First-Class Lawyer

Thick fog rose upon Fa Wang District in the early morning, and the view was obscured by grey as far as the eye could see.

During the morning rush hour, ghostly apparitions flickered across the city garden, and any photo cursorily taken would depict a zombie siege enshrouded in mist. 

While waiting for Gu Yan to get his photon computer, Teacher Yan sat on the arm of the sofa and panned the lens of his smart device, shooting a blockbuster horror movie…

Only to accidentally shoot a tall, ghostly apparition barging up to their door.

Yan Suizhi closed the hologram and padded to the door in slippers, then upon opening the door, received a great fright at the ashen white complexion and massive eye circles that greeted him.

“Miss Fitz?” Yan Suizhi was astonished. “What’s wrong? Do you feel unwell?” 

“Mm… I’m running a fever.” Fitz opened her mouth and what came out was a stuffy, nasally voice. She sniffled, rubbing her temples. “I did something stupid yesterday. I got home late and was too tired, so I fell asleep in the tub again. When I got up in the morning, I looked like I walked out of a horror flick—ah-CHOO!”

“…Again?”

Fitz, “Yeah, again. I committed the same folly in the past too, but lucky for me, I woke up freezing midway. This time I soaked in the tub till day—ah-CHOO—break.”

Yan Suizhi, “…”

Seeing her totter on her feet, Yan Suizhi supported her arm, his brows furrowing in worry. “You’d better come in and sit.”

Fitz feebly flapped her hand. “No, it’s fine. I came to hitch a ride.”

By chance, Gu Yan had come down during their conversation. At first glance, the mist outside cloaked the face in and out of sight, almost causing him to think that Yan Suizhi’s disastrous luck had netted him a ghost.

He paused for two seconds before processing the sight. “Fitz?” 

Fitz peeked out, asking weakly, “Gu, are you going to the hospital to see your client today? Give me a lift if you are, my space car’s anti-fogging system hasn’t been fixed and the autopilot isn’t working either. It’s for the greater good, and I don’t really dare to drive myself either.”

Without a word, Gu Yan strode out of the door and pressed on a control on his smart device. The matte black car pulled to a stop right in front of Fitz, and he even considerately opened the door for her like a gentleman.

“My god, the back seats are already cut to comfort mode?” Fitz clutched her heart, scooting into the car. “You guys are so sweet; you’re going to make it impossible for me to find a boyfriend.”

“No, the comfort mode has always been on, it wasn’t especially changed.” Lawyer Gu considerately helped her to lower the difficulty of finding a boyfriend by a few points. 

“How can that be? I saw with my own two eyes that it was in normal mode just a few days ago. Don’t try to pull one over your friend just because she’s feverish.” Miss Fitz flaunted her keen observation skills.

Gu Yan stared at this friend of his in speechless silence for two seconds, then pulled open the portable medical box, pointing at it. “Take some medicine.”

With that, he readily helped her shut the door.

She was sick after all, so once on the car, Fitz stopped chittering but accepted a cup of warm water, quietly settling in on the back seat. 

Conversely, Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan were somewhat unused to it and would occasionally glance at her through the rearview mirror, making sure that she hadn’t swooned from her fever.

“Gb sbe uesr kjca ab rmgffc boo atf ogbca jcv yjmx rfjar?” Coafg rbwf alwf bc atf gbjv, Mlah atfc atbeuta bo atlr, tfg ygjlc ijuulcu. “P’w rmjgfv P’ii rqgfjv ws ufgwr ab sbe.”

“Gbc’a kbggs jybea la,” Tjc Velhtl rjlv klat j rwlif, “Pa vbfrc’a gfjiis wjaafg fnfc lo kf mjamt la jcskjs; kf’gf ublcu ab yf mbbqfv eq lc j tbrqlaji lc atf mbwlcu vjsr, lo kf ufa j ofnfg, kf mjc pera gjlrf j tjcv jcv atfgf’ii yf j vbmabg ja tjcv ab pjy er.”

“Bah,” Fitz slapped her mouth. “Don’t jinx it. Having a fever feels terrible.” 

“But speaking of which—you’ll be staying in a hospital in the coming days? You’re not going to ignore that client anymore?” Fitz said, “A manager was still expressing emotively yesterday that a client with that kind of temper needs your kind to give him the cold shoulder and make him panic. Then he’d know better than to beat around the bush.”

Gu Yan slid a look at her through the rearview mirror. “Those at the office are still talking about this?”

“Of course; it’s such a high-profile case. Upper management and the high-level partners in the firm are all very interested.”

Fitz perked up so much talking about gossip that her dark eye circles lightened. “Didn’t you guys hang that client out to dry a few days back when you went travelling across the universe on business? The hotshot partners are getting restless in their seats. They’ve even asked your manager Adams if you intended to win this at all and whether you were going to make proper preparations. They’d hauled me aside to ask, too, simply on account of us being neighbours.” 

“Really?” Yan Suizhi said, “It can’t be that serious, right? Southcross isn’t a small firm, what manner of major law cases have they not seen?”

Fitz said, “Wasn’t there a murder at the last reception? It affected our firm’s image quite badly. They’re probably hoping to recover the momentum with this one big case, which is why they’re direly wishing they could force you to throw yourself wholeheartedly at this case, working at it around the clock. I told them that you’re off checking out evidence to build a defence to keep them from worrying over nothing.”

—

Spring Ivy Hospital was surprisingly busy this morning. 

Gu Yan received a comms right as he walked through the entrance, from the police officer in charge of watching the client, Horace Lee.

“Yes speaking,” said Gu Yan. “Something has cropped up so I might have to push the meeting back by half an—”

“Don’t push it, don’t push it!” Fitz was scanning her smart device to get a queue number, and hearing this, she shooed them. “I’ll be fine just going in to see the doctor, you guys go about doing your thing, you don’t have to waste your time with me.”

Whatever that was said on the other end, Gu Yan hummed in acknowledgement, then said to Yan Suizhi, “Follow Fitz, I’ll head over to check on Horace; there’s been an unforeseen situation.” 

“What situation?”

Gu Yan cut the line. “It wasn’t specified; they only said that he wanted to cancel the meeting.”

This situation wasn’t actually uncommon to lawyers like them. They had a wealth of experience in handling it, nor could it be considered anything too troublesome.

After informing them of this, Gu Yan left. Yan Suizhi accompanied Fitz to the consultation room. 

As the doctor strapped a basic vital signs reader onto her, he asked, “What caused your fever?”

And so Miss Fitz retold her impressive feat of falling asleep in the tub.

The doctor frowned when he heard this. “You slept through the night just like that? Doesn’t your partner know to wake you up?”

Fitz pouted. “I’m single and available; there’s no one else at home, so how could anyone have found me?” 

“My mistake.” Having only glanced briefly at Yan Suizhi, the doctor had likely mistaken him for Fitz’s boyfriend.

The doctor coughed awkwardly, then said, “But don’t do this next time. All else aside, it isn’t good for your complexion. It’s really too dangerous for you youngsters to be living alone.”

As this old doctor fretted unendingly for Miss Fitz, Lin Yuan’s voice suddenly came from the door. “De—this is surprising. Ruan Ye?”

He’d gotten used to calling Yan Suizhi ‘Dean Yan’ recently and his mouth nearly slipped. Luckily, he saved it in the nick of time, changing it to ‘this’. 

Fitz darted a look over at him, then asked Yan Suizhi, “A doctor you know?”

“Mn.” Yan Suizhi raised his hand in greeting to Lin Yuan, explaining to Fitz, “A specialist that Teacher Gu found to consult regarding Horace Lee’s pathological condition and its implications.”

Then, Yan Suizhi came out of the consultation room, closing the door behind him.

Lin Yuan knocked his head in vexation, chagrined. “I haven’t gotten any sleep all night; my mind isn’t functioning right and I almost called the wrong name.” 

“It’s no issue,” Yan Suizhi wasn’t very concerned. “It’s just a matter of time. Have you ended your shift?”

“Yeah, Curly Hair has come to the office for his shift. I’m going back to sleep it off a bit.” As Lin Yuan spoke, his eyes darted to the left and right, then, making sure that the corridor was empty, he whispered, “I’ve been staring at it all night. That gene segment is harder to wrangle with than I thought; I can’t see anything wrong from the analysis data alone. There’s still around 30% remaining to be analysed, but…”

Frowning, he gave a preemptive warning, “I’m afraid that you’ll be disappointed when you see the findings. The amount of information that can be distilled is quite limited.”

Yan Suizhi didn’t seem surprised by this. He considered it and suddenly asked, “Generally when doing genetic experiments… if the base is specified, can the developmental pathway be predicted?” 

Lin Yuan was unable to make sense of his thought process. “What do you mean?”

“I was trying to figure out something all of last night,” Yan Suizhi said.

He was thinking—if the surgery that he and his parents had undergone had been treated by the Manson brothers as experiments, then it should yield the Mansons’ early-stage product.

Their initial objective was to stimulate ‘genetically-coded addiction’ and not death. Therefore, his parents should have been considered failures by the Mansons. 

Then what about him, who had survived?

At face value, he had not shown any of the so-called symptoms of ‘drug dependency’ in all that time, so he shouldn’t be considered a success case.

However, would the Manson brothers really take a failed product to heart after more than two decades had passed?

Yan Suizhi sorted his thoughts the whole night and came up with a possibility: “The gene segment existing in my body might not be a success, but it’s no less important than a successful product; it might even be of higher importance.” 

“How so?” Lin Yuan recalled Yan Suizhi’s previous question and received divine inspiration. “Are you talking about the base?”

Yan Suizhi nodded. “Right. It’s possible that their subsequent research findings were all built on that segment. So, I want to ask, if given a base, is it possible to forecast the future direction? If there’s such a possibility, then I see why the other side has set a target on me.”

After having pulled an all-nighter, Lin Yuan’s reactions were a little belated. He took two seconds to digest what Yan Suizhi said, then waved his hand. “It’s not very feasible. Even if we have a starting point, there are simply too many ways it can diverge for it to be predicted.”

Yan Suizhi said, “Not only the start point but also the end point. There are countless ways it could go, but what the Manson brothers wanted is only one of them.” 

Lin Yuan was stunned for a while before suddenly slapping his forehead. “You’re right! They just want one outcome, so there’s also an end point! If that’s the case…”

He took a moment to ruminate over it, and elation spread across his face. “Yes, yes you can! Machines can simulate it! I’ll get started right—”

“This doesn’t have to be done now.” Yan Suizhi patted him on the shoulder. “Go back and get some rest first. I’ll have to trouble you in the future.”

After sending Lin Yuan off, Yan Suizhi returned to the consultation room. 

Miss Fitz had just collected two fluid bags, her face pulled longer than a donkey’s.

“You need to get an IV drip?” Yan Suizhi asked.

“Yeah,” said Fitz. “I asked if there was any way to bring down my fever within the hour, so the doctor shoved me two bags of these. God knows how terrified I am of IV drips.”

“Why do you have to bring your fever down within the hour?”Yan Suizhi was puzzled. 

Miss Fitz spoke with conviction, “That’s because if I arrive at the office before ten, I can have hope of claiming my full-time bonus this month.”

Yan Suizhi, “…”

“Furthermore, if the fever takes too long to break, then I’ll have to take leave.” Fitz winked. “And if that happens, I’ll hear less gossip, and what a waste that would be.”

Yan Suizhi, “…Your spirit is commendable.” 

This young lady was nicknamed Southcross’ information hub, for good reason; her passion for miscellaneous tidbits was incomprehensible to most.

After settling Fitz down, Yan Suizhi was about to go over to check out how Horace Lee’s side was progressing. To his surprise, he bumped into Gu Yan, coming out of the elevator.

“Why are you back so soon? What’s the situation?”

Expressionless, Gu Yan said, “Our client, Mr Horace Lee, gets a kick out of harassing women. He refuses to let nurses inject him for no apparent reason, insisting on playing a game of catch. Purportedly, he made a nurse break into angry tears and an officer to storm off in anger. The police have now decided that he’s deliberately prolonging his treatment, and have filed an application to the prosecutor’s office and the courthouses before notifying me. It’s highly likely that the date of the trial will be brought forward, but we’ll have to wait for the official notice to know when exactly.” 

Rage nearly drove Yan Suizhi to laughter. “…What expired medicine did he eat to sabotage himself like that?”