The hypnosis chamber's blue light pulsed like bioluminescent plankton. On her seventh controlled breath, the electrodes on Ayla's wrists sparked with sudden heat. Dr. Chen adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, pen scratching against medical charts: "Let's start with the metallic composition of the lunar eclipse necklace. This time, we'll attempt active memory retrieval."
"Last session's silver vines nearly strangled me." She loosened the restraint strap, her collarbone scar glowing cyan under the AC vent. The crinkle of Max's mint wrapper in the observation room marked their safety signal—if the sound stopped, the hypnosis field had destabilized.
By the third swing of Dr. Chen's pocket watch, Ayla smelled rust—not from disinfectants, but the coolant leaking from Lucas' mechanical arm in her memories. The ceiling warped into the dome of a lunar altar, twelve silver chains descending from the void to pierce her scapulae. These chains bore reverse barbs that tore flesh with every struggle.
"Describe what you see." Dr. Chen's voice came through watery distortion.
"Lab... culture tanks bleeding..." Ayla's nails gouged the pleather recliner, oozing fluorescent mucus from the splits. "Odile altering gene maps... clones all have..."
The chains snapped taut. The memory shifted to Lila's silhouette—carving open her own nape at the observatory ruins, revealing not flesh but a crimson-lit chip matrix beneath. Ayla tried to scream, but the chains around her vocal cords left only rasping breaths.
"Memory interference detected!" Dr. Chen's alert synced with Max's door-kicking roar. Ayla jerked upright, ripping out bioelectric sensors. Blood droplets froze midair into wolf-head totems before exploding into silver dust.
Three hours later, five fingermarks from her hypnosis convulsions still scored the studio floor. Ayla aimed the welding torch at chain molds, sparks etching the patterns from her vision. Max crouched by Caged Moon's framework, scanning the newly cast chains with a spectrometer: "Nanomemory alloy matching Lucas' spinal implant. Sure these designs just 'popped into your head'?"
"They grew from my bones." She licked liquid nitrogen off her thumb, the frostbite sting mirroring phantom chains through her ribs. The sculpture's lunar base hummed at a subsonic frequency, every chisel in the toolbox quivering toward the northwest—directly aligning with Neumann Group's labs.
Odile's sabotage arrived with theatrical timing. As midnight rain sheeted down, three black-clad figures breached the roller shutter. The moment crimson paint arced toward Caged Moon, Ayla watched from the mezzanine monitors. Instead of dripping, the pigment crawled like sentient veins to spell "LIAR" across the sculpture. Raindrops tapped Morse code against glass: You're the clone.
"Even vandalism needs cybernetic flair?" Max prodded paint samples with his cane tip, UV light revealing Neumann's genetic watermark. But Ayla froze on the surveillance replay—the leader's missing right pinky, the silver neural port flashing at his nape when turning. Lucas' exact implant model.
Lila's midnight call severed her thoughts. "Vent pipes in Eric's lab... have your biodata logs..." Static devoured the闺蜜's panting. "Cryopod from winter 2000, code E.V.001..."
The archive computer unlocked with a click. Ayla's fingers found sticky residue on the keyboard—identical to Caged Moon's mucus, carrying cedar and rust. The screen's blue glare trembled in her pupils: 99.8% mitochondrial DNA match with Lila's 2003 samples, while the 2000 cryopod entry read Prime Genetic Template: Eclipse Maiden.
When the bloody "LIAR" fluoresced through the downpour, Eric's mechanical bats shattered the studio windows. They carried holographic chips assembling midair—footage of fifteen-year-old Lucas carrying Ayla from a burning lab, her collarbone already branded with the crescent scar.