The early morning sunlight was flat like a sheet of metal, flowing over the hood of the old car. The road heading West was endless cracked asphalt strips, red dust rising as the wheels rolled over, and old, weathered signboards that were only frames. The engine noise was steady like an old man's breath, occasionally interspersed with the sound of the wind whipping through dry grass clumps.
Trung gripped the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on a streak at the end of the road: the fractured horizon, where sand met sky. In the small compartment behind him, two small figures slept leaning against each other Tùng, his small forehead sticky with sweat, and Lan, her hair faintly silver in the early morning mist. That image was the only anchor pulling him back to reality two heartbeats, two bodies that needed his protection.
In his chest pocket, the tiny, fingernail sized chip was heavy with the weight of an entire mystery. He pulled it out again, gently touching the edge with a knife a sickly blue light flashed like an electric worm. Faint writing appeared on the surface: "Facility No. 03 West Bank of the Mekong. Objective: Entity M Restoration."
He didn't need to read further. M a single letter that his heart leaped towards the moment the chip displayed it. M, the familiar name he used to whisper in the night Mai. The car rolled into an abandoned gas station the tin roof was riddled with holes, the pump was manually wired, and the old filter still flickered. Trung stopped the car and sat in silence. Dust covered the windshield, trailing behind it the shadow streaks of the past. He looked at his two sleeping children, then managed a silent smile one that no one saw. A smile that felt like a steady, yet painful, chain.
Lan moaned half awake, her eyes opening vaguely:
"Dad... Mom is cold... I hear Mom calling... there's water... smell of... iron..."
Trung shuddered. The smell of iron... was it blood, or metal? Amidst the girl's fragmented words, he recognized an echo that was not just a memory, but perhaps a signal a fissure between human and machine.
He remembered. Remembering a rainy Saigon night, Mai's hand offering him a torn raincoat, remembering her tired but warm smile like a kitchen fire, remembering her voice saying:
"If anything happens... you must live. For the children."
That word pierced deep into his mind it had reminded him to live through the darkest days, and now it was the reason for him to move on.
When the station's warning buzzer sounded, Trung pushed his thoughts aside, plugged the chip back into the metal slot, and restarted. Far ahead, the migration route passed through villages untouched by the technology grid only tiled roofs, a few old utility poles, and wooden fences remained.
There, he sometimes encountered women carrying burdens over their shoulders, men behind old agricultural machinery, children running after the car wheels asking questions in simple local dialects, without noise.
Looking at them, Trung saw a part of the country not yet swallowed by technology: where memories were intact, where human heart was not yet digitized.
The car drove on. The numbers on the map in his head jumped one by one Tây Ninh... Đồng Tháp... where the chip pointed the way. The night before, when the machines were silent, he lay listening to his children breathe the sound of safety and told himself that everything would be okay. But now, between the sand and the sky, every kilometer gained was one step closer to the one who held the knife in Mai's hand that night.
Three days later, the car stopped beside an abandoned checkpoint. Fire flickered, the smell of oil and smoke combined into a faint haze. There, a man was squatting beside the fire. His eyes were sharp, his long beard scraggly. When Trung approached, the man didn't turn his head he spoke slowly, immediately:
"Are you Trần Trung?"
The questioning voice was like a knife. Trung gripped the gun under his jacket, looking at him.
"Who asks?" he replied, his voice deep, cautious.
The man gave a dry laugh, then tossed a metal card at him: K–12 Liaison Officer Dũng.
"Professor Khải said if you were still alive, I would lead you to the next place. No time for chit-chat." He stood up, adjusting his coat, his voice serious. "Eat, then listen."
Dũng pointed southwest, speaking briefly:
"Vạn Sinh is restructuring the network. They are not just hunting the prime sample they are hunting for a way to reproduce. Your daughter, little Lan, they consider her... the mechanism. Do you understand?"
Trung was silent. The word "mechanism" echoed dryly in his head, like the way people refer to a machine. The man squeezed Trung's hand as if to check if his bones were still intact:
"The key to the rebirth of mankind. It sounds terrifying, but it's the truth. If they can copy emotions, copy memories, they will copy willpower. And if they copy willpower, people will lose the most sacred thing the freedom to choose."
Dũng looked deep into Trung's eyes, as if searching for a remaining ember:
"You have one choice run, or go straight into the monster's face. Khải wants you to take the second path. What about you?"
Trung narrowed his eyes, releasing a dry laugh:
"I'm not used to choosing the easy path. I'm going."
He glanced at his two children sleeping in the car. Dũng nodded, handing him a paper map, on which ink lines traced trails, camouflage points, and the positions of watchtowers.
"If you go deep, there will be times when there's no signal. Consider your two children the reason. And... also their target. Hold them tight."
Trung held the map like an emblem. In his heart, a thought flashed his and Mai's early days together were not a grand scenario. They loved each other in simple days Mai worked at a district medical center, she often smiled at elderly patients, brewed unsweetened coffee, and listened to the life stories of passersby. Trung remembered the time she helped a lost child reunite with her mother in the flea market the way she looked at the child, as gently as if looking at her own. That scene was deeply imprinted, like a photograph that never faded.
While Dũng spoke about the route, his voice occasionally drifted, mentioning the time when they were still free soldiers in hiding, and the time when technology swallowed every inch of the country.
"They've known how to read DNA for a long time, but they don't know how to read the heart," Dũng said.
Trung nodded he saw a cold reality technology could copy the sample, but could technology copy the moment Mai stroked Lan's hair when she was tired, or her face when she sang lullabies to their children? He doubted it.
But the enemy did not doubt. They experimented, they sampled, they merged, they activated, and they called it progress.
Dũng lit a cigarette, smoke curling into the air. He clicked his tongue:
"You can't go in there alone. I will lead you to the final horizon where their traces linger. But you must promise no noise. They have eyes in the bushes, ears in the wind."
Trung looked at his two children, then took a deep breath. The West wind blew strongly, carrying the dry metal smell the smell of abandoned bases, and the smell of swirling sand. He spoke in a firm voice:
"I don't promise it will be easy. I promise I will bring them back."
Dũng smiled, his smile not sweet, but solid as rock:
"That is a man's promise. Alright. Let's go. Night is drawing near, and the night reveals the truth."
They got into the car, leaving behind the abandoned gas station and the people who lived by repairing plumbing, by the old generator. The road shifted into a desert state—sand, wind, deep ruts. In the rearview mirror, Trung saw a faint armored convoy, a sign that their pursuers were not far behind.
Along the way, Trung occasionally stopped by the roadside, got out of the car, and walked into small villages. The people there lived slowly like the grass no network protocols, they communicated through words and eye contact. An elderly woman offered him a bowl of salty, sweetened water; a group of children gave him a piece of baked cake such simple, human gestures.
Trung met their curious eyes, without fear simply kindness. He remembered Mai, smiling while distributing medicine to the people in a temporary shelter to this day, that was the most sacred image. He resolutely hid the coldness in his heart, covering it with the act of buying Lan a package of cookies, smiling at Tùng, gently touching his daughter's hair.
The car continued to roll, the rhythmic noise like a solitary song. In the distance, the metal streak of a partially buried facility emerged, the large frame like the mouth of a mountain. Trung stopped the car, turned off the engine, and watched in silence. Before him was the objective. Facility No. 03 West Bank of the Mekong. On Dũng's wrinkled map, this was where they were restoring "Entity M."
Trung placed his hand on the steering wheel, the mechanical and human heartbeats synchronizing. He whispered, as if talking to himself and the memories that followed him:
"If I can, I will bring you back. If I cannot, I will keep your name in my heart, so whenever the children remember, they will know Mom once lived."
The sun gradually set. The sand sank into the first darkness. Trung started the engine, turned on the lights, and together with Dũng, they advanced toward the complex where the sand concealed many secrets, and where one of those secrets had the face he once called by an intimate name Mai.