The hum of the freezer in the convenience store resonates with the distant sirens in the damp air, like some kind of Morse code eroded by the rain. Lila's fingernails scrape along the metallic edge of the creamer can, tracing the decryption formula for the triple irises in the milk stains that seep into the back of the receipt. The β-carotene particles emit tiny popping sounds as they rub against her fingertips, as if replicating the frequency of the bubbles rising in the memory of the embryo incubator. When the dull thud of the capsule exploding comes from the microwave, she is scraping the rusty ventilation duct with the broken end of her rib. The steam casts a holographic floor plan of the art museum on the ceiling. At a certain coordinate point on the third basement floor, the burnt mark of the pregnancy symbol is oozing a tar-like blackness along the cracks in the wall.
Amid the sound of the torrential rain pounding on the iron ladder in the ventilation shaft, the broken spur of the seventh rib pierces through the work uniform, and the rust mixes with the scabbed blood and embeds itself in the muscle texture. The moment the ninth drop of blood falls into the sewer, the holographic projection that appears on the water surface suddenly freezes — Mr. Holloway's white coat hem sweeps across the operating table of the artificial uterus. The last page of the pregnancy report twists in his palm, and the double helix on the genetic map gradually collapses into the bar code of the bail document. The number 0927 flickers repeatedly in the fluorescence, like the final fluctuations of the electrocardiogram before her mother's death.
The combination lock of the fire hydrant in the back alley of the art museum is corroded shiny by turpentine. Lila's fingertips roll over the indentations on the number dial. When the combination 0927 is pressed, the 1997 Pauillac red wine that gushes out carries the scent of truffles and gunpowder. The knee-deep wine floods into the basement, and the matrix of safes soaked in the red tide is emitting the pulses of a bionic heartbeat. The blue light flashes once every 0.8 seconds, resonating with the chip implant under her left shoulder blade — it is a positioning device implanted in the prison infirmary three years ago, and now it is getting hot as the concentration of β-carotene in her blood rises.
"The seventh cycle is initiated." The moment the mechanical female voice comes from the drainpipe, twenty-seven surveillance screens light up simultaneously, and the scenes of delivery rooms in different years overlap amidst the snow-like noise: In the sterile room in 1997, the nurse's action of swapping the baby's ankle tags is slowed down into a frame-by-frame animation. The engravings of "LW" and "SW" on the metal plate turn blue under the sterilization lamp; In the prison delivery room in 2015, when her abdomen was cut open by the robotic arm, the platinum powder mixed in the anesthetic was flickering along the infusion tube, just like the pregnancy report floating in the thawed amniotic fluid at this moment.
The instant the iris scanner sprays out the anesthetic gas, Lila pries open the safe panel with the broken end of her rib, and the smell of sawdust mixed with the preservative floods into her nostrils. In the photo on the first page of the report, her mother's swollen abdomen is covered with the iris tattoo of the Holloway family. In the ultrasound image, in the shadow where the umbilical cords of the twins are intertwined in the shape of a wedding ring, the metallic interface at the embryo's spine can be faintly seen — it is the mechanical anchor point left by the gene editing surgery. When her fingertips touch the platinum powder at the edge of the report, the safes on the entire wall pop open simultaneously. The embryo specimen bags gently sway in the red wine, and the number on each label corresponds to the medical record in her prison file.
The alarm light dyes the red wine the dark purple of venous blood. In the rotating maze of safes, seven clones are approaching from different directions. Prussian blue machine oil seeps from the iris interfaces at the back of their necks. In the wedding vows played synchronously by their mechanical vocal cords, the sound of the pipe organ once used by the prison chapel's choir is interspersed — "In sickness and in health...", the end sound of each word is accompanied by the current sound of the chip overloading, much like the sizzling sound when her cellmate engraved the word "substitute" on her abdomen with a soldering iron back then.
The moment the fire axe splits the seventh layer of bulletproof glass, childhood memories splash out with the sawdust — On Ethan's twelfth birthday, they injected a red wine solution into a rabbit in the laboratory. The burn scar on her brother's palm is exactly the shape of her mother's fingerprint on the diary at this moment. When she turns to the page with the platinum powder, there are two overlapping uteruses drawn next to the scribbled formula. Next to the mechanical interface at the embryo's spine, it is labeled "Artistic Gene Carrier", and the modification date at the bottom of the page is 0927, the day her mother "died" in the jewelry heist.
"So you're here." Scarlett's mechanical head tumbles out of the ventilation pipe. The instant her diamond false teeth bite through the pregnancy report, Lila sees the number "SW-07" at the interface at the back of her neck is oozing oil — forming a mirror image with the "LW-03" below her collarbone. Behind the hidden door blown open by the explosion blast wave, the artificial uteruses on the entire wall are synchronously playing the fire alarm surveillance of the art museum. On the label of each culture chamber, there is attached the birth certificate of the "Holloway Twins" from different years. On the latest one, the mother's column reads "Chief Surgeon / Jewelry Thief", and the father's column is a blank iris scan area.
The instant the β-carotene powder is sprinkled into the red wine, a holographic surgical record emerges in the orange smoke: On March 27, 1997, Mr. Holloway simultaneously injected the gene solution into three culture chambers. The woman in the middle chamber turns her head and looks out the window. The name tag under the gas mask clearly shows "Lila Holloway" — which is completely different from the photo of her mother she saw in the prison file. When the image freezes on her mother's frozen pupils, a DNA double helix suddenly appears on the surface of the red wine. On Scarlett's gene chain of violent tendencies, a fragment of her artistic talent is being grafted, and vice versa.
"A perfect triangular composition." Scarlett's mechanical spine wraps around her ankle. The sound of the gears turning is mixed with the memory of the amniotic fluid breaking — In the arson case of the art museum five years ago, the three Ethans she saw in the thick smoke were actually clones of different gene versions, each carrying the diamond cutting tools passed down in the Holloway family. The instant the fire axe chops into the power pipeline, the red wine fuel splashes into a burning crown of thorns. In the firelight, she finally sees clearly the numbering pattern on the artificial uterus: 0927 is not only her mother's death anniversary, but also the date of the embryo transplantation, and even the "Artistic Outburst Trigger Code" implanted in their gene chains.
The 45-degree tilt caused by the explosion makes the safes collapse like dominoes. When Lila jumps on the sliding metal cabinets, Scarlett's mechanical head bobs up and down in the ocean of fire and wine. The instant her diamond false teeth bite through the last page of the report, what emerges is not data, but the torn fragment of the note her mother stuffed into her hand before she died: "Three embryos, three fates. 0927 is both the key and the shackle." The instant the data cable cuts off the escape route, she suddenly remembers the sterilization lamp in the prison infirmary, which once reflected the iris tattoo on the back of the nurse's neck in the middle of the night — exactly the same as the badge on Mr. Holloway's white coat.
The instant the refrigerant sprays out from the artificial uterus, the ice layer that condenses on the ground reflects the childhood mirror image: The three embryo specimens she saw in the laboratory when she was six years old, with numbers corresponding to her, Scarlett, and the "third fetus" that never existed. Amid the sound of the broken end of the rib chiseling the ice, the β-carotene solution seeps into the cracks. In the hidden compartment pointed to by the blood arrow that appears, there are numbered obstetric instruments piled up. On the fragment of the embryo chamber clamped by the seventh pair of forceps, the "EW & SW" spelled out with platinum powder sparkles in the ice light — it is the genetic abbreviations of Ethan and Scarlett, but it appears in the embryo file that should belong to her.
When the resonance between the sound of the pipe organ and the fire alarm reaches a high frequency, the 1997 red wine seeps out from the wall. The embryo specimen bags fall into the ripples of the wine. On the fetal heart rate monitoring chart that appears on the ice surface, the two frequencies are merging at the rhythm of "Air on the G String". The instant Mr. Holloway's robotic arm penetrates the ice wall, the holographic projection switches to an ultrasound image: Lila in the uterus is wrapping the umbilical cord around Scarlett's neck, and the initial shape of the other's mechanical spine is already visible at the tail of the embryo — this is the survival competition program preset during the gene editing, a symbiotic paradox of artistic talent and violent tendencies.
The steam that rushes in from the ventilation pipe carries the smell of the crematorium. Lila holds the embryo specimen frozen into an ice shield in front of her chest. The melted ice water drips down through her fingers and forms a map of the sewers of Manhattan on the ground. The instant the iris toxin seeps out from the drain marked 0927, she finally deciphers all the clues: The jewelry heist her mother participated in back then was actually an attempt to steal the gene bank of the Holloway family. And the three embryos respectively carry three extreme traits of art, machinery, and violence. Their fates, from the moment the fertilized egg combines with the platinum powder, have been designed as a living art experiment in a triangular composition.
When the matrix of safes sinks into the sea of wine and Lila grabs the blood transfusion tube of the artificial uterus and climbs up, the surveillance footage of the past twenty years plays automatically: In the picture of Mrs. Holloway separating the conjoined twins with a diamond ring, the ankle tags swapped by the nurse are actually gene activation codes. "LW" stands for "Living Canvas", "SW" stands for "Deadly Brush", and Ethan's "EW" is the "Mechanical Palette" that runs through all the experiments. The instant Scarlett's mechanical spine pierces through her abdomen, what is extracted is not an egg cell, but the carrier that activates the genetic key left by her mother — the original gene chain hidden in her uterus is the "perfect artistic medium" that Mr. Holloway pursues.
The torrential rain in the church graveyard washes over the tombstone of 0927. When Lila kneels in front of her mother's grave, the lightning illuminates the cracks. Behind the bulletproof glass, Scarlett's real body is breathing, and the iris tattoo on the back of her waist flickers with her heartbeat — it is the proof of the integrity of the gene chain. The instant she pries open the coffin, the truth of the arson case of the art museum in the microfilm emerges: The three Ethans fled from three exits with different gene samples, and the embryo specimen bag in her hand is exactly the "uncontaminated original embryo" that her mother risked her life to protect back then.
The instant she swallows the film amidst the sound of the sirens, the cedar scent of the humus soil awakens the deepest memories: In the delivery room the year she was born, the last words her mother said to her before the anesthesia, mixed with the faint light of the platinum powder — "Your uterus is a safe they can't open." In the light at the end of the tunnel, three sets of blood-stained wedding dresses hang on the archway formed by the gene chain. Each thorny brooch is engraved with a different name: Lila, Scarlett, and the "third fetus" that should have existed. When the first ray of morning light seeps in, the cells in the embryo specimen bag are dividing in the red wine. This time, they no longer follow the preset artistic script, but in the faint light of the β-carotene, they write their own double helix poem.