Shi Huaiyang faded quickly after that. His speech became fragmented, looping back over the same grievances — unfairness, resentment, things done to him and things he'd done — until it stopped entirely, ten minutes later.

Shen Cong moved the body aside and organized what he'd learned.

His understanding of the death-eaters had sharpened considerably.

Zhao Zilong — the Holy Mother. He turned the name over, expression unreadable, then walked over to Yuan Changjiang and began the second interrogation.

Yuan Changjiang didn't hold out long. Tears, pleading, and then everything he knew.

At the beginning, the Radiation Laboratory had been directed by a member of the Academy of Sciences. His assistant was Professor Zhao Yang — formerly of Nanjing University's School of Life Sciences, mid-forties, vigorous, deeply committed to his research on metal radiation. C1 Mutagen had been developed under his sustained advocacy.

The development had met fierce opposition. Extracting lymph fluid and cerebrospinal fluid from human patients killed the patients immediately. The Command, concerned about civilian morale, had shut down the C1 project.

It continued anyway, quietly, under the authorization of several senior leaders who had other ideas. The support base was smaller than before, and Zhao Yang resented the constraint. His daughter Zhao Zilong had been born with leukemia. Zhao Yang had been hoping to develop a refined C1 that could cure her. When her condition worsened, he had administered the unfinished version to her out of desperation.

To secure more resources and support for perfecting C1, Zhao Yang had taken a calculated gamble: he covertly administered C1 Mutagen to several senior military leaders who came in for routine medical examinations.

These were the first death-eaters.

The gamble paid off. The enhanced leaders didn't kill him. They accommodated him instead, giving him resources to develop a more complete version of C1.

Until the day an iron person who had lost his sister brought a nuclear warhead to Baguazhou and ended the Radiation Laboratory.

In the aftermath, the death-eaters split into two factions. Zhao Yang, unwilling to see his life's work destroyed, began planning retaliation. The senior military leaders among…