Agent Donovan knew he had been played. The partial, flawed data he had received from Dr. Chen's laboratory was not a failure of intelligence; it was a deliberate, calculated insult. She had not been a passive target; she had actively fed him misinformation. She was not just a genius; she was a combatant. The realization was both infuriating and exhilarating. The stakes were higher now, the game more personal. He was no longer just a spy trying to steal secrets; he was a hunter who had been challenged by a far more intelligent and dangerous prey.
He needed to get the rest of her notes. But another direct attempt using the terrified Mr. Wu was too risky. He needed to lure the Doctor out, to draw her onto ground of his own choosing. He would appeal to the one weakness he believed every genius possessed: intellectual vanity.
He spent a day crafting his bait. Working with the Prometheus team via coded telegraph, he composed a message. It was a single page, a photographic reproduction of one of Dr. Chen's own flawed equations, the one dealing with resonance decay. At the bottom of the page, one of Tesla's top physicists had circled a specific integral and, below it, scrawled a single, elegant question in perfect, academic Mandarin.
THIS ASSUMES A STABLE ISOTOPE AS THE RESONANCE MEDIUM. HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THE CASCADE EFFECTS OF A NON-STABLE ELEMENT WITH A PREDICTABLE HALF-LIFE?
It was a brilliant piece of bait. It was a genuinely intelligent, probing question that demonstrated they were not just clumsy spies, but scientific peers who were engaging with her work on a serious level. It was designed to pique her curiosity, to flatter her intellect, and to make her believe she was dealing with a worthy opponent.
The message concluded with a simple, typed invitation for a discreet, academic discussion. The proposed location: the old manuscript section of the Imperial University library, long after closing. A neutral, quiet location. A scholar's location.
He entrusted the delivery of this message to Mr. Wu. The old man, now bound to Donovan by a complex mixture of fear for his family and a strange, desperate hope that these Americans might actually be trying to "help" the Doctor, agreed. He left the note on Dr. Chen's desk when she was out of the room, his hand trembling as he did so.
Dr. Chen found the note that afternoon. She read it, her expression unreadable. She saw the trap instantly. It was a clumsy, transparent attempt to lure her into a meeting. But as she read the scrawled question at the bottom of the page, a flicker of something new entered her eyes: professional respect.
'So,' she thought to herself, a faint, cold smile touching her lips. 'They have at least one competent physicist on their team. This is… unexpected. And far more interesting.'
Her initial impulse was to burn the note and alert Shen Ke's agents. That would be the safe, logical course of action. But Dr. Chen was a woman who had spent her life wrestling with the fundamental forces of the universe. The clumsy maneuverings of spies bored her, but a direct intellectual challenge? That was irresistible. A dangerous, supremely arrogant idea began to form in her mind. She would go to the meeting. She would not bring guards or alert the ministry. She would handle this herself. She would show these foreign children what a true master of the game looked like.
That night, the old manuscript section of the university library was a vast, silent cathedral of forgotten knowledge. Moonlight streamed through the high, arched windows, illuminating towers of books that rose like skyscrapers into the darkness. The air was thick with the dry, sweet scent of decaying paper and ancient ink.
Agent Donovan was there, hidden in the shadows at the end of a long aisle, his heart pounding with a predator's anticipation. He was certain he had her. His appeal to her ego had worked. She was coming, alone, to meet her intellectual "peer."
He saw her then, a solitary figure walking down the long, shadowed aisle. She moved with a calm, unhurried grace, her footsteps echoing softly in the great, silent hall. She was not afraid. She was a queen entering her court.
She stopped at the midpoint of the aisle, still some distance from him. "A clever question, Agent Donovan," she said, her voice clear and carrying in the silence. It was not the voice of a woman coming to a parley. It was the voice of a woman issuing a judgment. "It shows you have at least one competent physicist on your team. It is a genuine shame that you are such a profoundly poor spy."
Before Donovan could process the insult or react to the fact that she knew his name, a low, deep hum began to fill the air. It was a sound that seemed to come from the very bones of the library, a gut-vibrating thrum of immense, building power.
From behind the towering bookshelves on either side of the aisle, two large, complex devices, hidden in the shadows, activated. They were larger, far more powerful versions of her tabletop machine, their copper coils glowing with a sudden, intense blue light. They were not weapons designed to kill. They were powerful, focused electromagnets, and Donovan had just walked directly into the center of their kill zone.
Every metallic object on his person was suddenly, violently ripped away from him. His concealed pistol was torn from its holster under his arm. The spare ammunition clips in his pocket, the steel-toed caps of his boots, the small knife strapped to his ankle, even the metal buckles on his belt—all of it was wrenched from him with incredible force. The air filled with the sound of whizzing, flying metal, followed by a series of loud, percussive CLANGS as the objects slammed into the glowing magnets on either side of him.
He was thrown off balance, disarmed instantly, completely, and humiliatingly. He stood there, his clothes askew, his hands empty, his professional composure utterly shattered.
Dr. Chen stood at the far end of the aisle, silhouetted against a moonlit window. In her hand, she held a small, simple remote activator. A cold, triumphant smile graced her lips.
"You wanted to see my research, Agent," she said, her voice dripping with intellectual contempt. "You presumed that I was the prey, and that you were the hunter. A fatal miscalculation. You have been walking in my laboratory for weeks. I have been studying you and your clumsy associates just as intently as you have been studying me. I know your methods. I know your weaknesses."
She took a step closer, the unquestioned master of the situation. "Now… let us have a proper conversation. No more lies, no more games. You will tell me everything you know about Project Prometheus. And you will be very, very thorough."
Donovan, unarmed and utterly outmaneuverered, was trapped in a cage of his own making, a cage built of magnetism and a superior intellect. He was at the complete and total mercy of the woman he had so arrogantly sought to manipulate. The target had become the captor.