The old manuscript section of the Imperial University library was a forest of forgotten words. The air was still and cold, carrying the dry, sweet perfume of ancient paper and decaying leather bindings. Here, in the heart of this silent world, Agent Donovan was a prisoner. He was not bound by ropes or chains, but by a force far more fundamental: magnetism. Dr. Chen's trap had been as elegant as it was absolute.
He stood in the center of the long aisle, disarmed and humiliated, as she approached him. She moved with the calm, deliberate confidence of a master chess player who had seen the board twenty moves ahead. Her expression was not one of triumph, but of cool, academic satisfaction, the look of a scientist whose hypothesis had just been proven correct.
Donovan, his initial shock giving way to the cold pragmatism of a trained agent, knew that his only weapon left was his wits. He could not escape physically, so he would attempt to re-frame the reality of his capture.
"Dr. Chen," he said, his voice steady, betraying none of the adrenaline coursing through his veins. "You are making a grave mistake. You think you have captured a simple spy. I am a direct representative of the President of the United States. Harming me, or handing me over to your government, will be considered an act of war. A true act of war, not the petty squabbles your Emperor is currently engaged in."
He tried to project an aura of authority, of a power greater than her own. "However," he continued, shifting his tone to one of magnanimous negotiation, "releasing me and cooperating with my government… that could be very beneficial for you. We can offer you protection. A new identity. A new life in America, with a laboratory ten times the size of this one, far from the paranoia of your Emperor and his secret police. We can offer you freedom."
Dr. Chen stopped a few feet from him and actually laughed. It was not a sound of mirth. It was a short, sharp, utterly dismissive sound, like glass breaking.
"Freedom?" she repeated, the word tasting like an absurdity on her tongue. "Agent Donovan, you still do not understand the situation you are in. You still do not understand the situation the world is in."
She began to walk slowly around him, her gaze analytical, as if she were studying a particularly interesting specimen under a microscope. "You think in terms of nations and governments. Petty squabbles over territory and ideology. You see this as a game between your President and my Emperor. I am not playing that game. I am engaged in a conversation with the fundamental forces of the universe. Your President is an irrelevance. Your Emperor," she said, pausing to look him directly in the eye, "is a fascinating but primitive biological anomaly. A fluke."
Donovan's professional composure finally cracked. "A fluke? The man can cause earthquakes."
"Precisely," she said, a flicker of genuine intellectual excitement in her eyes. "He does by instinct, by a genetic roll of the dice, what I am learning to do by design. You came here because you want my research on resonance. You believe it is a weapon that can be used against your Emperor. You are thinking too small, Agent. So pitifully small."
She gestured at the humming electromagnets hidden in the shelves. "This is not a weapon. It is a key. A key to unlocking the very laws of reality. It is the first step toward a technology that will make your warships and my Emperor's land-ships look like children's toys. You are trying to build a better spear to kill a dragon, while I am learning to speak the language the dragon speaks."
She had returned to her original position at the end of the aisle, placing herself between him and the only exit. She had laid out the true nature of her ambition, and it was so vast, so far beyond the scope of his mission, that it left him speechless. She was not interested in choosing a side in the new Cold War. She was interested in making it obsolete.
Now, she laid out her terms. It was not a negotiation. It was a demand.
"Project Prometheus," she stated, her voice cold and hard as diamond. "You will tell me everything. Your budget. Your key personnel—I already know of Dr. Wu Jian and the charlatan Tesla, but I want the full list. Most importantly, you will tell me the precise location of your facility in the Nevada desert."
Donovan's blood ran cold. To give up the location of the Forge was an unthinkable act of treason.
"And that is only the beginning," she continued, as if sensing his thoughts. "You will arrange for a complete and total transfer of all of Dr. Wu Jian's medical data on the Emperor. Every blood test, every tissue sample analysis, every note on his biological condition after one of his 'episodes.' He possesses the practical medical data of the anomaly; I possess the theoretical physics that explain it. Together, his data and my equations might actually allow us to understand this phenomenon, instead of just trying to crudely replicate it or kill it."
She took a small remote activator from her pocket, the one that controlled the magnets. "This is my offer, Agent. You will become my liaison. You will feed me the information I require from your government. In exchange, I will not hand you over to Shen Ke's butchers."
She smiled again, that same cold, terrifying smile. "Of course, if you refuse… this door will remain sealed. My devices will remain active. And Spymaster Shen Ke's agents, who are undoubtedly wondering about the significant and sustained energy spike currently emanating from the library, will arrive within the hour. When they find you here, I will be a respected scholar who has cleverly captured a dangerous foreign spy. You will be an illegal agent caught in the act of espionage. I will be decorated. You will be… disassembled, piece by piece, in a very dark room. I wonder whose story the Emperor will be more inclined to believe?"
Donovan was checkmated. Utterly and completely. She had him trapped physically, politically, and intellectually. He had walked into her web, and she was now the spider. To give her the information she wanted was an act of high treason that would doom his country if she ever turned on them. But to be captured by the Qing secret police was a death sentence, and it would mean the complete and total failure of his mission. All the knowledge of Prometheus would fall into the Emperor's hands anyway.
He saw the cold, unwavering certainty in her eyes. She was not bluffing. She saw him as nothing more than a useful tool, a key to unlock a door she could not open herself. He had a choice: become her tool, or be discarded.
He thought of his mission, of his duty to his President. He had been sent here to find a way to neutralize a god. He had failed. But perhaps, by cooperating with this devil, he could still achieve that goal, albeit in a way he had never imagined.
He let out a long, slow breath, a sound of profound and utter defeat. He looked at the brilliant, terrifying woman at the end of the aisle and gave a slow, reluctant nod.
"What do you want to know first?"
He had escaped immediate capture, but he had fallen into a deeper, more insidious trap. He was no longer just an agent of the United States. He had become a double agent, his primary loyalty no longer to his country, but to the unpredictable will of a scientific genius who saw the great powers of the world as little more than useful sources of grant funding for her true work.