12: Chapter 12 A Monumental Lie

"Of course I'm familiar with it. I made it."

Chen Feng stuffed the last piece of cookie into his mouth, brushed the crumbs off his hands, and looked up at Ford. His tone was as casual as if he were commenting on the nice weather.

Ford didn't respond. Instead, he took a recording pen from his briefcase, pressed the switch, and placed it in the middle of the table. The red indicator light flickered on.

"Formal interrogation. Time: 2:37 PM. Subject: Chen Feng, legal representative of Maple Leaf Biopharmaceutical Company. Interrogator: Special Agent James Ford of the Biochemical Crimes Investigation Unit, FBI Los Angeles Field Office. Personnel present: Sergeant Sarah Mitchell of the South District Precinct."

After finishing the preamble, Ford opened a black notebook.

"Basic information. Full name?"

"Chen Feng."

"Age?"

"Twenty-four."

"Nationality?"

"Citizen of the U Federation, born in Los Angeles."

"Educational background?"

"California State University, Los Angeles. Bachelor of Science in Biology, dropped out. I was one semester short of graduation when something happened at home."

"Business scope of Maple Leaf Biopharmaceutical Company?"

"The registration says research, development, and sales of biological agents. As for actual operations—well, you've seen it. What kind of business could a dump like this possibly run?"

Ford's pen tip glided across the paper, noting down every answer. Chen Feng cooperated perfectly, answering exactly what was asked, neither more nor less, with a steady speaking rate and even breathing.

These were all standard formalities. Chen Feng knew the real knives were about to come out.

And indeed they did.

Ford closed his notebook, interlaced his fingers on the table, and leaned forward slightly.

"Mr. Chen, we have recovered an unregistered drug from multiple channels in the South District, known on the market as 'ruisu'. The Federal Criminal Identification Laboratory and our own lab have performed a full analysis—the active ingredient is a completely new alkaloid derivative with zero matches in the global drug database. Its molecular structure contains four previously undescribed chiral centers and targets at least four signaling pathways, one of which is unknown."

He paused, staring intently at Chen Feng.

"You just said you made this. So my question is—how did you make it?"

Chen Feng didn't speak immediately.

He picked up the cup of cold instant coffee on the table, took a sip, and set it back down.

Then he asked a question that seemed completely unrelated.

"Agent Ford, before I answer, I need to confirm something first."

"What is it?"

"What is your security clearance level?"

The air in the room suddenly seemed to stop flowing.

Standing by the door, Sarah's brow furrowed. The hand Ford used to hold his pen froze, the tip suspended just above the paper, never descending.

The red light on the recording pen continued to blink.

"Why are you asking that?" Ford asked.

Chen Feng leaned back into his chair, which let out a sharp creak. His right index finger tapped twice on the tabletop, neither fast nor slow.

"Because information regarding ruisu falls under the confidentiality scope of a Ministry of Defense advanced R&D collaboration project. If your clearance level isn't high enough, I have no obligation—nor the authority—to disclose any details to you. It's not that I don't want to cooperate; I'm simply not allowed to."

Silence.

Three seconds.

Five seconds.

Ford's gaze was pinned to Chen Feng's face, as if he wanted to flip over every single pore and examine it. Chen Feng's expression didn't change in the slightest—for someone who had spent seventy-two consecutive hours staring at petri dishes and data in a laboratory in his past life, the muscles in his face had long since forgotten how to twitch.

"Are you implying," Ford's voice slowed down, "that ruisu... is a project of The Pentagon?"

Chen Feng didn't say yes, and he didn't say no.

"What I'm saying is that Maple Leaf Bio is currently participating in a drug R&D collaboration related to the federal defense system. Specific details, the identity of the partner, the project number—it's not convenient for me to disclose these in any setting without authorization."

He reached out and took another cookie, breaking it in half.

"You can use your own channels to verify this. It's not like the FBI doesn't have communication channels with the Ministry of Defense, right?"

Ford didn't respond immediately. He set his pen down and closed his notebook. This action indicated he was re-evaluating the man in front of him.

A tiny, three-person company on the verge of bankruptcy had created something that didn't exist in global databases. Three minutes ago, this was 'illogical' in Ford's eyes.

But if The Pentagon was standing behind it—then it became logical.

The Ministry of Defense running secret drug research projects using an inconspicuous small company as a shell was hardly a novel concept in Washington circles. The more inconspicuous, the better; the more dilapidated, the less attention it drew.

"Then what about the drugs circulating in the South District?" Ford asked. "How did those test tubes get from a 'Ministry of Defense project' into South District black clinics?"

"They didn't just 'get there'; I put them there. Drugs in the R&D stage require real-world data. No matter how beautiful the lab data is, the FDA won't look at in vitro results alone. You need people using it; you need real clinical feedback."

"So you just took them to the streets to sell?"

"It wasn't selling," Chen Feng corrected him. "It was small-scale informal human observation. The special populations of the South District—the uninsured, those with status issues, those regular hospitals won't take—they have high injury and illness rates, zero medical records, and no system can trace them. This was part of the project design, not a decision I made on a whim."

He spoke with an eerily flat tone, as if he were reading a project specification sheet.

But everyone present understood exactly what those words meant.

Using the people at the bottom of the South District as test subjects.

No insurance, no identity, no records. Disposable once used, with no trace of their existence.

Sarah's fist tightened against the doorframe.

"Chen Feng."

She used his full name.

"What are you saying? You're using the people of the South District as lab rats?"

Chen Feng turned to look at her.

That look was so calm that Sarah's anger was momentarily choked back.

"Sarah, the medicine I gave them cured injuries and illnesses they couldn't have afforded to treat in their entire lives. Furthermore, not a single one had a side effect. Not a single case."

He paused.

"If you want to call them test subjects—the people in the South District waiting in line to be those test subjects would stretch from Old Tom's clinic all the way to Seventh Avenue."

Sarah opened her mouth but found no words.

She knew in her heart that what Chen Feng said was the truth. Those people really did get better. ruisu really worked. And the poor in the South District truly had no other choice.

But 'the truth' and 'being right' were two different things.

She wanted to argue, but found she couldn't find a single solid point to stand on.

Ford did not interrupt their exchange. He watched the confrontation between Chen Feng and Sarah, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Then he stood up, turned off the recording pen, and put it in his pocket.

"Mr. Chen, that is all for today's questioning."

Chen Feng looked up at him.

Ford pushed his chair back to its original position, picked up his briefcase, and stopped at the door, turning back.

"I will verify every word you've said. I'll send an inquiry to the Ministry of Defense tonight. If what you said is true, then there is no problem between us."

He stared into Chen Feng's eyes.

"But if you are lying—a federal felony indictment will be delivered to you within twenty-four hours. It won't be the ten-year version for manufacturing and selling counterfeit drugs. It will be for the unauthorized development of unknown bioactive substances, twenty years, plus fraud for impersonating a defense system project, another five years."

Chen Feng nodded. "Fine. Go ahead and check."

Ford gave him one last look and pushed the door open to leave. The sound of leather shoes on old wooden floors echoed in the hallway, followed by the stairs, and then the iron gate on the first floor being pulled open.

An engine started, and the car drove away.

Sarah didn't leave.

She stood at the door, looking at Chen Feng with a complex mix of emotions—anger, confusion, and a worry she was reluctant to admit to herself.

"Chen Feng."

"Yeah."

"You'd better not be lying to me."

Chen Feng set down the remaining half of the cookie and brushed his hands.

"When have I ever lied to you?"

Sarah stared at him for three seconds.

She didn't answer. She turned and left.

The door closed behind her. Her footsteps faded into the distance.

The entire office fell silent, save for the hum of the refrigerator motor next door and the occasional sound of Da Hei's claws scratching the floor downstairs.

Then, a rustling sound came from under the table.

Tony crawled out from beneath it.

His face was as white as printer paper. Before the questioning began, he had said he was looking for a pen that fell under the table; he had crouched down and hadn't come back up, huddling there for a full twenty minutes.

"B... Boss."

"Yeah."

Tony stood up, holding onto the edge of the table, his knees buckling. His voice sounded like a leaking tire. "Do you really... have a collaboration with The Pentagon?"

Chen Feng rotated the creaking old chair half a turn to face the window.

Outside the window was the dusty skyline of Third Avenue. Telephone poles leaned at odd angles, the fire escape of the building opposite was rusted, and a pigeon sat on the windowsill, tilting its head to look at him.

"What do you think?"

Tony's face went from white to green, then from green to gray. He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again.

"Are you saying... you're saying everything you just said was..."

"I didn't say anything." Chen Feng interrupted him, turning the chair back to look Tony in the eye. "You didn't hear anything. You were under the table looking for a pen and heard nothing. Understand?"

Tony's lips trembled twice.

"Understood."

"Go give Da Hei an extra meal."

"Oh... oh, okay."

Tony turned to walk out, his legs as soft as if he were treading on cotton. At the door, he looked back at Chen Feng once more.

Chen Feng already had his feet propped up on the desk. He picked up the cup of cold instant coffee and tilted his head back to drain it while looking at the ceiling.

Tony wanted to say something, but in the end, he said nothing, closing the door as he left.

The sound of him tripping and nearly falling came from the stairs.

Chen Feng set down the paper cup, and the calm, composed expression on his face finally fell away.

He looked down at his right hand.

His fingers were trembling slightly.

The past twenty minutes had been the biggest gamble of his life—of both his lifetimes combined. The Pentagon project, the Ministry of Defense's confidentiality scope, the security clearance levels—all of it was fabricated. Every word, every sentence, from start to finish, not a single punctuation mark was true.

Ford would send an inquiry to the Ministry of Defense tonight to verify.

The result of that verification would, of course, be 'no such project.'

But that didn't matter.

What mattered was what would happen after that inquiry was sent.

When the people at the Ministry of Defense saw keywords like 'unknown bioactive substance,' 'zero matches in global databases,' and 'simultaneously targeting four pathways,' what would they think?

They wouldn't simply reply 'no such project' and return the letter. They would keep reading. They would wonder—is this thing real? And if it is, why isn't it in our hands?

A drug that can make a fracture's swelling disappear in three minutes—would the military not be interested?

Battlefield pain relief, combat trauma emergency care, rapid anti-inflammation—any one of those would be enough for the Ministry of Defense's procurement department to hold three rounds of meetings.

So Ford's verification inquiry wouldn't receive a simple 'no.' It would enter a process—a process that required time. Someone would make calls, someone would hold meetings, someone would request to review the FBI's lab reports, and someone would ask, 'What is the background of this Maple Leaf Bio?'

These processes take time.

And time is exactly what Chen Feng needs most.