The Midnight Emergency Room

**Protagonist**: Xu Mingzhang, a police doctor with the Shanghai Municipal Council of the International Settlement (double identity: underground Communist Party member and Green Gang “White Paper Fan”)

**Setting**: The emergency room at Renji Hospital and the cold storage warehouse at the Shiliupu fish market

A plague strain disguised as a cholera vaccine, stolen from Japan’s Unit 731, is traced by Xu Mingzhang to the Green Gang’s docks via fish scales found beneath a victim’s fingernails. He discovers refrigerated vials of the strain hidden in a compartment beneath the operating table, but is surrounded by French Concession police. Under the pretext of treating the Japanese consul’s asthma, he mixes the strain into the consul’s inhalant. He then uses rickshaw pullers controlled by the Green Gang to spread false rumors of an epidemic, sparking widespread unrest in the Japanese residential district and sabotaging the biological warfare plan.