Zhao Meiyou boiled himself another pot of dumplings, then carried two plates to the table. The young men sat facing each other, counted down from three, two, one. The starting gun fired, and they dug in with gusto.
The room echoed with the sound of teeth grinding through flesh—plump, vibrant, alive. The food mashed against their tongues like a fetus wriggling in the womb: so full, so joyful, so utterly satisfying. They ate like savages from a hunting age or carefree children in a civilized world.
It was an exquisite meal, Zhao Meiyou savored it down to the last slippery bite. In the end, he carried a bowl in one hand and Diao Chan—poisoned by the food—in the other to the hospital. Diao Chan lay in a coma for a long while, but when he woke, the first words out of Zhao Meiyou’s mouth were: “What does your mom taste like?”
Diao Chan’s throat was still hoarse, but he answered without hesitation. “Cucumber sandwich.”
Strange things began happening after that. No matter what Diao Chan ate, it all tasted like cucumber sandwich.
Perhaps this was the most complete fusion of all.
It was Zhao Meiyou’s sudden inspiration that led him, on the day of Diao Chan’s discharge, to prepare a box of cucumber sandwiches as his recovery meal. After the first bite, Diao Chan paused and said, “I think I taste shepherd’s purse.”
Zhao Meiyou hadn’t put any shepherd’s purse in the sandwiches. That had been the filling in the dumplings from the day before.
They experimented many more times. Diao Chan could detect all sorts of random flavors in the cucumber sandwiches. Neither of them cared to investigate whether it was some physical malfunction or psychological disorder, but Zhao Meiyou figured this condition would make a perfect retro medical beauty product—satisfying cravings while enabling dieting.
After that, cucumber sandwiches became Diao Chan’s staple food. He couldn’t live without them, just as a fish couldn’t live without water. Through this, Zhao Meiyou realized that Diao Chan still had the will to live. Only someone who wanted to survive would care so much about their appetite, even if that survival hinged on cucumber sandwiches.
Sure enough, a few days later, Diao Chan said to him, “I want to try living in the Lower District.”
“Sounds good,” Zhao Meiyou replied. He was chewing on an unlit cigarette, rummaging for a lighter. “Want me to hook you up with a place?”
“No need. I want to figure it out on my own.” Diao Chan paused there, opening his mouth as if to say more but holding back.
Zhao Meiyou finished for him. “Just come by the Pork Shop whenever you want a free meal.”
They were squatting in the doorway of the Pork Shop at the time, watching the rain. The towering complexes of the Metropolis were too vast and impenetrable; the thirty-three layers above rarely let real rainwater through. Some said the Lower District’s rain was industrial runoff. Others claimed it was holographic precipitation. Still others insisted it was urine.
Zhao Meiyou preferred to think of the Lower District’s rain as urine. He’d heard that urine was actually quite clean—given the pollution levels of 25th-century skies, it was cleaner than rainwater by far.
Amid the deluge of piss pouring from the heavens, Diao Chan suddenly burst out laughing. He bent down and lit Zhao Meiyou’s cigarette.
Zhao Meiyou offered him one. “Want a drag?”
Diao Chan shook his head. “I don’t smoke.”
Zhao Meiyou knew he and Diao Chan weren’t the usual kind of kindred spirits. Even after years in the Lower District, Diao Chan never took up smoking. Their meeting had come too early, when trust was still fragile, and too late, after both were scarred by sorrow. Calling them close friends or brothers didn’t quite fit. Each had his own voids. If anything, they were like stray dogs huddling under the same eaves to escape the rain.
But when two mutts gathered together, neither was a stray anymore.
Two could form a pack where three or five made a gang.
The closest became the most distant; kin turned to strangers. Families were like that.
Now Zhao Meiyou stood in front of the Hamburger Shop on the skyway, thinking: After all these years, I didn’t expect his mother to still be his biggest hang-up.
He’d boasted earlier, ripping open the metaphors hidden in the site with grave seriousness. Thus, old scars tore afresh, oozing pus and blood—in Diao Chan’s disorientation, his mother was no longer a machine. She had become truly human.
Zhao Meiyou had thought that chapter closed long ago. That day, they’d devoured their grief with ravenous hunger and stood tall once more. That’s how he’d always gotten by. When his own mother took her life, leaving behind crates of expired makeup, he’d accepted it swiftly, using it to paint a new face and forge a new path.
But now Zhao Meiyou realized their mother-son bonds weren’t the same. From his earliest memories, he’d known infants consumed their mothers in the womb, devouring her bones and blood. After birth, the predation intensified. His relationship with his mother was a friendly contest of survival of the fittest—vying for time, space, control. She had told him young: “We will devour each other—but you will be the final victor.”
Diao Chan, though, had never digested his mother’s death. He lived poisoned by it.
Zhao Meiyou recalled Qian Duoduo’s earlier description of the experimental subject—she had wrought chaos in the city.
“Mother” was the root of the turmoil in Site S45, the agitator in Diao Chan’s subconscious.
Diao Chan had failed to consume his mother, to inherit her life. In this brutal contest, she had turned defeat into victory through death.
The son appeared to devour the mother, but really, she had swallowed him whole—could it be explained that way? Zhao Meiyou pondered. She had left Diao Chan an unsolved riddle of soul and free will, without pointing him toward any path. From start to finish, he waged war within himself, unsure whether to hate or to be reborn.
Earlier, he’d told the disguised old man Diao Chan: “You’re an accomplice trying to flee the murder scene.” The words had rocked him, even triggering the site’s alert protocols.
One thing was certain: Diao Chan’s subconscious saw Zhao Meiyou as a friend from distant Mars, someone who could take him to the cosmic depths, forever escaping this chaotic city and the looming war. He wanted to flee, but Zhao Meiyou was sure there’d be no human seats on that departing ship.
Diao Chan wouldn’t leave with “Mother.”
Did his urge to escape Earth stem from wanting to escape her too?
Well, from any angle, I don’t seem qualified, Zhao Meiyou thought with a sudden chuckle. Whether as the hired killer, new family, or old friend from Mars, he hadn’t pulled Diao Chan from the fire.
He hadn’t killed the source of the chaos. He hadn’t noticed Diao Chan’s long inner torment. And now he couldn’t whisk him to the stars.
Zhao Meiyou remembered Diao Chan’s old commission to kill. The deposit had been substantial, but the job failed, and the money unreturned. He truly owed him.
Dwelling on the past was pointless. Better to start fresh, one step at a time.
A crackle buzzed in his ear implant, and the channel connected. Qian Duoduo’s voice came through: “…Zhao Meiyou?”
“Hey, Brother Qian.” Zhao Meiyou headed into the Hamburger Shop. “Go ahead, I’m listening.”
Qian Duoduo’s side was still in the thick of combat; explosions flickered through the static. “…Your Stealth Form has thirty seconds left. Don’t move, especially don’t…”
“Sorry, Brother Qian, bad signal.” Zhao Meiyou pushed open the glass door of the Hamburger Shop. The wind chimes tinkled with a ding-a-ling. “Stay safe. I’m hanging up.”
Qian Duoduo must have his coordinates; the voice on the other end grew cold and steady. “Listen, if you… you’ll…”
Such nagging. Zhao Meiyou grew irritated. He didn’t know how to disconnect the channel, so he ignored it. Amid the crackling static, he had twenty seconds left. Zhao Meiyou slipped into the back kitchen and found a meat cleaver on the counter.
Ten seconds. The exhaust vent hummed lowly as blood-streaked burger patties sizzled on the griddle. Zhao Meiyou emerged from the kitchen, vaulted the counter. Time up.
The cashier in her red-checkered apron looked at him in bewilderment, flashing a professional smile. “Sir, how may I—”
Before she finished, Zhao Meiyou’s cleaver rose and fell, severing her head cleanly. Years of butchering pigs honed his skill to perfection, like a master carving an ox—her spine snapped in two.
The shop was empty of customers, so there were no screams like in the movies. But outside, Diao Chan jolted as if startled. He surged to his feet and shoved through the door. Seeing the scene, his pupils contracted.
Zhao Meiyou was grabbing a box of fries from the kitchen window. He grinned at Diao Chan. “Want some tomato sauce?”
Drenched in blood, he spread his arms cheap-shot style. “It’s Mom’s flavor.”
The cashier he’d just killed—the woman who’d sold Diao Chan the cucumber sandwiches—Zhao Meiyou had spotted her the moment he arrived. She was the escaped experimental subject.
Diao Chan’s mother.
Perhaps the subconscious turmoil had derailed everything. The facade of normalcy ripped away, the “experimental subject”—supposed victim—had morphed into the purveyor of cucumber sandwiches, hawking heart knots, nightmares, and bitterness.
Diao Chan’s eyes bulged, his features twisting in raw emotion. For an instant, he seemed to recognize Zhao Meiyou. His face contorted like Mr. Hyde from the Jekyll story, torn between delirium and clarity—half despair, half madness. Then madness won. Like a beast, he lunged at Zhao Meiyou.
The Hamburger Shop door burst open again as Qian Duoduo stormed in. He was too late to stop it and shouted, “Zhao Meiyou!”
Zhao Meiyou stood unmoving, as if deaf to it all.
Diao Chan snatched the cleaver mid-leap and plunged it in without hesitation.
Agony flared. Zhao Meiyou stared dazedly at the fluid spilling from his gut. His artificial human body was still imperfect—he recalled Qian Duoduo didn’t bleed at all.
“…Zhao Meiyou?” Someone called. It was Diao Chan. At the moment of the stab, clarity seemed to return. “Zhao Meiyou?!”
“…Not dead yet.” Zhao Meiyou handed him the meat cleaver with effort, positioning the tip at his own heart, coaxing gently. “Here, finish me off.”
Zhao Meiyou had seen some case studies in the employee handbook. When archaeologists exploring a primary site fell into a lost trance state, there were ways to save them. One method was to eliminate the source of the chaos. The biggest obstacle, however, was that the “source of chaos” in many sites was not easy to identify.
For example, back at Site A173, when the young Liu Qijue and the old man both vanished together, The Lead Actor had regained his clarity.
Zhao Meiyou’s original plan had been to use Transformation to become Diao Chan’s mother. He hadn’t expected the man to end up as a cashier at the Hamburger Shop.
In short, he should have handled all this years ago—back when he first sneaked into the Mansion. Even if the woman discovered him, he should have gritted his teeth and killed her, rather than standing idly by as a spectator enjoying the spectacle. Perhaps then he could have prevented everything that followed, sparing Diao Chan a long immersion in those old nightmares and the construction of his twisted Ideal City.
Afterward, Zhao Meiyou formed another prediction. “Mother” was the root of Diao Chan’s nightmares, so once he killed her, he himself might take her place—becoming the new source of terror in Site S45.
The only way to stop fearing the darkness was to confront it head-on. In other words, for Diao Chan to truly awaken from his lost state, he would have to take matters into his own hands.
