On her third day on the job, when everyone else was out for lunch, the only thing staring at Li Qian was the faux dinosaur skull. This was important, as the lab computer account had access to Professor Ouyang's files – as well as admin rights so they could install the necessary software without calling for the IT department's help – and Li Qian was in a mood to snoop. Professor Shen had trusted her with his email passwords so she could look at the email attachments for him; it turned out that the habit was hard to break, even if Professors Ouyang and Zhou had heeded the siren call of email clients that were not terminal applications.
A surprising wave of nostalgia hit her. For a moment, she considered abusing admin privileges and installing Alpine on the lab computer (and snooping through Professor Shen's emails), but it'd take at least two days to customize the interface to what Professor Shen had used, and she had actual work to do.
Professor Ouyang had been very good with his passwords and other security, but the account with which the lab computer had access to the Department of Supervision internet and hard drives was Professor Ouyang's, which meant that the lab computer's access to the S drive was the exact same as Professor Ouyang's access. And the S drive was where everything was: lab notebooks, experimental results, planning documents – and personal folders.
Three double-clicks later, Li Qian was staring at Professor Ouyang's files. There was a file called CV.pdf (though really, who kept theirs on a work server?), a folder for copies of his own published articles, more folders for articles and books he wished to keep on hand for later reference, and a folder very enticingly called “plans".
The outer door whirred open and Li Qian had to abandon her snooping. Her tracks – little as they were – had been completely covered by the time Professors Zhou and Ouyang walked in.
“What are you still doing here?” Professor Zhou asked. “You should go eat. Surely Shen Wei taught you to take better care of your body!”
“Yes, Professor,” Li Qian said as Professor Ouyang started complaining about Professor Zhou always bringing up Professor Shen. It was very easy to duck out.
She stayed at work late that day. There was a legitimate reason – someone had to keep an eye on the reaction and clean up after it was done – but mostly she just wanted uninterrupted snooping time.
Gao Yulong was staying in longer than usual, cleaning up and organizing reagents. She opened Cell's web page and browsed through the new articles. They didn't have access, of course, but the DOIs were freely available and Sci-Hub had a perfectly functional DOI search to go with its vault of pirated articles. She settled in to browse summaries.
“You okay? I could stay and baby the reaction,” Gao Yulong suggested.
“No, it's all right; it's not like I have anything to do at home,” Li Qian said with a smile. “You go on ahead.”
“If you're sure,” he replied. “Night!”
“Night!”
She finished reading Jia Na et al's Large-Scale Comparative Analyses of Tick Genomes Elucidate Their Genetic Diversity and Vector Capacities to make sure he'd truly left and didn't need to come back for his jacket or something. Then, to get in the mood, she decided to open Professor Shen's email in a private browsing window.
The Outlook web app took forever to load, as always. A quick scan of the headings revealed the typical drek that made it into the inbox of an academic whose email was available on a public-facing website: a few machine-translated messages that claimed their authors were sexy women (improbable measurements enclosed) who'd met the recipient abroad and wanted his credit card number out of the depths of their loves, a few machine-translated messages that claimed their authors had inherited staggering sums of money they would be willing to share if the recipient could but transfer a paltry sum to their account first, a horde of messages from the editors-in-chief of no doubt scam journals titled things like Academic Journal of Scientific Advances soliciting articles, and a second horde of messages inviting the recipient to dubious conferences unaffiliated with any institute of repute. The department secretary had asked Professor Shen to fill in a Word form, too, to which he'd replied that as he hadn't been able to open the attachment in Emacs, he'd rather do it on paper.
Li Qian smiled. That was definitely Professor Shen, all right.
No-one else was present, and the only sounds in the lab were the air conditioning, the lab computer, and the whir of the magnetic stirrer under the fume hood. Time to go poking.
Once again, Professor Ouyang's private folder opened up. She double-clicked on “plans” and read the files list.
No subfolders, just a spreadsheet named protos.xlsx and a few Word documents with names like Untitled Document (2).docx. The spreadsheet had the most informative name, so she opened it in read-only mode.
The spreadsheet had four columns: Name, Built, Location, and Budget. The names given to the various prototypes were all uninformative alphanumeric codes, hopefully explained in the Word documents. “Built” was a simple yes/no, the location for most of the prototypes was “destroyed” – with a few in an “office” – and the budget cells had the currency units tagged on, every single one of them, which made the cells text cells rather than number cells and thus meant it was impossible to do half the things one would put one's budget in a spreadsheet for. Li Qian had to tamp down the urge to fix it.
She scrolled through the file, making note of which were in some manner of storage, home or office. Then her eye caught on an entry.
DS46843LW's location wasn't “destroyed", “office", “home", or the blank of unbuilt items. It was “unknown".
Interesting. The budget was moderately large, too.
Li Qian opened the first of the untitled Word documents. Time to find out what this DS46843LW was, and why Professor Ouyang had had it built.
An hour and a half of reading through Professor Ouyang's dense shorthand notes on projects, Li Qian found her answer in Untitled Document (4).docx. DS46843LW was a prototype for a weapon that could kill Dixingians from afar, like the rest of Untitled Document (4).docx's proposals, though this one had been built, unlike the robotic rats designed to seek out dark energy and gnaw Dixingians' ankles, or the machine gun harnesses designed to be mounted to deer and operated from afar. No, this was some sort of orbital laser weapon, taking advantage of improvements in optics to rain down death on suspected and confirmed Dixingians – but only when it was sunny.
Li Qian read the rest of the notes. Professor Ouyang had begged for approval to build one repeatedly, only to be turned down every time. The prototype had come between the second and third rejection and was no doubt unauthorized.
She tapped her fingers on the tabletop. A death ray was a serious thing indeed, and one in an unknown location, to boot... It would be best if she alerted authorities.
The question was, how to alert them? She had no cachet with Professor Ouyang's superiors, and anything with her name on it would have dire consequences on her reputation besides. She'd gotten in enough trouble career-wise by burning out of her PhD. So it would have to be anonymous, or through someone who would want to protect her.
Professor Shen's email was still open. Perfect.
Li Qian recalled he was now collaborating with the Special Investigations Department, whose Chief she'd met – he was a decent sort. Zhao Yunlan, that was it. And as the Special Investigations Department belonged under the aegis of the Department of Supervision, his email address was in the address book.
Department Budget Billing Codes Update, she titled the email, then attached all the contents of Professor Ouyang's plans folder. Now, she still needed a sufficiently innocuous message body... Please see attached spreadsheet's Location column for details. There.
She pressed send, logged out, and cleared the browser cache. That wouldn't clear the router logs, of course, but all the passwords of the Department of Supervision building came from the lab, so it wasn't that hard to log on to the main router, wipe the communication with the Dragon City University email server off the logs, wipe her presence on the router off the logs, and log out.
Next... Well. Who knew what Professor Shen – or Chief Zhao, she supposed; Professor Shen had no cause to look at his outbox – would do with the information. In the meanwhile, she had a job.
The timer beeped. She got up and turned off the magnetic stirrer, then poured the reagent into the reagent bottle and cleaned everything up.
Her fourth and fifth days on the job went similarly. On Saturday, she woke up, brushed her teeth, dressed, ate breakfast, and realized this was the start of the weekend.
She sat down on the couch and tried to figure out what regular people did on weekends. She knew what regular people did at work, and thus could work well enough, but her weekends before had been taken up with taking care of her grandmother. After that, she'd spent a few months in an exhaustion fugue, staring at the walls while occasionally crying. She suspected regular people didn't do either of those things on their weekends.
Her cellphone rang; she almost dropped it pulling it out of her bag. The clock claimed she'd been up and awake for over half an hour without noticing. The number wasn't one she'd saved to her contacts, but then again, they were pretty empty now.
“Hello?” she said.
“This is Zhao Yunlan of the SID,” the reply came. “I'm talking to Li Qian, I presume?”
Her heart hammered in her chest. “Yes, that's me.”
“I don't suppose you'd have anything planned for the weekend?”
“I don't.” She had no idea where this was going, but hopefully it'd beat staring out the windows all day.
“Good!” Chief Zhao's shit-eating grin was audible. “I assume you still live in the same place?”
“Yes...”
“We'll pick you up in half an hour,” he said. “Dress for athletics.”
Before Li Qian could ask for any sort of clarification, he'd cut the call. She let herself sigh before dragging herself back to the bedroom to swap her white palazzo pants for track pants with zippers on the pockets. They were decent enough, even if the black didn't go that well with any of her tops. The sneakers she'd have worn anyway.
Half an hour after the call, she was waiting outside the door, trying not to pace. She'd gone through her pockets five times already, making sure she had her wallet, phone, and keys with her; she thought if she did so again she'd just drop something on the pavement, and that wouldn't-
A large, attention-grabbing monstrosity of a vehicle pulled up in front of her. It had been dark the last time she'd seen it, but she thought it was what Chief Zhao drove around in.
The passenger side window slid down, revealing Professor Shen. “Good morning, Li Qian,” he said with an all too familiar awkward smile. “Get in the back, and we'll explain as we go.”
“Of course, Professor.” She clambered onto a rear passenger seat.
Chief Zhao gunned the engine before she'd managed to get the seatbelt on. It was just her, Chief Zhao, and Professor Shen. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“It turns out that your Professor Ouyang did build a death ray,” Chief Zhao said, “but he didn't put it in orbit. Something about clouds?”
“Clouds would absorb and reflect the laser beam to a degree that would've made it useless for its intended purpose on overcast days,” Professor Shen explained. “The Mie scattering of the laser beam would've made its presence obvious and disrupted nearby air traffic.”
“So he put it on some sort of blimp instead,” Chief Zhao finished. “Now it floats beneath the clouds and the ray's only out of action when it's raining.”
“Oh.” Li Qian tried to digest the implications. “Does anyone have access to it?”
“I asked Lin Jing to search, and apparently it's not necessarily active, but it's still in the air and, uh...”
“The plans include a note for a radio receiver,” Professor Shen said. “It is conceivable Professor Ouyang could still hold the matching transmitter.”
So there was a death ray floating around above Dragon City, and it had been there for ... Li Qian didn't know; Professor Ouyang's notes hadn't said when it was built. “What are you going to do now?”
“Capture it, of course!” Chief Zhao declared.
“We'll disable it,” Professor Shen said what might have been rebuke.
“...what do you want me for?”
“Shen Wei thought you might enjoy a bit of adventure,” Chief Zhao said, “so we decided to bring you along. And besides, Lin Jing'll be busy flying the airplane, and another techy type would be nice.”
“The airplane?!” Li Qian asked, too busy panicking to cringe at how her voice shot to the stratosphere.
“The apparatus is airborne,” Professor Shen said. “As humans cannot fly unaided, we'll use technological means.” He sounded like he'd forgotten how to speak to Li Qian and as a consequence was trying too hard to be professional.
“That ... makes sense,” Li Qian said. She still didn't have the faintest clue as to why they wanted her to come on their high-adrenaline high-stakes mission, but she supposed it might be something to do with her being the one to alert them to the death ray in the first place.
They drove out of the city and into the surrounding fields. Li Qian saw more grass than she had ever imagined seeing at once. Dimly, she wondered about the genetic diversity – a monoculture, or a more natural mix of species brushing up against each other?
Another road came up; Chief Zhao went left in the intersection. The pavement soon ended, leaving them bumping slightly along the dirt road.
“Is that it?” Professor Shen asked after a while.
“That's it – Dragon City Airport,” Chief Zhao said. “The old one,” he added when Li Qian squinted at what was at best an absence of grass with a low building next to it. “This one used to be the civilian airfield, but then the Air Force got moved around to Cold City and the plebs got to use the airfield with actual asphalt on the runways.”
“How long ago was that?” Li Qian asked; as far as she remembered, Dragon City's airport had always been on the other side of the city and decently large.
“I don't know, that's what Lin Jing read on the internet,” Chief Zhao breezily said as he parked the car on a seemingly random patch of grass. “Anyway, it's been used for small aircraft, and Lin Jing's got us a ride. Let's get on it!”
Li Qian stumbled out of the car and trotted after Chief Zhao on the uneven grass. Professor Shen stopped and waited for her, which meant that Chief Zhao stopped, too, waiting for Professor Shen. She felt more chagrined at delaying things than glad to be waited for.
The low building turned out to be some sort of aircraft hangar. Three silvery planes, various degrees of beat-up, were in there; the newest-looking one had the pilot's door open.
“Hey, Lin Jing!” Chief Zhao hollered.
“Almost ready!” a tall, bespectacled man with an electrocuted mop of hair replied. He must be Lin Jing; Li Qian had heard Professor Ouyang mention teaching someone of the name and wondered whether they were the same person. She'd have to listen.
“We'll start packing,” Chief Zhao replied. “Where are the supplies?”
“Back left corner,” Lin Jing replied before disappearing back into the cockpit. “The plane's fueled, so don't set anything on fire,” he added.
Chief Zhao rolled his eyes and set off to a large pile of – something – with Professor Shen. Li Qian hesitantly followed.
“We have some tools, a tracking device, parachutes, and safety gear,” Professor Shen patiently explained, like he'd patiently explained airport security to Li Qian on her first – and only – trip to a conference. “Here, put on the goggles and flight jacket. Is this your size?”
“Will we need to jump out?” Li Qian asked nervously as she accepted the windproof jacket Professor Shen handed her. It was worn, but fit well.
“It's a safety measure lest you fall out,” Chief Zhao said. “Don't worry, you'll be strapped in, but we can't just let promising young scientists fall out of planes, can we?”
Li Qian felt a fake smile rise to her face as doubts rose to her mind. She doubted she'd count as a promising young scientist, after she'd burned out of her PhD. Chief Zhao was just trying to spare her feelings, and also Professor Shen's, who'd chosen her from all the applicants and gotten nothing on the time invested.
Well, one published article, and a second one that was probably at least in peer review. But the purpose of professorship was to take on students in an apprenticeship of sorts, and as Li Qian had failed as apprentice, so had Professor Shen as teacher.
“Would you help carry the toolbox?” Professor Shen asked.
“Oh, yes, sure,” she said. She picked it up – it was heavy, but she'd carted heavier pieces of equipment around at wor- in Professor Shen's lab. It didn't take long to move it to the plane.
There were two movable stair sets, one for the cockpit, one for the main space. Li Qian heaved the toolbox up the second one, shoulders burning.
She paused for breath at the top of the stairs. The fuselage of the plane had a loading space with sliding doors on both sides; there were a number of places to tether things to and four seats with seatbelts, two of which were forward-facing. She hauled the toolbox next to one of the tethering hooks. Hopefully Professor Shen and Chief Zhao would have some idea on how to tie it up.
“You got it? Great!” Chief Zhao said as he brought some sort of tarp up the stairs. “Let's tie it down and then get this rolling.”
“I don't have any tethers?”
Chief Zhao made a very expressive gesture of realization, then unfolded the tarp to reveal a large quantity of ropes of various colors, as well as cargo straps in a similar technicolor spread. He picked out two ropes of a similar color and set out tying the toolbox to two tethering hooks.
“Everything done?” Professor Shen asked.
“Almost,” Chief Zhao said as he tied the final knot. “There!”
Outside, Professor Shen was moving the stairs out of the way. Li Qian helped Chief Zhao pull the tarp and its contents to an enclosed rear compartment before he helped Professor Shen up into the plane.
“Put on the safety harness, please,” Professor Shen said, then led her through the multi-part instructions: first the harness over her jacket and trousers, then attach the harness to the floor with a long tether, after which he tied a parachute to her, sat her down on one of the seats, and hovered over her while she buckled herself in. She felt vaguely embarrassed to be in need of such assistance.
Meanwhile, Chief Zhao had closed the doors. They were lit only by the gentle yellow glow of the overhead lights. Li Qian wondered for a moment why they hadn't been replaced with LEDs, then decided it must be due to the usage rate not being worth the cost of hiring someone.
“We're done,” Chief Zhao said once he and Professor Shen were similarly ensconced. “Get it rolling, Lin Jing!”
The engine hummed, and suddenly the whole plane started vibrating. Li Qian hadn't liked the way the larger planes started vibrating when she'd flown to that conference and back; this was comparatively much more intense and immeasurably worse.
No-one else was panicking. That meant this was fine, didn't it? She hoped the plane wouldn't shear itself apart.
Then the plane noises became even louder, and there was a sensation of motion, and Li Qian did her best not to yelp. She failed.
Professor Shen must've heard, for he yelled “It's all right,” over the din.
Li Qian felt chagrined and wondered again why she'd been brought with. Did they imagine there was some sort of code on the device that only she'd be able to crack due to her brief association with Professor Ouyang? Or was this all an excuse for Professor Shen to check in on her? Would the SID try to recruit her from the Department of Supervision lab if she performed adequately at this fieldwork?
Somehow, she doubted it was the latter. And even if it was, she wouldn't perform adequately on the fieldwork.
The plane rolled forth on the slightly bumpy terrain, turning this way and that, before settling down. The humming increased in volume.
Abruptly, Lin Jing gunned the engine – the plane was rocking and trembling against Li Qian, buzzing vibrations hitting her thighs and buttocks and pooling an uneasy heat in her groin as blood flowed to a false positive. The plane bumped along the runway and she tried not to think about her physiological reaction as she was pressed into her seat.
The bumpiness smoothed out and the plane's vibrating changed into something less distracting. Li Qian exhaled, loud yet unheard in the din.
Chief Zhao unclipped from his seat. “All right, time to hunt down the death ray!” he declared. “Lin Jing! The signal's coming from the East!”
“We have a tracking device,” Professor Shen explained. “It works via radio waves.”
“Professor Ouyang's plans contained a rudimentary steering system,” Chief Zhao added. “It's meant to stay in range of Dragon City, so it gets its location from cell towers, but also by pinging Professor Ouyang's transmitter to make sure it's in range.”
Li Qian thought for a moment. “Won't he notice if the transmitter stops pinging?”
“He put the location as unknown, so he's probably forgotten where his death ray firing button is,” Chief Zhao said. “And we'll leave the radio parts operational. There should be no change visible to his end after we've excised the death ray bits – just that it won't fire.”
“The buoyancy,” Professor Shen pointed out.
“Well, that. But it's not like we can attach weights to it; what if they fall off and flatten someone?”
Chief Zhao and Professor Shen then settled into an argument on how likely Professor Ouyang was to notice the change in buoyancy, occasionally punctuated by Chief Zhao yelling headings for Lin Jing. The argument felt well-worn, as if they'd been having it or similar ones for years already. Li Qian felt even more like an outsider.
For long minutes – less than an hour – nothing changed. Then, Lin Jing said, “I have visual.”
“Bring it up on our left,” Chief Zhao said, argument forgotten. He and Professor Shen unbuckled themselves. “Get out of the seat, student.”
Li Qian bit her lip rather than remind him she was no more a student; she saw Professor Shen wince as well. She concentrated on unbuckling herself and then tested the tether. It held from both ends.
“Ready?” Chief Zhao asked; at Li Qian's nod, he opened the door.
What had previously been a steady hum changed into a roar of wind and turbulence. Cold air whipped her face with the fury of a frozen storm.
Ahead, she could see the silver swell of a weather balloon. “It's there!” She pointed.
“We'll bring it in, then cut out the death ray bits and release the rest to the winds,” Chief Zhao said, holding on to a railing on the ceiling. It was too high for Li Qian to reach.
“The balloon won't fit inside.”
“We'll keep the door open. We only need to touch the payload.”
Li Qian thought this was a terrible idea, and they should've just shot down the balloon instead or something, but she was here and this was the plan. She took hold of the toolbox and very carefully opened it. Side cutters and screwdrivers would probably suffice; alternatively, they could just smash the lenses. That might make it overheat if it attempted to fire, which would make it explode in a ball of shrapnel, given the general quality of Professor Ouyang's prototypes.
The balloon loomed larger. Chief Zhao was yelling instructions to Lin Jing, while Professor Shen had his hand stretched out. There was no way it'd be enough – the balloon could hit the wing and Professor Shen still wouldn't have enough reach-
They were almost upon the balloon. Li Qian could see the payload – a large plastic block with a line beneath – and the distance to Professor Shen's hand. He'd never reach it.
Abruptly, darkness flickered, and then the line was in Professor Shen's hand. “I have it.”
Li Qian decided she could deal with the fact that Professor Shen was an alien later and grabbed side cutters and screwdrivers in a few probable sizes. She rushed over and handed the side cutters to Chief Zhao while Professor Shen was busy holding the line and payload inside.
The wind whipped her stiff fingers as she poked at the plastic case. Held together with Philips screws, she noted, smallish. She took the M6 screwdriver and got to work opening the thing up.
The communication bits and the small solar-powered engine were on the top of the compartment. Then there were some ailerons attached to the casing, but the bulk of it was lens array.
“I think the LiPo battery looks swollen,” Li Qian noted. It was a large one, too. She knew lithium polymer batteries could spontaneously combust if they overheated, or leak the electrolyte, and this one was already damaged.
Chief Zhao nodded wordlessly and started snipping wires in a methodical order. His hand was steady, despite the wires themselves shaking between Professor Shen's grip on the line and the winds that buffeted the balloon outside. She, meanwhile, swapped her Philips screwdriver to a hex key to unscrew the internal mounts.
These weren't M6. It took some fumbling to get the correct size hex key, with her hands stiff from the cold and having to put the unused tools in her pockets lest they fall down as death on the landscape below.
“There,” Chief Zhao said. He cut the final wire.
The line ran from the balloon down through the casing. The lens assembly was just slightly off-center, with the power pack on the other side.
“I think we can slide it off if we open those two joints and cut that wire,” Li Qian suggested.
Chief Zhao nodded. “Good call.”
This was harder – the angle was awkward, and the hex keys Li Qian had didn't have rounded ends to help with loosening things. She stuffed her hand into a small space that barely fit it, joggled the key until it hit against the head, and turned.
It felt like it bit. She yanked the key out, put it back to where it had room to rotate, joggled it until it found the hexagonal indentation, turned. Repeat.
The screw came out with a clatter. Li Qian hurriedly stuffed it in a pocket and went to work on the other one.
As that one had more room to maneuver around it, it came out faster. She and Zhao Yunlan gently slid the death ray assembly out, doing their best to mind the flapping line.
“Should we close up the casing?” Li Qian asked.
“No,” Chief Zhao replied. “Get clear of the line.”
Li Qian took several steps backwards, all the way to the toolbox. She heard Chief Zhao shout something to Lin Jing – a warning, likely – and Professor Shen start reeling out the line.
There wasn't much left in his hands when the winds tore at the balloon and whipped the line from his hands. Professor Shen jerked forwards, off-balance, blood dripping from his hands. “Professor Shen!” Li Qian cried out, at the same time as Chief Zhao shouted, “Shen Wei!”
“I'm fine,” Professor Shen insisted.
Chief Zhao closed the plane doors. The comparative silence was deafening.
“Professor Shen?” Li Qian asked, testing the sound of her voice. “Are you all right?”
He smiled much like he had after being thrown off the roof into the bushes and showed his hand, free of so much as a grip mark. “I'm fine.”
A bit too fine, in fact. Li Qian numbly nodded.
The death ray. She should disable that.
Thankfully, the LiPo battery unclipped smoothly, leaving the laser source without a power source to drive it. They didn't have a nonflammable pouch for the clearly swollen battery, so Li Qian tucked it under the free chair while Chief Zhao told Lin Jing to bring them back and Professor Shen tied down the death ray apparatus.
The way back started out silent. Some manner of silent communication passed between Professor Shen and Chief Zhao as the plane rolled to the side.
“Why didn't we fasten up the case?” Li Qian asked.
Chief Zhao and Professor Shen jolted out of their eye contact. “This way, it looks like the death ray died of natural causes,” Chief Zhao explained. “A rusted screw or something.”
That made sense. “Ah.” Li Qian nodded. The pattern wouldn't be terribly convincing – no shearing of the plastic – but if Professor Ouyang waited a few years before looking at it, it mightn't raise too much suspicion.
Landing somehow was even bumpier than takeoff. Li Qian's stomach jerked forwards into her mouth as she was thrown forward in her seat.
A few moments of slow, bumpy rolling over the ground later, the motors turned off. Chief Zhao and Professor Shen started opening their safety harnesses. Li Qian hurried to emulate them.
“Lin Jing, put everything back in place, plane included,” Chief Zhao shouted, then started unfastening the death ray. “We're taking the death ray.”
“What, everything?” Lin Jing complained from the cockpit.
“Absolutely everything,” Zhao Yunlan confirmed.
Lin Jing made a loud noise of despair. Li Qian couldn't help but feel for him.
Chief Zhao and Professor Shen took the death ray and lowered it down to the ground. Now that she knew to look, Li Qian couldn't help but notice him using what must be dark energy to stabilize the system as they lowered it.
She was on the ground. She could freak out about that now, right?
Instead, she took the LiPo battery and hopped down onto the ground. She landed awkwardly, pain momentarily shooting through her ankles.
“Will you take this to the SID?” Professor Shen asked.
Chief Zhao shrugged. “Might as well. Besides, Lin Jing might be able to repurpose some components.”
Professor Shen nodded, then turned to Li Qian. “It's almost lunchtime. Would you like to join us?”
The offer of not having to cook or figure out which place to order from was very tempting. However, this was her former thesis supervisor, whose research group she'd crashed and burned out of, and who was also an alien illegally on the surface.
“It would be nice to catch up,” Professor Shen continued.
“The lab's research is classified,” Li Qian tried to object. She didn't know if the wanted to object.
Professor Shen smiled gently, like he were just the supervisor she'd grown fond of. “What you can tell, then.”
But he was just the supervisor she'd grown fond of, wasn't he? He'd been a Dixingian all that time. Every piece of advice, every kind word, every concerned question – they had all come from the mouth of an alien. Someone Professor Ouyang would call a monster should he know.
No wonder he hadn't gone to the Department of Supervision with its variety of projects, all of which were guns to point at his people's heads. Even the risk of accidental exposure to the latest biological agent would be too great.
“Sure,” Li Qian said. “But we should dispose of the battery properly. It's damaged and might spontaneously combust.”
Professor Shen stared at the battery before gingerly picking it out of Li Qian's hands, as if she might die from the smallest lick of flame while he were a fire-retardant pouch. Perhaps he was – he'd only have the one Dixing power, but there were certain things that were inherent to anyone with Dixing powers. Perhaps being fire resistant was one of them. Perhaps so was being fall resistant.
“We'll drop it off at the SID and bring you off to lunch,” Chief Zhao said. “Come, let's get in the car.”
Li Qian took off the borrowed gear and followed them. She let them strap the death ray next to her and tried not to worry about the LiPo battery in Professor Shen's jacket pocket.
Chief Zhao turned the key in the ignition and pulled out of the makeshift parking lot. The road was bumpy beneath them.
Li Qian looked behind her, at the grassy fields and small airplane hangar, and second-guessed her choices. There was no way but forward. The question was, which way was forward?
Perhaps she would find out. Or, if nothing else, she'd muddle through. That she trusted herself to do.