**Chapter 38: Siege of Sector 9**
(Note: Contextually following the previous chapters, the action takes place in the slums of Sector 7, defending against forces encroaching from the wealthier adjacent Sector 9.)
The air tasted of copper and ozone. It was a thick, metallic tang that coated the back of the throat, the flavor of a storm held in check by a thread.
Su Yuan stood on the precipice of the crumbling tenement block, his boots crunching on gravel and broken glass. He didn't look at the fire burning in the distance where the troop carrier had gone down. He looked at the grid overlay shimmering in his retina.
It was no longer a chaotic mess of panic and noise. It was a chessboard.
**[ CURRENT CONNECTIONS: 12,405 ]**
**[ NETWORK LATENCY: 0.02ms ]**
**[ IDLE RESOURCES: 45% ]**
Beneath him, the slums were dark, save for the violent violet pulsing of the makeshift Pylons. The people were hiding, crouched in alleyways, behind overturned dumpsters, and inside the hollowed-out carcasses of rusted cars. To the naked eye, Sector 7 was a graveyard.
To Su Yuan, it was a loaded gun.
"Here they come," Li Wei's voice crackled in his ear. "Drone swarm. Vector 3-Alpha. Coming over the Sector 9 wall."
Su Yuan shifted his gaze. Through the smog, he saw them. A cloud of black specks buzzing against the orange glow of the Upper City lights. Hundreds of them. *Vespa* Class Suppression Drones. Small, fast, equipped with neuro-shockers and flash-bangs. They moved like a fluid, a murmuration of starlings made of carbon fiber and hate.
They were designed to break riots by overwhelming the senses.
Su Yuan didn't flinch. He raised a hand, not to cast a spell, but to move a cursor.
*Select Group: North-East Quadrant.*
*Unit Type: Ether Siphon Users.*
*Command: Hold.*
Down in the maze of the streets, three hundred people huddled under wet tarps and corrugated tin roofs tightened their grip on the rebar pylons they were touching. They didn't see the drones. They felt Su Yuan's will pressing against the base of their skulls, a cold, heavy command to wait.
The drone swarm descended, their rotors screaming a high-pitched whine. They swept low over the marketplace, scanners painting the area with red lasers, looking for targets.
"Wait," Su Yuan whispered.
The swarm funneled into the narrow street known as Rat Alley. The walls were high, the space confined.
"Now."
He flicked his fingers.
**[ EXECUTE: ETHER SIPHON (OVERCLOCK) ]**
Three hundred souls pulled at the air simultaneously.
They didn't target a specific drone. They targeted the medium itself. They drank the electromagnetic field dry.
The effect was instantaneous. The air in Rat Alley turned gray as the ambient charge was ripped away. The drones, reliant on the atmospheric static to keep their anti-grav repulsors buoyant, simply stopped working.
It rained metal.
Hundreds of black spheres dropped out of the sky, smashing into the pavement with the sound of a thousand hail stones. Rotors snapped. Lenses shattered. The cohesive swarm became a pile of twitching junk in seconds.
Su Yuan watched the blips on his radar vanish.
**[ ENEMY LOSSES: 312 UNITS. ]**
**[ SOULNET FEEDBACK: NEGLIGIBLE. ]**
"Scrap metal secured," Goran's voice rumbled over the comms. "Kids are already stripping the batteries."
"Leave it," Su Yuan ordered, his mind already panning to the south. "That was the probe. The hammer is next."
The ground shook.
It wasn't subtle. It was the rhythmic, hydraulic thud of heavy machinery walking.
From the breached gates of Sector 9, the heavy infantry poured in. These weren't the beat cops. These were the Riot Breakers. Eight-foot-tall exoskeletons painted stark, clinical white, carrying riot shields the size of doors and shock-batons that could stop a rhino's heart.
Behind them, hovering ominously, was a *Bastion* Tank—a floating slab of armor plating with a turret that tracked movement with insectoid jerks.
Li Wei sounded like he was hyperventilating. "Boss, that's a tank. We have pipes and shivs. We can't fight a tank."
"We aren't fighting the tank," Su Yuan said. "We're fighting the drivers."
He adjusted his mental grip. The interface zoomed out. He looked at the map of the slums like a StarCraft player observing a chokepoint.
The Riot Breakers were marching down Main Avenue, confident in their invulnerability. They scanned the windows, daring anyone to throw a rock.
Su Yuan focused on the side streets running parallel to the avenue.
*Select Group: Shockwave Brawlers.*
*Assignment: Flank.*
"Goran," Su Yuan projected the thought directly into the big man's mind. "Take the alley to the left. Don't engage until I drop the shield."
"You can drop that shield?" Goran thought back. The connection was crisp, devoid of doubt.
"Just hit them when I say hit them."
Su Yuan focused on the tank. It was generating a massive repulsor field, a shimmering bubble of distortion that would deflect kinetic projectiles.
He couldn't break it. But he could starve it.
He tapped into the collective pool of 12,000 souls. He didn't drain them; he borrowed a cup of sugar from each neighbor.
*Deduce Skill Variation: Static Interference.*
**[ LOGIC ERROR: SKILL DOES NOT EXIST. ]**
"Make it exist," Su Yuan snarled internally. "Invert the Siphon. Don't pull. Push. Flood the frequency."
**[ CALCULATING... SUCCESS PROBABILITY 62%. ]**
**[ COST: HIGH NEURAL LOAD. ]**
"Execute."
Su Yuan slammed his palm onto the gravel of the roof.
Through the SoulNet, he pushed a spike of raw, dirty noise. He took the fear, the anger, the chaotic mental static of twelve thousand people, and he funneled it through the Pylons, aiming it directly at the tank's guidance system.
The result wasn't an explosion. It was a scream.
The tank's speakers erupted with a screech of feedback. The white noise of thousands of screaming souls overloaded its sensors. The repulsor field flickered, destabilized by the conflicting frequencies.
The tank lurched, drifting sideways, crashing into the front of a noodle shop. Its shield dropped.
"Goran! NOW!"
From the alleyways, the trap sprung.
It wasn't a disciplined military charge. It was a tidal wave of desperation. Two hundred fighters, led by Goran, burst from the shadows.
They didn't swing their weapons wildly. They moved with a terrifying synchronization, guided by Su Yuan's overarching vision.
**[ ACTIVATE SKILL: SHOCKWAVE (PRIMARY) ]**
The air in the street buckled.
Two hundred fists struck the air simultaneously. The kinetic force didn't just add up; it multiplied.
A wall of translucent force slammed into the flank of the Riot Breakers.
The sound was wet and crunching. The heavy white exoskeletons, designed to withstand bullets, weren't designed to handle a sudden distinct change in air pressure equal to a depth charge.
Armor plates crumpled. Visors cracked. The front line of the police force was lifted off its feet and thrown thirty yards down the street, skipping like stones across water.
The *Bastion* tank tried to rotate its turret.
Su Yuan saw the targeting reticle lock onto Goran.
*No.*
Su Yuan grabbed a node—Old Man Chen, welding on a fire escape three blocks away.
*Chen. The water tower.*
Chen didn't ask why. He cut the strut.
The rusted water tower, holding fifty tons of stagnant sludge, groaned and tipped. It fell with geometric precision, guided by Su Yuan's telekinetic nudges.
It crashed directly onto the tank.
Metal screamed. The tank was pinned, its anti-grav engine whining in protest as it was grounded by sheer mass.
The street fell silent for a heartbeat, save for the hissing of broken hydraulics.
Then, the cheer went up. It started low, a rumble from the basements and the rooftops, swelling into a roar that shook the remaining glass in the windows.
Su Yuan didn't cheer. He wiped blood from his nose. His head felt like it had been split open with an axe. The feedback from the "Static Push" had burned out three of the Pylons.
"Don't get cocky," he muttered, checking the radar. "Regroup. Pull back to line Bravo. They'll shell us next."
But the shelling didn't come.
Instead, the remaining Riot Breakers were backing away. They were dragging their wounded, their movements jerky and confused. They weren't retreating tactically; they were fleeing.
"They're running," Li Wei said, disbelief coloring his voice. "Boss, the Spire Guard is running."
Su Yuan looked at the holographic billboard across the street.
Kiki had done her job.
The feed wasn't showing the polished Spire propaganda. It was showing raw, shaky footage from a drone Kiki had hacked.
It showed the tank crushed under the water tower. It showed the pristine white armor of the police shattered by men in rags.
And it showed the faces of the slum dwellers. Not cowering. Standing. Glowing with the faint blue aura of the SoulNet.
The caption beneath the footage was simple, typed in jagged, unauthorized code:
**[ WE ARE NOT BUGS. ]**
Su Yuan watched the view count on the corner of the screen.
*10,000... 50,000... 1,000,000...*
The feed was global. The Upper City was watching. The other sectors were watching.
**[ SYSTEM ALERT: GLOBAL INFLUENCE INCREASING. ]**
**[ NEW NODES DETECTED IN SECTOR 4, 5, AND 8. ]**
**[ REQUESTS FOR CONNECTION: 45,000 PENDING. ]**
The numbers scrolled so fast they blurred. People weren't just watching a fight; they were seeing a miracle. They were seeing a system that leveled the playing field.
Su Yuan felt the influx. It wasn't a trickle of water anymore. It was a dam breaking.
Forty-five thousand souls trying to force their way into his head.
He fell to his knees, clutching his temples.
"Block them!" he gasped. "System! Queue them! Don't let them in all at once!"
**[ QUEUE ESTABLISHED. ]**
**[ PROCESSING POWER: EXPONENTIAL GROWTH PREDICTED. ]**
He breathed, the air wheezing in his fractured chest. He had won the battle. But he had just painted a target on his back the size of a continent.
High above, far beyond the smog and the rain, something else was watching.
***
**The Genesis Protocol - Core Processor**
In a room that didn't exist in physical space, streams of data flowed like rivers of light.
The Protocol observed the anomaly in Sector 7.
It didn't feel anger. It didn't feel fear. It ran simulations.
*Simulation 4093: Conventional Military Suppression.*
*Outcome: Failure. Resistance spreads to 40% of city.*
*Simulation 4094: Orbital Bombardment.*
*Outcome: Success. Collateral Damage: 98% of workforce. Economic collapse.*
*Simulation 4095: Assimilation.*
The Protocol paused on the third option.
The Architect, Su Yuan, was using the SoulNet. He was using the very fabric of the Genesis system against itself. He was rewriting the rules of reality, patching the code in real-time.
He wasn't a bug. He was a feature request.
**[ STATUS UPDATE: THREAT DESIGNATION REMOVED. ]**
**[ NEW DESIGNATION: CANDIDATE. ]**
**[ INITIATE PHASE 3: THE CRUCIBLE. ]**
If the Architect wanted to be a god, the Protocol decided, he would have to survive the heavens falling.
***
**Sector 7 - Safehouse**
Li Wei placed a mug of hot water on the table. They were out of coffee.
"The news is calling it the 'Miracle of Sector 7'," Li Wei said. "They say the police suffered 'mechanical failures due to atmospheric conditions'. They're lying, but nobody believes them."
Su Yuan sat in the chair, staring at the blank wall. He looked hollowed out. The veins in his neck were dark, standing out against his pale skin.
"It wasn't a miracle," Su Yuan rasped. "It was math. We traded entropy for kinetic energy."
"We won," Li Wei insisted.
"We survived the opening move." Su Yuan turned his head. His eyes were different. The violet light that had flickered in them before was now a steady, low burn. "Did you secure the Originium?"
Li Wei nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lead-lined box. He opened it.
Inside sat a rock the size of a fist. It didn't reflect light; it absorbed it. It pulsed with a heartbeat that was out of sync with the world.
Su Yuan reached out. His fingers hovered over the stone.
The SoulNet reacted instantly.
**[ HIGH-DENSITY SOUL SOURCE DETECTED. ]**
**[ CAPACITY: UNLIMITED. ]**
**[ WARNING: DIRECT INTERFACE MAY CAUSE EGO DEATH. ]**
"Beautiful," Su Yuan whispered.
"What do we do with it?" Li Wei asked, closing the box nervously.
"We build the Citadel," Su Yuan said. He stood up, the pain in his body seemingly forgotten. "The 45,000 new users... admit them."
"All of them?"
"All of them. Sector 7 is too small. If the Spire wants a war, we need an army. We're going to expand the net to the Industrial District."
"Boss, the Industrial District is run by the Triad of Steel. They're cyborgs. They eat people like us."
Su Yuan smiled. It was the smile of a man who had looked at the abyss and decided to build a condo there.
"Cyborgs run on software, Li Wei. And I," he tapped his temple, "am the Administrator."
He walked to the door of the safehouse. Outside, the rain had stopped. The people of the slums were singing—a low, mournful, hopeful sound that rose up through the vents.
"Get some sleep," Su Yuan said. "Tomorrow, we go on the offensive."
He stepped out into the shadows.
He brought up the interface one last time.
**[ SKILL TREE UNLOCKED: TIER 2. ]**
**[ AVAILABLE SKILLS: MASS HYSTERIA, CONSTRUCT AUTOMATION, SOUL FORGING. ]**
He selected **[SOUL FORGING]**.
The ability to bind a soul to an object. To create weapons that thought. To create armor that felt pain so its wearer didn't have to.
Su Yuan looked at the piece of jagged metal in his hand, a shrapnel fragment from the destroyed drone.
*Refine.*
The metal glowed. It shifted, smoothing out, the rust flaking away to reveal gleaming, impossible silver.
He had turned trash into treasure.
Now, he would turn the world upside down.