An engine roared outside. They turned in unison to see three black SUVs tearing through the rain, surrounding the safe house. The lead car's door opened, a black umbrella unfurling to reveal Li Chenzhou's ice-cold face.
"—our feelings for each other," Li Moting finished, threading his fingers through hers. "This is the final experiment."
---
### **"The Data Labyrinth: Altered Memories and Truth"**
Li Corporation Headquarters, 3:17 AM.
The alarm pierced the silence just as Xia Xiaoman was organizing fragmented data on Project MN-07. Emergency lights flooded the floor, casting her silhouette against the window—an eerie double image overlapping the storm-lit cityscape.
"Breach in the smart medical database," Li Moting's voice came from behind, uncharacteristically tense. "Seventeen core algorithm modifications detected."
She turned to find him standing before a holographic display, his fingers skimming through floating red error codes. The projection's blue glow sharpened his features, etching harsh lines across his face. His cuffs bore traces of blood—left three hours earlier during the confrontation with his father, Li Chenzhou.
"Not a typical hack," she said, stepping closer. The faint scent of jasmine hung in the air—Li Mingyue's signature perfume. "This coding pattern... I've seen it before."
Li Moting's hand paused over a blinking node. "Explain."
"Last year's *Financial Frontier* covered a similar case—the Swiss MedGroup leak. The attacker used a nested algorithm..." Her fingers traced invisible paths. "Like hiding a second maze inside the first."
The hologram glitched abruptly, replaced by a video feed. Li Mingyue's elegant face appeared, her backdrop unmistakably MN-07's original lab equipment.
"Dear nephew," the woman smiled. "Remember the puzzle I gave you for your tenth birthday?" She held up a metal piece engraved with "Ⅶ." "Sometimes, the most crucial fragment is hidden in plain sight."
The video cut out. A final warning flashed:
**[Memory Data Integrity Check Failed: Carrier #7 Compatibility Dropped to 79%]**
A sharp pain lanced through Xia Xiaoman's temple. She saw Li Moting's pupils constrict—they both knew the significance. Her father's notes had warned: *Below 80% compatibility, transplanted memories begin to fracture.*
"This isn't a hack," Li Moting ground out. "She's activating dormant code."
Xia Xiaoman rushed to the console. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, retrieving deleted logs. Her hyperthymesia replayed every action with film-like precision.
"Found it!" She pointed to a string of code. "This wasn't an external breach—it's an internal backdoor, hidden in the medical AI's ethics protocol module."
The unfolded code revealed its true nature: a sophisticated memory-overwriting program, quietly replacing core MN-07 memory segments. Most horrifying was the timestamp—activation seven years prior, long before the smart medical project's inception.
"Aunt has been planning this longer than we thought," Li Moting said coldly. "She started the moment my mother died."
Xia Xiaoman clutched her head. A stabbing pain brought flashbacks—a younger self strapped to a medical chair, Li Mingyue leaning in with a syringe, whispering—
"Xiaoman?" Li Moting's palm pressed between her shoulder blades. "Breathe. Follow my rhythm."
His steady heartbeat against her skin anchored her. Gasping, she gestured to the screen: "This file path... the backdoor connects to an external server."
The IP trace left them speechless. The location—Geneva, Switzerland—home to Li Mingyue's husband, the renowned neuroscientist.
"This goes beyond corporate warfare," Xia Xiaoman said tightly. "She's trying to rewrite all MN-07 subjects' memories... including ours."
Li Moting yanked his collar open, revealing a barcode below his clavicle. The scan result froze Xia Xiaoman's blood: **[MN-07-01 Receptor. Memory Source: Carrier #7]**
"Now you see," he said, thumb brushing her wrist scar. "Why you bypass my emotional dissociation." His grip tightened. "Those feelings were never mine to begin with."
Outside, the city's lights abruptly died. In the backup generator's glow, Xia Xiaoman caught something unfamiliar in Li Moting's eyes—fear. Fear of losing the transplanted memories of her.
"She won't succeed." Snatching the keyboard, she pulled up her father's encryption algorithm. "His notes mentioned a fatal flaw in memory transplantation..."
Her finger hovered over Enter as she met Li Moting's gaze:
"Shall we bet on it? On our shared phantom pain."### **"Roses and Thorns: Confessions in the Rain"**
The storm had lasted for three days.
Xia Xiaoman stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of the safe house, her fingers unconsciously tracing the raindrops on the glass. Outside, the lighthouse in the bay flickered through the downpour, flashing every seventeen seconds—a rhythm that inexplicably reminded her of Li Moting's breathing.
A shattering sound came from behind.
She turned to see Li Moting standing beside the overturned coffee table, a shattered whiskey glass at his feet. His condition was alarming: his shirt collar hung open, revealing beads of sweat along his collarbones; his usually sharp gray-blue eyes were unfocused, pupils contracting irregularly; and most unsettling of all—his right hand, knuckles white from clenching, nails digging into old scars on his palm.
"MN-07 withdrawal symptoms," he rasped, his voice distant. "Typically lasts three hours and forty-two minutes."
Xia Xiaoman didn't move. She knew the consequences of approaching a test subject in withdrawal—her father's research notes had detailed how subjects became indiscriminately aggressive during this phase.
A bolt of lightning split the night sky. In that instant, she saw something glistening on Li Moting's face.
Not sweat.
"Get out." He turned abruptly, his shoulder blades sharp beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. "Appendix D, Clause 3 of the contract: isolation required during withdrawal."
Instead of retreating, Xia Xiaoman took a step forward. Her slippers crunched over broken glass, the sound triggering something—Li Moting suddenly dropped to his knees, clutching his head, a low growl tearing from his throat.
Memories flooded back. Xia Xiaoman recalled the monkeys chained in her father's lab, their contorted postures during withdrawal. But her father's notes, marked in red, had specified: *Human subjects are different. They need...*
She began to hum.
*La Vie en Rose.* A French chanson she shouldn't have known, yet the melody flowed effortlessly from her lips. Soft as it was, Li Moting's trembling visibly lessened.
"Keep going," he muttered into his arms.
Xia Xiaoman knelt before him. As rain battered the windows, her voice grew steadier. When she reached the line *"Quand il me prend dans ses bras, il me parle tout bas"* (When he takes me in his arms and speaks softly), Li Moting suddenly looked up.
His eyes burned in the dark.
"You know my mother was French." Not a question. His fingers brushed her throat, feeling the vibration of her voice. "She used to sing this... before she left."
Xia Xiaoman didn't stop singing. She watched as Li Moting's pupils gradually normalized, his breathing steadying. But when she tried to stand, his hand clamped around her wrist.