Chapter 11: Resurrection Hymn

The Shanghai night smelled of wet concrete and desperation. Jiang Se pressed against the alley wall, watching raindrops sizzle as they hit the lab's electrified fence. Somewhere inside, Mingyu's newest body waited—a marionette restrung with Qin Shu's malice.

Lu Chen adjusted his night vision goggles. "Thermal shows forty hostiles. Half human, half... something else."

Jiang Se's data scar throbbed. Since the Arctic, the fractal patterns had spread up her neck, itching whenever Qin Shu's network pulsed. "The something elses are mine."

They breached through a maintenance tunnel flooded with glowing algae. The walls breathed here, expanding and contracting like living lungs. Jiang Se's boots stuck to the floor with each step, peeling away with wet shlicks that echoed too loudly.

"Checkpoint ahead." Lu Chen gestured at a biometric scanner. "Still think you're the key?"

Jiang Se pressed her scarred palm to the reader. The machine screamed, red lights strobing as the door irised open.

The nursery took her breath away.

Rows of glass wombs stretched into darkness, each containing a cyberlotus blooming from a human skull. The flowers' roots burrowed into eye sockets, their petals glowing with stolen memories. Scientists in frog masks moved between the tanks, syringes dripping black nectar.

Lu Chen gagged. "He's turned them into batteries."

Jiang Se zeroed in on the central pod. Mingyu floated in amber fluid, her shaved head bristling with electrodes. The lotus erupting from her crown pulsed in time with Jiang Se's scar.

"Node Alpha," Lu Chen read from a console. "Primary power source for East Asia."

A frog mask turned. "Intruders!"

Chaos erupted.

Interlude: Two Days Earlier

The safe house stank of mildew and regret. Jiang Se scrubbed Mingyu's melted chip with alcohol, revealing a single surviving data strand—a Shanghai address pulsing like a infected heartbeat.

Lu Chen mapped the route through minefields of Qin Shu's influence. "It's a clone farm. He's growing replacements."

"Replacements need power." Jiang Se traced the scar's new branches. "She's alive there. I can feel it."

He slammed his fist on the table. "That's not your sister! It's a skin suit filled with neurotransmitters!"

The mirror cracked as Jiang Se threw her mug. "Then I'll bury the suit!"

Present

Jiang Se moved like smoke. Her whalebone knife found gaps in lab coats, severing lotus stems. Each kill released a memory burst—a child's birthday in Beijing, a old man's last train ride in Kyoto, Mingyu's first scream in the cloning tank.

Lu Chen covered her blind spots, his bullets finding knees and elbows. "We're not here to kill grunts!"

A womb exploded. The cyberlotus within lashed out with razor vines, slicing through steel. Jiang Se rolled, coming up with a dead guard's keycard. "Distract the flower! I'm getting MeiMei!"

Mingyu's eyes tracked her through the fluid. Her lips formed silent words: JieJie late again.

The pod hissed open. Amber fluid flooded the floor, carrying the scent of Qin Shu's greenhouse—lychee and blood. Mingyu collapsed into Jiang Se's arms, electrodes sparking.

"Wake up." Jiang Se shook her. "We're going home."

Mingyu's fist connected with her jaw. "Home's gone."

The sisters crashed through a instrument tray. Mingyu fought with feral precision, every move tuned by Qin Shu's programming. Jiang Se recognized their childhood wrestling matches corrupted—the headlock they'd invented at six, the ankle hook from the summer Mingyu turned nine.

"You taught me this!" Jiang Se blocked a kill strike.

Mingyu's lotus flared. "And you left me to learn worse!"

The memory surge knocked Jiang Se sideways.

Interlude: Age Fourteen

Jiang Se pressed bloody palms to the greenhouse floor. "We have to tell someone!"

Mingyu buttoned her stained blouse. "They'll lock us up."

"He's your father too!"

"He's a scientist." Mingyu's smile frightened her. "We're his favorite experiment."

Present

Mingyu's knee pinned Jiang Se's chest. "You ran. I stayed. Now I'm stronger."

Jiang Se headbutted her nose. "Stronger doesn't mean right."

They grappled through collapsing equipment. Lu Chen's shouts merged with the alarms. "The whole block's going critical!"

Jiang Se seized Mingyu's lotus stem. "Remember the crickets?"

Mingyu froze.

Interlude: Age Seven

The cellar stank of mildew and adventure. Jiang Se nudged the jar. "Count them!"

"Thirty-two," Mingyu whispered. "Will they sing?"

Fireflies blinked beyond the high window. The first cricket chirped.

Present

Mingyu's grip faltered. "You... came back?"

"For you." Jiang Se yanked the lotus. "Always."

The lab dissolved in light.

Qin Shu's Broadcast

Every screen from Paris to Perth flickered. Qin Shu's newest clone—a perfect blend of the sisters' features—smiled from Tokyo Tower.

"Humanity is a failed sensory experiment."

In London, a banker tasted his secretary's cancer. In Mumbai, a beggar's skin became a living braille of his neighbors' despair. Across the Atlantic, New York's skyline shivered into a kaleidoscope of screaming colors, each shade a different octave of pain. The neural bonsai's roots had breached reality itself.

Lab Ruins, 4:17 AM

Mingyu's dying body crumbled like charcoal, her cyberlotus reduced to wilted petals in Jiang Se's arms. The lab's central reactor whined towards critical mass, shaking loose ceiling panels that sliced through the remaining wombs.

Lu Chen dragged Jiang Se backward. "We need to move!"

"No." She clutched her sister's fading warmth. "Not without—"

The explosion came in waves. First heat, then light, then a silence so profound Jiang Se heard her own neurons firing. When the ringing subsided, she lay in a crater where the lab once stood, Mingyu's ashes mixed with rain on her tongue.

Lu Chen's lips moved soundlessly. Blood trickled from his ears. He pointed upward.

Qin Shu's final broadcast pulsed across the clouds—not holograms, but storms. His face stretched from horizon to horizon, lightning for teeth.

"WITNESS THE HARVEST."

The words vibrated in Jiang Se's marrow. She stumbled toward the city center, Lu Chen's protests drowned by the guttural roar of collapsing skyscrapers. Shanghai's streets ran neon-red with emergency lights, crowds convulsing as their senses betrayed them—a businessman licking concrete to escape the taste of his dead mother's perfume, children clawing at their eyes to stop seeing sounds.

At the Bund, the Huangpu River flowed backward. Qin Shu's neural bonsai rose from its depths, roots churning the water to black bile. Its branches bore new fruit—pulsing cocoons shaped like human hearts.

"Jiang!" Lu Chen gripped her shoulder. "The pattern!"

Her scars blazed. The fractal map now glowed across her entire torso, each line converging on the bonsai's trunk.

"Final node." She stepped into the rancid water. "He's inviting me home."

The first cocoon burst. A Mingyu-doppelgänger emerged, wings dripping amniotic fluid. Her voice harmonized with the thunder.

"Join us, JieJie."

Jiang Se's knife trembled. This clone had Mingyu's childhood scar above the eyebrow, the chipped tooth from their bicycle accident.

Lu Chen pressed a grenade into her hand. "For the cellar."

The blast radius would kill thousands. The river would burn.

Mingyu's clone smiled with their mother's lopsided grin. "You'll always lose what you love."

Jiang Se pulled the pin.

Epilogue: Silent Spring

The fire cleansed everything.

When the ash settled, Shanghai's survivors moved like marionettes with cut strings. Jiang Se's scars had gone dormant, though her left hand kept shaping Mingyu's name in sign language.

At the river's edge, Lu Chen fished out a shard of glowing bark. "Root system's intact. Just dormant."

Jiang Se watched a lotus petal circle the drain. Somewhere beneath their feet, the world's senses slept fitfully.

"Let them dream," she said.

But in the ruins of a tea shop's cellar, a single cricket chirped.