Chapter 280: Cold Backups and Reconciliation

The elevator descended to B2, its cold light washing across Lin Chen’s face. He leaned against the metal wall, the stabbing pain in his left ankle pushing outward with every heartbeat. Shifting his balance, he put most of his weight on his right leg and gripped the chilled handrail with his left hand. His phone screen was still lit. Su Man’s last message read: “Compliance checklist is printed. Legal is waiting on B2.” The time was 6:40.

The morning rush had not yet begun. The subway was empty, with only a few cleaners and designated drivers scattered through the car on their way to early shifts. Lin Chen found a corner seat and hugged his backpack against his chest. The USB drive and paper archive envelope pressed against him, the hard shell’s edges distinct through the fabric. He closed his eyes and ran through the due-diligence process in his mind: physical access-control records, cold-backup data hashes, model iteration logs, data desensitization certificates, ethics filing emails. Every item had a corresponding timestamp and signature. No miracles—only traces. He repeated the sentence in his head like a protective charm.

At 7:20, the lobby of the office tower had just opened. The security guard was not fully awake yet. Lin Chen swiped his employee card, and the turnstile let him through with a beep. He walked slowly; every time his left foot touched down, he had to test the ground first before committing weight to it. The elevator went straight to the seventeenth floor.

At the far end of the corridor, outside the server room, Su Man was already waiting. She wore a dark-gray trench coat and held a kraft-paper folder in her arms. Faint shadows lay under her eyes.

“Morning.” She handed him a cup of black coffee. “No sugar. Your stomach can’t handle cold things.”

Lin Chen took it, warmth spreading through his fingertips from the paper cup.

“Checklist complete?”

“Complete. I exported the raw-data samples the auditors want according to their random-number table. Legal mainly wants to review the authorization chain and disclaimers.” Su Man’s pace was steady, without unnecessary emotion. “Zhao Qiming brought two people. One finance, one technical due diligence. The technical one came back from Silicon Valley. Likes drilling into the underlying architecture.”

Lin Chen nodded and unscrewed the coffee lid for a sip. The bitterness slid down his throat, pressing down the cold emptiness in his stomach.

“Let’s go.”

At exactly eight o’clock, the glass door was pushed open. Zhao Qiming walked in front, his suit immaculate. Behind him were two young people carrying briefcases. There was no small talk. He went straight to the point.

“Mr. Lin, Ms. Su. Time is tight. Let’s look at the server room and logs directly.”

His voice was not loud, but it carried its usual pressure.

Lin Chen swiped his card, passed fingerprint verification, and watched the heavy blast-proof door slide open. The server room’s constant-temperature system gave off a low hum. Cold air rushed at them. Rows of black cabinets stood in precise order, indicator lights blinking in steady rhythms.

The technical due-diligence specialist immediately stepped forward, opened a terminal, and connected to the audit interface. Su Man handed the folder to the finance reviewer and stood nearby taking notes. Lin Chen leaned beside a cabinet. His left foot ached dully, but he stood straight.

Logs began scrolling across the screen: 20231015_090000_data_ingest.log, 20231102_143000_model_v2.0_train.log, 20240317_031700_spike_anchor_adjust.log. The technical reviewer frowned slightly, fingers moving rapidly over the keyboard.

“Mr. Lin, why are there manually labeled prior anchors in your data-cleaning logs? That doesn’t meet the standard for an automated pipeline.”

Lin Chen stepped forward, his gaze settling on the screen.

“Clinical data isn’t a standardized industrial product. Old EEG charts printed on thermal paper suffer waveform attenuation; automated parsing loses low-frequency features. We added a manual review node to ensure the clinical validity of the training set. Every manual operation has dual signatures and timestamp records in compliance_manual_review.pdf.”

His tone was calm. It was not a defense, only a statement.

The technical reviewer opened the file, checked several signatures and hash values, then nodded and did not press further.

On the finance side, they began reconciling server procurement contracts and cloud-resource invoices. Zhao Qiming walked over to Lin Chen, his gaze sweeping across the cold-backup drives inside the cabinets.

“Lin Chen, this vertical model of yours has its clinical sensitivity stuck at 0.784. The investors want a scalable product, not a half-finished lab prototype. Do you understand what a 0.784 miss rate means in a real clinical setting?”

Lin Chen looked at him, voice low.

“It means we gave up black-box optimization and chose interpretability. Medicine isn’t a recommendation algorithm. Recommend the wrong ad and your click-through rate drops; misjudge a waveform and it’s someone’s family member’s life. We’d rather move slower and draw the decision boundary clearly.”

Zhao Qiming was silent for two seconds. The corner of his mouth pulled into the faintest curve.

“Idealism is expensive. But the market doesn’t pay for ideals. It pays for certainty.”

He turned back to the conference table, pulled a document from his briefcase, and pushed it in front of Lin Chen.

“A draft performance-bet agreement. If, within twelve months after Series A, DAU fails to reach fifty thousand, or the clinical review pass rate falls below ninety percent, we have the right to demand an equity repurchase. Sign it, or we reassess the valuation.”

For a moment, the only sound in the conference room was the air conditioner vent.

Su Man stopped writing and looked at Lin Chen.

Lin Chen lowered his eyes to the document. The terms were harsh, but the logic was clear. Capital wanted a risk backstop. He wanted the chips to stay alive.

He picked up the pen and, without hesitation, wrote his name in the Party B signature field. The nib scraped softly across the paper.

Zhao Qiming collected the document and stood.

“Preliminary due diligence passed. The funds will reach the jointly supervised account before Friday. Lin Chen, don’t disappoint me.”

The glass door closed again. Quiet returned to the server room.

Su Man let out a long breath and rubbed her temples.

“You really dared to sign that.”

“If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have walked out of this building today.”

Lin Chen capped the pen. His left foot finally threatened to give way, and he swayed slightly. He caught the edge of the table before Su Man could see.

“Let’s get breakfast first. We have to run the stress test this afternoon.”

He turned toward the door. His phone vibrated in his pocket.

It was a text message from an unfamiliar number:

“Mr. Lin, the neurology department at City First Hospital just received a competitor test report. Your model’s specificity on the 0317 abnormal waveform has been highlighted by the other side. Recommend immediate review. — Old Zhao”

Lin Chen stopped mid-step.

Old Zhao was not Zhao Qiming. It was the Old Zhao from the county town years ago, the one who had done data outsourcing.

When had he entered the medical-AI circle?

The phone’s glow flickered faintly in the dim corridor. Lin Chen lifted his head and looked toward the gradually brightening sky beyond the window. Wind threaded through the gaps in the glass, carrying the faint bustle of a distant morning market.

He pressed the lock button and put the phone back in his pocket.

The pain in his left foot remained sharp against the floor, but his stride was already steady.

He knew the next game had only just been set on the board.