As the disinfectant mixed with the smell of beeswax exploded in her nasal cavity, Lila was using a steel ball to wipe the "Rise from the Fire" display case. Scarlett's laughter oozed through the stereo and resonated with the squeal of the cleaning wheels into a curse: "... True art needs to make the viewer experience the burning sensation of that wonderful night five years ago..."
The bullet-proof glass reflected Ethan's figure, the ring finger of his left hand twitching as he stroked the scorched marks on the edge of the frame. Lila's rubber gloves were suddenly hooked and broken, revealing a prison tattoo on the palm - 0927 four numbers stained with turpentine, and the same platinum color as the wedding ring under the spotlight.
"Be careful, Miss Cleaning." Scarlett brushed her iris-blue nail across the back of her neck. "It's enamel made from arsonists' ashes." Her haute couture skirt sweeps through the alarm, and 27 sapphire crosses are obscuring the surveillance cameras.
As "Aria on the G String" reaches its climax on its seventh loop, Lila Yanks the cleaning spray gun. Twelve paintings beeped at once as the high-pressure water burst through the base of the case - each with a tiny camera embedded in the center of the flame, focusing on the bleeding holes in her earlobes.
"Surprise!" Scarlett stepped through a crack in the fire ax, her nude heels stained with ice from the morgue freezer. "You think you can walk away with the security footage alive?" She tore open her shirt to reveal her back, her upside-down iris tattoo oozing Prussian blue paint.
The disinfectant boils suddenly, and Lila watches her reflection twist in Scarlett's diamond necklace. When Ethan's wedding ring tumbled into the drain, her dive to the ground set off an infrared alarm. The dust cloth falls to reveal a covered "Red Iris", a painting that was supposed to have been burned in the fire five years earlier, depicting the eyes of a human being dripping with bright red resin.
"Is it perfectly restored?" Scarlett injected wine intravenously into the canvas with a syringe. "After all, keep your fingerprints on the igniter." In the scent of Margaux 1997, Lila saw her hair woven into the gold thread of the frame.
Fire sprinkler heads suddenly pour red liquid, but the alarm is silent. Ethan's white suit turned into a wedding dress in the rain of blood, and his trembling ring finger was sprinkling some kind of powder into the detergent bucket: "Remember? You said art should be made of the dirtiest materials..."
Lila's pupils suddenly dilated, and the scene in the prison infirmary was mirrored on her retina: the vitamin solution the nurse had injected into her IV was the smell of the evaporating detergent. She grabs the polisher and smashes it at "Red Iris," and from the flying pieces of acrylic pops microfilm -- Scarlett tattooing corpses in the morgue.
The frame resonates all over the floor, and 27 alarms point to the fire exit. As the security guard's taser sticks dip into the pool of disinfectant, blue-purple electric arcs illuminate the beta-carotene graffiti in the cracks of the wall - a burning angel feeding a wedding ring to a poisonous snake.
When Lila broke open the exhibition storage room, the hydraulic door snapped a piece of her nail. The batch number of the five-gallon detergent drum stuck out: 0927-PX, the day she was sent to prison. Instead of chemicals, what gushed out when the seal was cut, it was a 1997 red wine mixed with platinum powder.
There was scratching in the air ducts, and the homeless man's festering hand brought in the charred fire logs. The yellowed pages show that 23 fire engines were diverted from the night of the fire five years ago, while the approval signature column is covered with the Harlowe family's iris print. The brown stain on the edge of the journal, soaked in red wine, gradually became a DNA double helix pattern.
"It's playtime." Scarlett's whisper floated in through the exhaust fan. Lila swung the fire ax at the bearing wall, and out rolled hundreds of tiny perfume bottles - each containing a different concentration of turpentine and blood plasma, labeled "Lila's Asthma Emergency."
When the seventh bottle of liquid is poured over the Eternal Fire installation, the flame suddenly takes on the shape of an iris flower. Ethan's wedding ring is suspended in the fire, and the inscription on the inside changes To "To LW & SW" in the heat. The burning platinum drips into a thorn shape that perfectly matches the prison number tattoo on Lila's palm.
The whole smart glass curtain wall suddenly plays a doctored surveillance video, in which Lila is using detergent to corrode the painting. Scarlett screamed through the fire door. "Get that crazy woman! She's going to destroy all the evidence!"
Lila smashed through the emergency passageway in the tear gas and found the stairwell filled with body bags stamped "Harlowe Funeral ". In a half-zipped bag, on a withered finger, was a ring with the same prison number as hers. As sirens approached, she leapt into the trash chute, catching a glimpse of graffiti on the inner wall of the pipe as she fell - a burning wedding dress design with a triple iris tattooed on the back of the model's waist.
The induction lights in the underground garage turn on, illuminating the chemical equations written in detergent on the wall. Lila dipped the blood from the wound and solved the formula: C27H30O5, the molecular formula for iristin, which was the ingredient in hallucinogens.
The red Honda suddenly starts automatically, and a holographic navigation pops up on the dashboard: "Take me to the truth." When she turned the key, the trunk popped open with a loud noise that startled the pigeons. Twenty-three charred frames are arranged in neat rows, each with a mortuary corpse label on the back, while a human outline rises under the canvas at the end.
When the linen was lifted, the smell of rancid and cedar cologne swirled. The body was wearing the same prison number as her, with Scarlett's diamond mask on the right side of her burned face. When a police flashlight illuminates the left ring finger of the corpse, it is wearing a wedding ring engraved with "EW❤SW".
"Surprise? My stunt man." Turning from behind the fire column, Scarlett tore off her silicone mask to reveal the lines of Lila's iris. "This body has been waiting to receive my consciousness since you signed the organ donation agreement three years ago."
Lila's temple burst in pain, and shards of memory pierced her nerves like sharp frame edges. She saw herself being anesthetized in the prison hospital while Scarlett had some kind of chip implanted in the back of her neck. The number of the mortuary freezer flickers across the retina: B-27, Lila Weston, time of death September 27, 2023.
The residue of the detergent bucket suddenly spontaneously ignited, and the flame followed the beta-carotene doodle into the iris totem. Scarlett spread her arms across the flames." Now, let's finish the real resurrection..." Her dermis began to peel away, revealing a robotic skeleton that glinted blue beneath her skin.
As the firehose shelled the load column, Lila grabbed Scarlett's cervical joints and rolled toward the discharge tunnel. They tear through broken glass until a metal capsule ejected from Scarlett's chest - curled up inside the actual Scarlett embryo, its umbilical cord attached to a photo from the 1997 jewelry heist.
Ethan's cries burst through the parking lot, and he fell to his knees clutching the charred frame. In the rough diamonds that fall beneath the canvas, a hologram is playing a video of the wedding: the priest asks "if you would like to exchange souls," and the two brides simultaneously lift their veil - both of Lila's faces.
The moment the baton hit the back of her head, Lila saw her own blood forming a double helix under Scarlett's high heels. The tramp's marker wrote on the edge of his final vision: "Watch out for the third filter on the cleaning truck."
Before darkness falls, she hears the sound of Milo's mechanical prosthetics plugging into the server and Ethan's broken sobs: "I clearly backed up all three souls..."