CH 151

“You think so as well?” Yan Suizhi gave a start when he heard this.

“Huh, isn’t this a tough nut to crack,” mumbled Laura. “If it’s someone that you’ve both seen but didn’t leave a deep impression… it can’t be someone you know nor someone special, otherwise, with your memory recall, it would be impossible for you to be unable to identify her upon the second meeting. Could it be someone who you passed by out on the streets?” 

“No.” Yan Suizhi shook his head, extending his hand at Gu Yan, hiding a smile. “Lawyer Gu’s eyes never wander when he walks, so he most likely doesn’t see people that I sweep a glance over. Considering that, your presupposition is implausible.”

“Then who have you seen at the same time? How about narrowing it down a bit? Think back to occasions where you were both present,” Laura unconsciously asked.

When her voice trailed off, she found that both lawyers were regarding her in equal measures helplessness and exasperation.

After freezing for two seconds, she suddenly came around—some people were in each other’s space every day; this wouldn’t help to narrow it down at all. 

Ms Laura, suddenly force-fed a mouthful of dog food, was so traumatised that she could only woodenly drag out her “oh—” to express her understanding.

“What now, then?” She discreetly checked the security cameras around the lobby. “This is their turf, so checking the surveillance is basically gift-wrapping ourselves to them, triggering their suspicion. Besides, this lobby is too tall. The angle of the cameras cannot catch the right angle on faces.”

More people entered the drug research institute. It really wasn’t a good place to loiter, so they returned to the quarantine station.

The quarantine station’s ground floor lobby was similar to many other hospitals’, fully equipped with electronic facilities, service staff, and medical personnel. The only difference was that both hospital staff and Yan Suizhi’s group were covered up so tightly that they’d be unrecognisable even to the mothers that birthed them.

When passing by a query kiosk, Laura hesitated. She whipped her head over to look at the machine erected next to a pillar, patting Gu Yan. “Why don’t… we try something stupid? Most hospitals have information about all their staff recorded in query kiosks, which are open and transparent to the public. Since that woman has the credentials to enter the elevator, she should be considered a staff working here, right?

Yan Suizhi asked warmly, “Miss Laura, are you taking them for fools?”

Laura, “You never know. You don’t understand how it feels like to have the answer just on the tip of your tongue yet it just refuses to come out. It’s driving me crazy, so just let me check it out, prof.”

Determined to try whatever that could be tried, this lady stubbornly planted herself before the query machine. 

The interface of this query kiosk wasn’t unfamiliar to Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan, for they were exact replicas of the facilities at Spring Ivy and other major hospitals scattered across the alliance. In fact, they weren’t only similar in interface; their databases were synchronised as well. A patient’s medical history could be accessed from any of these machines, including patient information about visits to other hospitals.

Laura nimbly worked the kiosk, and the staff list of the treatment centre leapt out, nearing a hundred pages of entries in total.

Fortunately, they were always swift in the perusal of data, quickly glancing through every attached photo. As such, it didn’t take too long for Laura to glance up from the last entry on the last page with pursed lips. “Oh, alright. I’m sorry to declare that they’re not fools.”

The query kiosk clearly only disclosed a portion of the staff working at the quarantine station. They didn’t hide it either, openly footnoting—As we are in the midst of inducting staff, this list is not exhaustive and will be continually updated. 

This was only the first day that the quarantine station was opened, after all. It was entirely reasonable that some procedural information was not to date, denying them any grounds for filing a report.

Laura opened a few at random, aimlessly scanning the staff information. “Even the medical staff are new hires. They probably don’t know each other well, let alone trying to wheedle anything useful from them.”

“Oh well. We should move along, then.”

As she was about to turn off the interface, Yan Suizhi blocked her finger. “Wait.” 

“What’s wrong?” Following his gaze, Laura looked at the screen again.

Yan Suizhi’s finger slid down, finally stopping at a certain line.

Ktja ilcf kjr cba rb wemt j qlfmf bo nlaji lcobgwjalbc jr la kjr j vlrqijs bo atf ijra atgff gbealcf wfvlmji mtfmx-eqr bo atf fwqibsff. Yc atf lcafgojmf, atf fwqibsff atfs tjqqfcfv ab milmx lcab tjv gfmbgvr ogbw olnf vjsr jub, lc Zjgmt atlr sfjg, jcv lc Zjs ijra sfjg.

There was a note following each one. 

The record from five days ago was a check-up taken upon employment.

The record from March was De Carma’s mandatory check-up.

Yan Suizhi’s finger stopped on this line, lightly tapping a few times on the words ‘check-up rescheduled’.

“I almost forgot,” he said. “De Carma Hospital Association changed their policies this year, and the annual check-up was moved as well.” 

While it wasn’t too bad elsewhere, the circumstances were special on De Carma due to its high human traffic. The moment it hit the time for a check-up, everyone who set foot on De Carma, no matter their citizenship, had to go to the hospital, preventing the spread of diseases carried in from other planets.

Since March and April happened to be peak season for eye epidemics, the Hospital  Association, led by Spring Ivy, submitted a request to move the annual check-ups to March.

“March.” Gu Yan understood what he was getting at. “Mr Budd and his herdingbird entered the port in March.”

The medical check-up period was scheduled for May 5-25, which coincided with Marcus Budd’s entry into the port. He couldn’t escape it, since, after this period, he’d need the record to freely access the port to go to other planets. 

This also meant to say that even if they couldn’t net much more information elsewhere, there’d minimally be his check-up in the hospital system.

“Where’s the port entry record that Joe retrieved? Shouldn’t there be an ID attached to that? Hurry up and check it,” Laura immediately exclaimed.

They had difficulty searching before partly because there was indeed too little information on this man, but also in part because there were not many distinctive features obtained from the port surveillance, so using his facial features as the search source was unable to yield many results.

Yan Suizhi keyed in Marcus Budd’s identity number, selected the time frame, and the query kiosk retrieved a few scattered records. 

“Three in total; two were veterinary records,” Laura said, irate.

Those two veterinary records were simple, tied to that herdingbird of his. One was to get its guts treated for accidentally pecking a drug, whilst the other time was for organ damage due to its extended time on another planet.

There wasn’t much information about him in these two records, most of it were photos of his herdingbird.

They didn’t waste too much time on this record before moving on to the third one. 

Unsurprisingly, the third one pertained to the medical check-up in March.

“At Spring Ivy, group 12G.”

To cope with the scale of the annual medical check-up, major De Carma hospitals would deploy all of their medical staff and regroup them. One like 12G was obviously a provisionally formed group.

“Mr Marcus Budd should be very careful when it comes to medical check-ups, right?” Laura said. “The fact that there is so little information about him suggests that he had deliberately concealed his tracks. For a check-up that is bound to leave information, it’s unlikely that he found any random doctor to play along. So, it’s quite intriguing that he chose to do it at Spring Ivy Hospital… does he have an inside man at Spring Ivy? Or is it Spring Ivy itself that reassures him?” 

Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan exchanged a look.

With this, the arrow once again came back to what Joe was most concerned about:

Did the Mansons have someone on the inside of Spring Ivy?

Or was Devore Yves himself the problem? 

“Group 12G…” Yan Suizhi gave it a thought and projected a hologram from his smart device.

The screen automatically jumped to the interface that wasn’t closed before, on which rested the message he had sent to Dr Lin, asking about the change in his appearance. Lin Yuan’s response came beneath it:

[We can’t rule out that there has been a change in its effective period. I can only know the specifics with further testing. I suggest that you come back as soon as possible, preferably within the next two days.]

Yan Suizhi moved his fingers, replying in assent before sending another text: [Do you still remember how your hospital did the groupings for De Carma’s physical eval in March?] 

Lin Yuan’s response was swift: [80 groups in total. Why?]

[Yan Suizhi: Do you still have an impression of who was in each group?]

This time, Lin Yuan’s response came after a marked pause: [Are you kidding me? What brain food must I eat to memorise the name lists of 80 groups?]

Another few seconds later, the second text arrived: [But you’re in luck, I saved a copy. I’m in a bit of a hurry to get to a surgery, I’ll send it to you when I’m out. What are you up to this time, honorable prof?] 

[Yan Suizhi: Guess?]

With this, Lin Yuan flat-out ignored him.

“I asked Lin Yuan. Let’s just wait for news from him.” Yan Suizhi waved the ring on his finger, informing Gu Yan and Laura.

Aside from group 12G, this record also contained some other information. 

“He has a cluster of red moles…” Yan Suizhi scanned the explanation that was incomprehensible to mere mortals, concluding succinctly, “and a heart condition.”

The cluster of red moles had been meticulously photographed by the attending doctor. From the photos, it could be observed that there were five growing on Marcus Budd’s nape beneath his scalp. This angle wasn’t present in the previous video, so this feature was naturally missed.

“Episodic twitching of the right hand.”

But this wasn’t attributed to a physical but a psychological cause. His middle and ring fingers twitched unconsciously when he was nervous or emotional. 

“There’s also a tattoo.” Laura skipped ten thousand sections, flipping to the end to see a photo of his tattoo.

The tattoo was located on the inside of Marcus Budd’s left wrist. It was likely freshly inked, for it was still red and swollen.

Upon seeing the photo, Yan Suizhi was utterly unsurprised to find that—it was, as before, a small Spade.

Exactly the same as the Sweeper in the year that he left the orphanage, only that it had moved from his earlobe to his wrist. 

“This Mr Budd is so weird,” Laura said. “If the attending doctor was in cahoots with him, then he should have been able to control what information was released. It’s so contradictory to hide his traces yet display such a distinctive feature.”

But Yan Suizhi said, “Not quite. You should be aware that a type of condition easily manifests in long-term genetic modifications, that is, the recipient is prone to changes in temperament and habit to resemble the person who provided the gene source. Wasn’t there a few similar cases about it before? Like Mr Budd over here, he has had so many genetic modifications over the years that he might have lost track of who he really is. Such a person often needs to leave something to prove that he is himself.”

“Even needs to prove it to himself…” Laura tsked, shaking her head. “That’s just self-sabotage.”

— 

On the way back to the hotel, Yan Suizhi transferred the newly acquired photos of Marcus Budd’s identifying features to Joe, yet never heard back from Joe.

Gu Yan dialled him but received a busy tone.

“Still on the line with Eunice?” Yan Suizhi simply set Marcus Budd’s mole cluster and Spade tattoo as search parameters, going through the tremendous amount of stored data on his own smart device.

As the previous searches yielded no results, he didn’t hold out much hope this time and closed the screen after sending out the search command, leaving the smart device to run the precision search in the background, whereas he unhurriedly entered the hotel behind Gu Yan and Laura. 

“Didn’t he say that he found some leads before? Maybe he’s discussing it with his sister.” As Laura spoke, she unlocked the main entrance to the villa. “Anyway, since we’re back now, we can just ask him what’s going on.”

The door swung open.

Hearing this, Joe turned over. His face was still frozen in an extremely stupefied expression, as though he had learnt something beyond belief, stuck somewhere between excitement and incredulity.

He had yet to put away the share-screen comms interface before him, and the wide holographic screen was paused on a certain scene. The back view of a man writing with both hands was captured in the frame. Next to that share screen was a handwriting comparison interface, displaying the results on top. 

Similarity=99.99%

Joe’s mouth opened. He said to them, “I found who it is…”

“The anonymous sponsor?” Gu Yan caught on as soon as he saw the handwriting comparison interface.

Laura asked, “Really? Who?” 

Joe inhaled deeply. Wide-eyed, he said, “…Old Fox.”

“It’s actually Old Fox, holy shit!” It was hard to tell if Joe was more pleased or shocked. “Old Fox! Can you believe it? He had actually signed something like Old buddies & little buddy, X & Y, you love who you love, and stuff like that, are you fucking for real?! I’ve never seen him crack a joke with me all my life, and he actually has moments like this!”

“Your dad?” Laura also got a fright. “Your dad, really? How do you know? Are you sure?”

Joe pointed at the hologram and said, “My sis…” 

“My sis was sharing her video diary with me and I saw Old Fox write with both hands simultaneously. There was a stroke in there that turned in a very unique way, the tail on the Y, like the one in the documents. I said something about it, so Eunice searched through all the video diaries from childhood to adulthood and put together a makeshift font library with all the words written by Old Fox with his left and right hands. We compared them and—”

He spread his hands, at a loss at how to express it, finally pointing to the large comparison interface. “As you can see, that’s it.”

He’d been lost in colossal bewilderment and dizziness just now, only coming back to his senses at this time. “I’m going—”

He paced around witlessly, then looked up to yell, “I’m going back to De Carma! We’ll go to Old Fox to get to the bottom of this right now!”