Quangang District, Fujian Province, China
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS Jian Zhang had made a remarkable recovery from the bullet wound to his chest that he had sustained on the Lieyu Island raid. Remarkable, at least, by conventional standards. But there was nothing conventional about the men of China’s secretive Project 49. Outwardly normal in appearance, if a little larger and more muscular than their compatriots, what lay beneath their skin was a living laboratory where scientific engineering and nature came together to break every existing rule of human genetics.
The high-velocity round that had slammed into his pectoral muscle that night would have kept an average adult human in hospital for weeks, perhaps longer with complications. It would then be months before they recovered the full use of their arm and they might well experience pain, trauma or even infection for some time afterwards. Not so PFC Zhang. The artificial respirocyte red blood cells injected into his bloodstream, with the painstaking genetic engineering that had made him the twenty-first-century ‘super soldier’ he was, combined to speed him on his way to a rapid recovery. By the end of the second day Zhang was up and walking around, arm in a sling. Later that night he threw the sling into the bin and requested to be returned to his unit and active duty. The hospital staff exchanged anxious glances and were initially reluctant, but they were overruled by a uniformed officer who turned up from Zhang’s unit bearing a very impressive ID card. Within minutes he was discharged, leaving by the back door, and ushered by the officer into a waiting military jeep.