The MoTech Research Annex stood like a monument to secrets—clean glass, polished stone, and silence deeper than any vault it housed.
Mo Zeyan hadn't returned here in over two years.
Now, standing before the reinforced steel door of Basement Level 3, he pressed his late mother's family ring into the hidden biometric panel.
The vault recognized him instantly.
Access granted.
Ruoxi stood just behind him, every step inside echoing like a heartbeat through time. Lin Qian had stayed behind at the villa to rest—but her warning still echoed in Ruoxi's mind.
"They tried to make me forget her. But I remembered."
They descended into a room filled with old terminals, locked drawers, and a temperature-controlled case in the center.
Inside it, untouched and sealed:A small black leather journal.
The words etched on the cover made Zeyan go cold.
Mo Qinghua – Personal RecordNot for project eyes.
Zeyan opened the journal with careful fingers.
The first few pages were benign: appointments, notations, scattered thoughts.
But then, halfway through, the handwriting changed—sharper. Urgent.
"I didn't authorize the expansion to Phase Three. They took my designs and altered them. Ruoxi is not a child… she's a reflection. Made from pain I never meant to pass down."
Ruoxi felt her knees weaken.
She gripped the edge of the terminal.
"She knew about me," she whispered. "She knew I was made from her."
Zeyan's jaw clenched, but he turned the page.
"They want to remove emotional variance. Perfect the emotional pattern by removing maternal links. But they don't understand—feelings are what give her balance. If they erase that, they'll destroy her soul."
Ruoxi closed her eyes.
Every time she had questioned her tears, her kindness, her longing to be loved—it hadn't been a flaw. It had been the piece of Mo Qinghua that survived inside her.
"I'm not a mistake," she said.
"No," Zeyan whispered. "You're a message."
They searched the vault for hours.
In a drawer beneath the journal, Zeyan found a key.
A physical one.
Carved into the brass was a number: #0.
"What is this?" Ruoxi asked.
Zeyan turned it over. "It doesn't match any vault here."
Then he noticed the initials stamped into the handle: Q.H.
"QH Biogenics," he said. "The original lab. Not the European branch—the one beneath the hills in City S."
Ruoxi's pulse spiked. "The lab that supposedly burned down."
Zeyan gave a grim smile. "Not completely, it seems."
Back at the villa, Lin Qian woke up to find a note on the nightstand:
Gone with Zeyan. Found something in the vault. Rest. Be safe. —Ruoxi
But something was wrong.
The window was open.
And on the mirror, in faint red lipstick:
"You forgot one."
Lin Qian staggered back.
Two hours later, Ruoxi sat beside Zeyan in the car speeding toward the outskirts of City S.
Night had fallen, and the sky pulsed with distant thunder.
"Do you think your mother was trying to protect me?" Ruoxi asked softly.
Zeyan didn't answer immediately.
"She never spoke about the project to me," he said finally. "But she always said emotion was strength. Even in business. Even in loss."
He looked at her. "She didn't want you to be a machine. She wanted you to be free."
Ruoxi turned her head toward the window. Raindrops had begun to streak across the glass.
"I wonder if she ever held me," she whispered.
Zeyan reached across the seat, taking her hand.
"You're not alone anymore."
She didn't respond.
But she didn't let go.
They arrived at the ruins of the old QH Biogenics facility just before midnight.
The fencing was rusted and broken in places, the land grown wild.
They found the old entry shaft exactly where Zeyan's coordinates said it would be—beneath a collapsed maintenance building.
The key fit perfectly.
A silent click.
Then the floor creaked—and a metal hatch slowly swung open.
Beneath it… darkness.
Ruoxi turned on her flashlight and began to descend.
They expected rust. Decay. Dust.
But what they found was clean.
Sterile.
As if the place had never truly been shut down.
Ruoxi moved ahead, flashlight trembling.
A hallway stretched out before them, ending in a massive steel door with a single etched number:
00.
Zeyan stepped forward, inserting the key.
The lock opened with a hiss of compressed air.
Behind the door was a sealed room—with only a single bed.
And on that bed…
A girl.
Hooked to IVs. Wires.
Sleeping peacefully.
Ruoxi staggered forward.
She knew that face.
It was her own.
But younger. Paler. Her features softer—less defined.
"She's not Prototype 1," Zeyan said. "And she's not Prototype 2 either."
Ruoxi looked at the nameplate on the bed's monitor.
PROTOTYPE 0Designation: Memory Core
"She's the beginning," Ruoxi breathed. "The one they built the rest of us from."
The girl stirred slightly.
Ruoxi leaned in.
And then—
Her own voice came from the child's lips.
"You were supposed to forget me."