The three of them each had a job: one to collect every kind and variety of drug, one to photograph and gather evidence at the scene, and one to slip into the second basement lab and grab whatever they could, and then, at the right moment, set off the alarm.
There was no telling whether Zhong Ziqian had actually pulled it off.
Zhang Xiangyi drifted along the corridors and finally spotted Zhong Ziqian’s secret signal. Cautiously, she followed the direction it pointed in and arrived at a small storeroom.
Standing at the door, she raised a hand and knocked.
“Knock, knock—”
“Who is it?”
“Take a guess?”
“Zhang Xiangyi!”
The instant he heard that familiar voice, Zhong Ziqian yanked the door open, hauled her inside, shot a furious glance outside to confirm no one was there, then glared at her. “I have never met a teammate like you!”
Take a guess, she says!
But Zhang Xiangyi only blinked, staring back at him with the most innocent eyes in the world.
Argh!
Zhong Ziqian was about to lose it. How could a girl who looked this much like a sweet little dumpling be this much of a menace?!
His composure had cracked clean through…
“Then what was I supposed to say?” Zhang Xiangyi didn’t think she’d done anything wrong. She could hardly just blurt out his real name, could she? If the one inside hadn’t been Zhong Ziqian, wouldn’t she have blown her cover with no time to run?
“Down there, it’s locked down level by level, super strict, totally hopeless. And these damn things take your money and then don’t deliver.”
That part really got Zhong Ziqian going. He’d taken every cent the four of them had to buy stuff to bribe these “people,” and in the end all they’d done was let him off and drop a couple of hints, nothing else said, nothing else done!
Despicable!
Greedy!
When he did livestreams and took money from a brand, at least he delivered!
Even he wasn’t this shady!
“That lab downstairs, apart from the researchers, only those few top-level people can go in. Everyone else has to stay outside the door. If you need to find a boss, you can only call them from the doorway, and if nobody picks up, or whatever, you just have to wait.” Zhong Ziqian frowned, fairly radiating resentment as he stood there. “I went and checked. I can’t crack that lock. First there’s an electronic keypad, needs a password, and you only get one shot. Then after that there’s an iris scan. Get past both of those, and there’s still an infrared scan.”
“Infrared? Scanning for what?”
She’d heard of the first two, but infrared scanning?
Some kind of cutting-edge tech?
“It scans your body. Everyone who’s allowed in has a kind of emblem on them, like a red rose, and that’s what it scans.” Zhong Ziqian sighed, suddenly struck by how genuinely impressive it was to be book-smart. How did anyone know this much tech? “Word is it’s made from some special material, and the infrared scan reads not just the pattern but the material too. You have to clear all three steps before you can get in.”
And once you were in, the place was packed with experts, everyone knew everyone, and even if they didn’t know your face, they’d know it was unfamiliar.
A stranger suddenly walking in there… just picturing it was grim.
To sum up, getting inside was hard upon hard. The password you could maybe work around, but the iris scan, how?
And this emblem, how?
“And because everyone who can go in has all those features, the scan only lets one person through per success. There’s no way to even sneak in piggybacking off someone else.” Recalling the intel he’d gathered, Zhong Ziqian’s heart sank. There was simply no getting in.
Zhang Xiangyi’s eyes flickered. “Can you get out right now?”
Zhong Ziqian fell silent for a second, then said blankly, “Out where, exactly?”
“This factory.”
Zhong Ziqian gave Zhang Xiangyi a complicated look, his mouth opening and shutting. Under her puzzled gaze, he said, “Don’t you think you’re giving me a little too much credit?”
How long had he even been in here?
Gathering this much intel had already been no small feat, and on top of that he’d been groped half to death. The “people” inside were utter perverts! They’d lay hands on any halfway-pretty “woman” they saw. Verbal harassment would’ve been one thing, but they got handsy! Handsy!
For the greater cause, he had endured far too much.
Zhong Ziqian was nearly in tears.
After all that, and she was asking him to do something even harder.
Did she want him to live or not?
Zhang Xiangyi considered it and decided that was fair. If it really were that easy, the police would have shut this place down long ago, they wouldn’t be sitting around waiting for the four of them to do it. So she said cheerfully, “Then keep at it. And while you’re at it, map out the routes inside. When it’s time to run, it’ll be all on you.”
Zhong Ziqian: “……” The heavy burden always landed on his shoulders.
Once the two of them had traded information, they each went off to their grave responsibilities.
Zhang Xiangyi made her way down to the second basement again. The rows of rooms lining the lab entrance were, according to Zhong Ziqian, actually holding cells.
These held only the unimportant test subjects, though. The important ones were all inside the lab.
Thinking of Zhou Lan, Zhang Xiangyi sighed.
Since Zhou Lan looked so much like Zou Yue’s little sister, and had once been trusted by Zou Yue, then by rights she should have both the iris scan and the emblem on file. But the most important question right now was: was Zhou Lan even still alive?
If she was, she’d be inside the lab too, somewhere Zhang Xiangyi couldn’t reach her at all.
Never mind actually getting in there.
Zhang Xiangyi was getting a headache.
Iris-recognition tech could, in fact, be cracked. The toner in a laser black-and-white printer absorbs near-infrared light fairly well, so a high-resolution iris photo printed on such a machine produces an iris image close enough to what the sensor reads.
By this method, people had successfully unlocked phones equipped with iris recognition.
And of course, even if “liveness detection” was added, you could easily bypass it and pass authentication by jiggling the printout or smoothly moving it nearer and farther.
Zhang Xiangyi knew the principle, and she knew how to do it.
But here was the catch.
They had no one to scan from, and no equipment.
She couldn’t get near Zhou Lan. And the 4-2 girl, setting aside whether she could even get inside, was already dead, which meant her pupils had naturally dilated, the iris had vanished, and there was nothing left to “copy.”
With no one around, Zhang Xiangyi took out the master keycard she’d improvised that afternoon. One swipe, and she pushed open the door to one of the central holding cells with ease.
So studying computer science really did come in handy.
She and Xiao Xingzhi had big reputations at school, but their grades were just as good. They’d both entered plenty of competitions and skills contests, and their technical chops had steadily climbed.
Of course, she had to admit, Xiao Xingzhi had lived two years longer than she had.
This master keycard was something Xiao Xingzhi had made, which infuriated her.
She didn’t know what was inside the cell, or who, or whether she’d be exposed once she went in. But no matter what, she had to.
The door eased open. Inside there wasn’t a single sound. Zhang Xiangyi knitted her brow and brought every nerve to maximum alert.
When she got a clear look at the person inside, her pupils dilated, her eyes flooding with shock and confusion. Her hand shut the door fast as she walked over, utterly stunned by what was before her.
The 3-3 girl!
Yuan Sheng!
She looked nothing like the bright, sunny person Zhang Xiangyi had met just yesterday. Never had Zhang Xiangyi imagined they’d move this fast, Yuan Sheng had only just moved in. Those of them who’d been here for days hadn’t been touched yet, so why Yuan Sheng…?
Yuan Sheng hung from a wooden cross, her face mottled with bruises, as though she’d been beaten.
Her neck was red and swollen. Zhang Xiangyi stepped closer and examined it carefully, there was a tiny needle mark.
“Yuan Sheng?”
Zhang Xiangyi called out softly, wanting to give her a gentle pat, but she had nowhere to start. There wasn’t an undamaged spot left on the girl’s body, she was in even worse shape than Zhou Lan had been the day Zhang Xiangyi saw her.
And it had only been one day…
“Yuan Sheng…”
“Yuan Sheng…”
Zhang Xiangyi called again and again, patiently, until at last she saw the girl’s lashes twitch. Slowly, she opened her eyes, and when she made out who it was, they lit up for a moment, then immediately filled with terror. “Run! Run! Xiangyi, run, this whole place is full of demons, get out and call the police!”
Yuan Sheng’s voice was hoarse and grating, nothing like a voice a college student should have.
Her eyes were stretched perfectly round, as if they might leap from their sockets. Both hands were clenched into fists, her teeth grinding audibly, as though she were straining to hold back her own terror.
Then her breathing turned ragged too. Zhang Xiangyi, alarmed, softened her voice and soothed her. “Don’t be scared, don’t be scared. I’m here to save you, don’t be scared…”
Slowly, Yuan Sheng came back to herself.
Zhang Xiangyi didn’t untie her, because she couldn’t take her away right now. She hadn’t even found the escape route yet, the plan wasn’t finished, and if she took someone out now, they’d all be stuck here.
She meant their lives.
Not one of them would make it out alive.
“How did you get in here?”
Yuan Sheng was a little dazed. Zhang Xiangyi thought for a moment, took out a painkiller, and held it to her lips. Yuan Sheng swallowed it without a second thought, took a while to steady herself, then said, “That day, after I finished talking with you, I went and bought some daily necessities. I took your advice, before bed I locked every door and window tight, checked them over and over, and I even used a door jammer on the bedroom door. But they… but they actually smashed the door down and came in…”
Yuan Sheng shook her head. “They were in a hurry, like they were short on people…”
“I tried to run, but I’d locked the door myself, and before I could get it open they grabbed me. I fought back, and a whole group of them beat me, beat me until I couldn’t move at all… It hurt so much… my whole body hurt… and then… then they injected something into me… and it hurt even more! Pain shooting out from inside my flesh, I was hurting so bad I was rolling on the floor.”
“They just ignored me, and somebody stood off to the side taking notes…”
Yuan Sheng’s breathing went ragged again, her face deathly pale, her lips so white they were nearly transparent, her cheeks trembling, her muscles rigid.
All Zhang Xiangyi could do was comfort her and change the subject. When a person is in extreme fear and panic, they can go into shock.
Only once Yuan Sheng was a little better did she continue. “Do you know who else is being kept here?”
“There was another girl…” Yuan Sheng said weakly, her eyes brimming with tears. “I watched… watched them inject so much, so much fluid into her, so many different kinds. I watched that girl roll around on the floor, watched them drag her away. I know… I know it was a warning to me.”
Yuan Sheng stared at the door with hollow eyes, talking almost to herself. “They said it was because that girl wouldn’t behave. But they kept laughing, talking on and on, it was nothing about her not behaving!”
“It was that the girl had to die! She had to die!”
Yuan Sheng was shaking, her whole body starting to convulse, foam at her lips. Zhang Xiangyi grew even more frantic, but there was nothing she could do, all she could manage was to steady Yuan Sheng’s emotions.
“It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay. We’ll get out alive. Think of your mom and dad, think of your friends, your best friend, they’re all still out there waiting for you.” Zhang Xiangyi kept watching Yuan Sheng’s expression, and only when the hollow look in her eyes shifted and the foaming stopped did she go on. “I’ll leave the painkillers with you. I can’t take you with me right now, but don’t worry, tonight every one of us is getting out safely.”
“Tonight?”
Zhang Xiangyi froze. Shouldn’t the key word have been safely?
Her gaze flickered, settling on Yuan Sheng. “If all goes well.”
“Ah Sheng, I’ll be heading out in a bit. Do you have any message you want me to pass to your parents?” Zhang Xiangyi quietly stepped backward, moving toward the “tool” wall at the rear. “Your aunt and uncle even asked me about your internship, I didn’t know what to tell them.”
“I’m getting out soon, so there’s no need to pass anything on.”
Yuan Sheng still wore that same lifeless look, seemingly no different at all. But…
She wasn’t even close with Yuan Sheng…