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The hand of Mao Yixuan adjusting his cufflinks froze in mid-air. At the circular conference table, six men who bore his likeness synchronized their tie adjustments, even the detail of a half-notch loosened on their left wristwatches was identical. Han Xiao wrapped the baby in a camel-colored cashmere shawl, his fingertip rubbing against the recording pen hidden in his pocket—a peculiar prenatal recording discovered three days earlier in the pediatric office.
"I propose to dissolve the group." The six voices resonated in unison, their vocal patterns detected by the voiceprint analyzer revealing they originated from an old voice modulator used twenty years ago. Suddenly, Lin Xiao's computer emitted an alarm; the surveillance footage showed Li Ce standing in the electrical room on the third underground level, a scar on the back of his neck glinting an eerie bluish-purple under the infrared lens.
"He’s using deepfake technology." Lin Xiao magnified the image to pixel level. "Each double has an independent behavioral algorithm." Suddenly, one of the doubles turned towards the camera and mouthed Li Ce's Russian nickname: "Losha."
The baby in Han Xiao's arms let out a sudden cry, its amber eyes reflecting the brass ornament at the center of the conference table—a memento from the Stalingrad battle, which had been Mao Yixuan's father's favorite. The thermometer inside the nursing blanket read 39.8°C, yet the child's forehead felt as cold as jade.
As A Yong kicked open the iron door of the transformer box, a wave of gunpowder scent hit him. Li Ce stood at the center of a circular filing cabinet, wearing a white coat adorned with a faded medical school badge—identical to what Han Xiao had found among his biological mother's belongings at the Chemical Plant site.
"Dear brother." Li Ce's voice suddenly shifted to that of young Mao Yixuan. "Father’s gift for my eighteenth birthday was a tracking chip; yours was an entire business empire." He tore open his shirt to reveal a scar over his heart, where a microfilm developed images from Mao Yixuan's first birthday party—the cut edges revealing half of a Soviet-era medical school ring.
Han Xiao's recording pen suddenly played back automatically. A lullaby purchased from a maternity store mixed with snippets of Russian dialogue: "Wait until that child is three; I want to use his memories as experimental subjects." The baby fell silent upon hearing a specific frequency, its pupils narrowing to dangerous pinpoints.
"The brain of a hypermnesiac is a natural storage device." Lin Xiao's voice tightened. "What he injected into the child wasn’t a vaccine; it was a neuroinhibitor!"
The shareholders' meeting abruptly lost power. The six doubles turned simultaneously towards the observation room, their faces displaying Li Ce's signature cold smirk through Mao Yixuan's visage: "When mother was undergoing cesarean section, the fetal heartbeat was still 112 beats per minute." At that moment, as bulletproof glass shattered, Han Xiao shielded the baby with his body and discovered that what was sewn into the lining of the nursing blanket was not a chip but an aged organ donation consent form—the signing date precisely Christmas Eve 1999.
At this moment, the real Mao Yixuan activated a signal jammer. Smoke began to rise from Li Ce's filing cabinet as those recordings filled with hatred turned to ash amidst flying magnetic powder. Yet, the alarm continued to flash red, and vents began spraying mist laced with hallucinogens.
"You've lost," Li Ce laughed hoarsely through bloodied foam. "I had already taken control of the medical committee during the merger..."
His voice abruptly cut off. The baby in Han Xiao's arms suddenly emitted a mechanical sound: "The temperature in the distribution room is 19.7°C. It is recommended to initiate Plan B3." This was precisely the catchphrase of Li Ce from the recordings on the dark web.
Lin Xiao's scream pierced through the communicator: "The child is mimicking Li Ce's brainwave frequency! His condition is being induced to flare up!"
【The Truth of the Twins】
Mao Yixuan tore open Li Ce's shirt, revealing a scar over his heart that formed the word "Backup" in Russian, perfectly matching the scar beneath his own collarbone. A yellowed surgical record fluttered from the filing cabinet—on the surgical log from Christmas Eve 1999, it was clearly stated: "Twin embryo transplant surgery; only living subject A (Mao Yixuan), subject B (Li Ce) determined clinically dead."
"We are all experiments." Li Ce's breathing began to falter, "But father chose to let you live in the sunlight..." His fingertips suddenly dug into an old wound, pulling out half of a charred birth certificate—number B, stamped with a crimson seal reading "Medical Accident."
The medical station's alarm echoed throughout the city. Han Xiao looked at the baby's EEG chart; those sharp peaks completely overlapped with Li Ce's medical records during his detox period. At that moment, the prenatal recording jumped to its final chapter, hiding a Morse code within the lullaby—this was the command to initiate memory intervention.
"End this all!" Li Ce suddenly shouted in Russian, his neck veins bulging like writhing snakes, "Before he becomes the next me!"
As the signal jammer activated for the second time, six substitutes screamed in agony, clutching their heads. Mao Yixuan saw his own iris in the reflection of the bulletproof glass, radiating with blood vessels—this was Li Ce's permanent damage left during his time in rehab.
【Dawn's Choice】
At the last moment, Han Xiao pressed the recording pen against the baby's fontanelle. The specially processed sound waves transmitted through the silk lining of the nursing cloth, and suddenly, the child's pupils regained clarity as he whispered with a milky scent: "Papa..."
At that instant when the substitute projections collectively extinguished, Li Ce's body suddenly convulsed. His tightly clenched right hand relaxed, revealing an old film roll that developed into its final image: on Christmas Eve 1999, young Father Mao stood before a burning laboratory holding two swaddled infants, handing one to a man in a protective suit—when that man lifted his mask, it revealed the face of twenty-year-old Zhou Mingli.
"Let's name the child." Han Xiao placed the birth certificate in her husband's trembling palm. The morning light penetrated through the bulletproof glass, landing on the three characters "Mao Nianqing"—the name written by Mao Yixuan's mother on the front page of her poetry collection before her passing.
Suddenly, engine roars erupted outside the medical station. In the rearview mirror, three unlicensed black sedans were closing in. The baby suddenly grasped his father's bleeding fingertip and pressed it onto the birth certificate, leaving a blood fingerprint with ridges—exactly matching a sample from twenty years ago’s experimental records.
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