Chapter 18

The truck had been built for four. The long cargo bed at the back was covered with something like a tarpaulin. Jiang Shan watched a ramp slide down and extend in front of Wei Yuan.
She watched him push his wheelchair up the ramp and into the cargo bed. The others didn’t bat an eye. As soon as he was up, the ramp retracted.
Wei Yuan turned to look at her. “Come up.”
Only then did she understand: when he had said she would ride with him, he meant in the back of the truck. Was this what he called “riding”? She stared at the narrow, dark cargo hold. Next to Wei Yuan’s wheelchair were two neat rows of fuel drums, apparently full.
Wei Yuan sat there calmly beside the drums.
Zhang Zheng in the driver’s seat leaned out and yelled: “What’s the hold-up? You coming or not?”
Jiang Shan had no choice but to climb into the back. Wei Yuan reached out to steady her until she was standing.
Standing, she was almost level with the roof. She felt cramped and awkward. It was the 2030s—solar and new energy were everywhere. When had anyone last seen a fossil-fuel truck like this?
This was nothing like the “search and rescue” team she had imagined.
“You said you’re from what institute?” Jiang Shan asked Wei Yuan.
Wei Yuan: “… Institute of Biology.”
She was silent for a moment. “Why would a biology institute be doing a mountain search?”
In her mind, search and rescue meant 911, 119—and more than four people, one of them in a wheelchair.
Wei Yuan: “…” He didn’t know how to explain. Perhaps it couldn’t be explained.
After a long silence he said: “Maybe once we’re back in the city, you’ll understand.”
Explaining what had happened to Jiang Shan now—she probably couldn’t take it in.
The truck was a seventies-era pickup the institute had dug out of a dozen nearby scrapyards at Wei Yuan’s request, given a quick overhaul and clean, and sent on the road.
Why he had insisted on this as transport, the institute had no words.
No plane. No electronic instruments. Nothing technological or digital.
A 1970s diesel vehicle. A driver. A team medic. A mountain guide.
Driver: Zhang Zheng, 21.
Guide: Zhao Ying, 27.
Medic: Gao Wenwu, 38.
When the institute had received Wei Yuan’s list, it had looked like a joke.
But his reasoning was clear: his goal was to find out what had happened at the cave hotel and on that mountain. He didn’t need many people—the fewer, the better.
… If there were casualties, keep them to a minimum.
That reasoning left no room for argument. Besides, every agency had already sent people in. Clearly numbers were no advantage.
The search mission had not been announced to any media. Apart from the institute itself, everything was kept quiet.
To be honest, it was because no one had any hope left.