When the sewage overflowed the cooling holes of the mechanical prosthetic limb, Lila tasted the sweet flavor of β-carotene in her own blood. The shackles of the DNA strand composed of seven Ethan clones swayed on the wreckage of the pipe organ, and her mother's corpse was using the umbilical cord to wrap around her bleeding ribs. When the positioning lasers shot out simultaneously from the wedding rings of the clones, she tore off the data cable from her mother's cervical vertebra and inserted it into the sewage—the conductivity of the 1997 vintage red wine turned the entire sewer into an electric execution ground.
"You actually... used what Father loved the most..." The clones twitched and dissolved, and the thorns formed from molten platinum pierced the artificial blood vessels. Lila pried open her mother's tightly clenched right hand, and in the rotting palm was embedded half a sapphire earring. On the inner side, the latitude and longitude coordinates of Harlowe Jewelry Store were engraved with a laser.
The fluorescent graffiti in the abandoned subway tunnel suddenly came to life, and the pattern of the burning wedding dress guided her to crawl into the ventilation shaft. When the broken rib hit the rusty steel bar for the third time, the pain triggered the implanted memory—on her fifth birthday, the cake box sent by Father Ethan contained a miniature scalpel, and her mother was cleaning her ear piercings with red wine.
The out-of-tune melody of the music box playing "Air on the G String" came from the end of the maintenance passage. Lila kicked open the inspection door marked with "0927", and in front of her was a scaled-down delivery room laboratory. Twenty-seven embryos floated in the incubators, each wearing a wedding ring made of a different material. The open experimental log on the operating table showed that the 99th memory overwrite surgery had just been completed last night.
The iris lock of the refrigerator recognized her festering right eye, and in the popped-out drawer were displayed three sets of wedding dresses. Lila tore open the lace hem of the oldest one, and a pregnancy test report from 1997 fell out from the interlayer—the fingerprint in the signature column of Mrs. Harlowe exactly matched the fingerprint of the prison guard on her bail document.
"Does Mom's bridal dress still fit?" The homeless version of Ethan crawled out from the exhaust fan, and the mechanical prosthetic limb was injecting red wine solution into the embryo, "Father said that your womb is more advanced than these petri dishes..." He suddenly twitched and knelt down, and the artificial pupil reflected the glowing thorny birthmark on Lila's lower back.
The incubators suddenly burst open collectively, and the embryos grew rapidly in the nutrient solution. Lila crushed the β-carotene capsules and sprinkled them into the culture medium, and a holographic projection appeared in the orange mist—Mr. Harlowe was implanting a raw diamond into a pregnant woman's womb, and the face of that woman was that of her mother when she was young.
When the ninety-ninth explosion shook the sewer, Lila grabbed the mechanical spine of the homeless man as a crowbar. The moment she lifted the floor of the laboratory, fragments of the wedding dress floated in the gushing cold air. Inside the crystal coffin in the center of the ice cellar, Scarlett's original body was wearing a blood-stained maternity dress, and a burning frame of the painting "Iris in Blood" was inserted into the opened wound on her abdomen.
"This is the real container." The voice of the homeless man suddenly turned into that of Mr. Harlowe, "The most precious loot from that robbery back then." He tore open Scarlett's silicone skin, revealing the beating sapphire heart in the mechanical womb, "It's a pity that your mother stole the embryo..."
The moment the fire axe split open the crystal coffin, the surveillance video from twenty years ago played automatically. Lila saw herself being swapped and put into the garbage truck, and Mrs. Harlowe was using forceps to crush the skull of the stillborn baby. When the screen cut to the genetic laboratory, the cries of the three babies suddenly turned into the wedding march.
The fishy smell of a mixture of turpentine and amniotic fluid seeped out from the cracks of the crystal coffin, and Lila's fingernails dug into the stitching of Scarlett's mechanical womb. The moment the sapphire heart was torn out, the alarm of a baby's cry rang out throughout the laboratory. Nine clones wearing wedding dress hoods stood up from the wreckage of the incubators, and their mechanical fingers were playing "Air on the G String" in synchronization.
"Surprised? My brides." The homeless man tore off his face to reveal Mr. Harlowe's metallic skull, "What your mother stole back then wasn't an ordinary embryo..." He pressed the diamond button on his chest, and Lila's womb suddenly twitched—the outlines of twenty-seven miniature wedding rings emerged under her skin.
The 1997 vintage red wine gushed out from behind the ice wall split open by the fire axe. When the liquid touched the sapphire heart, it activated the holographic projection. Lila saw herself curled up in the embryo chamber of the diamond safe, while the real Scarlett was being welded shut in the underground vault of the art gallery. When the screen switched to the delivery room surveillance, Mrs. Harlowe suddenly took out a scalpel and stabbed it into her own throat. The blood splattered on the newborn's ankle bracelet, forming the "LW" brand.
The nine clones lifted their veils simultaneously, and each face was Lila's appearance at different ages. The iris tattoos on their lower backs were pieced together to form a complete genetic map, pointing to the pupil recognition lock of the laboratory's hidden door. Lila smashed the sapphire heart against the recognition screen, and the splashing fragments cut through the mechanical blood vessels of the clones—it wasn't machine oil that flowed out, but red wine mixed with platinum powder.
"Do you think you can destroy my masterpiece?" Mr. Harlowe's mechanical eye shot out a laser, which refracted into a cage of DNA strands on the surface of the red wine, "Since the moment you swallowed the sapphire, every cell of yours has the Harlowe trademark engraved on it!"
Lila's ribs suddenly pierced through her skin, and the micro-carved text of a wedding invitation appeared on the bone fragments. She broke off the blood-stained bone pieces and threw them at the clones, and the sharp edges precisely cut off the implanted chips in the nine heads. But the headless bodies continued to approach, and the mechanical fingers ejected the syringe needles, which contained the fluorescent blue liquid of iris toxin.
The sewage suddenly boiled, and in the orange thick fog generated by the reaction between β-carotene and red wine, the image of her mother being imprisoned emerged. She was using her fingernails to carve "0927" on the wall of the cell, while the guard was pouring a poisonous agent from a 1997 red wine bottle into the infusion tube. When the camera zoomed in, the guard was wearing Ethan's father's wedding ring on his left ring finger.
"The game should end now." Mr. Harlowe ripped open his chest to reveal the mechanical heart with a beating sapphire, "Become the final bride, my dear..." His voice suddenly distorted because Lila embedded the fire axe into the power supply pipeline, and the mixed fuel of red wine and turpentine splashed into a flaming iris flower.
The shockwave of the explosion blew off the ceiling of the laboratory, and Lila grabbed the mechanical spine of a clone and swung towards the ventilation pipe. The high temperature melted the wedding dress veil, but it made the thorny birthmark on her lower back reveal a hidden barcode—the scan result showed that it was the key to the highest confidential safe of Harlowe Jewelry Store.
The "Wedding March" suddenly rang in a telephone booth in the slum during a rainstorm, and a blood-stained delivery room record was spat out from the coin slot. Lila used the broken end of her rib to pry open the shell of the telephone, and found a miniature embryo chamber hidden inside. When the 1997 vintage red wine was poured into the chamber, a holographic image of Ethan as a baby emerged in the culture medium—he was wearing a thorny birthmark on his left ring finger and was twitching to the rhythm of "Air on the G String".
The church graveyard suddenly collapsed, revealing the secret vault of the Harlowe family. Lila leaped into the crack stepping on the tombstone engraved with "0927", but what was displayed in the bulletproof glass cabinet wasn't jewelry, but twenty-seven uterine specimens soaked in red wine. Each organ was connected to a surveillance display screen, showing the scenes of arson cases in different eras.
When the seventh screen lit up, she saw herself being injected with a hallucinogenic agent five years ago, and the one operating the injection pump was actually her mother when she was young. Ethan suddenly burst into the picture, but he wasn't there to save her—he was pouring red wine onto the burning canvas, and the flames took on the shape of the letters "Harlowe".
"Do you understand now?" Scarlett's mechanical head rolled out from the shadow of the vault, and her diamond teeth bit Lila's ankle, "We are the chosen fusions..." There was a data cable inserted into her temple, and the other end was connected to the drilled hole in Lila's mother's skull.
Amid the loud bang of the shotgun shattering the vault door, Lila stuffed the sapphire heart into Scarlett's mechanical mouth. When the SWAT team rushed in, they only saw the burning uterine specimens and fragments of wedding rings all over the ground. Suddenly, the last words of Ethan were projected from the inner side of a platinum ring that hadn't been melted: "Go find the third 'Water Lilies' in the attic of the art gallery..."
The rainstorm washed over the neon lights of Manhattan, and Lila saw her wanted poster on the surveillance screen of a convenience store. When the automatic door dinged open, on the hot drink cup handed to her by the cashier, the latte art showed a triple iris totem—exactly the same as the coat of arms of the Harlowe family.