To Embers We Return — Chapter 43

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***

Li Shan and her coterie of officials led Shen Ni to Laboratory One. This was a very large room with walls of cold featureless metal and no windows. The surveillance cameras, one in each corner of the room, were all pointed at the same object: a cube of some pale blue, transparent material that sat in the middle of the room.

The cube was made from the same material as a shielding capacitor, and inside it floated something Shen Ni had become all too familiar with: a brain belonging to the Black Box.

She strode into the middle of that oppressive space and stopped right in front of it. The brain squirmed restlessly inside its container, stretching out feelers in exactly the same way as an organic creature would. It seemed eager to venture beyond the confines of its current prison. But every time it poked a feeler out of its container, some unseen force stabbed right through it, making it shrink back on itself. Every time it did so, it would resume writhing even more violently than before, as if wracked with resentment. 

Li Shan, who had followed Shen Ni into the middle of the room, found no surprise in the other woman’s face, nor even curiosity. She knew then that the reports her agents had brought back to her must be true. Shen Ni and Bian Jin had captured a mutant beast as well, and they’d probably seen a brain like this before.

‘How long as this been in there?’ asked Shen Ni.

‘Three days.’

Shen Ni’s eyebrows rose. ‘You’ve let it sit in that shielding container for three whole days, Your Highness?’

Li Shan did not understand. ‘Should I not have?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t that the technique you used to render the Black Box inert, when you were in the north?’

This gave Shen Ni some new and rather surprising information. She was sure that Li Ruoyuan had sent agents to the north to keep an eye on her movements, but she hadn’t expected Li Shan to do the same as well. Or perhaps the two sisters were in the habit of sharing information, if they really were as close as the rumours claimed.

Shen Ni drew a pair of blue-white gloves from her sleeve-pocket. ‘A shielding container is capable of suppressing the virus,’ she explained, ‘but it needs to be used in conjunction with mercury. If used on its own, three days’ confinement would be its absolute limit.’

Li Shan watched as Shen Ni pulled on the gloves, still perplexed. ‘And what would happen after three days?’

‘Nothing much,’ said Shen Ni airily. ‘The brain would break free of its container and escape, that’s all.’

As she spoke, she unfurled a gloved palm. Resting on it was a brain the exact same size and colour as the one floating inside the container. She thrust it into the watching officials’ faces; shock rippled through them, and the more timid ones even began backing away.

‘Don’t worry,’ Shen Ni comforted. ‘As long as we fill the container with mercury now, we should still be in time to stop it from escaping.’

With bad grace, Li Shan gestured for one of the officials to do exactly that. 

Once the container was filled, Shen Ni peeled off one of her gloves, wrapping it around the brain in her palm, and tossed the whole bundle into the container. 

Li Shan watched her silently. Disposing of your hazardous waste here, are you?

That little byplay, however, had also given Li Shan a realisation that shook her to her core. 

Crafting a container from the same material as shielding capacitors were made of had been a monumental challenge. The fact that they succeeded at all was the bureau’s greatest research achievement in the last few years. The first version of the container they’d designed had been larger even than the bureau itself. The current cube-shaped form was the most efficient one she and her researchers had been able to devise, and that had taken every single ounce of their combined ingenuity. Even now, it was still exceedingly heavy and very difficult to transport. Yet Shen Ni had been able to make a pair of gloves — thin, light, and portable — out of the exact same material.

And she was so young still. Li Shan did not dare imagine where the upper limit of her Talent might lie.

Shen Ni tossed her second glove into the container after the first. Her face, in profile, looked even colder and more forbidding than the cool blue glow from the cube.

Ever since Han Fu had brought the Black Box’s brain back to the Supreme Bureau of Research and Innovation, every single official there had treated it with the utmost vigilance. None of them had dared to let their caution slip for even a moment.

Yet they’d just seen Shen Ni handle that fearsome object so casually — first balancing it on her palm, then tossing it flippantly into the container of mercury as if it were nothing. This was due in part to the iron nerve that had been forged in the battlefields of the north, but also in part to Shen Ni’s own natural arrogance. 

No wonder huangjie is so eager to win Shen Ni over to her side, thought Li Shan. And no wonder she’s just as keen to keep Shen Ni’s power in check.

Out loud she said, ‘Marquess Jing’an, we have been using the bureau’s store of galactic chromium to generate a defensive barrier around the city all this while. By tomorrow, we’ll have exhausted the entire stock of galactic chromium we’d allocated to this task. Do you have another strategy for maintaining our defences?’

Shen Ni turned to Li Shan, but she did not look into the other woman’s face; instead, her eyes were fixed on the patterns on Li Shan’s purple robes. ‘Your Highness, the foundations for the city fortifications have now been laid. Once the galactic chromium runs out, we can construct a temporary defensive barrier out of shielding capacitors to take its place.’

The corner of Li Shan’s mouth spasmed. You could have used shielding capacitors from the very beginning, she thought. But no — you were set on bleeding me dry of my precious galactic chromium!

Li Shan bore Shen Ni no small amount of resentment. But Shen Ni, with her prodigious intellect and breathtaking loveliness, had scrawled audacious brush-strokes all over Li Shan’s heart, painting it with an emotion she could not name. Whatever it was, that feeling rose up within Li Shan now, flinging her thoughts into complete disarray.

Shen Ni was not even looking directly at Li Shan, so she had no idea of the tumult the other woman’s heart was in. She said nothing more, only waiting in silence for Li Shan to make her decision.

Given the gravity of the situation, Li Shan decided to bring Shen Ni to one of the conference rooms, where they could speak alone. Li Shan’s subordinates knew better than to try and follow them.

Li Shan entered the room first, with Shen Ni just a few steps behind. Instead of closing the door, however, Shen Ni left it hanging wide open. When Li Shan glanced at it, Shen Ni explained, ‘I’m simply here to assist you to the best of my ability, Your Highness. My words carry little weight, so there’s no need to guard against eavesdroppers. Besides, I’m a married woman now, and leaving the door open would ward off any misunderstandings, as well as giving us a little fresh air.’

‘As you wish,’ said Li Shan. She sat down in the chair at the top of the room. In front of it was a table on which stood a teapot and several cups. She poured herself the first cup of tea she’d had all day, and took a sip. Shen Ni, meanwhile, settled onto the sofa opposite her.

‘Let me not mince words, Marquess Jing’an,’ said Li Shan. ‘The Supreme Bureau of Research and Innovation has reached the limits of its abilities. We equipped the officials of the Lijing Bureau with specially-designed tracking devices, yet they failed to detect the Black Box even at very close quarters. I have been a complete failure at countering this threat. You are the only one who can defeat the Black Box now.’

‘Your Highness, I can work with you and your researchers to upgrade the city-wide tracking system, to increase its range and its accuracy. We could then install a version of that in the Lijing officials’ digital watches, so that they’ll receive an alert whenever a mutant beast comes within range. We can even design the interface in such a way as to allow them to lock on to their targets.’

Shen Ni’s speech could be caustic — even insulting — but there were times when she did not waste any words, and this was one of them.

‘It seems you already have a plan in place, Marquess Jing’an. That shows remarkable foresight.’

At the end of the day, Li Shan was still a royal prince. She might have encountered her share of setbacks in her youth, but she’d had Li Ruoyuan’s backing throughout. She’d led a privileged and pampered life for many years, and now her praise came a little stiffly, as if she were unused to giving it.

‘There’s no need to compliment me if you don’t know how, Your Highness,’ said Shen Ni.

Li Shan did not reply.

‘The Black Box is a master of stealth and concealment,’ Shen Ni went on. ‘And now it has developed intelligence as well. We won’t be able to use the same old tactics against it. Instead, we’ll have to rely on our own experience and judgment to determine whether any given person standing in front of us is an innocent human — or a mutant beast infected by the Black Box.’

‘And how can we do that?’

‘The Black Box’s main characteristic is its instability. No matter how well a mutant beast tries to pass itself off as a human, there will be some telltale sign, some partial loss of control. It might be its eyes, its hands, even its heartbeat, or some oddity we have yet to see.’

‘That sounds rather vague,’ said Li Shan.

Shen Ni leaned back on the sofa. ‘The Black Box has been able to grow a brain,’ she said. ‘More than one, in fact. Perhaps It’s time we used our own brains when trying to track it down.’

Li Shan was silent for a long time. She felt as if a mountain of information had come roaring down on her, crushing her where she sat. Her head seemed to weigh a thousand tons. Too many unknowns waited in her future. She’d not had a full night’s sleep in a long time, yet she still felt as if she’d accomplished nothing.

She remembered her wild excitement when her Talent as an S-tier machinist had first been awakened. I can finally share some of huangjie’s burdens, she’d thought. I’m no longer a failure.

But now, the Black Box had invaded the capital, and it was evolving much, much faster than she and her researchers could cope with. She’d strained every nerve, driven herself to exhaustion, yet still found it impossible to keep up with these ever-shifting developments.

Back then, Li Ruoyuan had overridden all her ministers’ objections and named Li Shan Director of the Supreme Bureau of Research and Innovation, the position she’d dreamt of for so long. She’d sworn over and over again that she would become strong enough for her sister to lean on. And now? She’d occupied that high position for so many years, but what had she been able to do for her sister? She was still the same worthless failure.

The stress she was under had climbed to bursting point; it desperately needed an outlet. Without being quite conscious of what she was doing, she raked a fingernail viciously across the back of her hand. It left a deep, bloody scratch in its wake.

Out of the corner of her eye, Li Shan caught another flash of red. Shen Ni had stood up, gone over to the door, and closed it. 

‘Your Highness,’ said Shen Ni. ‘Her Majesty has been unwell these past few weeks, and Prince An has just arrived in the capital on the pretext of visiting her on her sickbed. The balance of power in Chang’an is about to shift. Perhaps it already has. I’m sure Your Highness understands that no one else can be relied on to support Her Majesty as wholeheartedly as Your Highness does?’

In the midst of her helplessness, Li Shan looked up.

Shen Ni’s expression had not changed; she still had all the cool detachment of a bystander. But somehow, something about her seemed to have softened. Her words had not been particularly comforting either — they had sounded much more like a warning. But at the same time, they were exactly the shot in the arm Li Shan needed to lift her out of her despair.

Shen Ni is right, she thought. There are so many things I need to do. And I need to protect huangjie too. This is no time to give up.

Li Shan scrubbed a hand over her eyes. Shen Ni said nothing more. She only opened the door and bowed to Li Shan in farewell.

Through the tears in her eyes, Li Shan could not clearly make out the young woman standing in front of her. Was Shen Ni a power-hungry harbinger of disaster, or was she the empire’s saviour?

***

An hour flew by.

With great difficulty, He Lanzhuo extricated herself from Bian Jin’s consciousness. When she returned to the here and now, she found that the exertion had left her temporarily blind.

Bian Jin was not feeling particularly comfortable either. She kept getting the sense that some foreign object was stuck in her head, one she could not dislodge. It reminded her of the first time she’d had a prosthetic installed, and the way her flesh and blood had recoiled reflexively from the cold hard metal. And now, another person had entered her subconscious to bury that unwanted memory. He Lanzhuo might be adroit at such things, but she’d still left some trace of her movements behind.

He Lanzhuo tossed back a can of nutrient beverage and tried her best to compose herself. ‘Thank you for co-operating with me,’ she told Bian Jin, ‘and for relaxing your mind and body as I requested. Otherwise I might not have made it out of your subconscious alive.’ Given that Bian Jin’s Talent outranked hers, and she was a warrior at that, she’d proved as challenging as He Lanzhuo had expected. Had Bian Jin not co-operated with her, He Lanzhuo doubted she could have escaped the other woman’s mental landscape alive, even if she had succeeded in hypnotising Bian Jin.

A dull ache was spreading across Bian Jin’s skull. But she wasn’t in the habit of revealing her weaknesses in front of outsiders; it made her far too vulnerable. So despite her extreme discomfort, she went on sitting in her chair, holding herself perfectly upright. ‘What did you see in my subconscious?’ she asked He Lanzhuo.

He Lanzhuo had put on her visor again. Her vision was gradually returning. Fragments of Bian Jin’s thoughts and emotions still clung to the edges of her mind. She’d set out to hypnotise a client, but had found their personality seeping into her consciousness instead. This was the first time something like that had ever happened.

‘During a hypnosis session, the psychic cannot directly perceive anything other than their intended target,’ she explained. ‘Everything else is reduced to an abstract sense of danger or a source of potential psychic contamination. It wasn’t easy for me to find the memory you wanted to hide.’

At the mention of that particular memory, silence fell over them both. An almost imperceptible flush spread over Bian Jin’s face. Luckily she was still wearing her mask, which concealed most of it. He Lanzhuo, meanwhile, found her throat feeling rather dry. She shifted a little awkwardly in her chair. 

Bian Jin rose to leave then, and He Lanzhuo said, ‘I’ll send you the invoice for the balance of my fee.’

Bian Jin nodded slightly.

He Lanzhuo added, ‘And if my mental state doesn’t stabilise on its own, I might also bill you for the costs of treating that. I hope you understand, Mistress Bian.’

‘Aren’t you an S-tier psychic?’

‘Yes — but I happened to take on an SS-tier client.’

He Lanzhuo had her ‘expensive little pet’ to maintain, while Bian Jin felt obliged to report every item of expenditure to her lady wife. Each woman had her own cross to bear. It was in this atmosphere of silent, mutual understanding that Bian Jin left Empire House. 

Being hypnotised by an S-tier psychic had not been a pleasant experience — far from it. She’d woken up feeling absolutely awful, and as tired as if she’d fought an entire battle in her dreams.

Just as Bian Jin expected, Shen Ni had still not returned by the time she arrived back at the mansion. Auntie Wan, however, did have something to bring to her attention. 

After three rigorous rounds of interviews, Auntie Wan had chosen the first batch of servants to replace the ones that had been dismissed. There were ten of them in total, all very competent and neat-handed. When she saw that Bian Jin had returned, she brought the new servants over for her mistress’ approval.

As the former leader of Shuangji Hall and the ex-commander of an army that had numbered a million soldiers at its peak, it was the work of a few moments for Bian Jin to confirm the correctness of Auntie Wan’s choices. All it took was a quick, appraising glance over each new servants, and a few questions here and there. That was enough for her to be sure that these were capable, trustworthy women and men. Auntie Wan had excellent judgment.

‘When her lordship returns,’ she told Auntie Wan, ‘bring the servants out to her so she can meet them.’

‘Yes, my lady,’ said Auntie Wan. She peered into Bian Jin’s face. ‘You seem tired, my lady. I should not have troubled you with this.’

Bian Jin managed a smile. ‘It’s no trouble at all, Auntie Wan. We appreciate everything you do for this household.’

The new servants were all hard-working women and men seeking to make an honest living. It was difficult to come by such staff these days, so Auntie Wan must have taken some extraordinary pains to find them. That was all to the good. With Auntie Wan to oversee these domestic matters, Shen Ni would no longer have to deal with them personally in the future.

Bian Jin went into the bedchamber. She wanted to take a short nap so that she would stay alert for the rest of the day — while also testing the effectiveness of He Lanzhuo’s hypnosis. Though the way she planned to go about the latter struck even herself as absurd.

Since she was trying to see if that erotic dream had been successfully buried, she’d reasoned, it wouldn’t work if she simply fell asleep in the usual way. After all, she rarely dreamt, and when she did, it was either of bloody battlefields or disembodied arms reaching up from an abyss to strangle her. Dreams with any kind of sensuality to them were few and far between. 

To see whether the hypnosis had worked, Bian Jin had concluded, she needed to watch a little something before falling asleep, something that would to trigger an association with romance and desire, then see whether that old dream resurfaced. Given the sheer volume of salacious material on the extranet, Bian Jin was sure it wouldn’t be hard to find something suitable for her purposes.

Before doing that, however, she went to the door and made sure it was locked. Then she got back into bed, logged on to the extranet, and fumbled her way through some unfamiliar search terms. 

She tapped lightly on her watch a few times. Before pressing play, however, she glanced rather uneasily towards the window. She’d never had any interest in such things before — even disdained them. She’d never imagined that one day, she would find herself surreptitiously seeking out such material in the bedchamber she shared with her new wife.

Bian Jin turned back to her watch, took a deep breath and, with the air of someone making a momentous decision, pressed play. A cacophony of the most debauched images and sounds flooded her senses.

Bian Jin blinked. Why is there a close-up? And a little while later: Why is the close-up going on for so long?

This was decidedly not filling her with thoughts of romance and desire. On the contrary, she was beginning to feel a bit queasy.

Quickly she closed the video, wishing she could wash her eyes out. What did I just see? she thought. Why would anyone enjoy watching something like that? It was more liable to trigger a nightmare for her than any sort of erotic dream.

Bian Jin got out of bed and drank some water to settle her nerves. Once she was feeling a little calmer, she realised that she might have been mistaken in her approach from the very start. Since she was trying to find out whether she would still have that dream of her shimei, what point was there in watching a performance by complete strangers? It would make much more sense to look at something that made her think of her shimei instead.

Luckily, she’d saved that picture of her shimei from their outing to the Eastern Market. She projected it from her digital watch now.

She had not had the chance to study her shimei’s face as attentively and openly as this ever since their reunion. Compared to the child she remembered, Shen Ni had grown into her features beautifully. Her smile was like the sun coming out after rain, its brilliant rays dazzling through the soft clouds of moisture that still hung in the air. 

What an irresistible face, she thought.

Bian Jin gazed at the picture silently, waiting for desire to stir, but it did not come. Instead, Shen Ni’s lovely face had a soothing effect on her, and soon she began to feel quite drowsy. 

She forced herself to stay awake. It seemed this hadn’t been the right strategy either. Looking at Shen Ni’s picture only gave her a sense of contentment, so if she wanted to provoke a stronger reaction, she needed to try something else.

Bian Jin turned off her watch, closed her eyes, and called up a particular recording from her memory module. Although a part of her memory module was sealed off, the rest of it remained functional.

The recordings stored in one’s memory module could be projected for others to see, or simply replayed in the privacy of one’s own mind. It had been huge headache for the Ministry of Rites when memory modules and other similar software first came into common use. They’d had to amend the regulations governing the empire’s civil service examinations — especially the all-important spring examination — many times over.

The memory now replaying in Bian Jin’s mind was from the day the box jellyfish had attacked Chang’an. To be more precise, it was the moment when Shen Ni had taken hold of her right hand and begun sucking the poisoned blood out of her wound.

Only the sights and sounds of a recorded memory could be projected outwardly, but smell and touch could be replayed as well in one’s own mind. The stench of blood and burning dominated the memory, but Bian Jin could also detect a hint of osmanthus-blossom soap — quite faint, but it broke easily through the other, much stronger smells.

Shen Ni was sucking on her hand very artfully, her lips and tongue moving unerringly to the spots that made Bian Jin quiver the most. Now that she was reliving the memory, Bian Jin couldn’t help wondering: had Shen Ni really not noticed at the time how strongly — and how embarrassingly — she was responding? 

And Shen Ni had bitten down so wickedly on her knuckle as well, right next to the jellyfish sting…

Bian Jin’s chest rose and fell heavily; her eyelashes fluttered rapidly. She rolled over on the bed, and instantly thought: Oh no. She felt as if she were being burnt alive atop an open flame.

Still, this should be more than enough to make her subconscious trigger an erotic dream. 

Exhaustion washed over her. Clenching her teeth against the heat rising within her, Bian Jin fell asleep.

***

By the time Bian Jin woke up, the memory had finished replaying. Her mind seemed completely clear, though she was so exhausted that she couldn’t open her eyes.

Then she recalled what she’d been doing before she fell asleep, and tried hastily to remember if she’d dreamt of anything.

There had been no dreams.

Bian Jin let out a sigh of relief. ‘I didn’t dream of shimei,’ she murmured.

He Lanzhuo’s hypnosis had worked, it seemed. She’d test it out a few more times, and if all went well, she and Shen Ni would be able to use the spousal module. 

And then Shen Ni’s voice rang out beside her ear. ‘Are you really so pleased not to have dreamt of me?’

Bian Jin’s eyes flew open.

Shen Ni had come home while she was sleeping. And now she was crouching by the side of the bed, gazing plaintively up at Bian Jin with her chin in her hands.

***

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