The Era of the Wolf's Howl

The diamond stud earring lying in the pool of blood was melting. As I crouched down, a drop of liquid slid right down along a crimson streak. The platinum setting was already deformed, looking as if it had been scorched by extreme heat. Yet, the thermometer at the scene read a mere 18 degrees. "That makes three," I said, pulling out my laser pointer. The red dot traced a circle on the floor. "The same crescent-shaped burn mark; the same..." "...Conclusion of suicide," Bai Yan's voice cut in from behind me. On his left hand, he wore the black glove he never took off; between his fingers, he held a freshly printed spectral analysis report. "No d**g residue in the blood; the wound characteristics are consistent with self-infliction." I glanced up at the window. The light of the full moon slanted in, casting a sharp, bright line across the wound on the corpse's neck. "Didn't the goldfish in your lab tell you?" I stood up, the blood clinging to my gloves stretching into fine threads in the air. "People who commit suicide don't claw at their own faces like that." The skin tissue found beneath the victim's fingernails was still at the forensics lab. But I already knew the result—just like her two "suicidal" companions before her, the DNA would match her own. The surveillance room was even colder than the morgue. I pulled up the footage from seven city blocks, my fingers pounding on the keyboard until they ached. Seventeen screens fast-forwarded simultaneously; in every frame, the moon appeared to be expanding in a bizarre, unnatural way. "Stop." I slammed the spacebar. The time of the incident: 02:17. All seven cameras pivoted simultaneously to a forty-five-degree angle. It wasn't a software glitch—each rotational trajectory was so precise it looked as if it had been drawn with a compass. The glare reflecting off the stainless steel autopsy table stung my eyes. The fractured-glass patterns began to ripple across my retinas again, and the shifting spots of light made the contents of my stomach feel sickeningly prominent. "The Bureau of Celestial Calibration?" I used a pair of tweezers to pick up the half-fragment of an employee ID card. The gold-embossed lettering gleamed coldly beneath the shadowless lamp. "Sector E-7... That corresponds to the access clearance level for the seventh underground floor." Zhong Xiaoman's music box suddenly began to play. I hadn't noticed when she had leaned against the doorframe; the tips of her hair were still damp with the night mist. As the melody—one I had never heard before—reached its third bar, my phone began to vibrate. "A case identical to one from thirty years ago?" I inverted the file folder over the desk. Black-and-white photographs slid out; in them, the same diamond stud earrings glinted from the victims' earlobes. Beside me, the forensic pathologist was trembling like a leaf—the photos were dated 1993, yet the fingerprints listed in the autopsy report matched those of today's victim perfectly. The signature on the second page of the file was a wild, flamboyant scrawl. I stared at the cursive script for three seconds, then pulled out my phone and aimed it at the current Police Chief's digital signature. With a sharp *click*, the music box fell silent. In the dim light, Zhong Xiaoman's pupils gleamed faintly: "Do you want to hear the second half?" Chapter 2 As Zhong Xiaoman's fingernails dug into the seams of the music box, I caught the scent of rotting flesh. "The second half is in Sector E-7." She suddenly thrust the music box into my arms; the winding key dug painfully into my ribs. Before I could react, the fluorescent lights in the autopsy room began to strobe violently; in the flickering light, the diamond earrings in the black-and-white photographs appeared to ooze a pale red liquid. I yanked a dust sheet over the corpse. The surveillance monitors remained frozen on the image of the expanding moon; the arc formed by the seven cameras pointed directly toward the Astronomical Calibration Bureau. On the back of Bai Yan's spectral analysis report, faint pencil marks were visible—the "7" in "E-7" had clearly been altered, and embedded within the paper fibers were the faint indentations of a "3" that had been erased. Under the ultraviolet light, a second set of numbers materialized on the employee ID card. I stared at the access chip for ten seconds, then abruptly grabbed a jacket from the Evidence Division. Zhong Xiaoman followed me out to the parking lot, humming the melody from the music box; the lingering notes shattered in the night breeze like shards of glass. "You mentioned last time that the homeless shelter was under renovation?" I turned the ignition key; in the rearview mirror, her eyelashes cast a web-like shadow. She was using the tip of the music box's winding key to trace the outline of a moon on the car window—each arc so precise it was unnerving. The security gate at the Celestial Calibration Bureau glowed with a blue light. I swiped my forged visitor's pass three times; suddenly, the alarm fell silent—dead silent. The uniformed guard had a crescent-shaped birthmark on the back of his neck—identical to the burn mark found on the deceased's collarbone. The steel cables groaned as the elevator descended. The third basement level was colder even than the morgue; a white mist seeped through the c***k beneath the door, coiling around my ankles. I counted the vibrations of the ventilation ducts; during the seventh interval, I heard the distinct sound of machinery in motion. Bai Yan's silhouette wavered behind the tempered glass. He wore that black glove on his left hand, while his right gripped a welding torch. The torso lying on the operating table had been splayed wide open, and the metal lamellae of a mechanical gill were rhythmically expanding and contracting. I pressed myself tight against the wall. The clockwork key embedded in the corpse's temple glinted under the shadowless lamp; the brassy sheen—so characteristic of a music box mechanism—stung my retinas. The homeless man who had gone missing last week had a brown spot behind his ear; now, three miniature mechanical insects were crawling across it. "The memory medium requires liquid nitrogen," Bai Yan suddenly spoke up. I froze completely, only to realize he was speaking to the empty air. The instant he peeled off his glove, I nearly knocked over a fire extinguisher—etched into the palm of his left hand was an inverted moon, and blood was seeping from every single line of the design. The melody of a music box drifted in from the ventilation ducts. Seizing the opportunity, I slipped into the adjacent laboratory, where a lunar-spectrum analyzer was automatically printing out data. The peaks and troughs on the paper strip formed the image of a human face—the face of the "suicidal" girl with the ear stud, who had died thirty years ago. The instrument suddenly began playing an audio recording just as I was stuffing a laser lens into my backpack. "Subject 023: Memory wipe complete." The Director's voice—sounding sharp and high-pitched, as it had in his youth—rang out, accompanied in the background by a familiar sound: fingernails scraping against metal. The sound of wheels—the wheels of a morgue trolley—approached from the far end of the corridor. I shrank back into the shadows cast by the equipment, watching as two attendants pushed a medical refrigeration unit past. The cuffs of their uniforms were stained with a pale blue liquid—the very same fluorescent substance found beneath the homeless man's fingernails. The seal on the refrigeration unit suddenly burst open. The instant the white mist dissipated, I caught sight of an eyeball floating in the culture fluid—fractured, glass-like patterns spread across the iris; they were unmistakably the distinct features of my own retina. The winding mechanism of the music box suddenly began to spin wildly. As I recoiled, I knocked over a rack of reagents; amidst the shattering of test tubes, Bai Yan's cold sneer rang out. The observation window of the refrigeration unit reflected my own distorted face, while Zhong Xiaoman crouched by the ventilation grate, using blood-stained fingers to form the gesture for "23."