Chapter 1 — The One Who Keeps The Venom Saves People

The snake wriggled in the grip, its body tightened around the stainless steel handle and then released, its tail hitting the edge of the worktable with a harsh sound. Trinh Mien Du held the animal's neck tightly with her thumb and index finger, holding the exact point on the back of the neck where it could not turn its head to bite, while the other three fingers of her left hand were only half-closed by reflex - the little and ring fingers no longer had enough force to squeeze, they only knew how to follow along to take the shape of a hand. She had been used to it for twenty-four years. What she was not used to was that this snake thrashed harder than any other snake she had extracted venom from in her eight years of working.

"Hold the membrane for me." Du raised her chin towards Lu Bach Khiem, a twenty-four-year-old technician standing opposite, his trembling hands stretching the thin rubber membrane covering the mouth of the collection bottle.

"It's bigger than the two in the afternoon." Khiem said, trying to keep his voice normal but unable to hide the sound of swallowing saliva in the middle of the sentence.

"Larger, more venomous, and more ferocious." Du lowered the snake's head to the level of the jar's mouth. "Look carefully here. Not all animals will bite the membrane the first time."

She gently pressed both cheeks of the snake, right at the position of the venom gland located close to the back of the eye. The animal tensed its body, its jaws stiffened, its two fangs curved down through the thin layer of rubber as if through paper. The venom flowed out, pale amber in color, dripping to the bottom of the glass vial — slower than Du expected. She gently stroked along both sides of the jaw, from the corner of the eye to the corner of the mouth, forcing the venom gland to empty the rest. Fifteen seconds. Twenty seconds. The last drop fell, thicker and more viscous than usual.

"Finished." She dropped the snake into a shipping container with a double-layer locking lid, and with thick gloved hands, placed it down as gently as placing it on a sleeping child. "How many ml?"

He tilted the bottle under the table lamp, cold white light shining through the vibrating liquid. "About four point two. Twice as much as a regular six."

"Write it down in the book. Record the time and coordinates of the capture." Du took off her gloves, the tip of her right index finger still had a streak of dried venom that she wiped with alcohol as soon as she saw it, but she still looked again to make sure. Habit is in the blood, not fear. "Where did you catch this one?"

"The rocky crevice behind the ranger station, where Mr. Thanh and the forest patrol reported the other day. The third one we found in that area last week."

Outside, the rain poured down on the corrugated iron roof of the venom extraction area in a continuous sound, like someone was continuously sprinkling sand into a large drum. Khe Lanh Snake Farm is located on a mound about three meters above the residential area, enough to have never flooded in the fifteen years of operation, but the single road connecting the camp to the national highway has a section that is underwater every year for at least a week in October. Du glanced at the wall clock. Eleven twenty minutes at night.

The desk phone placed next to the centrifuge rang, the sound was old and broken because the line often shorted out in heavy rain. Du picked up the phone with her right hand, her left hand was still labeling the vial of venom she had just collected.

"Khe Lanh snake farm, I heard."

"Miss Du, it's Thu, help Son Trach." The voice on the other end of the line was urgent, mixed with the sound of wheels pushing a stretcher and someone shouting the patient's name in the background. "We just received a case of snake bite, a seven-year-old girl, the bite was on her ankle, the swelling spread to her knee in just forty minutes. I injected two vials of polyvalent serum according to the protocol but the bleeding from the bite site still did not stop, my 20-minute blood coagulation test came out as a false negative - it didn't clot at all, sister."

Du put down her pen. "What kind of snake, can you describe it?"

"The family brought the snake's body and they beat it to death when they removed it from the baby's leg. I took a photo and sent it to you via Zalo."

Du's phone vibrated in her pocket. She opened the photo with her gloved hand. She had to pull the edge of the glove with her teeth to reach the screen. The photo was taken quickly, the flash blinded one corner, but it was enough to see that the flattened snake's head still had the rows of scales on top of the head covered with a translucent white layer like chalk, as if someone had just sprinkled dew on it.

She stood silent for a second.

"Mist-Scaled Viper," she said, not asking.

"What kind is it? Why don't you use the polyvalent serum?"

Du did not answer immediately. She walked to the filing cabinet, pulled out a drawer labeled "V-NEBULA — special monitoring", where all the data on the rare green snakes that the camp had sporadically recorded over the past eight years, never more than five individuals per season, were kept. The file was thicker than she remembered. In the past four weeks of floods, the number of individuals caught has tripled compared to the same period every year.

"Mist-Scaled Viper," she said into the phone, her voice monotone to keep both ends of the line calm. "Its venom is not like the common viper venom we often encounter, the polyvalent serum can only partially neutralize it. How is your baby now?"

"The blood pressure is low, the gums are bleeding, the urine is pink. The baby's parents are in the hallway, I have to go talk to them in five minutes and I don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything about the serum just yet. Just maintain the infusion, monitor closely, I'll call you back in fifteen minutes."

Du hung up the phone. Khiem stood still at the operating table, still holding the bottle of venom he had just collected, looking at her waiting.

"I just collected four point two milliliters of Mist-Scaled Viper venom," Du said, her eyes still glued to the file. "But this vial must be incubated for at least three weeks with immune horses to produce usable serum. There is a seven-year-old child in Son Trach who is bleeding uncontrollably right now."

"So do we have any specific serum? The pre-made one?"

Du pulled out a mini cold storage compartment next to the table, where small quantities of reserve doses are stored for emergencies within the camp. There were three jars. She counted them again, even though she knew the exact number from last week's inventory report.

"Three vials," she said. "Enough for one severe case, maybe two mild cases."

"Should I send it to the baby right away? Three bottles should be enough."

Du did not answer immediately. She looked out the window, where the farmyard lights fell on the surface of the rain water, forming a puddle, rippling continuously because of the raindrops falling continuously. The number three was in her mind at the same time as another number — the number of bites Va Suong had recorded this week alone, scattered across four different communes around Son Trach, a spike compared to any flood season she had seen since she started her job.

"Three bottles are not just for one baby." She spoke, her voice slowing. "If there's another case this week, which there certainly will be, I have nothing more to give."

She picked up the phone and dialed Dai Khac Thanh, the camp director. The bell rang three times before someone picked up the phone, their voice was sleepy but they quickly regained consciousness when they heard the words "Va Suong".

"Mr. Thanh, it's Du. We need an urgent meeting. Right now, if possible."

The other end of the line was silent for a beat, only the sound of rain mixed into the transmission.

"I'll be down in the meeting room in ten minutes." he said. "Bring the V-NEBULA file."

Du hung up the phone and turned to Khiem. He was still standing there, the vial of venom in his hand, the ceiling light shining down, casting long shadows of both of them on the tiled floor, stained with rainwater pouring through the crack in the door.

"Put this bottle in cold storage, label it carefully, clearly stating the collection time." Du pulled the raincoat hanging behind the door and put it on even though he knew he was only going from the venom extraction area to the meeting room thirty meters away. "It's going to be a long night."

"Miss Du." Khiem called out, his voice hesitant as if he was considering whether to ask or not. "Why don't we raise more horses and prepare more Mist-Scaled Viper serum in advance? We wouldn't have to be so hasty."

Du stopped at the door frame, half turned around. "A horse donating plasma must be injected with diluted venom in increasing doses over six to eight weeks to have enough antibodies to get the first batch of plasma. To have a complete batch of serum, purified, bottled, and tested, takes nearly four months. For the past eight years, the farm has seen only a few Mist-Scaled Vipers each season, no one considers it a species worthy of putting a whole herd of immune horses on it alone. Our budget must be divided among cobras, scorpions, and indigo - species that bite humans all year round. It's not just flood season."

"So how is this year different from other years in that it has so many mutations?"

"I don't know for sure yet." Du spoke the truth. "Maybe the flood filled all the caves in the mountains, so it had to crawl down to find dry places. Maybe it's something else. But I know one thing - the number of bites this week is equal to the whole season every year combined, and there are only three bottles left in stock."

She stepped outside, the rain hit her cold face, and in that moment, her ears heard not the sound of rain on the corrugated iron roof of the snake farm, but the sound of the Lam Tri River rushing through the bend behind the old house, a sound she had tried to forget for twenty-four years but had never once forgotten. It always comes back like that, without warning, without any clear reason other than the words "snake bite" ringing out in a call in the middle of the night.

She shook her head, stepping faster towards the light of the meeting room, where Dai Khac Thanh was already standing next to the foggy glass door, his figure casting a long shadow on the wet cement floor.

Behind her, in the mini cold storage, three bottles of serum sat still on the shelf, the aluminum lids still had their moisture-proof coating intact, and that number — just three — would haunt her for the rest of the night, like a time bomb that no one knew exactly how long it would be before it exploded.