Welcome home, teacher.
The abandoned chemical plant in the south of the city reeked of ammonia and rotting metal. Fan Jinci pushed open the rusty iron gate, his flashlight beam slicing through the dried bloodstains on the ground. Three hours earlier, surveillance cameras had captured Jiang Zhaoyue—or rather, Zhou Xue—entering this place with an unconscious girl.
"According to Shen Mo's testimony, this should be the last testing site." Yu Yan followed behind, gun in hand, the muzzle moving with his gaze. Ever since receiving that encrypted message, Fan Jinci's expression had frozen into ice.
The flashlight beam suddenly shone on a line of bright red writing on the wall: "Welcome home, teacher." An arrow pointed towards the underground passage.
Fan Jinci's breathing quickened almost imperceptibly for a second. Underground, lay the core laboratory of the "Reverse Butterfly Project." His right hand unconsciously traced the butterfly scar on his left wrist; the uneven texture felt as hot as a branding iron.
"She wants to recreate everything from back then," Fan Jinci's voice echoed eerily in the underground passage, "but she missed a crucial step."
"What step?"
"Voluntariness."
The harsh white light of the underground laboratory was painful to the eyes. Jiang Zhaoyue stood beside the central control panel, her hospital gown trousers peeking out from under her white coat. She was much thinner than in the photos, her cheekbones high, only her eyes, which resembled Jiang Zhaoyan's, still retained a trace of her former self. On the control panel, the unconscious girl's wrists were immobilized, and seven syringes were arranged on a tray beside her.
"Fan Jinci," Jiang Zhaoyue's voice was hoarse and inhuman, "You're five whole years late."
Fan Jinci stopped at a safe distance, his gaze sweeping over the slight rise and fall of the girl's chest: "Zhou Xue, stop all of this. Zhou Lin's experiment is wrong."
"Wrong?" Jiang Zhaoyue suddenly sneered, holding up an old-fashioned tape recorder. "Listen to this before you jump to conclusions!"
Zhou Lin's voice came from the recorder: ["Reverse Butterfly Project" final stage, test subject M-0's memory awakening test. Date: November 7, 2009] Then came the calm report from the young Fan Jinci: [Hippocampal electric shock intensity 3.7 volts, amygdala drug injection completed] Suddenly, an inhuman scream erupted from the recording—it was Jiang Zhaoyue's voice.
"You implanted false memories in my brain! Making me believe I'm Zhou Lin's sister!" Jiang Zhaoyue hysterically brandished a scalpel. "The real Jiang Zhaoyue died at eighteen!"
Fan Jinci stepped forward: "The recording is edited. The full version is in cabinet 17, section D, of the Military Medical University's archives."
"lie!"
"Then why are you afraid to get genetic testing?" Fan Jinci suddenly raised his voice. "Why do you have a birthmark under your right shoulder blade that's exactly the same as Jiang Zhaoyan's?"
Jiang Zhaoyue froze. In that instant, a figure suddenly leaped down from the ventilation duct—Jiang Zhaoyan tackled his sister with precision, while Yu Yan rushed forward and snatched the scalpel.
"Zhaoyue, look at me." Jiang Zhaoyan held his struggling sister down tightly. "Remember the time capsule we buried under the ginkgo tree when we were six? You said you were going to put in some experimental data, a packet of popping candy!"
Jiang Zhaoyue's struggles suddenly lessened: "...Brother?"
Fan Jinci quickly untied the unconscious girl's restraints: "What was she injected with?"
"It's just a sedative." Jiang Zhaoyue's eyes began to glaze over. "I...who am I...?"
The ground suddenly shook. Dust fell from the ceiling, and an explosion could be heard in the distance.
"Shen Mo!" Yu Yan rushed towards the door. "He detonated a bomb elsewhere!"
Fan Jinci picked up the unconscious girl: "Go through the emergency exit on the east side! It leads directly there—"
His words were interrupted by the second wave of explosions. Cracks spread across the walls like a spider web, and a steel beam crashed down onto the control panel. In the nick of time, Jiang Zhaoyue pushed Jiang Zhaoyan away, but she herself was trapped under the steel beam.
"Brother...I remember..." Blood gushed from the corner of her mouth, "Shen Mo is...is..."
The third wave of explosions engulfed everything.
Three days later, outside the intensive care unit of the military hospital.
"She survived." Jiang Zhaoyan rubbed his face wearily, "but her memories have reverted to Zhou Xue's mode."
Fan Jinci looked through the glass at Jiang Zhaoyue, whose body was covered in tubes: "Shen Mo used a memory-stabilizing agent on her. Every time she's about to regain her true memories, a protective mechanism is triggered."
"So what exactly is the 'Reverse Butterfly Project'..."
"Zhou Lin initially told you a lie." Fan Jinci unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, revealing a tiny chip implant scar below his collarbone. "The real plan wasn't to erase memories, but to awaken the truth that had been distorted by other experiments." He pointed to his wrist. "These butterfly scars are marks of self-experimentation; each one represents a memory regression surgery."
Yu Yan suddenly realized: "So you've always been..."
"We need to find a way to completely break the memory fixation." Fan Jinci looked towards the ward. "Jiang Zhaoyue was the earliest successful case, but Zhou Lin injected her with the fixation agent immediately after discovering it and faked her death."
A commotion suddenly arose at the end of the corridor. Situ Jin came running, panting: "Shen Mo has escaped! He left a message saying he's going to complete his 'final experiment'!"
Almost simultaneously, the monitor in the ward emitted a piercing alarm. Jiang Zhaoyue convulsed violently, white foam spilling from the corner of her mouth. Fan Jinci rushed into the ward and ripped open her hospital gown—below her right shoulder blade, the needle of a miniature syringe was still stuck in her skin.
"M-10..." Jiang Zhaoyue said intermittently through her spasms, "He wants to... turn you into the next Zhou Lin..."
Fan Jinci quickly injected the antidote, but it was too late. Jiang Zhaoyue's pupils had dilated to the edges, and her breathing gradually stopped.
"No!" Jiang Zhaoyan collapsed and knelt in front of the bed.
Fan Jinci suddenly became frighteningly calm: "Situ, analyze the injection ingredients immediately. Yu Yan, seal off all hospital exits." He gently closed Jiang Zhaoyue's eyes. "Shen Mo is still in the hospital. He doesn't want her life, he wants the data."
In the water tank room on the hospital's rooftop, Shen Mo was frantically inputting data into his laptop. The screen displayed an electroencephalogram (EEG) with the title: "The Final Stage of the Reverse Butterfly Project: Memory Transplantation."
"I knew you'd come," he said without turning around, his fingers still flying across the keyboard. "Give me three more minutes, and I can extract all of Jiang Zhaoyue's memories, and then—"
"And then inject it into me?" Fan Jinci stood in the doorway, a syringe in his hand. "You think I didn't discover the surveillance camera you installed in my office?"
Shen Mo finally turned around, his eyes flashing with a crazed light: "You are the real masterpiece! That idiot Zhou Lin has no idea that you've evolved memory immunity through self-experimentation." He stared at Fan Jinci's wrist with fascination, "Those butterflies... what perfect neural remodeling marks..."
"Do you know why you always fail?" Fan Jinci stepped forward slowly. "Because you've missed the most crucial element."
"What element?"
"Pain." Fan Jinci suddenly plunged the needle into his neck. "All effective memory reconstruction must be built upon real pain. The synthetic pain agent you used is too pure, like..." He staggered, "like coffee with the bitterness filtered out..."
Shen Mo's expression changed drastically: "What did you inject?"
"Sample M-0." Fan Jinci knelt on the ground, a smile playing on his lips. "My own memory extract. Now... experience what true neural remodeling is like..."
Shen Mo suddenly clutched his head and screamed. His eyes darted around wildly, as if watching a horrific internal movie. The data stream on the computer screen turned into gibberish, finally freezing on a video—young Shen Mo strapped to an experimental chair, and the operator was Zhou Lin.
"No! This isn't my memory!" Shen Mo scratched his face. "I'm a researcher, not a guinea pig!"
"This is the truth." Fan Jinci stood up with difficulty. "You were one of Zhou Lin's earliest test subjects, and your memories were completely altered. The so-called revenge... was just an instruction he implanted."
Hurried footsteps came from outside the door. When Yu Yan rushed in with his men, Shen Mo was already curled up in a corner muttering to himself, while Fan Jinci was leaning against the wall, the butterfly scar on his wrist glowing an unnatural red due to the effects of the medication.
"Is it over?" Yu Yan supported the swaying Fan Jinci.
"No." Fan Jinci looked out the window at the gradually brightening sky. "This is just the beginning."
In the distance, the first rays of sunlight pierced through the clouds and shone on Fan Jinci's wrist. Those butterfly scars that once symbolized pain now seemed truly ready to take flight.
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