Lin Lan clutched the scorching-hot qipao file and rushed into the rain. The brass bell at Chen’s tailor shop rang out behind him. When the dark red liquid seeping from beneath the flagstones flowed over his heels, he recognized it as blood from a 731 test subject. Mixed with wild chrysanthemum petals, it was coagulating at a bizarre speed.
The words “Returning Goose” on the baby clothes had been pierced by a needle. Lin Lan’s fingertip suddenly felt something hard beneath the fabric. The teeth of the cherry-blossom key matched the one Lin Mo had in the ice cave perfectly. Amid the shards of the shattered apricot-blossom silver bangle, he saw himself stuffing a counterfeit-money template into the cremation furnace, while Lin Mo, who should have been dead, pointed a gun at the swaddled Lin Nian.
As the Returning Goose’s whistle tore through the morning mist, Lin Lan recognized the face of the woman in a white coat on deck. The wild chrysanthemum tattoo bleeding at the nape of her neck was identical to Su Wan’s, but when she turned, the smile at the corner of her mouth was exactly like Sato Yukiyuki’s.
When Morse code formed by the stitches on the baby clothes pulsed in his palm, Lin Lan suddenly realized that the countdown’s endpoint was the cellar where he had hidden the bacterial samples.
