Chapter 220: Artificial Organs (9) |
“Are we going inside now?” Anthony asked Robert in a nervous voice.
“Wait here. There’s someone we’re going to meet here,” Robert said.
“Meet someone? The person who sent you the blueprint?”
“No, that information was a stroke of luck that we didn’t expect, but we weren’t sitting on our hands either.”
“You already have someone on the inside?”
Robert nodded with a faint smile on his face.
Ding!
Soon, the elevator stopped at the fifth floor of the basement, and a middle-aged doctor stepped off. There were two unexpected things: one was that the doctor was a woman, and the other was that she was Chinese.
“Hey.”
“Is she Chinese?” Anthony asked in surprise.
“No, I’m American,” said the woman as she held out her hand toward Anthony.
Anthony shook her hand, a little surprised.
“But my parents are Chinese. I’m Chinese-American. My name is Nancy Zhang.”
“...”
“Why?”
“No, I’m just so surprised. A doctor at the Xinjiang University Hospital in China is a CIA agent…”
“I used to work as a doctor in Beijing. I’m pretty good, so I was the attending physician for some high-ranking people in China. Got some good information, too.”
“But why are you here now?”
“You’re curious about a lot of things. You can’t write these things in Nature, okay?”
“... Of course.”
“The internment camps in Xinjiang Uygur were set up a few years ago, and they were spotted by satellites. It’s gotten a lot of attention recently, but intelligence agencies have been keeping an eye on the region for a long time before that. That’s why I moved to Xinjiang University Hospital two years ago.”
“Then… Did you do any… transplants?”
“No.”
Nancy shook her head.
“I was looking forward to it, but unfortunately, they didn’t let me. It would have been so much easier to gather evidence if they’d let me, even once.”
“Why not? I thought you attended to high-ranking people. Are you not a surgeon?”
“I’m a hepatobiliary surgeon, but I don’t have a lot of experience with surgeries like liver transplants. Some of the high-ranking officials who’ve come here over the years are people I used to treat, but they didn’t ask me to do it,” Nancy said. “Other than that, well… Some traditional Chinese dignitaries didn’t want to let a female doctor lead their life-saving surgery. I also don’t have a lot of experience, so they don’t use me.”
“...”
“For that reason, Anthony, from now on, you’re going to be the doctor performing the liver transplant surgery on Fei Hung, one of the lieutenants in the Public Security Bureau. I’m just there to assist you, okay?”
“Oh… Okay.”
“Let’s go if you’re done introducing yourselves. It’s almost time,” Robert said.
“Time?”
“The time when all the underground guards are gone. The sixth floor and below are closed down, and two guards are on duty in front of the elevator. It’s when there’s the least security.”
* * *
Robert’s team moved to a space behind pillar J43 in the parking lot on the fifth level of the basement. It was the most secluded spot in the large parking lot.
“It’s here.”
Robert pulled out a small electronic device out of his bag and set it up behind the pillar.
“What is that?” Anthony asked.
“It’s an interference device. Security will radio for help when we go in.”
Click.
Robert activated the device and pushed on the side of a concrete wall. His fist slid in with the sound of stones grinding. Robert grabbed the wall and pushed it aside. Inside was a large elevator, a desk, and two guards.
“Who are you?”
The two guards stared at them in surprise.
“Good evening, we have surgery scheduled for the patient here, code name ‘SB7084.’ This is the patient’s attending physician who is here to perform the surgery.”
Nancy introduced Anthony to the guards.
“... Oh… We weren’t told anything. The basement is closed as a rule at this time,” said one of the security guards.
“It was an emergency. The patient’s liver is getting more cirrhotic and fluid keeps building up, and that’s why you weren’t told beforehand. The patient’s in stable condition for now, but they need a transplant urgently. They are in the emergency room right now, you can go check.”
“They are in the emergency room? Why didn’t they come here to do the surgery?” “They are in very critical condition, so they were taken care of in the emergency room. But we can’t move them here now. Radio someone and check right now.”
“Alright.”
The guard picked up the walkie-talkie on his desk and dialed a number.
Pzzz…
But all that came out was static.
“What’s going on…”
The two security guards turned it on and off a few times, but it didn’t work.
“Is the radio not working?” Whittaker asked.
“...”
“Haha, small-town security guards. Can’t even take care of their own equipment.”
Robert laughed.
“What?”
“Why? You got a problem with me?”
Robert glared at the guards with a frown.
“We’re busy people. I’m sorry, but we don’t tend to take up time here. Move,” Robert said, showing them his Public Security Bureau ID.
“A foreigner is in the Public Security Bureau? And there’s three of you? And we weren’t told about this situation,” the guard said, glaring.
“Is it weird that there are foreigners here? When we speak perfect Chinese?” Robert asked.
“...”
Robert frowned terrifyingly.
“Listen, you two. The person who is waiting for surgery right now is a key member of the foreign intelligence gathering of the Ministry of Public Security. We are informants who have done covert operations in Western countries, going through life-and-death events together. We’re the ones who brought his British doctor back here.”
“This… This is the doctor?” the guards asked, pointing at Anthony.
“That’s right.”
Anthony nodded.
“Did you say you were from Britain? Then, you are not allowed inside because you are a foreigner.”
“Because you can’t tell us that the donor is alive and well?”
Anthony quickly rebutted.
The guards looked surprised.
“It seems like you harvest the donor’s organs and hand them over just to perform the surgery when external doctors come, but you don’t have to complicate things for me. I’ll do the harvesting myself, which will cut down on the time and minimize tissue damage.”
“Uhm…”
As the guards panicked, Robert spoke.
“I brought him here because he’s trustworthy. He’s helped VIPs with their operations, and he has connections with the Public Security Bureau. Open the door.”
“B-But… We can’t open the door without confirming your identity,” the guard said, stammering.
“The patient had hepatitis B since the first time I saw them,” said Anthony. “They were jaundiced, had portal hypertension with a bleeding varicose vein, and he was in a critical condition. We kept losing time because we didn’t have a histocompatible donor. And now, they have severe ascites, and their blood albumin and fibrinogen are low. Now, they’re in a hepatic coma.”
“...”
“Hepatic coma. Do you know what that means? Their liver function is so impaired that they are losing consciousness, and they are suffering behavioral and neurological damage. We need to operate on the patient right now because the clock is ticking.”
“Donor B78551. Right?” Robert asked.
The guard opened an Excel sheet at his desk and checked the codenames.
“Y-Yes…” said the guard.
“We know this much top-secret information, and you can’t trust us? Or fix that crappy radio or something. Run to the emergency room or security in the main hospital building.”
“... We can’t leave our post, so…”
“What should we do?”
As the guards hesitated, Whittaker interjected.
“How about this? We don’t need you to open the door to the sixth floor. We have the top security card, and the only person who can issue them is Director Mei Weisun. How about that? Now, you have something you can trust.”
“You have a security card?”
The guards looked surprised.
“The director gave it to us because she was worried that you guards would be alerted by three foreigners. Can we go in now?”
“...”
The two guards glanced at each other and then nodded.
“Then go inside. But we will report this once this gets fixed.”
* * *
“That was nothing,” Robert said as they went down the elevator.
“What are you going to do about the security card?” Anthony asked.
“We don’t have a security card. Even Nancy doesn’t have a way of forging one.”
“Doesn’t that mean we can’t get into the sixth floor?”
“There are medical personnel who go in and out of the sixth floor regularly, and we recently kidnapped one of them.”
“Kidnapped them?”
“We timed it well and kidnapped them while they were on vacation, so the hospital doesn’t know yet.”
“So you took his security card?”
“No, security cards are not allowed to leave the building,” Robert said.
Anthony complained in frustration.
“Then what the hell did you do?”
“We don’t have the card, but we do have a fingerprint.”
Robert pulled something out of his bag.
Anthony almost screamed in horror because it was a human finger.
“Y… You cut… You cut off a finger…”
“We were going to cut all ten, but he was crying and begging, so we only cut off his index finger,” Robert said.
“Don’t worry, I took care of it, so he won’t die,” Nancy said. “But he won’t be able to hold a scalpel anymore, so he won’t be able to harvest organs anymore.”
Ding!
The elevator arrived on the sixth floor of the basement. The four approached the door, and Robert put the finger on the scanner.
Bleep!
The door opened.
“Take out your camera now,” Robert said. “You can’t spend too much time. From now on, you’ll go back to being a journalist and photograph everything in sight. I’m going to rescue the donor.”
“I’ll go with Agent Whittaker to the secure document library and get a hard copy of the organ transplant ledger and the coded customer data.”
Nancy pulled Whittaker’s arm as she walked toward the westbound corridor.
“O-Okay.”
The four people moved quickly. Anthony felt sick to his stomach at the disgusting scene inside the sixth floor of the basement. The people were locked up, basically being treated like livestock.
But Anthony was focused on his job as a journalist and focused his efforts on capturing their stories on his camera. He took several photos of the donors and the operating rooms.
“Please!”
“I’m sorry! Please help me!”
“I won’t rebel at the camps now!”
The sound of crying and begging was making Anthony dizzy. Meanwhile, Robert found the donor and rescued them. He gave them a short summary of the situation.
As they were all completing their assigned tasks, something unexpected happened.
Bleep! “We need iris recognition!” Nancy shouted in panic.
“Fxxk… I thought it was the fingerprint or the iris!”
Whittaker let out a deep breath.
“It’s because we opened the donor headquarters with this fingerprint. The security keys have to be different,” Nancy said.
“What a shitty security system.”
“What do we do?”
“What do you mean? We have to go back. Don’t be greedy, Nancy. We have pictures of this place, and we rescued the donor. That’s enough for us.”
“Damn it. It was a nuclear weapon, but it just became dynamite.”
“... Nothing we can do.”
It was when the two turned away in disappointment.
Bleep!
Click.
The door to the secure document library opened.
“...”
Whittaker and Nancy’s eyes widened. The iris scanner was now open.
“What?”
* * *
—Phew…
Rosaline covered her forehead like she was a little tired.
‘Did it work?’
Young-Joon was rolling his feet as he was sitting in the lab.
—Yes. I temporarily recreated the iris pattern by clumping 3.8 million of my cells together. But I’m very tired.
‘... Good work. Let’s go home and rest.’
Young-Joon smiled.
—But will they let us leave?
‘I was in the lab all day, right? There’s a record of my entry, and there’s CCTV footage of me.’
—But they will cause trouble once they find out that the donor was stolen, as well as the important ledger. Even if you have an alibi, they won’t let you leave.
‘Let’s see. They won’t be able to do that.’
Young-Joon grinned.
Rosaline was right. The next morning, Mei Weisun was furious that Young-Joon expressed his intent to go home when the hospital had been turned upside down.
“W-Where do you think you’re going? You can’ leave now. Stay a little longer,” Mei Weisun said.
“The experiment is over. They are all infected with the virus.”
“... There is an urgent matter at the hospital right now, and you can’t leave. I won’t call the police, so please stay put.”
“Urgent matter? What is it?”
“...”
“It’s also urgent that I return home.”
“What is it?” asked Mei Weisun with a frown.
Young-Joon showed her his phone. It was an artificial heart that the Life Creation Team had made.
“You know the President’s situation, right?”
“...”
“He doesn’t have much time. I have to get back to A-GenBio right now, finalize the contract, and send the artificial heart.”
“B…ut…”
“Is that urgent matter more important than this? Explain it to me. I will help you if you need.”
