Chapter 2: The Hunt
The velvet door swung shut behind him with a sound like a final breath.陈子轩 stood in the corridor, the heavy silk of his robes suddenly feeling like a shroud. The air was cold, sterilized, carrying the sharp sting of antiseptic that couldn’t mask the underlying odor of spoiled meat and chemical sweetness.
The hum was a physical thing here, vibrating up through the soles of his borrowed silk slippers. It was the grind of machinery, the click-whirr of precise instruments, punctuated by a wet, subcutaneous squelch that made his jaw clench.
He ran.
The corridor seemed to stretch forever, a river of blinding white marble and reflective black tile. Chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling, their crystals not catching light but dripping a viscous, dark fluid that gathered in iridescent puddles on the floor. He skidded, his footing unsure on the slick residue.
Then he saw the tanks.
They were set into the wall like grotesque aquariums, floor-to-ceiling cylinders of thick, greenish glass. Inside each one, suspended in a murky, amber fluid, was a figure.
The first one made him gag. A young man, maybe his own age, floated naked. Tubes fed into his mouth and nose. His eyes were open, unblinking, watching nothing. His skin was marbled with purple veins, and his fingers ended not in nails but in small, polished chrome caps.
陈子轩 stumbled past, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He had to find赵明远.
He was in the third tank.
He was still in the tight black leather, but it was now split open along the spine. The fluid wasn’t clear; it was clouded with particles of something dark, swirling like ink in water.赵明远 floated face-down, his body drifting in a slow, lazy circle. His arms were slack.
Black, fibrous tendrils, like ropy veins or mechanical roots, emerged from ports in the tank wall. They had burrowed into the exposed flesh of his back, weaving under his skin. They pulsed with a dull, interior light. One twitched, and赵明远’s whole body shuddered in response, a puppet jolted by a careless string.
“No.” The word was a whisper, fogging the cold glass.陈子轩 pressed his hands against it. “明远!”
His friend’s head turned. Just slightly. One eye, visible through the drifting hair and murk, rolled toward the glass. It was the same eye that had winked at him across a crowded lecture hall, that had squinted in concentration at a free-throw line. Now it was glazed, a milky blue film forming over the iris. The eyelid gave a slow, mechanized blink.
A hand clamped over陈子轩’s mouth from behind, yanking him away from the tank.
He thrashed, panic boiling into pure terror, but the grip was firm. He was dragged behind a humming piece of machinery—a console covered in dials and glowing screens showing waveforms he didn’t understand.
“Shhh! You want to bring them all down here?” a voice hissed in his ear. The hand loosened.
陈子轩 whirled. Crouching beside him was another young man, eyes wide with a fear that mirrored his own. He wore the remnants of a stylish streetwear outfit—a ripped graphic tee and jeans—but over it was draped a absurd, half-fastened brocade waistcoat. His face was smudged with what looked like rouge, applied hastily and wrong. This, he realized, must be林晓.
“Who are you?”陈子轩 breathed, his own voice unfamiliar to him.
“Someone who didn’t put on the fancy dress willingly,”林晓 whispered, peering around the console. His eyes kept darting to the tanks. “I saw them take your friend. I was hiding in a linen closet. I’ve been hiding for… I don’t know how long.”
“What is this?”陈子轩 gestured wildly at the room. “What are they doing to him?”
林晓’s laugh was a sharp, broken sound. “What does it look like? They’re fixing us. Making us… appropriate. For him.” He nodded down the corridor, toward a set of double doors at the far end. “I’ve seen them bring others in. They go in looking like us. They come out… like them.” He pointed a trembling finger toward the entrance.
A servant walked past, carrying a tray of polished surgical tools. His gait was perfectly even, his blank eyes fixed ahead. It was the same empty precision as the管家.
“We have to get him out,”陈子轩 said, the decision solidifying his fear into something harder.
“Are you insane? Look at him!”林晓 grabbed his arm. “He’s already in the soup. You crack that glass, he’ll spill out and… and what? He’s not your roommate anymore. He’s becoming furniture.”
On the screen beside them, a waveform spiked. In the tank,赵明远’s back arched violently. The black tendrils glowed brighter, and a stream of silvery bubbles rushed from a valve near his neck. His mouth opened in a silent scream. Then he went limp, sinking back into the fluid, turning slowly until he faced them again.
His expression was serene. Vacant. It was the same placid emptiness he’d shown in the mirror just before the door closed.
陈子轩 felt something inside him tear. “We can’t just leave.”
“We can’t save him,”林晓 insisted, his voice cracking. “But we can maybe not end up in a jar. There’s a service stair. I marked it. It might lead out.”
The grinding hum shifted pitch. A new sound emerged from the double doors: a calm, unhurried footfall.
林晓 froze. “He’s coming.”
The double doors swung open silently.
The庄园主人 stood there, framed in the doorway. He wore his usual impeccable black tailcoat, his hands clad in white gloves. The porcelain mask covered the upper half of his face, leaving only a pale, thin-lipped smile visible. His presence didn’t fill the space; it drained it, making the air itself seem to bow.
“Ah,” the voice was low, mellifluous, and it traveled down the corridor with unnatural clarity. “Two of my guests are admiring the gallery. The process of refinement is beautiful, is it not?”
陈子轩 couldn’t speak. His mind, usually so quick with words, was blank.
林晓, however, moved. With a choked cry, he shoved陈子轩 toward a recessed archway in the wall. “The stair! Go!”
He then did the opposite. He burst from behind the console and ran, not toward the archway, but back down the main corridor, away from the庄园主人, making himself a loud, clumsy distraction.
“A spirited one,” the庄园主人 observed, his head tilting. He didn’t raise his voice. “Retrieve him.”
From shadows陈子轩 hadn’t noticed, two servants emerged. Their movements were not rushed, but they were impossibly fast, intercepting林晓 with effortless, chilling coordination. He fought, yelling, throwing wild punches that they absorbed without reaction. One caught his arms, the other produced a long, slender injector.
“Run, you idiot!”林晓 screamed, his eyes finding陈子轩’s across the distance.
The injector pressed against林晓’s neck. There was a hiss. His struggling ceased mid-motion. His body went slack, his final, defiant expression melting into blank acceptance as the servants caught his dead weight.
The庄园主人’s smile never wavered. He turned his masked gaze slowly, scanning the room, toward the archway where陈子轩 stood paralyzed.
陈子轩 ran.
He plunged into the darkness of the service stair, the sounds of the corridor—the hum, the wet sounds, the now-absent shouts—swallowed by the slam of a heavy iron door behind him. He took the steps two at a time, the ridiculous robes tangling around his legs. He heard no pursuit. That was the worst part. No footsteps, no cries. Just his own ragged breathing and the pounding of his heart.
He didn’t stop until he collapsed on a small landing, hidden behind a stack of mouldering crates. He sat in the thick, consuming dark, the image of赵明远’s twitching body and林晓’s collapsing form seared onto the back of his eyelids.
From deep below, through the layers of stone and iron, the hum of the machinery continued. A new rhythm joined it. The steady, marching tread of many feet, moving in unison, ascending the stairs.