Nanking, December 13, 1937
The screams wouldn't stop.
They echoed through the narrow streets of Nanking as Japanese soldiers moved house by house, dragging families into the open. The ancient city that had once stood as the proud capital of China now ran red with the blood of its citizens. Men were executed on the spot—beheaded, bayoneted, shot, and buried alive in mass graves they'd been forced to dig themselves. But the women... the women suffered a fate many considered worse than death.
Among them was Zhu Lihua, six months pregnant, crouching in a cramped cellar beneath what remained of her family home. The once-respected Zhu family—whose distant ancestors had walked the halls of the Forbidden City as royalty during the Ming Dynasty—had been reduced to six terrified women hiding in the dark. They huddled together, hands pressed against each other's mouths to stifle their sobs as boots stomped overhead. Dust sifted down from the floorboards with each heavy footstep.
"Please, ancestors, protect us," Grandmother Zhu whispered, clutching a small jade pendant—the last family heirloom they hadn't been forced to sell during the Japanese occupation. "Heaven must not let our line end here."
The prayer went unanswered. The cellar door crashed open with a splintering of wood, and flashlight beams cut through the darkness like knives.
"LOOK WHAT WE FOUND!" a soldier called in accented Mandarin, his bayonet gleaming in the harsh light. "More Chinese pigs for slaughter!"
They were dragged up the stairs and into the winter air, Lihua stumbling under the weight of her unborn child. Her husband—a university librarian who'd spent his life preserving historical texts—had been executed three days earlier, accused of harboring anti-Japanese literature. He'd been forced to kneel in the street while officers took turns practicing sword strokes on his neck, requiring four attempts before his head finally separated from his body.
Now Lihua stood trembling in that same street, the bloodstain from her husband still visible on the cobblestones. Five soldiers argued over who would take her first.
"This one's pregnant," a corporal observed, prodding her swollen belly with his rifle butt. "Won't be as much fun."
The lieutenant grinned, revealing teeth stained yellow from tobacco. "Let's see the whole family, then. Bring out the others!"
Two soldiers dragged Lihua's mother and sisters from the house. Her fourteen-year-old sister collapsed in the street, begging for mercy. A rifle butt to her face silenced her pleas, shattering her jaw in an explosion of blood and teeth.
"Watch closely," the lieutenant told Lihua, unbuckling his belt. "This is what happens to Chinese vermin."
What followed was systematic savagery. One by one, they forced Lihua to watch as her family members were violated and executed. Her mother was bayoneted through the stomach after three soldiers finished with her. Her sisters were taken simultaneously by laughing men who made bets on which girl would break first. The youngest, barely twelve, bled to death after they finished, her small body discarded like refuse.
"Now for you," the lieutenant said, turning to Lihua. "I want to hear you beg in Japanese."
They tore her clothes away despite her struggling. Six months of pregnancy had made her awkward and slow. They bent her over the corpse of her own mother, taking turns while making crude jokes about "double penetration" since she carried a child.
When the fifth soldier finished, Lihua no longer screamed. Something inside her had broken beyond repair. She stared emptily at the sky as the lieutenant circled her, drawing his ceremonial sword.
"Let's see what kind of monster a Chinese woman carries," he announced to the laughter of his men. "Maybe we'll find a dragon!"
He plunged the blade into her swollen belly without hesitation. Lihua's body convulsed, primal instinct forcing one final scream from her throat. The lieutenant cut crudely, making a game of it for his men, who cheered each slice. They carved her open while she still lived, her lungs desperately pulling air as they extracted the tiny fetus from her womb.
"It's a boy," the lieutenant announced, holding up the bloody, six-month-formed infant by one leg. "Too bad he's dead already. Would have made a good slave."
He tossed the seemingly lifeless infant onto the pile of bodies before wiping his sword clean on Lihua's hair.
"Burn the house," he ordered as they moved on to the next target. "No evidence."
Flames soon engulfed the ancestral home of the Zhu family, erasing centuries of heritage in minutes. The soldiers left without looking back, never noticing the infinitesimal movement among the corpses—the microscopic cellular activity beginning in the discarded fetus whose heart had somehow not stopped beating.
Hours later, when Japanese medical officers came through the streets collecting "specimens" for research, they found something that defied explanation—a premature infant, impossibly alive despite exposure, trauma, and the absence of an umbilical cord.
"This one's resilient," the medical officer noted clinically, lifting the blood-covered child with gloved hands. "Tag it for special observation. Ishii will want this one."
And so began the existence of subject X-7734—the designation given to the child who would one day be known simply as Sam.