4. 白手套

The trellis groaned under their combined weight. Lu went first, his canvas bag slung tight against his chest, the hacksaw handle digging into his ribs like a second heartbeat. The wooden lattice was old, warped by rain, and every movement sent a shudder through the rusted nails that anchored it to the mansion's eastern wall. Below, the kitchen garden lay in darkness, its rows of winter vegetables glistening with mist. Behind him, Su followed, her camera case banging against her hip with each step.

They dropped the last six feet into a bed of dead marigolds, their ankles jarring against frozen soil. Lu pressed his back against the wall, scanning the garden's perimeter. Two guards had been converging on the coal shed moments earlier, but they had been drawn inside by the commotion of Prescott's escape from the basement. The garden was empty, but for how long?

"This way," Su whispered, tugging at his sleeve. She led him along a narrow path bordered by box hedges, through a gap in the iron fence that had been forced open by vagrants years ago. They emerged onto a steep alley that descended toward the old city's east quarter, where the houses leaned together like drunkards and the streetlights were few and far between.

They walked for twenty minutes, keeping to the shadows, until Su stopped at a nondescript door set into a crumbling brick wall. She produced a key from a hidden pocket in her borrowed jacket and unlocked it. The door swung inward onto a cramped courtyard filled with rusted printing presses and stacks of moldy newsprint. A wooden staircase led to a second-floor loft, where a cot, a desk, and a small darkroom had been jury-rigged between the rafters.

"The Daguang Bao's old distribution warehouse," Su explained as she bolted the door behind them. "The paper moved to a larger space last year, but I kept the lease. No one knows about it. Not even my editor."

Lu set his bag on the desk and emptied its contents: the vial of cerebrospinal fluid, the folded map, the notebook page, and his camera. Su placed her own camera beside them and began the delicate process of extracting the film roll in complete darkness. Lu lit a kerosene lamp with a red filter, casting the loft in the dim glow of a photographic darkroom.

They worked in silence for an hour. Su developed the film, immersing each frame in a series of chemical baths, her hands steady and sure. Lu watched the images emerge on the photographic paper—ghostly silhouettes of glass cylinders, the pale forms of suspended children, the angular face of Dr. Prescott at his console. One frame caught the doctor's hand on the dial, his fingers frozen mid-adjustment. Another captured the labels on the nearest cylinder: a prisoner number, a date, and a scrawled notation in English that read "S-phase, incomplete, scheduled for disposal."

"Disposal," Su repeated, hanging the wet prints on a line strung across the loft. "That's the word they use for murder. They're not even pretending anymore."

Lu studied the prints with a magnifying glass, his medical eye searching for details that might have escaped Su's lens. On the label of a cylinder in the background, he caught a partial name: "Wei, L."—not the full character, but enough to match the missing Child Wei from 1946. And on the console's readout, visible in the corner of one frame, a digital display showed a heart rate and a blood oxygen level. The number next to "Subject ID" was 407—Chen Ajiu's prison number. But Chen Ajiu had been dead for two days. The reading had been taken twelve hours after his death.

"He's not just running experiments on the living," Lu said, his voice tight. "He's continuing to monitor the dead. The implant in Chen Ajiu's brain—it must have been transmitting data even after his heart stopped. They didn't remove it because they wanted to see what happened during the death process."

Su's face went pale. "They're using death as another phase of the experiment. Evocation, Subjugation, Inversion—and now Termination. They want to know what the brain does in the final moments of fear."

"Or they're trying to capture that fear, bottle it, and replicate it in the next subject." Lu tapped the vial. "This fluid came from Chen Ajiu's skull. If they can isolate the chemical signature of acute terror, they can induce it in any subject without the need for—" He stopped, realizing the implication. "Without the need for actual trauma. They can manufacture the response in a laboratory. It's more efficient. It's more repeatable. It's the kind of thing a scientist would call 'progress.'"

Su shook her head. "We have the photographs. We have the vial. We have the notebook page. But all of this points to Prescott, not to the governor. Prescott is a foreign consultant—he can be disavowed, expelled, even arrested, and the governor will claim he acted without authorization. We need a direct link. A signature, a memo, a ledger with the governor's own hand."

Lu unfolded the map again and spread it on the desk. The red "X" beneath the mansion was now supplemented by a series of annotations he had not noticed before—small numbers and letters written in pencil, almost invisible, along the corridor that connected the mansion to the prison. He held a magnifying glass over them and read aloud: "G-4, personal authorization, 12/24/46." The date was the same as the governor's infamous case. "G-4" could only mean Governor's Office, File 4. And "personal authorization" was as direct as it got.

"Where is File 4?" Su asked.

Lu traced the notation on the map. It led to a small room on Level 2 of the underground complex—the Observation level, just above the Core. The map labeled it as "Records Annex." If the governor had kept a private file, that was where it would be.

"But Level 2 is occupied twenty-four hours a day," Su said, recalling the map's earlier warning. "We saw that on the schematic. There's a guard post and a rotation of orderlies. We can't just walk in."

"Then we need a distraction." Lu looked at the vial on the desk. "A bigger one than a fire in a fuel tank. Something that forces everyone above ground to evacuate."

Su stared at him. "You're not suggesting—"

"I'm suggesting we make it look like a gas leak in the mansion's basement. One that threatens to explode and destroy the entire wing. The dinner party is still ongoing—the governor's guests will be evacuated, the guards will be diverted, and Prescott will have to come up to oversee the emergency. That gives us a window."

"How do we create a gas leak without actually blowing ourselves up?"

Lu held up the hacksaw. "The gas line runs through the same service tunnel that connects the prison to the mansion. I saw it on the map—an old municipal gas main, decommissioned but still pressurized. If I saw through the valve casing, it'll release a slow leak. Enough to trigger alarms, not enough to ignite. Unless someone lights a match."

Su's expression shifted from doubt to grim resolve. "I'll get the photographs printed. We need at least fifty copies—enough to distribute to every major newspaper and foreign consulate before dawn. You take the hacksaw and the map, go back through the drainage culvert, and crack that valve. We meet back here at midnight."

"That's three hours from now." Lu checked his pocket watch—a battered silver piece that had belonged to his father. It was nine-fifteen.

"Three hours is enough for a man who knows his way around a cadaver." Su allowed herself a thin smile. "Just don't become one yourself."

Lu left the loft through a rear window, dropping into an alley that smelled of rotting cabbage and coal smoke. He moved through the city's underbelly like a man who had spent years navigating bodies—each step deliberate, each turn calculated. The drainage culvert that had brought him out of the prison was his entry point again. He waded into the cold water, the hacksaw strapped to his back, and followed the underground channel until he reached the junction where the prison's tunnels met the mansion's service corridor.

The gas main was exactly where the map had indicated—a rusted iron pipe, shoulder-high, with a valve wheel that had not been turned in decades. Lu inspected the casing. It was brittle, flaking, and a single blow from the hacksaw would score it deep enough to create a hairline fracture. He worked carefully, not wanting to break through completely, just enough to produce a faint hiss. The smell of sulfurous gas filled the tunnel within seconds.

He retreated to a safe distance, listening. Above him, he could hear the muffled sounds of the mansion—footsteps, voices, the clink of glasses. Then, a shout. A servant's cry of alarm. The footsteps grew louder, more urgent, as the evacuation began. Lu smiled in the darkness.

He was about to retrace his steps when he heard another sound—footsteps approaching from the prison side of the tunnel. Not hurried. Deliberate. Two pairs of boots, walking in step.

Lu pressed himself into a recessed alcove behind a stack of old bricks. The footsteps grew closer, and two figures emerged into the dim light of the gas leak. They were not guards. They were orderlies—men in gray uniforms, the same kind he had seen in the underground surgical chamber. Each carried a metal box, and their faces were obscured by surgical masks.

One of them spoke, his voice muffled: "The doctor says it's time for the transfer. Subject Forty-Eight is ready for I-phase, but we need the new shipment from the prison. He wants three fresh bodies by morning."

The other orderly nodded. "The warden has agreed. He'll send up the ones from Block C—the tuberculosis ward. No one will ask questions."

Lu's blood went cold. They were not just experimenting on death-row prisoners. They were taking the sick, the expendable, the forgotten. The tuberculosis ward was filled with men who had months to live at most. Their deaths would be blamed on the disease.

The orderlies passed within three feet of him, their boxes brushing against the brickwork. Lu held his breath until they moved on, their footsteps fading toward the mansion's underground entrance. Then he exhaled, his heart pounding. The gas leak was working, but it had also exposed a new layer of horror. The governor's project was not a small, secret operation. It was a vast, systematic harvesting of human lives.

He crawled back to the drainage culvert and swam toward the river, emerging onto the same stone ledge where he had met Su the previous night. The city was in chaos—fire engines, police whistles, the blare of car horns. The mansion's evacuation had triggered a broader alarm. But in the confusion, no one noticed a dripping figure slipping through the alleys.

He reached the loft just before midnight. Su had finished her work: fifty glossy prints lay across the desk, each one sharp and damning. She had also typed a brief statement on a portable typewriter, outlining the governor's role, Prescott's experiments, and the list of known victims. She had signed it "A Witness," but Lu took the pen and added his own name.

"If they find me, I want it known that I was the one who did this," he said.

Su looked at him, her eyes shining with a mixture of fear and admiration. "Then we send them out. My contacts at the papers are waiting. I'll courier the packages to five different delivery points. By dawn, every editor in the city will have a copy."

They divided the prints and the statement into envelopes, addressing each one to a different newspaper and foreign mission. Su left first, her arms full of evidence, disappearing into the night. Lu followed ten minutes later, his own share of the packets tucked inside his jacket.

He made his first drop at the office of the Ta Kung Pao, sliding the envelope through a grate in the door. His second went to the American consulate's mail slot. His third to the British embassy. His fourth to a Chinese-language newspaper that had been critical of the governor. His fifth to the general he and Su had mentioned—the northern garrison commander, now stationed at a barracks on the city's outskirts.

He had just completed the fifth drop when a hand clamped on his shoulder.

Lu spun, ready to swing his hacksaw, but the hand belonged to a boy—no older than fourteen, in a tattered school uniform. The boy's face was flushed, his breath ragged.

"Doctor Lu?" the boy whispered. "I was sent by a woman named Su. She said to give you this." He pressed a folded note into Lu's palm.

Lu opened it. Su's hurried handwriting: "The general is dead. Found in his quarters this evening, heart failure. But his adjutant is alive and willing to talk. Meet me at the old Confucian temple on West Street. Come alone. Hurry."

Lu crumpled the note and thanked the boy. He headed toward West Street, his steps quickening. The general's death was no coincidence—it was a preemptive strike, a silencing of the one man who could corroborate the governor's crimes. But the adjutant might know the details of the 1946 case, might have seen the authorization File 4 himself.

The temple was a derelict structure, its once-grand roof now caved in, its courtyard overgrown with weeds. Lu approached cautiously, scanning the shadows for Su's figure. He found her sitting on a broken stone pillar, her face ashen.

"The adjutant was a trap," she said, not looking at him. "He was already dead when I got there. Someone had gotten to him first. But I found this in his pocket." She held up a small leather notebook, its cover stained with something dark. "It's the general's personal diary. He recorded every meeting with the governor, every memo, every order. It's all here—the authorization for File 4, the transfer orders, the budget allocations from the charity foundation. Everything."

Lu took the diary, flipping through its pages. The entries were terse, military, but unmistakable. The governor had personally signed off on the project in 1943, under the guise of "anti-espionage research." The children were sourced from orphanages and street vagrants. The adults were prisoners who had been condemned for crimes they never committed. The goal was to create a "behavioral modification protocol" that could be exported to other prisons, other provinces, perhaps even other countries.

And at the very back of the diary, a single page was dedicated to the governor's own son—a boy named Jianguo, born with severe neurological damage, who had been the first subject of the Iris project. The governor had authorized the experiment on his own child. The boy had died in 1944, the failure that had led to the current, more refined methodology.

Lu closed the diary. "He killed his own son trying to cure him. And then he turned it into a system to control everyone else."

Su nodded. "The diary is our final piece. Combined with the photographs and the vial, it's enough to bring him down. But we need to get it to a printer—a real printer, not just our back-room darkroom. We need to publish it in full."

Lu pocketed the diary. "Where's the nearest press that's still running at this hour?"

"The YMCA press on Nanking Road. They print pamphlets for the missionary schools. They won't ask questions if we pay in cash."

They left the temple and walked toward Nanking Road, keeping to the alleys. The city was quieter now—the mansion evacuation had been contained, and the gas leak had been sealed. But the streets were still patrolled by police, their whistles trilling at intervals.

As they approached the YMCA building, a figure stepped out from a doorway. A tall man in a Western overcoat, with a fedora pulled low. He held an umbrella, though the night was dry.

Lu recognized him. The same man who had pointed at his bag on the riverbank.

"Doctor Lu," the man said, his voice calm and unhurried. "Miss Su. I've been waiting. The governor sent me. He wants to make an exchange."

Su's hand went to her camera. "We're not interested in bargaining."

"You should be." The man reached into his coat and produced a folded document. "The governor is offering you this: a full confession, signed by him, admitting to the experiments and detailing the funding sources. In exchange for the diary and the photographs. He will also provide you with a safe passage to Hong Kong, with enough money to start new lives."

Lu stared at the document. "Why would he confess?"

"Because he knows you have enough to destroy him. But if you publish, the scandal will tear the province apart. Riots, reprisals, a purge. The Nationalist government will use it as an excuse to impose martial law. Thousands will die. The governor doesn't care about himself—he's dying of cancer, anyway. He cares about the legacy. He wants to control the narrative. A confession, given voluntarily, will allow him to paint himself as a repentant reformer. You get the truth, and the truth is what you wanted."

Su spoke first: "And the children? The ones still floating in those tanks?"

The man shrugged. "They will be released. Prescott has been arrested by the governor's own order—a scapegoat for the scandal. The survivors will be sent to hospitals. The dead will be buried with dignity. It's the best outcome you'll get."

Lu was silent for a long moment. The diary was heavy in his pocket. The photographs were still in the loft. The vial was strapped to his thigh. He had the power to destroy the governor, but he also had the power to cause chaos. Was the truth worth the blood that would follow?

He looked at Su. Her face was unreadable, her eyes fixed on the man's umbrella. Then she spoke, her voice low and dangerous: "We'll take the confession. But we keep the diary and the photographs. We don't trust you."

The man smiled. "As you wish. The governor is waiting in his study. He's alone. He will sign the confession in front of you. After that, you can do whatever you want with your evidence."

Lu knew it was a trap. He knew the governor would not surrender so easily. But the offer was too tempting to refuse. A signed confession would be undeniable proof—a bullet that even a corrupt court could not dodge.

"Lead the way," Lu said.

The man turned and walked toward the governor's mansion, which loomed on the hill, its lights now dim and scattered. Su and Lu followed, their steps heavy with dread.

As they reached the gate, Lu glanced back at the city below. A light flickered in the window of the YMCA press—someone was still working. He felt a surge of hope. The evidence was not all in his pocket. Su had also sent a copy to the editor of the Daguang Bao, with instructions to publish if they did not return by daybreak.

The governor's study was on the second floor, a wood-paneled room lined with books and trophies. The governor sat behind his desk, a gaunt man with hollow cheeks and trembling hands. He held a pen over a sheet of paper.

"You have what I want?" he asked, his voice thin.

Lu placed the diary on the desk. The governor picked it up, read a page, and nodded. He signed the confession without reading it and pushed it across the desk.

Su picked up the paper and scanned it. "It's genuine," she said. "Everything. The timeline, the names, the funding. Even the part about his son."

The governor smiled. "Then we have an agreement. You leave tonight, and I—" He stopped, his eyes widening. A shadow fell across the window. A figure was climbing the trellis—a child, the same child from the roof, but alive again, its eyes burning with a feverish light.

The child smashed through the window and landed on the desk, scattering papers. It lunged at the governor, its hands outstretched, its mouth open in a soundless scream.

Lu grabbed Su and pulled her back. The child—the governor's son, dead and revived, a monster of the experiment—wrapped its hands around the governor's throat. The old man clawed at the air, his face turning purple.

And then Prescott appeared in the doorway, a syringe in his hand. "The I-phase wasn't complete," he said, breathing hard. "The subject escaped. I tried to recall it, but—"

The child released the governor, who slumped forward, dead. The child turned to face Lu, its eyes meeting his. And in that gaze, Lu saw not madness, but recognition.

"Doctor," the child said, its voice a whisper. "Help me. Please."

Lu reached out his hand. The child took it, its tiny fingers ice-cold.

And from behind Prescott, a dozen guards poured into the study, their rifles raised.

The trap was not for him. The trap was for the child—and Lu had just walked into the middle of it.