Chapter 35: The Amnesiac Zhu Zhaojie

by cnwebnovels

Gu Kunling’s Gu Kun Investment Company was in the heart of Zhongguan Village, not in the Gu Building—closer, in fact, to the Du Group tower. Lanqi Garden was technically part of the Zhongguan Village district, but its fame had long since eclipsed the neighborhood itself.

The Gu Kun Investment Company was still in its start-up phase. I did not have much to do, and I was an outsider to the field anyway. Mostly I sat in on meetings with Gu Kunling, listened to management reports, weighed in on proposals, and handled other odds and ends. My daily work meant approving financial reports and financial statements. Probably because when I brought down the Zhuo Group, I had started with its finances.

I hadn’t expected Gu Kunling to bring Zhu Xinyuan along. I didn’t care for him—sycophant—and back when I’d started at Kunyue, he’d been my superior. Still, Zhu Xinyuan was competent. Quick to pick things up. He wouldn’t have made department manager otherwise.

His business development numbers were solid, partly because he knew how to deploy people. At the new company, he also ran HR. Hiring fell to him.

Gu Kunling had wanted me to handle it. She knew I had abilities—no one could read people the way I could. But I wasn’t interested. We weren’t recruiting fighters. No need to be that rigorous. I rarely sat in on interviews.

About three months after the company opened, I’d just reached my office when I heard raised voices from HR. I wasn’t going to get involved, but the voice was familiar.

Since gaining electromagnetic sensing, my hearing had sharpened. Even faint sounds from far off reached me clearly. I walked toward HR.

Inside, Zhu Xinyuan was dressing down an applicant. Several recruitment reviewers stood nearby.

The applicant looked like a scolded child, head slightly lowered, voice soft but insistent. She’d placed first in both the written test and the interview, she said. She only wanted to know why they wouldn’t hire her.

I walked up to her and glanced over.

I was stunned.

Zhu Zhaojie?

Zhu Zhaojie looked at me. Her eyes were completely unfamiliar.

I knew instantly something was wrong.

I observed her through same-frequency sensing. Her cognition of me was genuinely unfamiliar. I took her application. The name read: Zhu Jie.

Zhu Jie. Zhu Zhaojie?

My first thought: clone, or bionic. But when I saw the small black mole below her jaw near her neck, I was certain. This was Zhu Zhaojie.

A clone or bionic human couldn’t have reproduced a detail like that.

I stared at her. “Do you know me?”

She looked at me, innocent, and shook her head. “No. And you are?”

Zhu Xinyuan pointed at me. “This is our vice president, Mr. Gu Beichen.”

She said timidly, “Oh. Hello, Vice President Gu. I just want to understand—I scored first on both tests, but I wasn’t hired. Before this, I applied to more than a dozen companies. None of them took me either. My results were good. I really want to know why.”

I turned to Zhu Xinyuan. He smiled apologetically, tugged my sleeve, and gestured toward the back room.

I followed him in. He pointed at the back of his own neck and said quietly, “Vice President Gu, she has installation marks here. We don’t dare hire her.”

A Wisdom Capsule.

Of course Zhu Zhaojie had one installed. She was a Sweeper operative in the Information Department. But for ordinary people, that was a serious crime. No wonder companies wouldn’t touch her.

I nodded. “Understood. I’ll handle it.”

I walked back out. “You. Come with me.”

Zhu Zhaojie followed me to my office.

I had her sit on the sofa. I sat across from her.

She looked uncomfortable, half-standing. I insisted she sit. She did.

I poured her hot tea, poured one for myself. I wanted to talk slowly.

I hadn’t seen her in so long. I was glad.

This was too much of a coincidence, though. Had the Sweepers sent her? Did it matter? I knew her background. What was there to fear? I asked softly, “Did the Sweepers send you?”

She looked at me, puzzled. “Sweepers? What’s that? A kind of fish?”

She almost made me laugh.

Sweeper fish really do exist—a kind of fish that cleans water, hardy, unbothered by filth, fond of dirty water and of lying low, surviving on other fish’s feces and waste.

Maybe that’s exactly why people called CWP by that name.

I tried again. “Do you know Zhu Shiqing?”

Zhu Shiqing was her father. Surely she knew her own father.

She shook her head.

Trouble.

Had her brain been reset? Had the Wisdom Capsule been switched to a new system? Had they modified her brain? Whatever it was, I had to help her.

I called Ye Ziping immediately, asked him to send a photo of Zhu Shiqing.

Ye Ziping had moved to Yajiang City, but he still kept photos of Zhu Zhaojie—his dream girl. He had one of Zhu Shiqing too, cropped from a group shot.

When the photo came through, I showed it to her. She shook her head.

I knew then I couldn’t communicate with her normally.

I asked her to introduce herself.

Like any job applicant, she recited her résumé by rote.

Pingdu Business College. CET-6. Student union officer. First-class scholarship. One paper, five certificates. She pulled them out to show me.

I didn’t bother looking closely. I knew they were fake. But when I held them, the documents looked authentic. Someone had forged her a new identity.

What were the Sweepers doing? I knew who she was. Why make it this obvious?

I was speechless.

Still, I was glad to see her. I asked about her family.

Both parents dead, she said. Raised by her grandmother. Last year her grandmother passed too. Fresh out of college, she’d decided not to go home. She wanted to build a career in Pingdu.

I called HR right away. Arrange work for Zhu Zhaojie.

Zhu Xinyuan was shocked, but said nothing. Just that he’d handle it. I knew he’d run straight to Gu Kunling.

I didn’t care. Zhu Zhaojie was my childhood friend and classmate. I had to look after her.

I told her stories from when she was small. She listened like they were about a stranger, even interrupting, completely unaware I was talking about her.

But when I described Zhu Shiqing searching for his daughter, eyes red from crying, drowning himself in alcohol every day, something flickered in her mind. I sensed it. But I didn’t know if it was memory surfacing or her suppressed original self-brain reacting to stimulus.

I was doing it on purpose—using what she knew best to provoke her. I wanted to wake her original self-brain.

It didn’t work.

She snapped back to her current state quickly.

A reckless idea formed. What if I brought Zhu Shiqing to Pingdu to look after his daughter himself?

After I settled her in, Gu Kunling called.

I went straight to her office.

Gu Kunling’s office had a secret room prepared for our private talks. During renovation, the walls had been specially lined with magnetic conductive materials to block electromagnetic waves and prevent Sweeper detection.

Inside, Gu Kunling looked at me. “What’s going on with Zhu Zhaojie?”

I said, “If the Sweepers sent her, it’s almost insulting. I know her inside out. It doesn’t add up. But if they didn’t send her, that’s even stranger. A Sweeper base is not somewhere you can enter and leave whenever you feel like it. She said herself members can’t leave without a mission. And someone forged her documents and identity.”

I continued. “Most likely, someone wants a nail close to me to monitor us. It’s a card face-up on the table, but I can’t refuse it.”

Gu Kunling asked, “Could she be a duplicate?”

I shook my head. “Clones can’t replicate something like a neck mole. I grew up with Zhu Zhaojie. She’s not a bionic or a clone.”

Gu Kunling sighed. “Zhu Zhaojie’s identity is this special, yet they brought her out and made it this obvious. They are plainly demonstrating power to us, or looking for trouble. I suggest you not act on impulse. It would be best not to keep her by your side. Her purpose is unclear. Maybe she has some trump card we don’t know about.”

I said plainly, “Sister Kunling, I understand. Rationally, you’re right. But I can’t abandon Zhu Zhaojie. She’s my classmate and friend. I don’t have many people close to me. Even if she’s a card played openly, I have to take her. Maybe that’s what makes my opponent so dangerous—he knows I can’t refuse.”

Gu Kunling saw I was decided. She only told me to be careful. She could feel that Zhu Zhaojie was definitely not benign.

Maybe.

After that, Zhu Zhaojie behaved like any employee. She studied humbly, worked seriously, and acted completely normal. Kept a low profile in everything. No one could fault her.

Her relationships were fine. She made two close friends.

To guard against problems, I didn’t put her in a core department like finance. I had her do business development. Hard work, good pay, lots of contact with people.

I kept watching her.

When Gu Kunling saw how closely I observed Zhu Zhaojie, she suggested we just remove the Wisdom Capsule from the back of her neck.

I refused.

I’d been to the incapacitated people’s base. I knew how cruel that was. Losing a Wisdom Capsule was worse than kicking drugs.

Drug withdrawal came in waves. Losing a Wisdom Capsule was constant. It destroyed you physically.

I’d rather let her deceive me than destroy her.