5. 不愈口

She woke to the smell of salt and iodine, a combination that had become the signature scent of her nightmares. Her head throbbed with the dull rhythm of waves against a hull. She was lying on a leather sofa in a cabin that swayed gently, its walls paneled in polished mahogany, its portholes showing a sky the color of bruised plums. Dawn or dusk, she could not tell. Time had become a liquid, pouring through her fingers no matter how tightly she clenched her fist.

Zhong Yuxiu sat in an armchair across from her, the baby still wrapped in the white blanket, now asleep in a bassinet beside him. He was reading a newspaper, his spectacles perched on his nose, his posture that of a man enjoying a quiet morning in his study. When he saw her eyes open, he folded the paper and smiled.

"You've been unconscious for twelve hours. I had to adjust the dosage—you have a remarkable resistance to sedatives. It's the opium history, I suspect. Your body learned to fight."

Yulan tried to sit up. Her limbs were heavy, her muscles screaming, but she forced herself upright. She would not lie down in front of him. She would not give him that satisfaction.

"The other women," she said. "The boat. Did you catch them?"

Zhong Yuxiu chuckled. "I could have. My yacht is faster than that rust bucket. But I chose not to. Let them reach the mainland. Let them tell their stories. Who will believe them? A handful of hysterical women, claiming they were held captive on an island, that babies were harvested for organs? The authorities will call it war trauma, mass delusion. By the time anyone investigates, the island will be clean. The records will be destroyed. And I will be a philanthropist again, funding orphanages and hospitals."

He stood and walked to the porthole. "You, however, are a different matter. You know too much. You've seen the ledger, the coordinates. You even managed to tear a page. That was clever. But cleverness without power is only a performance."

Yulan's hand went to her neck, where the needle had pierced her skin. She felt a small bandage. "What are you going to do with me?"

"I'm going to take you to Annex Island. You'll join the other donors there. You're still young, still healthy. You can provide at least four or five viable pregnancies before your body gives out. And your sister's child—" He gestured to the bassinet. "—he'll be raised in comfort. He'll never know his mother existed. It's a kindness, really. The past is a burden. I'm taking it away from him."

Yulan stared at the baby. He was so small, so fragile, his chest rising and falling with each breath. She thought of Yumei, of her sister's empty eyes and scarred abdomen. She thought of the three women they had rescued from the cages, now somewhere on the open sea, fleeing toward a world that would not believe them.

She thought of A Shui, bleeding out on the floorboards. She did not know if A Shui was alive or dead. She did not know if any of them had survived.

"The boat will run out of fuel," Zhong Yuxiu said, as if reading her thoughts. "They'll drift. They'll be found by fishermen, or by pirates, or by the tide. It's all the same in the end."

He reached into a drawer and pulled out a syringe, identical to the one he had used before. "This will make the journey more comfortable for you. I suggest you cooperate."

Yulan looked at the syringe, then at the baby, then at the porthole, where the first light of a new day was turning the clouds pink. She had no weapons. She had no allies. She had only the memory of the torn page, the coordinates burned into her mind, and the knowledge that Zhong Yuxiu had underestimated her in one crucial way.

He believed she was broken. He believed she had no fight left.

But she had been broken before, and she had learned that broken things could be sharp. A shattered plate could cut a throat as well as any knife.

"All right," she said, her voice flat. "I'll cooperate."

The journey to Annex Island took four hours. Yulan spent them in a state of feigned lethargy, her eyes half-closed, her breathing slow. She watched Zhong Yuxiu through lowered lids. He was meticulous, almost obsessive, checking the bassinet every few minutes, adjusting the baby's blanket, humming a lullaby that sounded like a dirge.

The island appeared on the horizon as a low smudge of green. As they drew closer, Yulan saw that it was smaller than the first, no more than a rocky outcrop covered in scrubby trees. A concrete building dominated its center, windowless, brutalist, its flat roof studded with antennas and satellite dishes. A single jetty extended from a cove, where a small cargo ship was moored.

"This is where the real work happens," Zhong Yuxiu said, his voice tinged with pride. "We have state-of-the-art surgical facilities. Full-time medical staff. The donors are kept comfortable, well-fed, lightly sedated. They don't suffer. They don't even remember."

He looked at Yulan with something that might have been affection. "You'll be the crown jewel of my collection. Your genetic profile is exceptional. Your children will save lives."

The yacht docked. Two men in white coats came aboard and took the baby. Zhong Yuxiu guided Yulan down the gangplank, his hand on her elbow with a gentleness that made her skin crawl. She walked through the concrete building's entrance, past a reception desk, down a corridor lined with numbered doors.

Each door had a small window. Through the first, she saw a woman lying on a cot, her abdomen swollen with pregnancy, her eyes staring at the ceiling. Through the second, a woman in a wheelchair, her legs shriveled, her hands clutching a doll. Through the third, an empty room with a single bloodstain on the floor.

"The stain," Zhong Yuxiu explained, "is from a donor who hemorrhaged. We lost both the mother and the child. It was a shame. She was one of my favorites."

Yulan stopped walking. She turned to face him, her body trembling with a cold that had nothing to do with temperature. "You're a monster," she said. "You're the worst kind of monster—the kind who believes he's right."

Zhong Yuxiu tilted his head, considering this. "Perhaps. But monsters build empires, Chen Yulan. Saints only build graves. Now, come—I'll show you to your quarters."

Her quarters were a cell with a cot, a bucket, and a small window that looked out onto the concrete courtyard. She was locked in. The door was steel, the lock electronic, the walls thick enough to muffle any scream.

She sat on the cot and waited. She had no plan, no weapon, no way out. But she had learned something in the hours since her capture: Zhong Yuxiu was afraid. He was afraid of exposure, afraid of the women who had escaped, afraid of the torn page that might have fallen into the wrong hands. That fear was a weakness. She would find it and exploit it.

Hours passed. Night fell. The fluorescent lights in the corridor dimmed to a dull amber. Yulan pressed her ear to the door and listened. Footsteps, distant voices, the hum of machinery. And then, a sound she had not expected: a woman's voice, singing a lullaby in a dialect she recognized. The same dialect as the voice on the ship, the face in the window.

She pressed her face to the small window of her door. The corridor was empty. The singing came from somewhere deeper in the building, from the direction of the surgical wing. She could not see the singer, but she recognized the tune—an old folk song her mother used to hum, about a crane that carried dead children across the river to the other side.

The song stopped. A voice whispered, close to her door: "Chen Yulan? Is that you?"

It was Xiao Taohong. Yulan's heart leaped. "How—how did you get here?"

"Followed the yacht. Borrowed a skiff from the cove. The other women—they made it to the mainland. A Shui is alive. Zhou Wan is with her. They're getting help. But I couldn't leave you."

Yulan felt tears prick her eyes. She had not cried in months, had thought the tears dried up, but now they came, hot and shameful. "You shouldn't have come back. He'll kill you."

"He won't kill me. I'm too useful. I know the kitchen. I know the vents. I know how to disable the alarm system." Xiao Taohong's voice dropped even lower. "But I need your help. There's a control room in the basement. It operates the backup generator. If we cut it, the building goes dark. The doors unlock. The donors can run."

"But there are guards."

"Three. I've been watching. They take turns. One sleeps during the night shift. Two are awake, but they're stationed at the front entrance. The basement is unguarded."

Yulan closed her eyes and made a decision. "Tell me what to do."

She escaped her cell not with a key or a hack, but with a simple trick: she feigned a seizure, thrashing against the steel door until it rattled. A guard came running, unlatched the lock, and knelt to check on her. She drove her knee into his face, felt cartilage crunch, and grabbed his nightstick before he could recover. He slumped to the floor, unconscious.

The corridor was empty. She moved toward the basement stairs, her bare feet silent on the concrete. Xiao Taohong was waiting at the bottom, a tool kit in her hand. Together, they found the control room—a windowless space filled with breaker panels and a massive diesel generator.

"How long will it take?" Yulan asked.

"Five minutes. But when I cut the main line, the emergency lights will come on in sixty seconds. We have to move fast."

Xiao Taohong worked with a precision that belied her burned hands. She stripped wires, spliced cables, disabled the safety interlocks. Yulan stood watch, her nightstick ready.

The lights flickered. They died. Total darkness descended, punctuated only by the red glow of emergency exit signs. From above came shouts, confusion, the chaos of guards who had been suddenly blind.

Yulan and Xiao Taohong ran. They found the surgical wing, where the donors' doors had all clicked open. Women emerged, blinking, frightened, but alive. Yulan counted them—seven, plus herself, plus Xiao Taohong. Nine survivors.

"We have to get to the jetty," Yulan shouted. "The cargo ship—it's our only way off."

They ran through the dark building, a tide of women in cotton gowns, their bare feet slapping against the floor. Behind them, gunshots rang out. A woman screamed and fell. Yulan did not look back. She could not afford to look back.

The jetty was chaos. The cargo ship was still moored, its gangplank lowered. Zhong Yuxiu stood at the top of the plank, his white suit now streaked with dirt, his face a mask of rage. He held a pistol in his hand, and behind him, two of his guards took aim.

"Stop!" he shouted. "You go no further!"

Yulan raised her nightstick, knowing it was useless against bullets. But before he could fire, Xiao Taohong launched herself at the nearest guard, a kitchen knife appearing from her apron. The guard fired wildly, the shot going wide. Xiao Taohong buried the knife in his shoulder, and he dropped to his knees.

Zhong Yuxiu turned his pistol on her. Yulan threw herself at him, the nightstick swinging. It connected with his wrist, and the pistol clattered to the deck. They grappled, his hands around her throat, her fingers clawing at his face. He was stronger, heavier, but she had something he lacked: the absolute certainty that she had nothing left to lose.

She bit his hand. He screamed. She drove her knee into his groin, and he crumpled. In the chaos, the women rushed the gangplank, flooding onto the cargo ship. The remaining guard fired into the crowd, hitting two women, but the others kept moving, kept climbing, kept fighting.

Yulan pulled Xiao Taohong to her feet. "Now! Start the engines!"

Xiao Taohong ran to the wheelhouse. Yulan stood over Zhong Yuxiu, her foot on his chest. His spectacles were broken, his face bloody, his eyes wild with a fear she had never seen in him before.

"This is not the end," he spat. "I have money. I have influence. I will find you, Chen Yulan. I will find every one of you."

"I hope you do," she said. "Because I want you to remember this—the moment when a broken woman made you beg."

The cargo ship's engines roared to life. The gangplank fell away. The ship pulled from the jetty, leaving Zhong Yuxiu on his knees, his hands clutching his wounded wrist, his mouth open in a scream that was swallowed by the wind.

They sailed through the night. The women tended to the wounded, wrapped the dead in blankets, and wept for the ones who had not made it. Yulan sat in the wheelhouse, her body aching, her mind numb. Xiao Taohong steered by the stars, her face illuminated by the faint glow of the instruments.

At dawn, they saw the mainland—a smudge of brown and green, dotted with fishing boats and the distant spires of a coastal town. They had made it. They had survived.

But when they docked and the authorities came, when the doctors examined them and the reporters asked their questions, Yulan found that survival was not the same as freedom. She was free of the island, but not of the memories. She was free of Zhong Yuxiu, but not of the weight of the babies she had failed to save.

And Yumei, her sister, who had been among the six women on the first boat—Yumei had not survived. The wound in her abdomen had become infected, the sepsis spreading too fast for the mainland doctors to treat. She had died three days after reaching the shore, a death that was as quiet as her life had been, a whisper of breath that stopped before anyone could pray.

Yulan stood at her sister's grave, a small plot in the coastal town's cemetery, marked with a wooden cross and a name that was barely legible in the rain. She did not cry. She had no tears left. She only stood, her hands at her sides, and remembered.

The social workers offered her counseling. The journalists offered her money for her story. The police offered her protection. She refused all of it. She took a job in a laundry room, scrubbing sheets for pennies, the same work she had done on the island, but now with the added cruelty of choice.

Years passed. She grew older. She never married, never had another child. Her body, which had been used and discarded, seemed to have forgotten how to conceive, or perhaps it was her heart that had forgotten how to hope. She lived alone, in a small room above the laundry, and she slept with the lights on, because the dark brought the sound of crying.

And every night, she traced the scars on her own abdomen—not from childbirth, but from the time she had tried to claw out her own womb, during the worst days of withdrawal, when she had believed that the only way to stop the pain was to remove its source. The scars were a map of her grief, a geography of loss.

One evening, twenty years after the island, she received a letter. It was typed, formal, on official government stationery. It informed her that a man named Zhong Yuxiu had been arrested in Hong Kong, charged with human trafficking and illegal medical procedures. His empire had collapsed. Annex Island had been raided. Survivors had been found—thirty-seven women, kept in cages, their bodies ruined, their minds shattered.

The letter asked if she would testify. She did not answer. She did not need to. The justice of courts was a small thing compared to the justice of memory, which never forgets and never forgives.

She burned the letter in her kitchen stove and watched the ashes curl upward, black and fragile, like the wings of dead birds. Then she sat down at her small table, and she waited for the dream to come—the dream of the island, the sea, the babies crying in the hold, the faces of the women she had saved and the ones she had left behind.

The dream came every night. It would always come. She had stopped fighting it years ago. She had learned, instead, to walk through it, to touch the faces, to sing the lullaby that her mother had sung, the one about the crane that carried dead children across the river.

She sang it now, her voice a whisper, her fingers tracing the scars on her belly.

And in the dark of her small room, she heard an echo—another voice, joining hers, from somewhere far away, from the island or the sea or the other side of memory. It was a woman's voice, rough and scarred like her own, singing the same song.

A Shui, she thought. Or Xiao Taohong. Or one of the others. They were all singing, somewhere in the world, carrying the same wound, the same unhealed cut.

That was all they had. That was all they would ever have.

But it was enough to keep them alive.