Chapter 5: Countdown

Su Wanqing huddled in the tunnel of Wuhan Metro Line 2, her cell phone flashlight illuminating the glowing electronic patterns on her stomach. These waves were reorganizing the digital clock face - 23:59:47. As the mechanical centipede's hundred feet slashed across the tunnel wall, she suddenly realized that it wasn't the time, but the coordinate parameters of the nuclear code.

"Mom..." The cell phone suddenly played her daughter's recording from three years ago. Su Evening Qing trembled as she scratched her skin with her broken bones, and the blue blood oozing from the electronic patterns drew a map of the Yangtze River Valley on the wall. To her horror, she discovered that the kindergarten where her daughter had disappeared was at the center of the coordinates.

The tunnel suddenly shook, and the mechanical centipede's mouthparts spewed acid. Su Wanqing grabbed the transformer on the ground and smashed it into the bug's eye, and in the fire of the explosion, she saw that the map drawn by her blue blood was being corroded by black holes, each black hole being the place where Lu Li will behead the mechanical beast in the future.

Dr. Shen rummages through the abandoned hospital for antibiotics, the tattoo on his chest spreading to the knot in his throat. When he opens the freezer, he finds test tubes piled high with "Lin Han" written on them - metallic scales floating in the green liquid.

"Found you." Chu Yun hung upside down from the vent pipe, his tail stinger piercing Dr. Shen's shoulder. The two men have knocked over shelves in the tug-of-war, and the test-tube liquid has seeped into the wound. Dr. Shen suddenly sees a vision: his own self of twenty years ago is handing a scalpel to Dr. Lin, and strapped to the operating table is a crying little Chu Yun.

As the swarm of mechanical bats crashes through the glass, Chu Yun is stabbed in the heart with a serum syringe. His skin is instantly metallized, and he crushes the bats' titanium skeletons with his bare hands. Dr. Shen looks at his festering palm and notices that the tattoo has turned into a countdown, synchronized with the numbers on Su Wanqing's abdomen.

Deep inside the air defense shelter, three hundred cloned babies were crying in the incubation chamber. As Su Wanqing followed the sound, she saw electronic patterns flashing on the back of each baby's neck. She picked up the closest baby girl and realized that the child's students were broadcasting the kindergarten surveillance footage - the moment her daughter was swept away by the mechanical tentacles.

"Give her back!" Su Wanqing smashed the incubation capsule, blue blood and nutrient solution mixing into a corrosive liquid. As she ripped off the baby girl's umbilical cord, an alarm sounded throughout the air defense shelter, "Genetic Lock Disabled, Atomic Silo Open".

Chu Yun crashed through the iron door and rushed in, his tail stinger piercing the pursuing mechanical scorpion. Dr. Shen stared at the suddenly synchronized countdown and noticed that the numbers on the three of them added up - Su Wanqing's abdomen was the longitude, his tattoo the latitude, and the tip of Chu Yun's tail stinger flashed the altitude.

The Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge suddenly dissolves into a rocket launcher. The trio stands at the top of the Turtle Mountain TV tower, watching the countdown to zero - but the password is missing the last four digits.

"It's the time that's missing!" Dr. Shen suddenly ripped open his collar, and the festering tattoo oozed out the number 1945. Chu Yun's tail stinger zapped into the launch pad and entered his own clone code: 2023.Su Evening Qing wipes blue blood on the control screen, and the date of her daughter's disappearance, 2007, flashes in electric sparks.

As the atomic bomb lifted off, mechanical dark clouds gathered in Dr. Lin's face. Su Wanqing saw kindergarten graffiti carved into the surface of the warhead, and her daughter's smiling face flashed across the casing. Chu Yun suddenly coughed up metal shards with the future Lu Li's battle log printed on them - recording that the nuclear explosion had killed one-tenth of humanity.