Chapter 276: Chips and Scales

At seven in the morning, the alarm did not go off; Lin Chen woke on his own. The swelling in his left foot had already spread above his ankle. The skin was stretched shiny, and when he pressed it with the pad of a finger, it did not rebound, leaving only a shallow pale indentation behind. He sat on the edge of the bed and slowly pulled up his cotton sock. The fabric rubbed over the red, swollen skin, bringing a fine prickling pain. He did not frown; he only made his movements gentler, as if handling a fragile piece of code. The pain-relief patch had been changed last night, but its edges had already curled. He tore it off, wiped away the seeping tissue fluid with an alcohol pad, and put on a fresh one. There were only three left in the drawer, and they expired next month.

On the induction cooktop in the kitchen sat half a pot of plain congee, with half a plate of leftover pickled mustard tuber beside it. He ladled out a bowl and swallowed two ibuprofen tablets with warm water. A faint sourness rose in his stomach, but his mind cleared. His phone screen was lit; in the notes app was a list of materials to bring to the fund office today: data inventory, computing-power budget sheet, V1.2 false-positive-rate review report, and the revised term sheet. He checked the USB drive and paper documents once, then packed them into his backpack in order. The sound of the zipper closing was crisp in the quiet rental apartment.

Line 3 of the subway during morning rush hour was packed like a sardine can. Lin Chen gripped the handrail and tried to put his weight on his right leg. The carriage was filled with a mingled smell of soy milk, perfume, and damp umbrellas. He closed his eyes and ran through the logic of the upcoming negotiation in his head. What Zhao Qiming wanted was certainty and an exit path; what he wanted was a clinical window and control over R&D. The two did not conflict, but they required clearly defined boundaries. He did not need to convince the other party to believe in the technology; he only needed to make them believe the risk was controllable. The logic of capital was probability; his logic was fault tolerance.

At nine forty, he arrived at the office building where the fund was located twenty minutes early. The marble floor in the lobby was polished enough to reflect people, mirroring his slightly hunched gait. He bought a bottle of mineral water at the convenience store on the first floor, sat in the stairwell by the fire exit, and sorted the paper materials in order. At ten sharp, he pushed open the glass door on time.

Zhao Qiming's office was on the twenty-eighth floor. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows was a gray, hazy city skyline. In addition to Zhao Qiming, there was a financial due-diligence lead in a dark gray suit and a legal counsel wearing glasses.

“Mr. Lin, have a seat.” Zhao Qiming pointed to the chair opposite him, his tone level. “I read the terms email. Changing the technical veto right to a right to be informed plus an objection period is acceptable. But for the liquidation preference column, the exemption for ‘clinical delays caused by non-subjective fault’ needs to have a cap added. The extension can be twelve months at most, and during that period the company may not incur any new external debt.”

Lin Chen opened his notebook, the tip of his pen resting on the paper. “Twelve months is acceptable. But new debt needs to distinguish between operating liabilities and financing liabilities. Hospital cooperation payments for multicenter clinical trials, ethics review fees, and computing-power leasing fees are rigid operating expenditures and should not be included under the financing-liability restriction. Otherwise, the R&D pace will be strangled by cash flow.”

The legal counsel pushed up his glasses and recorded it quickly. Zhao Qiming glanced at him and did not argue, merely nodding. “Reasonable. Finance will update the model.”

Lin Chen pushed over the USB drive and paper list. “This is the desensitized list and feature-dimension description for the three hundred multicenter cases. The computing-power budget is calculated according to the current model parameter count. The training cycle is forty-five days, and the peak requirement is eight A100s running in parallel. The budget sheet is on page three. If the due-diligence team moves in next week, we will need to open read-only access to the code repository and temporary access keys for the server logs.”

The financial lead took the list and flipped through it quickly. “What about proof of compliance for the data annotation? Is the authorization chain for the patients’ informed consent forms complete? The National Health Commission is inspecting this very strictly now.”

“Complete,” Lin Chen replied. “All data has been approved by the ethics committee of Municipal Second Hospital, and the authorization chain has been preserved on the blockchain. During due diligence, we can provide scanned copies of the desensitized original authorization documents. But for original medical records involving patient privacy, under the Data Security Law, they cannot be copied offline. Due-diligence personnel may review them on the internal-network terminals we designate.”

Zhao Qiming leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping lightly on the tabletop. “Lin Chen, you’re very meticulous. But what capital looks at is efficiency. The due-diligence team will move in next Monday. I hope to see complete financial statements and a list of intellectual-property ownership before Friday. Also, synchronize the progress of the clinical filing once a week. If it gets stuck, we’ll need to activate the backup plan.”

“Understood.” Lin Chen closed his notebook. “I’ll synchronize the filing progress by email before five p.m. every Friday. The financial and intellectual-property lists will be sent to the due-diligence email before close of business this Friday.”

The meeting lasted forty minutes. There was no fierce confrontation, only word-by-word confirmation of terms and repeated calibration of boundaries. When he left, Zhao Qiming walked him to the elevator. “Lin Chen, in medical AI, slow is fast. But slow can’t turn into dragging your feet. I recognize your team’s technical foundation. Don’t trip over the process.”

“Thank you, Mr. Zhao.” Lin Chen nodded. The elevator doors closed, and the metal walls reflected his slightly weary face.

By the time he returned to the rental apartment, it was already two in the afternoon. Su Man was not there. There was a note left on the table: “The dynamic phase-calibration layer is running through; validation-set accuracy has improved to 89.4%. I’ve gone to the hospital to keep an eye on the data integration. Dinner is in the fridge.”

Lin Chen set down his backpack. When his left foot touched the floor, a sharp stab of pain shot from his heel up to his calf. He supported himself against the wall and walked to the sofa, then slowly sat down. After taking off his shoe and sock, he saw that his ankle was already swollen out of shape, the skin a dark purplish color. He unscrewed the ice pack and applied it to his ankle. Cold seeped through the towel into his skin, dulling the pain slightly.

He opened his computer and logged in to the internal collaboration platform. The training logs Su Man had uploaded showed that the model had already begun to converge. But the Loss curve showed a slight oscillation after the tenth epoch. He enlarged the chart and discovered that samples with missing leads had introduced gradient noise during backpropagation. He created a new script, adding gradient clipping and sample-weight decay. He wrote code very slowly, his fingers trembling slightly from holding one position for too long. He set a Pomodoro timer: for every forty-five minutes of work, he had to get up and move his right leg while keeping his left foot elevated. Reality had no pause button, only a progress bar. He could only break his body down into manageable modules and optimize his own consumption the way he optimized an algorithm.

At seven in the evening, his phone vibrated. It was a voice message from his mother, Wang Guiying. He tapped it open; the background was the din of the county hospital. “Chen, Xiao Man’s follow-up appointment for Wednesday has been booked. The specialist said they need to add a twenty-four-hour ambulatory EEG this time. Are you busy over there? If you can’t get away, I can take him.”

Lin Chen looked at the screen, his Adam’s apple moving once. He typed a reply: “Mom, I’ll ask for leave Wednesday afternoon. I’ve already bought the ticket. I’ll transfer the follow-up fees to you on WeChat.”

The transfer notification sounded. The balance showed: 142,305.60 yuan. This was the company’s last liquid cash. After deducting Wednesday’s travel expenses, follow-up fees, painkillers, and next week’s server rental, the remaining number would be just enough to last until the end of due diligence. He stared at that number. There was no anxiety, only confirmation. Only when the accounts balanced could the road keep extending forward.

He turned off the computer and walked to the window. Night had already settled; the neon lights in the distance merged into a blurred halo. The ice pack on his left foot throbbed faintly. He remembered his childhood in Qingshi Village, his father carrying two baskets of sweet potatoes on a shoulder pole along the loess road, the yoke rubbing bloody marks into his shoulders without a word of complaint. Back then, Lin Chen had thought that as long as he walked fast enough, he could leave poverty behind. Now he understood: poverty was not something you shook off; it was something you waded through step by step. Wade through it, and the soles of your shoes would wear through, your feet would swell, but you would still be moving forward.

The phone vibrated again. This time it was the secretary of the hospital ethics committee.

“Engineer Lin, the pre-review meeting materials have been submitted. However, the provincial Health Commission has issued a temporary notice requiring a supplementary report verifying the algorithm’s generalization in the pediatric epilepsy subgroup. For the expert Q&A on Wednesday afternoon, please prepare a fifteen-minute technical defense. In addition, the ambulatory EEG data interface has been opened; please integrate with it as soon as possible.”

Lin Chen stared at the screen, his fingers slowly tightening. The pediatric subgroup. Xiao Man’s medical records were right there in the drawer. He knew this was not coincidence, but an inevitable intersection of clinical pathways. For the algorithm to pass review, it had to cover the most vulnerable group; and that group, as it happened, included his younger brother.

He pulled open the drawer and took out the yellowed medical record booklet. On the cover were the words “Lin Xing.” He opened to the first page, his gaze falling on the few characters in the diagnosis field. Then he picked up his pen and wrote on a new page in his notebook: “Pediatric subgroup generalization validation: data-source integration, feature alignment, supplementary ethics statement. Complete before Wednesday.”

The wind outside the window had grown stronger, making the security grilles rattle softly. Water droplets from the ice pack ran down the towel and dripped onto the floor, spreading into a small dark patch. He closed his eyes, his breathing steady. The countdown was still continuing. The searchlight of due diligence had already swept over him, while another gate was falling in the consultation room on Wednesday afternoon.