The Era of the Wolf's Howl

Chapter 3

The iron gate of the orphanage was rustier—and redder—than I remembered.

As I kicked the gate open, the fountain pen in my pocket felt scorching hot. The wound in the web of my hand had scabbed over, yet the ink had seeped into my skin, forming a twisted rune.

The lock on the basement door had already been pried open. I groped for the light switch on the wall; with a sharp *click*, three hundred glass jars lit up the darkness with an eerie blue glow.

Inside each jar, wispy fragments floated—resembling jellyfish, or perhaps fragments of shattered brain tissue.

The labels bore dates written in reverse order. The most recent one read "2023.04.15"—the very day the vampire noblewoman had died. The oldest jar sat in a corner; floating within it was Lu Lin's police badge—his photograph showed him wearing the exact uniform he wears now, yet the issuance date stamped on it was thirty years ago.

"Memory vessels," Zhong Xiaoman said, suddenly appearing behind me; the wreckage of a music box rattled in her hands. "They siphon away our pasts and stuff them into these jars."

I reached out to grab the oldest jar, but my right hand suddenly began to twitch uncontrollably. My fingertips scraped against the wall with a piercing shriek, and threads of blood seeped from beneath my fingernails—the pattern I had traced was, unmistakably, the emblem of the Correction Bureau.

Zhong Xiaoman inserted the winding key from the music box into the seal of the jar. The instant the gears engaged, the glass jar popped open with a *thwack*, releasing a putrid stench.

When the memory projected onto the wall, I nearly vomited.

Bai Yan stood there, wearing a surgical mask and holding a miniature laser tool. Lying on the operating table was my childhood self, my eyelids propped open by surgical instruments. His mechanical left hand was in the process of implanting those shard-like, crystalline patterns onto my eyeballs.

"The retinas are receivers," Zhong Xiaoman's voice drifted ethereally. "They use our eyes... to harvest moonlight."

Suddenly, the basement began to shake. All three hundred glass jars resonated in unison, emitting a piercing shriek as the liquid within them boiled and churned. The three hundred beams of blue light intertwined to form a luminous net, casting the image of a full moon onto the wall.

Standing beneath that moonlight were twelve figures. The four figures on the left were Lu Lin; the four in the middle were "me"; and the four on the right were Zhong Xiaoman. The clones looked up in unison, their shattered-glass eyes glinting in the darkness.

The "me" standing at the very front raised her right hand—on the web of skin between her thumb and forefinger, there was an ink-black rune identical to my own.

Chapter 6

The clones' fingers gouged deep indentations into the tree trunks.

I counted the sycamore trees' growth rings; the outermost rings were still oozing fresh sap. These trees were supposed to be only three years old, yet their rings indicated they had been growing for thirty.

"You said the exact same thing yesterday," the lead "Lu Lin" suddenly spoke up, his voice sounding as if it were playing from a tape recording: "'Moonlight corrodes memory carriers.'"

I recoiled sharply. Each of these clones bore gill-like incisions on their necks, the edges crusted over with pale blue scabs. Their lips parted and closed as they recited the conversation we had held in the basement yesterday—mimicking even our exact intonations and pauses.

Zhong Xiaoman suddenly lunged at the nearest "version of herself." The fluorescent powder packed beneath her fingernails scraped across the clone's throat, drawing out a thin trickle of silvery fluid. Exposed to the sunlight, the substance instantly crystallized, forming the same crescent-moon shape found in the vampires' earrings.

"Saliva analysis," I said, holding the sample tube up to the light; the crystals suspended in the fluid refracted the light into shimmering rainbow-colored specks. "The composition matches that of the 'moonlight burns.'"

Lu Lin's retinas suddenly began to flicker violently. Clutching his right eye, he sank to his knees, the shattered-glass patterns on his face casting a spiderweb of shadows across his cheek.

"Sector E-3..." his teeth chattered. "The third access panel to the right of the ventilation shaft..."

The operating room was smaller than I had imagined. Three operating tables stood beneath the shadowless lamps, their leather restraints still stained with dried blue blood. The security monitors flickered with static; the moment I kicked open the main server cabinet, the hard drive automatically began playing an encrypted video feed.

In the footage, "I" was wearing a respirator mask. Bai Yan stood beside the operating table, his mechanical left hand adjusting some sort of laser device. "Moonlight Protocol Rewrite Project: Experiment #23." The voice of "me" in the video was cold. "Memory anchor implantation complete."

Zhong Xiaoman suddenly smashed the control console. The wreckage of a music box jammed into a hard drive port; amidst a shower of sparks, every screen abruptly switched to a live feed—the *real* Bai Yan, situated in a pristine white room, was currently attaching mechanical gills to the necks of the comatose "us."

"The prime bodies are in E-7..." Blue blood suddenly began to seep from Lu Lin's retinas, tracing a three-dimensional route map across the floor. "They intend to use our bodies... to receive the full moon signal..."

I reached into my pocket and grasped my fountain pen. The ink-etched runes in my palm grew searing hot, then suddenly extended on their own into a line of small text:

"Countdown: 47 minutes."

All the surveillance screens flickered in unison. Bai Yan's mechanical left hand suddenly turned toward the camera; every single gear had stopped with absolute precision at the 11:59 mark.

Chapter 7

The hallway was breathing.

I ran three steps forward, yet the walls recoiled two meters backward. Zhong Xiaoman's gasping breaths drifted in and out, sounding like a broken radio. Lu Lin's retinal projections shimmered across the warping walls—patterns resembling shattered glass coalescing into an ever-shifting arrow.

"Don't breathe!" I held my breath and lunged toward a ventilation shaft. The hallway instantly froze rigid, only to stretch back into a long tunnel the very next second, triggered by the sound of Zhong Xiaoman coughing.

The access card for Sector E-7 melted away in Lu Lin's hand. His right eye was now completely submerged in blue blood, and the hairline cracks across his iris were spreading at a rate visible to the n***d eye.

"Thirty-seven minutes." The fountain pen in my pocket burned hot; the ink runes seared right through the fabric.

The operating room was even more bizarre than it had appeared on the surveillance feeds. Three prime bodies floated within cylindrical incubation tanks, and the fluid in their IV lines was flowing in reverse—not merely flowing backward, but undergoing a literal reversal of time; the manufacturing date stamped on the bottom of the bottles visibly jumped from "2023" back to "1993."

Zhong Xiaoman's music box suddenly began to reassemble itself. Parts flew out of her pocket, snapping together in mid-air to form a complete mechanical structure. As the winding key turned, it played not music, but a sequence of numerical codes.

"The Calibration Bureau's ultimate directive," Lu Lin's voice sounded as if coming from underwater. "Disconnect it—quickly..."

I yanked the power cord from the life-support system. Sparks flew against the incubation pod; upon the glass surface, patterns identical to the pen-ink runes began to emerge. The fluid ceased its reverse flow, but the eyelids of the "originals" began to flutter.

Suddenly, Bai Yan's mechanical gills detached.

The metal casing clattered to the floor, revealing unblemished human skin beneath. His left hand possessed no mechanical structure whatsoever; beneath the black glove, his palm lines were clearly visible—that was not Bai Yan at all.

"Memory projection..." The lips of the fake Bai Yan twitched, yet the voice that emerged bore the timbre of the music box from Zhong Xiaoman: "They used our fears... to craft these puppets..."

The originals opened their eyes in unison.

The moment I leaned in to observe them, I froze. Reflected in their pupils was not my face, but a myriad of moons—full moons, crescents, blood moons—and within the silhouette of each moon stood an Observer.

Suddenly, the glass of the incubation pod shattered.

Fluid gushed forth, coalescing in mid-air into three hundred lunar models. They orbited the originals, and upon the surface of each model, distinct memories began to surface—fragments of our investigation that had been tampered with.

Suddenly, the pen pierced through my palm.

The ink-runes burrowed into the wound like living things, weaving themselves through my veins to form a new sentence: "The Observer is in position."