Codename: Number Seven

At two in the morning, a young man with a high fever and convulsions was brought to the emergency room at the Third Municipal Hospital. His body was covered in purplish-red, netlike rashes; his pupils had shrunk to thin slits, and his neck was stiff as a board. Lin Shen, an attending neurologist, identified the illness within two hours: anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. He began treatment. The patient woke up, but the rash vanished completely overnight. Then his fever rebounded, followed by mania, hallucinations, phantom smells, and aphasia. Right in front of Lin Shen, the patient's heart stopped. With his last breath, the patient pressed a USB drive into Lin Shen's palm. His lips moved, forcing out two words: “The Abyss.”

Lin Shen opened the drive. The first line read, “Project Director: Liu Bing,” the hospital's vice president, the man who smiled at him every morning from the end of the conference table. Overnight, Lin Shen went from doctor to prey. After he reported it to the police, they demanded that he hand over the drive. The shadow that followed him to the hospital knew his home address and his nephew's school. In the hospital's underground cold storage room, test tubes labeled with “Abyss” serial numbers were locked away. Everyone wanted what he had, and when he searched through the patient records, he discovered that someone who looked exactly like him had used his employee ID to prescribe a lethal dose of medication.

Lin Shen found a top-secret file. “Original gene sequence donor: Lin Shen.” He had never been an orphan from an orphanage. He was the earliest genetic donor for the Abyss Project. Hidden in his blood was the ultimate antidote to the “Abyss-7” toxin.

Beneath a hospital white coat, a person could be an angel or a devil. Lin Shen chose a third identity: guardian of a single lab report, standing above the Abyss.