Chapter 8: Blood Orchid

Qin Shu's teacup trembled, the only betrayal of his perfect calm. Jiang Se recognized the pattern on the china—peonies devouring their own petals, a design she'd doodled in the greenhouse's margins during better days. The elevator doors sealed behind them with a sigh that sounded like Mingyu's laughter.

"You've been busy." Qin Shu poured steaming oolong into three cups. "Though I prefer chrysanthemum for reunions."

Lu Chen's pistol wavered between Qin Shu and the shadowed corners of the underground conservatory. Orchids glowed with bioluminescent malice along the walls, their roots pulsing like exposed veins. Jiang Se's USB scar itched where cables snaked from the elevator controls into her spine.

"Where's Mingyu?"

"Closer than you think." Qin Shu sipped his tea. "But let's savor this. Old friends. New enemies. The drama writes itself."

A monitor flickered to life above the tea set. Mingyu's face filled the screen, her features now blended with Jiang Se's and Lu Chen's—a grotesque amalgam that made Jiang Se's missing eye throb. "Don't rush, JieJie. I'm still prepping the finale."

The feed cut to a stadium packed with unconscious civilians, IVs dripping milky fluid into their arms. Lu Chen's finger tightened on the trigger. "What's the play?"

"Redemption." Qin Shu opened a lacquer box, revealing rows of seed pods shaped like human teeth. "The world drowns in sensory decay. My orchids will reboot the nervous system."

"Through mass murder," Jiang Se said.

"Through evolution." He stroked a orchid's fleshy petal. "Pain is the catalyst. Ask your detective friend—his sister's death unlocked such wonderful potential."

Lu Chen's bullet shattered the teacup. Qin Shu tutted, brushing porcelain shards from his lab coat. "Still allergic to truth, I see."

Jiang Se grabbed a pruning shear from the wall. "Where's the real you?"

"This is the real me."

Qin Shu's split cheeks gleamed with titanium filaments, his human mask peeling away like wet parchment. The conservatory's orchids hissed, their bioluminescent glow sharpening into surgical-bright beams that pinned Jiang Se and Lu Chen in a cage of light.

"Did you think I'd risk flesh and bone?" The clone's voice buzzed with static. "This world is a petri dish. I am its immune system."

Lu Chen fired three shots into its chest. Sparks erupted, but the clone kept advancing. "Pathetic. You're still using bullets while I've weaponized memory."

Jiang Se lunged with the pruning shears, aiming for the exposed wiring in its neck. The clone caught her wrist, mechanical strength crushing bone. "You've always been my favorite experiment. Let me show you why."

It slammed her against the elevator doors. The impact triggered her USB scar, flooding Jiang Se's mind with stolen data—Qin Shu's research logs, Mingyu's screams, the chemical formula for Path to Hades burning like hellfire across her synapses.

Lu Chen tackled the clone, his pistol jammed into its ocular socket. "How's this for nostalgia?"

The blast tore the clone's head from its shoulders. Its body staggered, fingers sparking as it collapsed into the orchid beds. The flowers recoiled, petals shriveling to ash.

"The real Qin Shu's still out there." Jiang Se cradled her fractured wrist. "This was a decoy."

Lu Chen kicked the smoldering torso. "But now he knows we're coming."

Alarms wailed. The conservatory's glass ceiling cracked under immense pressure as water from the underground river above began seeping through. Mingyu's face flickered across every monitor, her new hybrid features contorted with rage.

"You ruined the surprise!" Her voice shook the facility. "Now everyone dies early!"

The stadium feed reappeared—civilians convulsing as the IV fluid turned their veins black. Lu Chen smashed the main console, but the screens kept cycling through disaster scenarios: subway tunnels flooding, skyscrapers crumbling, the police evidence locker detonating in slow motion.

Jiang Se pressed her USB scar against the clone's exposed motherboard. "We need to overload the system."

"That'll fry your brain."

"Already halfway there." She plunged the connection.

The scar glowed white-hot. Jiang Se's remaining eye rolled back as data tsunamied through her—Qin Shu's global lab network, Mingyu's hive-mind frequencies, the kill switch buried in every clone. She saw the original Qin Shu in a floating lab beneath the Arctic ice, smiling as he pruned a bonsai tree made of human nerves.

Found you.

Her hand moved autonomously, inputting coordinates into Lu Chen's phone. "Northwest passage. He's using old whaling stations."

The ceiling collapsed. Icy water crashed down, carrying mutant eels that latched onto Jiang Se's legs. Lu Chen hauled her into the elevator, stabbing the close button as teeth scraped his boots.

"The stadium—"

"Already triggering antidote protocols." Jiang Se vomited black fluid—data burnoff. "But Mingyu's…"

The elevator shuddered. Mingyu materialized in the corner, her new body glitching between solid and hologram. "You can't save them all, JieJie."

Lu Chen emptied his clip into her. The bullets passed through, ricocheting dangerously. "Persistent bitch."

Mingyu laughed, fingers elongating into scalpels. "You'll love what comes next."

Jiang Se ripped the elevator's access panel free. "Hold her!"

Lu Chen tackled Mingyu's flickering form. Jiang Se jammed live wires into the clone motherboard still fused to her scar. Mingyu's scream harmonized with the facility's death throes as the electrical surge overloaded her systems.

The elevator burst onto street level as the tunnels imploded behind them. Dawn stained the sky the color of infected flesh.

Lu Chen slumped against the chainlink fence. "How long until she rebuilds?"

Jiang Se studied the scar's new fissures—a topographic map leading north. "Long enough to end this."

Somewhere beneath the city, water filled Mingyu's last clone pod. Her eyelids fluttered open, irises blooming with Qin Shu's signature burgundy.