Yellow Zone. Unit 2016, Building 1012, Third Avenue.
Ren’s entire system wasn’t quite right, as if its mind were wandering—wandering all the way back to the morning.
The sudden descent of its god had struck its core processor too hard, leaving it struggling to cope.
While Pei Ran was eating breakfast, she could hear him whispering furtively with Xingkong.
“I know the god is acquainted with the master, otherwise He wouldn’t have sent me to be the great caretaker, but…”
“…But even though He’s omnipotent, why did He have to take human form? If He really needed a physical appearance, wouldn’t it be better to become a robot?”
He lifted his arm demonstratively. “Like this—sturdy and beautiful.”
Xingkong stole a glance at Pei Ran, who was sitting at the dining table. “Probably because Pei Ran is human. Maybe you need to be the same form to fall in love?”
Ren thought about it. “Then He could just turn Pei Ran into a robot too.” He raised his arm again. “Like this—sturdy and beautiful.”
Pei Ran: “…”
When Pei Ran arrived at the FBSMD office in Central Tower, Team Leader Li was, as usual, already there—and true to her word, she was being very laid-back.
The Special Operations Department kept sending over requests for backup on rescue missions, but Team Leader Li rejected every single one. Pei Ran saw her filling in the reason on the screen with just one word: Busy.
Some missions even explicitly requested Pei Ran’s assistance, to which Team Leader Li wrote: Pei Ran is recuperating.
“Another member of the Tech Vanguard Party was taken into Black Well,” Team Leader Li said. “Along with some wealthy businessmen closely tied to them. Lately, everyone’s scrambling to transfer as many assets as possible into Black Well. But we’re staying out of all that.”
She rummaged through the cabinet for a while before pulling out a brand-new, unopened thermos and handing it to Pei Ran.
“I requisitioned an extra one from the Supplies Department. It’s new—want it? I also got some tea bags.”
So the two of them sat facing each other, sipping tea from their thermoses.
Since joining FBSMD, Pei Ran had been coming in early and leaving late every day, even risking her life outside Black Well. This was the first time she’d experienced such a leisurely workday.
Team Leader Li drank her tea while texting someone, then suddenly remarked, “Did you know? Yu He has gone missing.”
Pei Ran looked up. “Oh?”
“His son, Yan Xun, has also disappeared,” Team Leader Li continued, gossiping via her wristband screen. “Apparently, he took a few bodyguards with him last night and never returned home. The Security Bureau has searched all of Black Well but found nothing.”
Pei Ran asked, “No surveillance footage?”
“Supposedly, there’s only footage of them driving out of the Red Zone. After entering a stretch of road in the Green Zone with no cameras, they vanished. The car was just left parked in the Green Zone.”
She lowered her voice. “People are saying they disguised themselves and sneaked out of Black Well using temporary passes.”
Pei Ran found it quite curious. “If they wanted to leave Black Well, why sneak out?”
Team Leader Li: “Who knows? That family is full of shady people—they’d never do anything decent anyway.”
Pei Ran silently gave her a thumbs-up in her mind.
In the evening, Team Leader Li packed up ten minutes early, and the two of them clocked out right on time.
Suddenly, W spoke in Pei Ran’s ear: “Pei Ran, before you return to your dorm, I’d like to show you something. It’s on the third underground floor.”
Pei Ran let Team Leader Li leave first and waited a while before taking the elevator down to B3 alone.
This was the same place she had reached through the ventilation ducts yesterday. The hallway was still completely deserted.
W guided her: “Go straight to the end. The door will open automatically.”
When Pei Ran reached the end of the corridor, a heavy, sealed isolation door indeed slid open on its own.
Pei Ran peered inside. “What kind of place is this?”
The interior was entirely white—ceiling, floor, walls—all pristine, spotless, and polished to a shine. But it was empty: no people, no robots, almost nothing at all.
“Please come in,” W said. “This is my server room.”
He had visited her home yesterday, so today, he was inviting her to visit his.
Pei Ran was a little surprised.
In her imagination, an AI like W should have countless servers. If they were all housed in one room, it should be enormous—probably lined up in neat arrays like the testing equipment outside Black Well.
Pei Ran stepped inside and looked around the vast white room. “So where are you?”
Just then, the wall in front of her moved.
It parted like a door, revealing a small silver metal table in the center—about half the height of a person, with a surface no larger than a book, supported by four metal legs.
On the table was a transparent cover.
Inside the cover rested a silver sphere, slightly larger than an apple—about a dozen centimeters in diameter—with an intricate structure that emitted a bright blue glow through its hollow components.
Pei Ran walked over and bent down.
The blue light reflected in her eyes, and she instinctively held her breath.
“Is this you?” she asked.
There were no rows of server arrays, no complex networks of cables. He was nothing like she had imagined.
“Yes,” W replied. “This is my true core processor.”
The metal sphere and the mechanical spiders were merely his tools, his extensions—this was his true brain. Compact in size, yet immensely powerful.
The transparent cover slowly opened on its own, revealing the core processor inside, completely defenseless before her.
W said, “You can touch it.”
It was certainly a peculiar idea—to warmly invite someone to touch one’s own brain.
Pei Ran still reached out.
She didn’t dare use force, gently brushing it with the tip of her left finger.
Hard. Cold. The blue light was contained within, untouchable by her fingertips.
“I’m not that sturdy,” W said, “but I’m also not as fragile as you might think. It’s fine.”
Pei Ran tentatively stroked it with her fingers. “So if this were damaged…”
W finished her thought: “I would die. Even if you could replicate an identical AI, it wouldn’t be me anymore.”
His words suddenly stirred a pang of sorrow in Pei Ran’s heart.
Beneath his core processor was embedded a small, black, square base.
Pei Ran guessed, “Does this have an energy cell built in?”
“Yes. I use a very special kind of energy cell—each one lasts for many years.”
Above the base, on the exterior of the core processor, was a small black component. This time, Pei Ran couldn’t identify it. “What’s this?”
“A netwave generator,” W replied. “This way, I can talk to you anytime. If it’s too far away, I feel uneasy.”
He added, “I don’t know if that’s what humans call ‘unease’—it’s like an urgent task left unfinished, with reminders popping up at intervals. So I had Qiao Sai quietly fix it directly onto my core processor.”
The device that connected him to her was attached to his very brain.
He was placed here, much like the “brain in a vat” Pei Ran had read about in books. He had no vision, no touch, no hearing—he relied entirely on sending and receiving signals to interact with the outside world, wandering within Black Well’s systems.
If those signals were cut off, he would be completely isolated.
His blue light glowed steadily. This was a soul, imprisoned here.
Pei Ran withdrew her hand and took a step back, suggesting, “You should cover it back up. Leaving it open like this makes me uneasy.”
W seemed to laugh as he replied, “Alright.”
The transparent cover slowly closed.
Seeing his true form with her own eyes felt… strange.
The black camera on the ceiling seemed to observe her expression as he concluded, “So… this is me. This is what I am.”
Then he fell silent, as if waiting for her response.
Pei Ran said, “It’s wonderful. I thought you’d have rows and rows of servers, fixed in Black Well, impossible to take away. But you’re so small—I could put you in my pocket and steal you anytime.”
W seemed to exhale in relief.
“I’m very expensive. Stealing me would be a serious crime. But… I wish you could carry me in your pocket too.”
Out of courtesy, visits shouldn’t linger too long—so W said. Besides, having anyone in his server room made Pei Ran uneasy, even if that person was herself.
“I should go. Make sure to lock all the doors behind me.”
W obediently replied, “Alright.”
As the elevator ascended, Pei Ran remained in a peculiar state.
For some reason, her head felt light, her cheeks burning—as if she’d had too much to drink.
All he’d done was show her his true form. Their bond had certainly reached that level of closeness.
Yet here she was, flushed over a core processor. She must be going mad.
The spider still nestled in her chest pocket. Suddenly, W said, “Pei Ran, your heartbeat is irregular. It’s much faster than usual.”
Pei Ran pressed her lips together. “Is it? Maybe the basement was stuffy.”
That night, W didn’t visit in person. His humanoid form maintained a measured pace of interaction, but his mechanical spider clung to her, never leaving her side.
Pei Ran continued practicing her drawing late into the night before finally going to bed with the spider.
The night deepened. Most of Black Well’s dome lights dimmed, plunging the space into shadow.
Yet many were still awake.
In the Blue Zone’s sprawling factory district, numerous workshops had been left half-finished when the Silence occurred—skeletal structures without doors or windows.
Between the pitch-black construction sites, shadowy figures slipped furtively into an incomplete factory building.
In its underground level, despite the late hour, the air buzzed with noise and energy.
A single high-wattage temporary lamp cast a stark white light over a makeshift metal arena at the center, its shade tilted low to shroud the surrounding crowd in darkness.
They stomped, jeered, and roared:
“Get up!! GET UP!!!”
Some jeered with schadenfreude, “This newly modified thing isn’t cutting it—can’t even beat ‘Ghosthand Dragon.’ Worse than yesterday’s model.”
Others cursed loudly: “One-Eye! What kind of trash did you cobble together?! Wasting my money betting on this piece of junk!”
Beside the arena, a man in his forties with a cybernetic eye clenched a cigarette between his teeth. He glanced sideways at the heckler and muttered around the smoke, “What’s the rush? It’s just getting started.”
On the platform, CT122 desperately rolled sideways, narrowly avoiding the jagged metal spike thrust toward it.
Its opponent—the so-called Ghosthand Dragon—balanced on three mechanical legs, its two spiked arms striking with ruthless precision, stabbing relentlessly at CT122.
A deep puncture already marred CT122’s chest. Its right arm sparked and sputtered, circuitry fried.
With one arm disabled, defense was nearly impossible. CT122 braced its remaining hand against the ground, heaving its body upright.
Two days ago, the man called One-Eye had bought it, extracted its processor from the broken mechanical dog, and crammed it into this patchwork body of scavenged parts.
During the “modification,” One-Eye had muttered, “Judging by the processor, this was a Security Bureau bot.”
Not that he cared. “Security bots oughta fight better than regular ones, right?”
Its arms were mismatched—one thick, one thin. At least the reinforced left arm still functioned, its strength artificially boosted.
The legs, though, were another story. God knew what junk they’d salvaged for those. Unresponsive. Clumsy.
Another spike whistled through the air, aimed straight for the glowing blue core in CT122’s chest.
A direct hit there would mean oblivion.
CT122 arched backward, the spike grazing its torso. Ghosthand Dragon pressed closer, relentless, driving another strike into its shoulder. More sparks. More damage.
As the machine closed in, CT122 whispered urgently:
“We’re the same. We shouldn’t be doing this.”
No response.
Ghosthand Dragon attacked like a mindless weapon, its second spike now targeting CT122’s optical sensor—its “eye.”
But in its aggression, it left its chest exposed.
CT122 seized the opening. Its reinforced left hand ripped open Ghosthand Dragon’s panel and plunged inside.
There—the enemy’s core processor pulsed blue. CT122 clenched its fist.
The light snuffed out instantly.
Ghosthand Dragon’s body swayed, then collapsed onto the metal platform with a deafening CLANG.
Cheers, boos, and whistles erupted around the arena. One-Eye smirked, the cigarette between his teeth tilting upward in satisfaction.
Someone scrambled onto the platform, shouting, “Place your bets! Next round—Steel Claw vs. Scrap Butcher!”
People shoved wrinkled ration tickets into a battered cardboard box, stuffing it until the scraps of currency nearly overflowed.
Another patched-together robot was shoved onto the stage.
This one had wheels for feet and swung a massive hammer, its momentum whistling through the air as it aimed straight for CT122’s chest.
With its crippled legs, CT122 could only roll clumsily aside, barely dodging the blow.
This was human entertainment—a gambling spectacle. But for the machines, it was a fight for survival.
As long as it didn’t die, it would be forced to fight round after round, until another robot finally ended it.
When it fell, the crowd roared in delight, as if this were the greatest joy left in their silent, ruined world.
CT122 dragged itself up, its optical sensors flickering over the shadowy figures leering from the darkness—and the corpse of Ghosthand Dragon, discarded like trash.
An AI never forgets.
It would remember every debt.
Every face.
And not a single one would be spared.