Lei's breath hitched as he watched Mei's lips move on the screen. "Upload." She knew the architecture of the Watcher Program better than anyone. If she was telling him to push the button despite the threat of the neural kill-switch, it meant she had found a flaw—or she had decided the cost was worth the result.
"I can't," Lei whispered to the empty, neon-lit booth of the Lucky Dragon cyber-cafe.
He looked at the code. If he hit 'Enter,' the Master Frequency would surge through the global relay, but the MAS would route the return-path through the Leda Signature—Mei's biological core. It would be a feedback loop that would literally burn her mind to act as a surge protector for the government's secrets.
Lei's fingers flew across the keyboard. He wasn't looking at the upload button anymore. He was looking at the tracer packets of the video feed itself.
The MAS was arrogant. They thought the threat would paralyze him, so they hadn't bothered to mask the origin of the broadcast with a high-level ghost server. They wanted him to see her. They wanted him to feel the weight of her life.
But the video feed carried a latency signature. In a city as small and high-density as Macau, the millisecond delay between the camera and the terminal was a GPS coordinate if you knew how to read the nodes.
"0.042 milliseconds," Lei hissed.
The signal wasn't coming from Beijing. It wasn't even coming from a secret island. The signal was coming from a server room in the Grand Lisboa—the very hotel where the international gala was taking place. The MAS was hiding in plain sight, using the hotel's massive power grid and satellite uplink to maintain the kill-switch.
Lei ripped the Key of Leda stone from the terminal. The upload wasn't finished, but he had something better: the location.
He burst out of the cyber-cafe, the humidity of Macau hitting him like a wall. He didn't head for the docks; he headed for the skyline.
The Grand Lisboa loomed over the city like a golden, lotus-shaped nightmare. It was a fortress of glass and light. Lei knew he couldn't get in through the front door—the facial recognition would flag him before he reached the lobby.
He found a narrow service alley where the massive industrial laundry trucks were unloading. He snatched a discarded uniform—a technician's coverall with the "Lisboa Facilities" logo—and smeared more grease on his face.
He entered through the basement, moving past massive humming generators. He followed the thick, shielded fiber-optic cables that ran upward toward the penthouse levels. These weren't standard hotel lines; they were military-grade, cooled by liquid nitrogen.
He reached the 54th floor, a level that didn't exist on the elevator buttons.
The doors opened to a corridor that looked like a surgical theater. It was white, sterile, and perfectly silent. The noise of Macau was gone, filtered out by a high-tech "Acoustic Shield" that created a pocket of artificial Quiet Hours in the heart of the city.
Lei pulled the Sonic Pulse Dampener. It was dead, but he didn't need it to fire. He needed the capacitor.
He reached the central server room door. Two Night Watchers stood guard, their black tactical visors reflecting the sterile white light.
Lei didn't wait for them to speak. He slammed the Pulse Dampener's casing against the high-voltage junction box next to the door. The remaining static charge in the dampener's capacitor arced into the building's local grid, creating a localized EMP.
The lights flickered and died. The magnetic locks on the door hissed and released.
Lei lunged forward, tackling the first guard into the darkened room. They crashed into a bank of servers. The second guard drew a silenced pistol, the red laser dot dancing across the room.
"LEI!" It was Mei's voice, but it wasn't a scream. It was a command.
In the center of the room, Mei was still strapped to the chair, the electrodes glowing. But she wasn't looking at the guards. She was looking at the central Relay Hub.
"The loop!" she cried out, her voice raw. "They've already started the purge! They're not waiting for you to upload! They're using my signature to broadcast the Acoustic Purge to Guangzhou!"
The MAS wasn't waiting for a standoff. They were moving to the final stage: the lethal noise that would kill millions to hide the evidence.
Lei realized his choice was gone. He couldn't save her instead of the city. Saving her was saving the city.
He didn't fire at the guards. He hurled the Key of Leda stone directly into the cooling fan of the main server rack.
The stone shattered, the silver chip inside making contact with the high-speed spinning blades. The data didn't upload—it short-circuited.
The Key of Leda was a Master Frequency. When it touched the physical hardware of the purge-broadcast, it didn't send a signal; it created a sonic black hole.
A high-pitched, crystalline shriek erupted from the servers. The Night Watchers collapsed, clutching their ears as their visors shattered. The video feed to Beijing cut to static.
The "Acoustic Purge" signal, meant for Guangzhou, was sucked back into the Macau hub, imploding under the weight of the Leda signature.
Lei dove for Mei, ripping the electrodes from her temples. The feedback loop was broken. The server racks began to melt, the liquid nitrogen coolant venting in white clouds.
"Lei," Mei whispered, her eyes finally clearing.
"I've got you," he said, pulling her from the chair.
But as they turned to the exit, the white walls of the server room began to hum. It wasn't the MAS. It wasn't the Ghosts.
The hotel's massive external LED screens, visible for miles, were all flashing the same, singular message in every language:
THE TRUTH IS AUDIBLE.
The short-circuit hadn't destroyed the data; it had broadcast the unencrypted history of the Watcher Program to every mobile phone, every television, and every billboard in Macau. The secret was out. The world wasn't just watching; the world was finally listening.
But as the alarms in the Grand Lisboa began to scream, a shadow appeared in the doorway. Not an agent. Not a soldier.
It was Director Zhao. And in his hand, he held a small, black remote with a single, glowing red button.
"You broke the leash," Zhao said, his voice a whisper of pure malice. "So I'm burning the kennel."