The heavy rain turned the traffic lights at the intersection into blurred spots of light. When Elvira wiped away the wet hair stuck in front of her eyes, she tasted the smell of rain mixed with motor oil. The truck that ran the red light three minutes ago was loaded with refrigerated containers from the Neumann Group, and the rearview mirror was pasted with a photo of the floor where her mother was hospitalized.
"You said you would walk me to the subway station." She shouted to the figure in the rain, her canvas shoes sinking into the mud on the edge of the manhole cover, "At least tell me what the string of numbers means!"
The hem of Lucas's windbreaker was dripping with fluorescent blue liquid, as if he had just crawled out of a culture chamber. The remote control in his right hand kept making low-frequency beeps, and every vibration made the scar on Elvira's collarbone twitch: "11.05 is the date of your rebirth, and it is also the last lunar eclipse--"
The sound of sudden brakes tore through the rain curtain. The truck suddenly turned around and rushed onto the sidewalk, and the wolf head decoration on the bumper cracked, ejecting the spinning chain saw blade. When Elvira was knocked down by Lucas, the back of her head hit the fire hydrant, and the silver leaf bookmark slipped from her collar, exploding a small arc of electricity in the puddles.
"Run!" Lucas's mechanical arm hurt her ribs. "There's a ship at the East Side Pier—"
The bang of the truck smashing the fence of the flowerbed covered the second half of the sentence. Elvira was thrown into the green belt, and the broken holly branches pierced her palm. She saw Lucas leaping towards the truck, and the silver lines on his back burst into a dazzling light. The eight-ton steel behemoth was forced to stop for two seconds.
These two seconds were enough for Mrs. Audrey's voice to penetrate the rain curtain: "Honey, look who this is?" The roadside advertising screen switched to the ward surveillance. Elvira's mother was twitching, and fluorescent blue bubbles were rolling in the infusion tube.
Lucas's mechanical eyes suddenly spun out of control, and his right hand uncontrollably grabbed Elvira's neck. Veins popped out on his forehead, and the micro-speaker at his Adam's apple emitted a distorted voice: "I have never loved... a lowly..."
The necklace began to shrink, the crescent pendant digging into the scabbed scar. Elvira stabbed the hydraulic pipe in Lucas' elbow with a holly branch, and blue-green oil splashed into the transparent window of the container - twelve of her clones were neatly stacked inside, each wearing a broken replica of the necklace.
When the truck accelerated again, Lucas' fingers suddenly released their force. The thorn pattern deep in his pupils faded away, and the mechanical hand quickly dismantled the armor plate on his chest, pulled out the silver chip wrapped with wires and pressed it into her palm: "Swallow it! This is memory..."
The roar of tires rolling over the water drowned out all other sounds. The moment Elvira was knocked away, Lucas's hand passed through her long hair and clasped the back of her neck, his five fingers digging deep into her skin. A silver-blue light flowed out from their intertwined fingers, like living liquid metal drilling into her blood vessels.
The muffled sound when landing was very light, as if falling into the clouds. Elvira saw her blood winding into constellation patterns in the rain, and the necklace fragments floating in the air formed the profile of Lucas. The crisp sound of shattering glass came to her ears, and all the clones in the container opened their eyes at the same time, with a fluorescent blue countdown beating in their pupils.
Mrs. Audrey's high heels crushed the nearest necklace fragment: "What a pity, the transformation was only three minutes away." She bent down to pick up the blood-stained silver leaf bookmark, and the broken diamonds at the wolf's eye suddenly exploded, revealing a miniature camera lens.
Elvira's vision began to turn red, and the chip implanted by Lucas felt hot in her stomach. She moved her fingers to touch the nearest clone, and the body suddenly spasmed and grabbed Audrey's ankle. In a chain reaction, all the clones began to melt, and the fluorescent blue liquid seeped into the water on the ground, forming a huge wolf-shaped totem covering the entire block.
As the sirens came closer, Lucas's broken mechanical arm suddenly twitched. His right hand, which had been broken into parts, pointed to the southeast night sky, where there was an unusually bright silver star. Elvira used her last bit of strength to turn over and saw her reflection in the puddles - the scar on her clavicle was oozing out light mist, which gradually condensed into a crescent-shaped halo.
"Your memory... is on the satellite..." Lucas' vocal cords made a hissing sound before they melted, and were then swallowed up by the heavy rain.
The necklace fragments on the edge of the pool of blood suddenly floated, forming an incomplete constellation map. The last scene Elvira saw before her pupils dilated was Lucas's holographic projection standing up from the fragments and covering her eyes with his hand: "Go to sleep, and you will be reborn the next time you open your eyes."
As the revolving lights of the ambulance swept across the scene, Mrs. Audrey was collecting the light mist with a test tube. The advertising screen behind her flashed a news bulletin: Neumann Group successfully launched its first genetic satellite, and the orbital parameters were exactly the same as Elvira's birthday numbers.
In the cracks of the floor tiles under the accumulated water, Lucas's mechanical fingers were still trembling. The micro-projector on his fingertips projected the final information on the wall: when the fluorescent blue liquid of the twelve clones evaporated, the real rebirth program would be activated in space - Elvira's consciousness data stream was crossing the ionosphere and rushing towards the silver satellite.