent of how he had gripped my waist that night when he marked me. In that instant before the Fetal Heart Monitor went black, Zhou Yi’s Tactical Suit vibrated and projected red light; a three-dimensional map of Lin Pharmaceutical’s underground laboratory flowed across the wall, every hidden door aligning perfectly with sketches in Mother’s diary.
When Su Nian stepped in over shards of glass, pearls around her neck glowed an eerie blue. Her practiced motion as she bent to pick up a Tactical Dagger revealed a corner of a yellowed photograph in her Pendant Box—fifteen-year-old Lin Yichen injecting a syringe into an infant’s nape amidst laboratory ruins, with "003" etched on the needle.
"What a pity." Her Lace Gloves brushed against my hand, and the sweet metallic scent of Embryo Culture Medium mingled with disinfectant as it seeped into my pores. When the last pearl cracked open, white mist poured out from the Cryogenic Chamber; bloodstains soaked through the Embryo Monitoring Report, blurring ink into Zhou Yi’s neck tattoo.
Lin Yichen crushed a pearl with such force that my knuckles cracked. In the monitoring footage that popped up from a chip, Zhou Yi lay convulsing on the Memory Erasure Platform. As I lunged toward Su Nian, her dangling obsidian earring brushed against my eye—just like that day in the delivery room when her cufflink tore through the Consent Form; it was unmistakably from the same raw stone fragment.
Amidst the vibrations of the bed rolling over the tiled floor, the Fetal Heart Monitor suddenly rebooted. The screen filled with garbled text, distorting into the final encrypted message from Mother before her suicide: "Subject 003 will awaken at the age of 23."
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