Lower City, "Lightning Fast" Black Net Café, Booth 09.
The air was a stew of cheap smoke, old instant noodle broth and overheated hardware. The exhaust fan on the ceiling spun with a greasy groan, blades caked in yellow grime.
Lu Jin sat sunk into a cracked faux-leather couch in the corner. His hood was dragged low over his face, leaving only a slice of pallid jaw exposed.
He coughed once, hard.
The tissue over his mouth soaked through in an instant, blooming a stark, wet red.
D-class genetic collapse wasn't built for this kind of mental load. His vision swam, his eyeballs felt swollen in their sockets, veins raw from pressure. But his hands stayed steady in a way that didn't match the rest of his body—ten fingers hammering the ash-stained, oily keyboard so fast the keys blurred, the clack-clack-clack merging into a single relentless downpour.
On the monitor, green code poured down like a waterfall. In the middle of it, a red progress bar climbed in jerks.
[ Injecting logic exploit package… Progress: 87% ]
[ Warning: "ThunderGod Industries" Security Division trace engaged. ][ Reverse-location countdown: 00:45 ]
He was selling a hole in the heart of a weapon.
A root exploit for a military-grade neural chip called "Divine Punishment," the kind they bolted straight into elite soldiers' heads. Five years ago, his father had left a single offhand comment on the edge of a schematic—a "failsafe" backdoor, in case their AI ever decided it didn't need human permission.
Now Lu was turning that throwaway note into meat on the table.
Once the deal went through, ThunderGod's dogs would rake Lower City apart.
He knew that. He just didn't have another option.
System account: ¥0.10.S-09 energy: 2.6%.
Li Xing was heading north. One hundred forty-two kilometers of no-man's land. No money, no resupply, one half-starved mech and a girl with a nail gun.
That wasn't migration. That was a funeral procession.
"Kh… khh…"
Every breath scraped through his chest, lungs scouring against invisible wire.
He bit down on the pain; his mouth filled with the taste of rust.
[ Progress: 94% ][ Reverse-location countdown: 00:12 ]
In the corner of the screen, a red dot fixed onto Lower City's network spine and started racing along the threads toward this rat-hole of a café.
Three seconds left.
Lu's pupils pulled tight. His left index finger hovered over Enter, fingertip jerking microscopically from the adrenaline spike.
[ Progress: 99% ]
"Deal," he said.
He tapped Enter.
The sharp click of the keycap vanished under the café's low roar—cheap headsets blaring, chairs scraping, someone swearing at a lost match.
On screen, the code stream cut off. The exploit dissolved into encrypted shards and jumped, one hop, two hops, three—deep-sea relay, orbital relay—then dropped into the dark web's black water and was gone.
Almost the same instant, Lu yanked the physical kill switch he'd wired onto the case, cutting power at the root.
Snap.
Booth 09 went dark. The glow from other machines leaked under the door, but inside, the monitor and case were dead weight.
Only Deep Space Echo stayed lit, a floating panel of light behind his eyes.
It went off like a golden firecracker.
[ Ding! ][ Large-value funds detected! ][ Source: Anonymous (Cryptocurrency mixing pool). ][ Amount: ¥12,000.00 ]
The system's sleazy, buzzed-out customer service voice coiled straight through his skull.
[ Oooh, big spender~ This money's so hot you could fry an egg on it. ][ Is this what they call "blood money"? ][ Sweetie, we strongly advise immediate spending. You gotta be alive to enjoy it, yeah? ][ Want us to pre-book a full funeral package? Ten percent off if you pay up front~ ]
Lu didn't flinch at the amount. He'd done his homework.
The Federal Financial Oversight Grid treated anonymous inflows on a neat little risk curve. Below ¥12,000, you tripped a Class C alert: some bored analyst's dashboard blinked yellow, a bot wrote a report. Every extra cent pushed you closer to Class B. Cross that line, and the Fed grid would partner up with ThunderGod's security freaks and drag the whole trail out into the sun within thirty minutes.
With his half-broken body and one secondhand Glock, he couldn't fight that. He didn't need that. He needed cash that could slip through the cracks.
He needed just enough to keep his girl and his mech from dying in the snow.
He grabbed his coat collar, hauling it tight to hide his throat, and nudged the booth door open, slipping back into the corridor's flow of hollow-eyed addicts and busted-up regulars.
[ Shut up, ] he told the system, voice flat inside his own head. [ Until I spend it, not even the Reaper gets to touch it. ]
—
Same time. Wasteland, A-11 Zone North.
The wind carved the air into a howling whistle.
A broken high-speed rail bridge stretched overhead, a severed spine of concrete and steel. One derailed car hung off the edge, frozen mid-fall at a steep forty-five degrees, its metal skin groaning in the gusts.
"Dong—!"
S-09's hydraulic foot slammed into the tilted floor, making the whole coffin of scrap shudder.
Li Xing caught a ceiling rail and rode the lurch, light on her feet despite the weight of the exoskeleton. Frost fogged the front of her goggles. Her fingers locked tight on the "Thunderstorm" nail gun.
"Little Rock. Don't move," she whispered.
Her voice carried just enough to reach the shivering shape behind her.
There was something further down the car.
Not normal ghouls.
The shadow crawled. Five pairs of sick green eyes opened one by one, bobbing at different heights. Then came the sound: metal sliding against bone.
Half-mech ghouls.
Once upon a time, they'd probably worn ThunderGod logos on their uniforms and guarded this line. After death, the implants in their bodies had kept ticking, but the code had no living brain to report to. The hardware sank into mutating flesh instead. Alloy bones tore through skin and hung outside, curved into natural armor and blades.
"Raa—"
The lead ghoul let out a scream laced with digital distortion. It dropped onto all fours and fired itself up the sloped floor like a shell from a gun.
"Big Yellow! Block it!" Li Xing yelled.
S-09's single eye flashed red. Its massive arm swung out.
Too slow.
[ Warning: Energy reserve: 2.5% ][ Power output limited. ][ Motion delay: 0.8 sec. ]
The ghoul twisted midair with an animal sharpness, skimming past the clumsy blow. Its alloy claws scraped a tongue of sparks along S-09's armor.
The mech's joints rasped. Every movement sounded dry, strained.
The other four ghouls surged forward. They knew prey when they saw it. Weak legs. Lagging arms. They were going to strip this big metal carcass down and wear its parts.
In the corner, Little Rock squashed himself into the angle where floor met wall, yanking the "invisibility cloak" over his head like a kid hiding under a blanket. His breathing hitched in tiny gasps.
Li Xing's palm was damp on the nail gun grip.
Twelve nails left.Five enemies.Big Yellow barely moving.
Dead end.
Cold fear slid up her spine and latched onto the base of her skull. For a heartbeat, her body wanted to freeze, to just lie down and let teeth end it.
Then Lu Jin's face flicked through her mind.
Not his whole face—she'd never really seen it. Just the way he'd "sat" in that clean little seat she'd made, back straight, voice cool as if the world couldn't touch him… yet still scraping scraps together to send her weapons and food.
She bit down on the panic.
"Can't be scared… can't…"
She sucked a breath in, shut her eyes for half a second.
Inside the racing static of her thoughts, something familiar flickered.
Out of nowhere, a beat. A simple, heavy pattern. He'd hummed it once back in the shelter, half under his breath while he'd been drawing something on that glowing interface only he could see. It had stuck in her bones.
She opened her mouth.
"Dum… dah… dum… dah…"
It came out thin and shaky first. Just a vibration in the air.
Then she repeated it, louder. Chest up. Feet braced.
It wasn't really a song. It was just rhythm. Something she'd stomped and clapped to a thousand times while digging through junk or hiding from monsters, a heartbeat she'd carved into herself to drown out fear.
The effect was instant.
S-09's great head paused for a split second.
Deep Space Echo caught the spike. Its view of the mech's logic tree flickered. A new branch lit up.
For machines, commands were dead. Frequency was alive.
"Vmmm—"
The core reactor thrummed, matching the beat.
Li Xing's eyes snapped open, pupils bright behind the frost. She brought the nail gun down hard on the ceiling rail beside her.
"DONG—! … tah!"
The heavy clank landed right on the downbeat.
S-09's lagging right arm stuttered, then surged. Timing clicked. The mech drove its fist forward not at random, but exactly between the ghoul's steps, when all its weight was committed and there was nowhere to dodge.
"CRACK."
Spine gone.
The crunch snapped through the car, weirdly satisfying.
"Forward! Tah tah tah!" she shouted, voice ringing in the hollow metal.
S-09's eye strobed. Its hydraulics fell into the rhythm like a drunk stumbling onto a dance floor and somehow finding the groove.
Left hook. Right sweep. Turn. Stomp.
Every strike landed along the pattern she laid down. Each time she slammed gunmetal against rail, steel followed, massive and lethal.
This wasn't a brawl anymore.
It was a performance. A steel duet.
Blood and black fluid sprayed the slanted walls. The half-mech ghouls' inhuman speed didn't matter when they kept stepping into blows they couldn't see coming, bodies aligning with beats they didn't understand. One tried to leap; S-09's clamp snatched it midair and introduced it to the side wall.
Little Rock peeked from under the cloak, jaw hanging.
From his angle, the skinny girl he'd followed out of the shelter stood on a tilted coffin of a car, legs braced, yelling in time as if she was conducting a band. The band just happened to be an S-class killing machine flinging corpses.
"Last one, Big Yellow!" she shouted.
Her voice climbed, high and sharp.
"BOOM!"
S-09 brought both arms up and hammered them down. The final ghoul's head ruptured like rotten fruit, smearing what was left of its face across the far wall.
Silence dropped in behind it.
Only the wind outside the wreck screamed. Inside, S-09's vents exhaled white, hot breath into the cold.
Deep Space Echo's interface pulsed at the edge of Lu's perception.
[ Observed Subject: Li Xing ][ Holy Resonance Realm: Faint Echo – Glimmer Tier ][ Level: LV3 ][ Growth: 18 / 1000 → 76 / 1000 ][ Emotion Source: Controlling combat through rhythm (Combat Sync – Emergent). ]
Li Xing leaned forward with her hands on her thighs, chest heaving. She didn't notice any of it. All she knew was that her legs were jelly and the floor was sticky.
Her bar, somewhere else, had just jumped by a chunk.
—
Reality. Street corner, in the shadow of a crumbling red-brick wall.
Lu Jin braced his shoulder against the cold masonry and sucked air.
For a moment, his skull felt like someone had opened it and poured a whole orchestra straight into his nerves. No sound, just raw impact. A drumline thumping along his spine, brass surging through his chest.
The UI scrolled bright text over his sight.
[ Holy Resonance: "Sync (Prototype)" detected! ][ Observed Subject "Li Xing" has, via personal rhythm, forcibly commandeered mechanical-unit logic. ][ Holy Resonance gained: +25 (Combat Sync feedback). ][ Current Holy Resonance: 27 ][ Temporary Feedback triggered: Rhythm Sync (Tier I). ]
Something strange slid through his body. The city around him clicked into a grid in his brain.
Footsteps two streets over. The flicker pattern of a fried neon sign. Even dust turning in a shaft of light—everything broke into beats and loops.
His heel shifted half a step sideways on its own.
A second later, a bucket of gray water dumped from a second-floor window, smacking down exactly where he'd been, splashing filthy arcs across the pavement.
Lu stared at the spreading puddle and let out a low laugh.
"So that's Holy Resonance too, huh…" he muttered. "Not just a healer. A battlefield metronome."
He flicked back to his fresh account.
¥12,000.00.
Down here, that could buy a life, or a month of losing yourself in neon and skin and forgetfulness.
He didn't spare it more than a heartbeat.
His thumb dragged Deep Space Echo's shop over his view.
[ Universal Mechanical Lubricant (Military Grade – Drum) ] – ¥800.00[ High-Energy Compressed Ration Crate (includes meat) ] – ¥1,200.00[ Micro Fusion Battery (Civilian Refurb, 80% Output) ] – ¥8,000.00
"Everything," he said. "Drop it in front of Li Xing."
[ Ding! Transaction complete. ][ Reality Currency Balance: ¥2,000.00 ][ Holy Resonance Balance: 27 ][ Delivery mode: Cross-plane drop. Target: Li Xing – Immediate vicinity. ]
Ten thousand gone in one swipe. His gut twisted, but his eyes burned brighter.
—
On the wasteland side, the train car stank of gore and coolant. Li Xing slumped among the bodies, lungs working overtime.
The air split.
A heavy crate slammed down on the tilted floor hard enough to jolt the wreck again, followed by a squat, glowing battery case that hummed faintly with contained power. Supplies rattled inside the box.
That was what a miracle looked like in her world.
She stared at the battery, dazed, then lurched forward and threw herself at it, wrapping both arms around the cold casing. She pressed it against her dusty cheek, smearing blood and grime over the smooth surface.
"Listener," she whispered, voice cracking. "You heard, right?"
"We won."
—
Back in the city, Lu pulled his hood lower and slipped into the maze of back alleys, shoes skimming past puddles and trash.
A few kilometers away, in the "Lightning Fast" net café, Booth 09's door opened again.
A man in a long black coat stepped inside. He moved loose and slow, like he was just another night owl, but his eyes went straight to the still-warm tower case.
He laid his palm on the metal side panel, feeling the faint ghost of lingering heat.
Then he touched the comm bud in his ear.
"Bloodhound to HQ," he said. His voice had the scrape of rough stone on glass. "Target severed physical trace."
He paused, considering the dead machine, the faint smell of cooked dust and risk.
"But he left a trail in the dark net. Feels like a wounded wolf that just fed."
A thin smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.
"I'll find him."