Monday, 03:46 a.m.
Elevation: 1,780 m
Outside temperature: –6 °C
The medical jet banked hard over the black spine of the Glarus Alps, dropped through cloud, and levelled out above a valley so narrow the wingtips seemed to brush snow-laced granite. Manning pressed her forehead to the frosted window. Below, a single strand of amber lights—three bulbs, no more—marked the landing strip: a bulldozed scar on a mountain flank, abandoned since the gold-rush hospitals of the 1960s.
"Wheels down in ninety seconds. Don't loosen your belts; the tarmac is ice with gravel on top," said the pilot over the cabin speaker.
Manning glanced at Xu Xiao. He had not slept in twenty hours. His eyes were the color of wet ash, but his pupils were steady, scanning the same strip of lights again and again, memorizing escape routes. Across the aisle, the defrocked surgeon—Dr. Hugo Keller—was snoring softly with a half-empty bottle of Rémy Martin cradled in his lap like a pet. Keller's medical license had been revoked on three continents for harvesting organs, but his hands could still be rented all the steadiest money could afford.
The Learjet slammed onto the frozen runway, cutting a screech on the ice. The reverse thrust howl against the mountains. When the engine revs ceased, it was a sudden and absolute quiet, as if someone had pressed mute to the outside world.
• The ghost station lay two hundred meters up the incline: a concrete cube half-buried in the mountain, its windows blind with tin shutters. A rusted red cross still clung to the façade, paint flaking like psoriasis. The generator-a 1960s diesel monster-coughed loudly to life at the second pull, flooding the front stairs with yellow light and the odor of diesel.
Inside, the air tasted of phenol and forgotten ether. A single corridor ran the length of the building; here doors opened to operating theatres with porcelain sinks and overhead lamps thick with dust. In the last room, beneath a cracked skylight, lay Luo Wan.
Manning's mother.
She was smaller than Manning remembered—shrunken, as if the years had been wrung out of her like water from a rag. IV tubing snaked from both arms; a feeding tube looped discreetly under her nose. Her hair, once midnight black, had gone the color of dirty snow and was braided back with institutional indifference. A paper bracelet read: Elena Rossi – catatonia, severe trauma, DOB 12/03/1973.
Manning's knees buckled. She caught the doorframe, splinted wrist protesting. A low moan escaped her throat—half word, half wound.
Xu Xiao touched her elbow. "We have forty minutes before the sedation wears off enough for the retinal scanner. Keller will prep. You can talk to her, but she won't answer."
Manning crossed the room as if wading through deep water. She knelt, careful not to disturb the tubes, and laid her cheek against her mother's knuckles. The skin was paper-thin, veins like blue rivers beneath it. Cold. So cold.
"Mama," she whispered in Mandarin, the word tasting like childhood. "I'm here. I brought the key."
No flicker of recognition. Luo Wan's eyes stared past her at something only she could see—perhaps the interior of a burning car, perhaps the moment nineteen years ago when the world ended.
Behind her, Keller clucked his tongue. "Time, Miss Shen. The scanner is temperature-sensitive. If her corneas cool past thirty-four degrees, we'll need to re-warm. That means more drugs, more risk."
Manning straightened. "Do it."
• The retinal scanner was military surplus the size of a shoebox, cables snaking to a hardened tablet. Keller swabbed Luo Wan's left eye with saline, pried the lid open with a speculum. The pupil remained fixed, dilated.
"Sclera's clear. No cataracts. Good." He tapped the screen. "Hold still."
A soft click, a green bar filling. Then red text: BIOMETRIC LOCKOUT – SECOND FACTOR REQUIRED.
Keller swore softly in Swiss-German. "They added a passphrase. Probably keyed to a specific sequence of eye movements. Without it, the vault won't open."
Xu Xiao's jaw tightened. "Can you simulate?"
"Not without knowing the pattern. Retinal veins are unique; micro-saccades are learned. Your only shot is the subject herself."
Manning stared at her mother's unseeing face. "The woman has not moved her eyes of her own volition for nineteen years."
"So we remind her how," said Keller, arranging a slender flashlight, passing it over Luo Wan's pupil. Iris sluggishly contracted. Again, with more time. "Pupillary dance therapy. Primitive, but sometimes the brain remembers."
Somewhere in the fourth sweep, there was a change. The light was barely followed across Luo Wan's eye—a millimeter, but definitely there.
Then Keller's voice shifted into a trance-like murmur. "That's it, Elena. Follow the light. Left... right... up...."
Manning's heart was pounding. She bent closer. "Mama, just look at me. Once. Please."
The pupil wandered; left, right, then locked onto Manning's face. For one heartbeat's breadth, the void vanished. Recognition erupted-blue-hot and naked. Luo Wan's mouth opened.
"...Man...ning...."
The utterance was a rasp, almost inaudible, but it opened the room as with a bolt of lightning. Manning's eyes swam with tears. She grabbed her mother's hand. "Yes. It's me. I'm here."
Keller seized the moment. "Now! Hold her gaze."
He initiated the scanner again. Green bar filled, stalled, filled. Then-ACCESS GRANTED.
A soft chime. Keller let out a breath. "Finished. The vault opens in Zurich at 09:00 local time. After that, the code is valid for six hours only."
Manning stood still. Her mother was losing consciousness again; the spark had all but gone. But the hand beneath Manning's palm made tiny movements; a slight pressure-an answer.
"I'm sorry," Manning whispered. "I will come back. I promise."
Outside, the wind had sharpened to a knife. Xu Xiao shouldered the duffel-now with the tablet, scanner, and Keller's fee in cash. Keller himself lingered, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands.
"You'll keep her safe?" Manning asked.
Keller exhaled smoke that mingled with his breath. "As long as the money flows. After that--" He shrugged. "The Alps are full of graves no one remembers."
Xu Xiao's hand settled on Manning's back. "We're done here."
They walked down the slope. Behind them, the generator coughed once and died; the ghost station blinked out, swallowed again by darkness and snow.
Manning halted halfway to the airstrip. She pulled the copper locket from her pocket-empty now that its USB core had been removed and bagged. She pressed it to her lips and then flung it into the night. It vanished without a sound.
Xu Xiao watched the arc. "Symbolic gestures don't stop bullets."
"No," she said. "But they mark the moment everything changes."
The first pale suggestion of dawn crept across the mountains. Somewhere beyond those mountains lay a vault, a code, and a war nineteen years in the making. Manning tightened the hood of her parka, inhaled alpine air like broken glass, and followed Xu Xiao toward the waiting jet.
The sky above was still empty, but she could already feel the next storm gathering.