Chapter 2: The Code in the Crack
The four words, "weird about your Go stone," acted like a stone dropped into the placid, stagnant pool of Leo's mind, sending violent ripples outward. Before he could even formulate a question, the technician, whom Leo now thought of as 'Ah Zhe', was already packing up his stall with a speed and efficiency that utterly betrayed his languid exterior.
"Not convenient here. Follow me," Ah Zhe's tone was no longer that of a bored shopkeeper but of a field operative, brooking no argument. He carefully placed the white stone back into its velvet pouch, pocketed it, and began pushing his tool cart into the labyrinthine, grimy back alleys of Apliu Street.
Leo was torn. Every instinct screamed at him to resist this sudden, chaotic deviation from the known. The back alleys were a sensory assault: the wet ground reflected the grotesque glow of neon signs, and the air was a thick miasma of restaurant grease, rotting garbage, and chemical disinfectant. A drop of cold water from an ancient, dripping air conditioner landed on his neck, making him flinch. He wanted to turn and flee, to run back to the safety of his predictable world. But Ah Zhe's words, and the stone that possibly held the truth of his father's death, were an invisible hand pushing him forward.
They navigated several twisting alleyways, finally stopping before what looked like a long-abandoned, old-fashioned cafe. The paint on the sign, "Red Bean Ice," was peeling badly. Ah Zhe expertly produced a key and opened the creaking metal gate.
"Come on in. What are you waiting for?" he urged from the darkness within.
Leo hesitantly stepped inside. The interior was as he expected: coated in dust, with tables and chairs stacked haphazardly in corners. The air was thick with the suffocating smell of mildew. Ah Zhe, however, walked straight to a wall behind the counter, fumbling with a faded poster of the Victoria Harbour skyline. With a soft click, the entire wall slid silently inward, revealing a descending metal staircase illuminated by a cool, blue light.
The stark contrast between the dilapidated exterior and the high-tech interior was a visceral shock to Leo's worldview. The secret room behind the counter was less a workshop and more a subterranean data fortress. A wall of dozens of screens scrolled with data streams he couldn't comprehend. Sophisticated instruments and various disassembled, modified electronic devices lay scattered about like the entrails of strange, mechanical beasts.
"Sit, wherever," Ah Zhe pointed to a chair that looked like it had been salvaged from a defunct dental clinic, while he himself headed for the most complex-looking piece of equipment. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna charge you. My interest in your stone is far greater than my interest in your wallet."
As he prepared the instrument, Ah Zhe glanced up, his eyes catching the "white dove" stamp Leo had torn from the package and tucked into the side pocket of his backpack.
"Haven't seen that stamp in a long time," he said, his tone casual but his eyes sharp. "When I was a kid, an uncle, Mr. Li, who used to fix some weird stuff for my dad, used stamps with that mark on his letters. He was a real gentleman, a great Go player, but always seemed to have the weight of the world on his shoulders."
Leo's heart leaped. His father had never mentioned such a "friend."
Ah Zhe didn't seem to notice his reaction. He had already carefully secured the white stone onto the stage of an electron microscope. "Alright, let's see what secrets this 'A-grade fake' is hiding."
The lights in the workshop dimmed, leaving only the eerie glow of the instrument's monitors. On the main screen, the smooth surface of the stone was magnified thousands of times, appearing like a desolate lunar landscape. Ah Zhe expertly manipulated the controls, focusing on the microscopic black speck.
"Spectral analysis shows a high concentration of iron… hemoglobin…" Ah Zhe muttered, his brow furrowing deeper. "Initial conclusion: this black speck… is a drop of blood. A single drop of human blood, desiccated and preserved inside the stone by some unknown technology."
The conclusion was a lightning bolt that seared through Leo's brain. He remembered the night eighteen years ago, the blood seeping from his father's clenched fist. Could it be…?
"But it's not just blood…" Ah Zhe's voice grew heavier with a mixture of awe and disbelief. He pushed the magnification to its absolute limit. The image on the screen blurred, then snapped into a horrifyingly clear focus. Within the microscopic structure of the dried blood, they saw a scene that defied all logic.
A collection of red blood cells, instead of being randomly scattered, were arranged in a perfectly orderly, unnatural pattern, like a column of well-drilled soldiers. Together, they formed a clear, legible string of numbers.
`19 20 1 18 23 1 18`
"Insane…" Ah Zhe took off his goggles, rubbing his eyes as if he couldn't trust them. "This is… nano-scale bio-etching? Writing code with blood cells? Who the hell was your old man?"
Leo couldn't answer. He just stared at the numbers, his mind a complete blank.
Ah Zhe was silent for a long time, processing the implications. Finally, he shook his head. "Leo, this thing… this is way beyond my pay grade. I don't know what this blood or these numbers mean, but I can tell you one thing for sure: you've stumbled into something that isn't for ordinary people. I'm helping you this one time for free, call it repaying the kindness Mr. Li showed me when he used to buy me ice cream. But," he looked at Leo, his expression dead serious, "you have to promise me, if you ever figure out what this is, you come back and tell me. I am very curious about this tech."
Leo numbly nodded, sealing the "deal." He jotted down the numbers and left the secret base hidden beneath the cafe, his mind in a complete daze.
His world was in turmoil. His father hadn't committed suicide. He had left behind a code, written in his own blood. But what did it mean? Who had the power to do such a thing? And what was the "White Dove" organization?
He wandered aimlessly, and before he knew it, he was back at the Sun Wah Cafe. He needed a place of order, of stability. He saw that the table he'd sat at this morning was empty, and the newspaper he'd left behind was still there.
He sat down and instinctively picked up the paper, his eyes falling on the half-finished crossword puzzle.
And then, his breath caught in his throat.
Next to a few of the clues he didn't understand—something about classical music and ancient history—was a string of numbers, lightly penciled in, almost erased. The handwriting was definitely not his.
The numbers were: `19 20 1 18 23 1 18`.
Identical to what he had seen in the drop of blood.
Leo's hands, holding the newspaper, began to tremble violently. A bone-deep chill shot up his spine. He snapped his head up, looking out the window.
Across the street, standing in the shadows of an empty alleyway, was the old man who played crossword puzzles every day. He wasn't looking in Leo's direction. Instead, he was holding an ancient-looking Nokia phone to his ear.
Leo couldn't read his lips or hear his voice. But he could feel the old man's gaze, an invisible, ice-cold scalpel that cut through the bustling crowd and landed squarely on him.
He realized, with a sickening certainty, that he had never been playing his own game.
He had always been a piece on someone else's board.