Key to Memory
There were points of light dancing in the darkness.
Du Siling opened his eyes, the flash of the blue porcelain key shattering still lingering on his retina. He lay in a cold puddle, the musty smell of the safe house basement mixed with the stench of blood filling his nostrils. He could hear footsteps approaching and then receding, along with radio static—Chen Yan's men were searching upstairs.
Slow down your breathing.
Han Beimo's voice came from the darkness, so close that Du Siling could count his every heartbeat. A cold hand pressed against his forehead, and something metallic was transmitting data through skin contact—it was a remnant of the blue porcelain key, now embedded in Han Beimo's palm and glowing.
"The serum has started working." Han Beimo's voice carried a strange resonance. "The memory reconstruction will be a little... painful."
The first fragment of memory pierced my mind like a knife—
Six-year-old Du Siling (no, back then he was called Beta-2) stood in front of the laboratory's observation window, watching Alpha-2 (now Han Beimo) in the next compartment being injected with some kind of golden liquid. The little Alpha curled up in pain, and the same genetic mark as it is now appeared on his lower back.
"This is... Linghua's laboratory?" Du Siling struggled between reality and memory.
"Keep watching." Han Beimo applied pressure to his temple with his fingers.
The second memory fragment is clearer: a young Huo Mingyuan stands in front of the control panel, the monitor displaying data from three incubation pods—Alpha, Beta, and Omega. The date is May 9, 1995, and the vital signs in the Omega pod suddenly become a straight line.
"The Ω sample is dead?" Du Siling asked breathlessly.
"No, it's entered hibernation." Han Beimo's voice seemed to come from a great distance, "We were too young back then, our memories were rearranged..."
An explosion suddenly erupted upstairs, causing the entire building to shake violently. Dust fell from the ceiling, casting spiderweb-like shadows on Han Beimo's face. By the faint light of the key fragments, Du Siling saw that the genetic marker on his lower back was glowing abnormally, its lines nearly doubling in size.
"Your genetic mutation has worsened." Du Siling tried to sit up, but was struck by a sharp headache. New fragments of memory flooded in like a tidal wave—
The twelve-year-old boy and Han Beimo stood side by side before Ling Hua. The female scientist, tears streaming down her face, placed two blue porcelain shards into their hands: "Remember, no matter what happens, the Ω sample must remain intact..."
In his memory, Ling Hua suddenly turned to Xiao Du Siling, her lips moving. In reality, Han Beimo simultaneously uttered the same sentence: "The truth lies beneath the blue porcelain azalea pot in the police station basement."
"She foresaw her own death." Du Siling suddenly realized. In reality, his fingertips unconsciously traced a raised pattern on the floor—a pattern of azaleas.
Han Beimo abruptly lifted the loose floor tile, revealing the biometric panel beneath. He pressed his hand, with a fragment of the key embedded in it, onto the panel, which beeped: "Ω Permission Confirmed."
The floorboards slid open silently, revealing a downward spiral staircase. A damp wind, carrying the scent of some kind of chemical agent, rushed up, and Du Siling's genetic markers suddenly began to resonate with something below the staircase, the golden light beneath her skin flickering like breath.
"Chen Yan will find this place in three minutes." Han Beimo checked the detector in his hand. "General Huo's 'cleaning team' is mixed in with them, carrying the RH-0 specific toxic agent."
Du Siling's brain suddenly throbbed with pain as another memory was unlocked: when she was fifteen, Huo Mingyuan took them to the beach, but on the way back, he injected some kind of transparent liquid into their necks. When they woke up the next day, they were sent to different places, and their memories were all reset to the false background of "growing up in an orphanage".
"They've been controlling us..." Du Siling gripped his pistol tightly.
"Not just us." Han Beimo pointed down the spiral staircase. "Ω is the source of all RH-0 genes. General Huo has cloned at least twenty pairs of 'twins' over the years, and we are just the closest to success among them."
The sound of shattering glass and shouts came from upstairs: "The basement! They must be down there!"
Han Beimo suddenly pushed Du Siling towards the staircase entrance: "Go down and find the initial sample of Ω. It contains all the research data left by Ling Hua." His genetic markers had already spread to his neck, the golden lines writhing beneath his skin like living creatures. "I'll distract them."
Du Siling grabbed his wrist: "Wait! Why me? You're the Alpha privilege holder!"
"Because..." Han Beimo's pupils turned completely molten gold, "Ling Hua implanted a special instruction into the Beta sequence before she died, and only you can awaken the complete Ω consciousness."
The footsteps reached the corner of the stairs. Han Beimo broke free from Du Siling's hand and ran towards the electrical room in the opposite direction. The next second, the entire building was plunged into darkness, with only the genetic markers on Du Siling providing faint illumination.
He had no choice but to go down.
The spiral staircase was much longer than expected, seemingly leading to the earth's core. The air grew colder, and fine frost began to appear on the walls. Du Siling's breath condensed into white mist before him, and the brightness of the genetic markers increased with depth.
At the end of the stairs was a rusty metal door with a huge Ω symbol painted in red. In the center of the door was a recessed groove shaped like a blue porcelain tile—which matched exactly the keepsake Ling Hua had given them in Du Siling's memory.
He pulled out the military tag he always wore around his neck, and sure enough, a small porcelain shard was embedded in the back. The moment the shard was inserted into the groove, a mechanical roar came from inside the door, and some system that had been dormant for many years was awakening.
The door opened a crack, just enough for one person to squeeze through sideways. The moment Du Siling squeezed in, the door behind her closed automatically, completely cutting off the shouts of the pursuers.
The sight before him froze his blood—
At the center of the circular chamber was a massive cylindrical culture chamber, almost identical to the one in the underwater facility, only larger. The chamber was filled with a pale blue liquid, and suspended within it was not a human body, but a beating brain. Countless fiber optic cables and tubing connected the brain to surrounding instruments, and data streams cascaded across the screens encircling the room.
"Welcome home, Beta-2."
The voice resounded directly in his mind, exactly the same as the one he heard when he bit the key. Du Siling's genetic marker suddenly glowed intensely, resonating with the brain in the culture chamber. The data stream on the screen accelerated, finally settling on a video: Ling Hua, wearing a lab coat, spoke to the camera with a haggard face.
"If you're seeing this recording, it means Huo Mingyuan has already initiated the elimination plan." Ling Hua's voice was hoarse in the video. "All RH-0 carriers will experience genetic collapse within 72 hours, except..."
The screen suddenly switched, displaying a set of genetic maps. Du Siling immediately recognized them as his and Han Beimo's genetic sequences, with the overlapping part marked by the core code of Ω.
"Besides the fully fused Alpha and Beta," Ling Hua continued, "you are the only vessels capable of inheriting all of Omega's memories. The red stabilizer can only temporarily delay the collapse; the real solution lies in..."
The video suddenly cut off, and the sealed room shook violently. A muffled explosion sounded overhead, and dust fell from the cracks in the ceiling. Du Siling rushed to the control panel and manually retrieved the remaining records. The screen flickered a few times and displayed a map—a floor plan of the police station's basement, with one room marked "Last Shelter."
"Du Siling."
Han Beimo's voice came through the communicator, mixed with gunshots and static: "The cleanup team used nerve gas... I can only hold on for ten more minutes at most... Have you found a solution?"
Du Siling quickly scanned the newly unlocked file on the screen: "Linghua hid something in the police station basement! It can stop genetic collapse!"
"Let's go... through the ventilation duct... the password is your birthday in reverse chronological order..."
Communications suddenly went down. At the same time, the vent cover on the other side of the sealed room was kicked open, and three fully armed members of the "cleaning team" slid down a zipline. They wore gas masks, and their weapons flashed with an eerie blue light—RH-0 specific genetic weapons.
Du Siling instinctively raised his gun and fired, the first bullet hitting the leader's mask precisely. Spiderweb-like cracks appeared in the bulletproof glass, but it failed to penetrate. The enemy raised their weapon, a blue beam grazing past Du Siling's ear before striking the outer shell of the incubation chamber. An alarm immediately blared throughout the sealed room.
"Target confirmed, Beta-2." The leader's mechanical voice came through the mask. "Execute the elimination order."
Du Siling rolled behind the control panel, bullets tracing his path and carving a row of holes in the ground. He glimpsed a new message popping up on the screen: "Ventilation system activated, countdown 30 seconds."
In a flash of inspiration, he fired three shots at the incubation chamber. The bullets pierced the chamber, and blue liquid gushed out. The moment it came into contact with the air, the liquid vaporized into a dense mist, filling the entire sealed chamber.
The cleaning team's weapons suddenly malfunctioned, and the blue light twisted and dissipated in the fog. Du Siling seized the opportunity to rush towards the ventilation duct, glancing back one last time—in the pervasive blue fog, the brain in the incubation chamber was emitting a dazzling golden light, and the outline of a human-like face was faintly visible in the light.
"Go find Alpha..." Ω's voice echoed in his mind one last time, "Fusion is the only way out..."
Du Siling leaped into the ventilation duct, the screams of the cleaning team members echoing behind him. He crawled through the dark duct, the countdown on his wrist displaying 65:28:17.
Time is running out.
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