Time Merchant

Chapter 12: Mother's Log

In the rain curtain of Trafalgar Square, the lotus crystal over Lin Mingyue's heart flickered with her breath. Lin Xia's bronze phalanges pressed against her mother's neck, and earth marrow fluid flowed back along the nerve bundles, dyeing the gear reliefs beneath Edwin's skin a fluorescent blue.

"There's a Shi Gu tracker in her spine..." Lin Xia suddenly withdrew her hand, half a swarm of nanobugs clinging to her bronze fingertips. "It's transmitting coordinates to the Thames!"

No sooner had she spoken than the river water reversed, surging into the sky! Black water condensed into a steam locomotive, shattering the embankment and lunging at the square. The carriages were cobbled together from air-raid shelter sheet metal, and silhouettes of St. Mary's Orphanage flickered in the windows—each child had a pocket watch embedded in the back of their neck.

"The Black Cross Train!" Edwin's mechanical pupils locked onto the locomotive cab.

Dr. Irene's brain tissue floated above the control panel, nerve bundles rooting into the children's watches like tree roots. "Trade the mother for these sacrifices. Choose, twins—"

First Track: Rusty Lullaby

The train whistle blared. Sound waves materialized into rusted baby crib bars, trapping the three in a tiny space. Mechanical nurse arms stretched through the bars, syringes filled with fluorescent blue earth marrow fluid.

"My nursery pod..." Lin Xia's bronze bloodline ached. As the needle pierced her skin, memory flashes erupted:

Shi Gu Nursery

Mechanical nurses implanting watch spines into baby girls;

Monitor close-up

Lin Mingyue biting her finger in the adjacent pod, writing the oracle bone character Escape on the glass;

Present

The crystal in her mother's spine suddenly shot out blood-red rays, burning an 【Escape】-shaped breach in the crib bars!

Edwin carried Lin Mingyue, rolling out of the cage. The syringe stabbed into the stone lion base, and earth marrow fluid melted the statue into bronze liquid, forming new tracks extending to the Tower Bridge ruins.

Second Track: Skull Station

The train tore through the rain in pursuit. Carriages split open, revealing an interior platform built from children's skulls. The station sign read: 【Destination: Embryo Cultivation Pod 1940】.

"They're trying to reset the timeline!" Edwin's metal-manipulating power flipped the tracks, but the train climbed along the vertical Tower Bridge wreckage. Dr. Irene's brain nerves coiled around Lin Mingyue, dragging her toward the furnace at the skull station's center.

Lin Xia's bronze body crashed into the carriage. Her leg bone circuits resonated with the skull platform, exploding into memory fragments:

Lin Mingyue in cheongsam prying open the nursery pod with a hairpin;

Blue light from the baby girl's spine watch burning the pursuers;

Flashes of herself curled among skulls, gnawing on other test subjects' nerve bundles...

"So I've eaten people..." Her mechanical joints rusted and peeled, earth marrow fluid boiling on her bronze skeleton.

Third Track: Umbilical Switchman

Lin Mingyue suddenly woke. She ripped the nerve bundle from her spine crystal, stabbing it into her daughter's exposed bronze spine: "Read my log!"

A flood of maternal log data:

September 7, 1940

Intentionally implanted the bomb watch into her daughter's spine, calculating that only her own flesh and blood's energy could destroy the Shi Gu core;

January 15, 1943

Voluntarily became the living core in exchange for reduced power in the nursery pods;

Ultimate Code

The reverse of the baby girl's spine watch serial number is the key to shutting down the embryo cultivation pod—【LXM-0791-0491】

Lin Xia's bronze phalanges plunged into the skull furnace. As the reversed serial number entered, the entire train disassembled like building blocks. Dr. Irene's brain tissue screamed, plummeting into the Thames, swallowed by a lotus formed from earth marrow fluid.

"Mom, I'm sorry..." Lin Xia hugged her mother on the falling skull platform. "I made you wait forty years..."

Lin Mingyue's hand brushed her exposed bronze spine: "I should be sorry... turning you into a living bomb..."

Edwin's mechanical arm caught them. Fluorescent blue blood beads seeped between his skin gears, dripping onto the new lotus crystal on her mother's spine, blooming into twin flowers on a single stem.

Night fog shrouded the riverbank.

The Black Cross Train's wreckage sank into the Thames, children's phantoms dissolving with the ripples. Lin Xia carried her weak mother toward the subway, her bronze skeleton glowing warmly under streetlights.

"Your leg..." Lin Mingyue's fingertip touched her daughter's exposed leg bone.

"It stopped hurting long ago." Lin Xia smiled, turning her head. "Now it's my armor."

Edwin lagged three steps behind. He rolled up his sleeve—his forearm skin had fully mechanized, fluorescent blue earth marrow fluid oozing from the gear joints. When Lin Xia glanced back at his arm, the gears suddenly spun faster, playing the melody of an air-raid shelter nursery rhyme.

Deep in the tunnel, the last propeller fragment lay quietly on the tracks. It reflected the three huddled figures—Lin Mingyue's spine crystal, Lin Xia's bronze skeleton, Edwin's mechanical arm—entwined by flowing fluorescent blue nerve bundles into an inseparable symbiosis.