My childhood friend is in her mature, sophisticated form again today. - Chapter 27

At 2 PM, the waves on the sea had indeed subsided considerably. Although the aftershocks of the storm still lingered, it was calmer than yesterday. Sun Yuan steered the boat to the white buoy, turned off the engine, and the boat rocked gently with the waves. Lin Jiqiu stood at the gunwale, wearing a brand-new waterproof suit—bought by A Zuo in the city yesterday afternoon, more form-fitting and better suited to her figure than the previous one. She checked her equipment: backpack, flashlight, folding knife, USB drive, lock picking tools, locator, and then took a deep breath. “Communication test.” Cheng Ran’s voice came through the earpiece, clear and crisp, as if he were speaking from a sofa, not standing on a rocking boat. “Clear.” “How’s the underwater signal?” “‘Yin’s’ signal is stable. Contact me anytime after going down.” “Okay.” Lin Jiqiu took a deep breath and jumped into the sea.

The water was a bit cooler than yesterday; the storm had stirred up the cold water from the lower layers of the sea. She paused in the water for a few seconds, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light, then let her powers flow. Her skin became slippery, her gills opened, webbed membranes grew, and the thin, transparent webbing between her fingers spread slightly in the pale blue water, like a tiny sail. She swam down the rope, ten meters, fifteen meters, to the cave entrance. The smooth area on the cave wall was still there, without any new seaweed clinging to it. She swam in, twenty meters, twenty-five meters, thirty meters. The tunnel grew narrower and narrower. The beam of her flashlight swept across the cave walls, the rocks as smooth as glass, reflecting a pale light that made the shape of the tunnel appear larger and smaller, like the esophagus of some living creature.

The metal door. Lin Jiqiu stopped in front of the door, which was closed, just as it had been when she last left. She took out the matching device from her backpack, pushed it into the slot, and twisted it three times. Click, click, click—the door opened a crack, and bubbles welled up from the crack, gurgling upwards and gathering into a transparent gasbag at the top of the cave before slowly dissipating. She waited for the bubbles to dissipate, then opened the door and swam inside. The passage was twenty meters long, arched, and had smooth walls. The beam of her flashlight shone on the walls, revealing traces of human excavation—drill marks, parallel lines, seemingly only visible from a certain angle. She swam to the end of the passage and stopped in front of the transparent door. The room was empty; Fang Lin wasn’t there, but the traces Fang Lin left behind remained—a dark patch of skin oil in the corner, left from her fourteen days of curling up in bed.

Lin Jiqiu turned the doorknob and swam inside. The water in the room was murkyer than in the passageway; the sediment Fang Lin had stirred up when she left hadn’t completely settled. She scanned the room with her flashlight—the table, chairs, shelves—just like last time. She swam to the observation window, pressed her face against the glass, and shone the flashlight inside. She couldn’t see anything. The glass was one-way, dark, like a black mirror, reflecting her own blurry outline—gills splitting on either side of her neck, transparent webbing between her fingers. She shifted her gaze from her reflection to the right side of the observation window. There was a door there, embedded in the wall, made of the same material as the wall; if she hadn’t felt the crack in the door last time, she wouldn’t have noticed it at all.

Lin Jiqiu walked to the door and carefully shone her flashlight inside. The door crack was very narrow, filled with sediment. She picked at the sediment with her fingers, revealing a straight gap. The doorknob was a recessed handle, also hidden beneath the sediment. She picked at the sediment, stuck her finger in, and pulled hard. The door didn’t budge. She pulled again, still no movement. Locked. She pressed her ear to the door and listened—no sound, no water flow, no knocking, nothing at all. She stepped back a little and took out the lock-picking tools Cheng Ran had given her from her backpack. It was a set of thin metal wires, housed in a waterproof box, each with a different bend angle. She chose the thinnest one, inserted it into the keyhole, and gently probed a few times. The lock cylinder’s pins bounced once, then sprang back. She tried again; the pins bounced to their positions but didn’t lock, then bounced back. The lock cylinder was rusty, or perhaps it had an anti-pry design.

“Chengran.” “Yes. What’s the problem?” “The lock won’t open. It’s rusty, or it has an anti-pry design.” “Can you force it open?” “The door opens inwards. You can only pull, not ram.” “Then you’ll have to open it from the other side.”

Lin Jiqiu was silent for a few seconds. She would try opening it from the other side. If there was another room behind the observation window, that door should lead to that room. That person—if they existed—might be able to open the door from the inside. She stepped back, turned her flashlight to its brightest setting, and shone it on the door, examining it carefully. There was a gap between the metal door frame and the concrete wall; she couldn’t insert a finger, but perhaps a thin metal wire could. Using the thinnest lock pick she had, she slowly probed along the gap in the door frame, feeling the resistance at the other end of the wire. It was elastic, not the hardness of concrete, but the softness of rubber—there was a sealing strip around the inside of the door frame. The aged sealing strip, soaked in water for who knows how long, had lost its elasticity, but it still held. She pried the strip open a little with the wire, and water seeped in through the gap, making a faint gurgling sound.

There is space on the other side of the door.

Lin Jiqiu shone her flashlight into the crack. The light shone through, forming a small patch of light on the other side. She saw it—not a wall, but emptiness. There was nothing behind the door. She continued to pry open the tape, widening the gap to fit two fingers. She hooked her fingers around the inner edge of the door and pulled hard. The door didn’t move. It wasn’t locked; something was blocking it. She changed her angle, moving her fingers upwards, and found a protrusion in the middle of the door—probably the latch. She pressed her fingertips against the protrusion and lifted it up; with a click, the latch loosened. She pulled the door again, and it opened a crack. Black water gushed out from the crack, colder than the water in the room, carrying an indescribable smell—rust, machine oil, and the pungent odor of some kind of chemical agent.

Lin Jiqiu opened the door completely and swam inside.

Behind the door was a small room. About ten square meters, half the size of the room next door. There was no table, no chairs, no shelves. In the very center of the room stood a metal pillar, stretching from the floor to the ceiling, about half a meter in diameter, its surface covered with buttons and dashboards. Each of the pillar’s four sides had a small but high-resolution screen displaying images of the next room—the table, chairs, shelves, and the passage she had just swum through.

Monitoring room.

Lin Jiqiu walked to the pillar and shone her flashlight on the buttons and dashboard. Some buttons had labels—the labels were faded and the writing was blurry, but she could still make out that they were in English. She recognized a few words: OBSERVE, RECORD, LIGHT, DOOR. She touched the DOOR button with her fingertip and pressed it lightly. A slight click came from the direction next door—the sound of the latch on the door she had just come through resetting. She pressed it again, and the latch loosened. Electrically controlled. This door wasn’t controlled by a key; it was electrically controlled. When Fang Lin was next door, the door was always locked, and the people on the control panel could open and close it at any time.

Lin Jiqiu took a few photos and then turned to observe the rest of the room. Behind the pillar, on the wall, hung a row of shelves containing several plastic file boxes with transparent lids over which the papers were visible. She took one of the boxes down, opened it, and found printed records—dates, times, the observed subject’s number, and a description of their behavior. She flipped through a few pages and saw Fang Lin’s number: XK-07. The records started from the day she went into the water and continued until yesterday—yesterday’s records stated, “Number 07 was rescued; observation terminated.”

Yesterday. After Fang Lin was rescued, there were still people here. She shone her flashlight on the ceiling—there was a circular vent, about thirty centimeters in diameter, with no fan, just a metal mesh. Water was flowing upwards through the vent—there was still space above.

Lin Jiqiu went down to the ceiling and reached her hand into the ventilation shaft. The mesh was movable; she pushed it open gently. She poked her head in and shone her flashlight upwards—it was a vertical shaft, about the same diameter as the ventilation shaft, extending upwards for about two meters before turning a corner. There was a rusty metal ladder on the shaft wall. She pulled back and returned to the small room, checking behind the pillar again. There was a shelf there, holding some odds and ends—a flashlight, a water glass, several packets of compressed biscuits, and a pistol. She picked up the pistol and glanced at it; it was a Glock 17, the magazine full, the safety on. Someone had been here, and recently.

Her heart skipped a beat, then she managed to calm it down. “Cheng Ran, I found the monitoring room. The observation window in the next room looks out from here. There’s a control panel, log files, and a gun. Someone was here just now. The ventilation shaft leads upwards.” “Upwards? Above the cave?” “Yes. Probably to a higher location, maybe inside the sea cliff.” Cheng Ran paused, her voice lower than usual. “Are you going up?” “Not now. Let’s take the evidence here first.”

Lin Jiqiu put the pistol back on the shelf and photographed each record in the file box, taking over a dozen pictures. She put the file box back in its place, then swam to the pillar and photographed the images on the screen again. The next room on the screen remained the same, but one screen displayed a different scene—a larger room with a bed, table, chairs, and bookshelves. Several blueprints, seemingly architectural plans, were pasted on the walls. There was also a person in that room—sitting on the edge of the bed, head down, face obscured, wearing dark clothes, with short hair, appearing to be male.

Lin Jiqiu stared at the screen for a few seconds. There was another person next door. Not Fang Lin. It was someone else.

“Chengran, there’s someone in the room next to the monitoring room. Male, alive. The footage on the screen is coming in real time. The location of that room—it’s probably on the other side of the shaft.” “Can you get there?” “I don’t know. I need to find the entrance.” She swam behind the pillar, rummaged through the shelf next to the file box, and found a key card. It was white, with the number LVL-2 printed on it. She put it in her pocket.

“Chengran, I found a key card. It might be a pass to the upper level. I’ll go up and take a look.” “Wait—” Chengran’s voice held a hint of tension. “You come back first. We’ll investigate tomorrow. That person has been imprisoned for who knows how long, one more day won’t make a difference. You come back first, organize the information, and then we’ll decide.”

Lin Jiqiu hesitated for a moment. The man on the screen was still sitting on the edge of the bed, his posture unchanged, like a statue. She looked at him for a few seconds, then turned and swam towards the door. “Okay. Let’s go back first.” She opened the door, swam through the passage, opened the door again, swam through the tunnel, and grabbed the rope to rise to the surface. The light grew brighter and brighter, and when she broke the surface, Cheng Ran was already at the gunwale. He reached out and grabbed her, pulling her up with a stronger force than usual—not roughly, but in a hurry.

Lin Jiqiu lay on the deck, retracting her gill slits, her skin regaining its original texture, and her webbed membranes slowly shrinking back. She took a deep breath, removed the waterproof backpack from her back, took out the key card, and handed it to Cheng Ran. “LVL-2. There’s another layer on top.” Cheng Ran took it, examined it carefully, and put it in a waterproof bag. “There’s another person, male, locked in another room. This is the live feed on the screen.” Lin Jiqiu’s voice was slightly breathless, not yet fully recovered. “That room is bigger, with a bed, table, chairs, and bookshelves. It’s not the kind where someone is locked in a room submerged in water; it’s dry.”

“Dried?”

“Yes. It’s sealed. No water got in. The monitoring room wasn’t flooded either. Only Fang Lin’s room was flooded.”

Sun Yuan listened from the side, his face pale. “Why? Why did you drown her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s part of an experiment. Maybe it’s to control her, to make her too weak to resist.” Lin Jiqiu stood up, took off his soaking wet waterproof suit, and put on Cheng Ran’s coat. “That man—his number might be different. Fang Lin’s is XK-07. I didn’t look at all the records on the screen, but I feel there are at least a dozen numbers.”

Cheng Ran’s fingers tightened slightly on the tablet. A dozen or so numbers, a dozen or so detainees.

The ship turned back towards the dock. The wind and waves on the sea grew stronger, and the clouds pressed in from the west, obscuring most of the afternoon sun and turning the sea a dark gray. Lin Jiqiu sat on the deck, hugging her knees, watching the white buoy in the distance grow smaller and smaller until it finally disappeared into the undulating waves.

Back at the hotel, Lin Jiqiu went straight to her room. She took a hot shower, changed into clean clothes, and then lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. When Cheng Ran came in, she was still looking at the ceiling, not moving. He brought two cups of coffee, placed one on the bedside table, and pulled up a chair to sit down. “That surveillance room indicates that someone has been active there for at least several months. The records span more than a year. The earliest one starts around this time last year.”

“What about the people who were imprisoned? When was the earliest?”

“There was also a record last year, numbered XK-01. The behavioral description was ‘adaptation period, refusing to eat, exhibiting aggressive behavior.’ But no follow-up records for XK-01 have been found. It might have been moved, or it might be—” He didn’t finish his sentence.

Lin Jiqiu sat up, picked up his coffee, and took a sip. “XK-07 is Fang Lin. 07 isn’t the seventh, is it the seventh batch? Or the seventh one?”

“Uncertain. But if it’s the seventh, there are at least six other people. XK-01 to XK-06.”

“Alive? Dead?”

“have no idea.”

Lin Jiqiu put down his coffee cup and walked to the window. The white buoys were no longer visible on the sea; the afterglow of the storm was still piling up on the horizon, a gray-blue that almost blended into the color of the sea. “Tomorrow, go down again. This time, go through the ventilation shaft to the upper level.”

Cheng Ran was silent for a few seconds. “I’ll go down with you.”

Lin Jiqiu turned around and looked at him. “You can’t go into the water.”

“No need to go underwater. If the ventilation shaft leads into the sea cliff, we might be able to find an entrance from land.” He opened his tablet and pulled up a satellite map of the area. “There are many natural caves in this area’s sea cliffs. Some of these caves have land entrances.”

“Can you find that entrance?”

“Sun Yuan might know. He has worked here for several years and is very familiar with the terrain in that area.”

Lin Jiqiu walked back and sat down. “Okay. Tomorrow we’ll split into two groups. You’ll find the entrance on land, and I’ll enter the ventilation shaft underwater.”

“Whichever side finds it first, the other side will retreat.”

“good.”

Cheng Ran stood up and picked up his coffee cup. “You rest. I’ll go find Sun Yuan.”

As he reached the door, Lin Jiqiu called out to him. “Chengran.”

“Um.”

“There’s something else I didn’t get a chance to mention in the footage from the monitoring room today. There was a small label on the side of the pillar. It had a name on it—’Mirror.’ Not ‘Mirror Meeting,’ but ‘Mirror.'”

Cheng Ran’s finger paused on the doorknob. “It might be the same ‘mirror’ as the stargazer’s.”

“So this underwater facility is also part of that network.”

“Very likely.”

Lin Jiqiu looked at him. “Then who are the people they’ve detained? Why are they detained? Why are they under surveillance?”

Cheng Ran remained silent for a long time. “Perhaps it’s an experiment. Perhaps it’s punishment. Perhaps it’s neither.” He opened the door and walked out. The door closed.

Lin Jiqiu lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. The image on the screen kept replaying in her mind—a man sitting on the edge of the bed, head bowed, motionless. Who was he? Why was he there? Had he heard Fang Lin’s knocking? Had he responded? She turned over and pulled the blanket over her head. The ball on her wrist vibrated slightly; it wasn’t Cheng Ran testing it, it was vibrating on its own.

She raised her wrist, looking at the dark gray sphere. “What do you know?”

The sphere did not answer. It simply vibrated, in sync with her heartbeat.