The mildew spots in the storage room on the top floor glowed fluorescent blue under the ultraviolet flashlight. When Lila counted to the seventh loose floorboard, the blood seeping from under her fingernails was undergoing a chemical reaction with the red wine stains. The moment the crowbar pierced through the interlayer, the scent of cedarwood that gushed out from the wooden box dating back to 1997 made her knees go weak – this was the unique smell of the preservative in Ethan's art studio, mixed with the metallic smell of the morgue's freezer.
Twelve vacuum photo frames hung upside down from the ceiling, and each photo was a close-up of Scarlett's lower back from a different angle. When Lila tore off the dust-proof film, the iris tattoo suddenly flipped under the strong light, revealing the steel stamp of the prison code 0927. Half of a nail art piece was stuck to the edge of the fifth photo, perfectly matching the sapphire fragment she had picked up when she was released from prison.
Suddenly, there came the sound of nails scratching against glass from the ventilation duct. When Lila lifted the seventh floor tile, a blood-stained delivery room record book was sleeping in the hidden compartment – on September 27, 1997, the stillborn baby born to Mrs. Harlowe tightly grasped a raw diamond in its right hand, and the fingerprint of Ethan's mother was stamped in the signature column of the on-duty nurse.
When the "Air on the G String" faintly drifted up from the gallery downstairs, the combination dial of the safe automatically lit up with "SW0927". The moment the iris verification passed, a chill gushed out along with the smell of blood from twenty years ago. Three embryo specimens were displayed in a bulletproof glass case, and the platinum tags entangled with umbilical cords were engraved with different names: Scarlett Harlowe, Lila Weston, Ethan Weston.
The anatomical diagram suddenly dropped from the ceiling. On the yellowed nerve diagram, diamond thumbtacks were nailed at the positions of the amygdalae of the three brains. Lila's hand that touched the specimen jar began to twitch uncontrollably. The ingredient list of the vitamin tablets injected in prison appeared on her retina – the concentration of amphetamine was exactly the same as the stimulant for premature babies in the delivery room records.
"Didn't mom teach you not to touch your sister's things randomly?" Scarlett's diamond high-heeled shoe heel pierced into the gap of the specimen jar. Prussian blue machine oil was seeping out from the mechanical interface on her lower back. "What a pity. You were supposed to be my most perfect host." She pressed the remote control, and the embryo suddenly opened its eyes, and the deleted clips of the wedding video played in a loop in its pupils.
The formalin solution knocked over by Lila formed a double helix on the ground, and Scarlett's mechanical prosthetic limb shattered the bulletproof glass. When they were struggling in the biological agent, Lila ripped off the other's artificial vocal cords – the exposed chip was playing Ethan's voice: "The three experimental subjects must all be alive at the same time to activate..."
The ceiling light suddenly burst, and the activated night vision surveillance in the dark showed that the whole building was structured like a beehive. Lila crawled into the ventilation duct following the smell of Ethan's cologne. At the fork, she saw a spray-painted arrow: "Turn left to the uterus". When the temperature of the duct wall suddenly rose, she found that this was an old steam pipe connected to the gallery's boiler room.
The seventh time she was scalded by the condensed water, a strange pink light shone through the peephole. Ethan was melting the wedding ring into a syringe and muttering to himself in front of the wall full of surveillance screens: "The memory transplantation progress is 97%, only the hippocampal synapses are left..." Scarlett on the screen suddenly turned towards the peephole and smiled, mouthing "Found you, little mouse".
When the steam valve burst open, Lila fell into the secret room transformed from an incinerator. The ashes sorting cabinet had three names pasted on it, and each drawer was filled with charred wedding dress fragments. When she pulled out the remaining items from her drawer, a miniature camera rolled out from the carbonized fabric – it was the birthday gift she had worn on the night of the fire.
The computer array suddenly started up, and a holographic projection of the genetic map unfolded. Three DNA strands intertwined in the virtual incinerator and finally twisted into a mechanical spine engraved with the Harlowe family crest. Lila's retina suddenly scanned out a hidden file. In the corpse photos of the 1997 jewelry robbery, the iris tattoo on the back of the robber's neck was oozing blood droplets.
"Do you think the birthmark is a gift from God?" Scarlett's mechanical arm pierced through the tempered glass. "It's just a subcutaneous mark made by father with the stolen diamonds." She tore open the artificial skin, and half of a blood-stained sapphire was inserted into the cervical vertebra interface. "That baby back then should have become the perfect container, until the nurse mixed up the experimental agent with the oxytocin..."
When the fire alarm rang, the twenty-seven embryo specimen jars began to resonate. The red wine overflowed from the server cabinet knocked over by Lila, and the liquid from 1997 activated the emergency destruction program. When Ethan rushed in holding the burning hard drive, his left ring finger had already been replaced with a mechanical prosthetic: "The data can't leak out! Two out of the three must be destroyed!"
In the shockwave of the triple explosion, Lila grabbed the wedding veil that hung down from the ventilation duct. Flames formed an iris cyclone behind her, and Scarlett's mechanical skeleton melted into a thorns totem in the high temperature. The moment she fell into the underground vault, the bulletproof glass display cabinet automatically unlocked – on the back of the genuine painting of the lost "Blood Iris", there was pasted an ICU photo of her when she was a baby.
The flashing frequency of the emergency light was synchronized with the prison visitation bell. Lila cut her palm with the picture frame. When the blood droplets dripped onto the center of the flames in the oil painting, a holographic diary popped out from the interlayer: "Experimental subject No. 03 has shown rejection reaction, and the memories related to L. Weston must be erased..." Ethan's signature date was the night before she was imprisoned.
In the smell of blood as the secret door of the vault slid open, a homeless man was putting a wedding ring on a corpse. When he turned around, the mechanical skeleton on his left face was exactly the same as Ethan's prosthetic. "Surprised, sister?" He tore off his scalp to reveal the iconic brown hair of the Harlowe family. "It wasn't just the fingerprint sample that was replaced back then."
The surveillance video from twenty years ago was suddenly projected onto the wall of the corpse. When Lila saw herself being carried out of the delivery room, the nurse was stuffing a dying baby boy into a medical garbage bag. The thorns birthmark on the right hand of that baby boy was now glowing on the homeless man's mechanical prosthetic.
"Father needed a perfect heir," the vocal cord processor of the homeless man emitted Ethan's voice. "So we took turns being Ethan Weston." He removed the zygomatic implant, revealing the exact same jawline as Lila's. "And you are the most failed defective product, not even qualified to be a substitute."
Lila threw the oil painting at the transformer, and the high-voltage electric sparks ignited the acrylic paint. In the crackling sound of the "Blood Iris" burning, she broke off the golden wire of the picture frame and stabbed it into the other's eye: "Then let the defective product rewrite the rules of the game."
The underground river suddenly burst its banks, and the flood mixed with red wine washed away the gene bank. When Lila grabbed the drifting data hard drive, the mechanical limbs floating on the water surface were automatically reassembling. Scarlett's head rose from the center of the vortex, and her diamond teeth bit her ankle: "There's still a backup embryo in your uterus, my dear..."
The homeless people under the bridge hole suddenly turned towards her in unison, and each face showed Ethan's features from different angles. They tapped on the water pipe with their mechanical prosthetics, playing a distorted wedding march. Lila inserted the hard drive into the public telephone booth, and the decoded surveillance video showed that – there were three Ethans at the scene of the fire five years ago.
When the morning light pierced through the dark clouds, she collapsed in the church confessional. The projection of the iris on the stained glass burned on her chest, and the communion wine handed to her by the priest exuded the aroma of the wooden barrel from 1997. When she sipped the sediment at the bottom of the cup, the metallic taste of the miniature chip came to her tongue, and twenty-seven surveillance perspectives were instantly loaded onto her retina.
"You finally came." Ethan's real body walked out from the shadow of the confessional, with a data cable inserted into his temple. "Let's complete the final consciousness upload." The iris interface behind his neck suddenly extended an optical fiber, which stabbed into Lila's still bleeding ear hole.
In the torrent of memory data, she saw herself playing three roles at the same time: the arsonist, the bride, and the experimental subject. Scarlett's mechanical skeleton shuttled among the nerve synapses, implanting the wedding video into the hippocampus. When Ethan's wedding ring melted into her ring finger, the siren of the fire engine transformed into the first cry of a baby in the delivery room.
The whole church suddenly tilted, and the angels in the stained glass all turned towards her. Lila tore off the optical fiber and jumped into the baptismal font. The holy water mixed with blood turned into fluorescent Prussian blue. When she surfaced, all the religious murals turned into genetic maps, and the wound of the crucifixion of Jesus was oozing out β-carotene solution.
"Do you think you can escape?" Seven cloned bodies of Ethan overflowed from the confessional, and their mechanical fingers were tapping on the inside of the wedding ring in synchronization. "Since the moment you ate the sapphire, the positioning chip has taken root in your stomach."
When the rainstorm shattered the stained glass, Lila swallowed the burning communion cloth. The flames spread from her pupils to her blood vessels, burning all the nerve implants. When the SWAT team rushed in, they only saw a charred human-shaped silhouette in a dancing pose, and all the surveillance screens froze on the same image – in the 1997 delivery room surveillance, the nurse stuffed the raw diamond into the heart of the baby girl.