The heavy iron door of the laboratory did not just open; it imploded. With a final, splintering crash of tortured metal, it was torn from its hinges and thrown inward by the battering ram. Through the breach stormed a tide of black-clad figures, their movements a blur of disciplined, ruthless efficiency. These were not common soldiers or city police. These were Shen Ke's elite agents, the Emperor's personal scalpels, and they moved with the chilling certainty of men who have been unleashed.
Agent Donovan reacted on pure, animal instinct. Years of training took over. He grabbed a heavy iron stool, the same one whose shadow was now permanently etched onto the wall, and hurled it at the first agent through the door. The agent swatted it aside with contemptuous ease. Donovan lunged, attempting to use the chaos to break through their line, but it was like a mouse charging a pack of wolves. An arm snaked around his throat, cutting off his air. A sharp, brutal blow struck him behind the knee, and his leg buckled. He crashed to the concrete floor, the impact driving the last of the breath from his lungs. In seconds, he was pinned, his arms wrenched behind his back, the cold steel of manacles snapping shut around his wrists. His desperate, chaotic flight was over.
The agents fanned out, securing the ruined lab. Their leader, the cold and precise Section Chief Ling, stepped over the threshold, his eyes taking in the scene with a professional, almost detached, assessment. He saw the shattered equipment, the dangling wires. He saw the strange, fused lump of green glass still glowing faintly on the workbench. He saw the ghostly, impossible shadows burned onto the brickwork. His mind, trained to analyze and categorize threats, stalled. This was not a bomb-maker's workshop. This was something else entirely. This was a place where the laws of the known world had been broken.
His men moved toward Dr. Chen, who was still slumped against the wall, a defiant, wounded animal in the ruins of her kingdom.
"Hold," Ling commanded, his voice sharp. His men froze in place. He approached her himself, his steps cautious, his eyes wary. He was not looking at a criminal; he was looking at a phenomenon.
Dr. Chen coughed, a wracking, painful sound, and a fresh speckle of blood appeared on her lips. She glared up at him, her eyes, though clouded with pain, still burned with a fierce, intellectual fire.
"You are too late," she whispered, her voice a hoarse rasp. "The signal was sent. The proof is… everywhere."
Before Ling could respond, a man in a physician's coat, who had entered with the raid team, rushed past him. He knelt beside the subdued Donovan first, quickly checking his pulse and forcing open his eyelids. Then he moved to Dr. Chen, his examination equally swift and efficient. He rose, his face grim, and approached Ling.
"Section Chief," the physician said in a low, urgent voice. "These two are dying."
Ling stared at him. "What? From the struggle?"
"No," the physician said, shaking his head. "Something else. Their symptoms are… alarming. Acute cellular damage. Severe anemia. Evidence of internal hemorrhaging. I have never seen anything like it. It's as if their own bodies are unraveling from the inside out. I do not know the cause, but I can tell you the prognosis. Without immediate and highly specialized treatment… they will both be dead within a week. Perhaps less."
Ling processed this information. The American spy and the rogue physicist were not just prisoners; they were ticking clocks. Their "victory," whatever it had been, had come at the price of their own lives.
He moved to the secure communication device his team had brought with them, a direct line to the Spymaster in Beijing. He quickly and concisely reported the situation: the American agent, Donovan, captured. The physicist, Dr. Chen, secured. He then described the laboratory, his voice clinical as he detailed the impossible scene—the melted green glass, the radiation shadows, the lingering, strange energy that seemed to hang in the air.
In Beijing, Shen Ke listened, holding one phone to his ear while another was pressed to the ear of the Emperor. Qin Shi Huang, weak but lucid, heard every word of Ling's report. He heard about the dying prisoners. He heard about the impossible wreckage. And he understood. This woman, this Dr. Chen, had not simply built a weapon. She had harnessed a fundamental force of the universe, the same force that he himself commanded, and had turned it into a poisoned arrow aimed at his heart.
His initial, furious order—"I want rubble"—had been an emotional response. But the Emperor was, above all, a pragmatist. Rubble would teach him nothing. This woman, however, could teach him everything.
"No," the Emperor's voice crackled weakly over the line, countermanding his previous order. The rage was still there, a cold fire beneath the surface, but his strategic mind had taken control. "Ling's prisoners are not to be executed. They are too valuable. She created this weapon. I must understand it."
He took a ragged breath, a new, chilling strategy forming. "She is to be kept alive. At any cost. Transfer her immediately to the new Institute of Physics in Beijing. Build her a new laboratory there, inside a secure wing. Give her anything she wants—any equipment, any assistant, any resource. She is no longer a traitor to be punished; she is a national treasure to be studied. A caged treasure. I want to know precisely how she built this weapon. And then," he added, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper, "I want her to build me a better one."
The order was relayed. Back in the ruined Shanghai lab, Section Chief Ling looked at Dr. Chen with new eyes. His mission had changed.
The scene ends with Dr. Chen and a now barely conscious Donovan being carefully carried out on stretchers and loaded into a black, windowless, and heavily guarded carriage. As they are lifted in, Dr. Chen, despite the agony that wracks her body, manages a faint, bloody smile. She has not been dragged to a torture chamber or an execution ground. She has been "nationalized." She has lost her freedom, but in exchange, she has been given the one thing she has always craved: unlimited resources and the full, focused backing of the state. She has gone from a rogue scientist scrambling for funds to the reluctant, captive head of the Emperor's most secret and important weapons program.
Beside her, Donovan slips into the gray fog of unconsciousness. His mission had been to use her. Now, his fate is inextricably, horribly tied to the brilliant, monstrous woman who has just destroyed him, and who may yet be the only one who can save him.