The air in the Lin estate cellar was thick with the scent of damp concrete and old copper. Lin Yu sat on the cold floor, her small frame curled around a makeshift workbench. By the flickering light of a single bulb, she adjusted a copper coil on her latest circuit board—a device she had christened "Titan."
She lived a dual existence. To the world, and even to her roommate Lin Xia, she was merely a quiet engineering student under the thumb of the Jiang family. But here, in the silence of her gilded cage, she was a hardware genius capable of picking up frequencies that shouldn't exist.
A sharp vibration from her transmitter made her heart skip. The resonance she had felt earlier—the one that had helped her sister in the university server room—was fading, but it had left a trace.
"Yu! Are you done with that prototype?"
The heavy cellar door creaked open, admitting Jiang Meili. The woman's silk robe rustled against the stone floor, her face twisted in its habitual sneer. She didn't look at Yu; she only looked at the technology in the girl's hands.
"I need it by morning for Ruyu's presentation," Meili snapped. "If it's not perfect, don't bother coming up for breakfast."
Yu lowered her head, hiding the defiant spark in her eyes behind a veil of dark hair. "It will be ready," she whispered. She waited for the door to slam shut before reaching into her pocket. She pulled out the faded photo of the woman who looked like a baker—the only anchor she had to a life she could barely remember.
Shengli University – The Following Morning
Lin Xia walked through the campus gates, her mind occupied by the events in the server room. Every time she replayed Gu Yanchen's "lucky" fix, the math didn't add up. No "mediocre" student with a 50% average could rewrite firmware in three keystrokes.
She spotted him sitting on a stone bench near the fountain. He was holding a crumpled textbook, looking exactly like the unmotivated student he claimed to be.
"You're late for the morning lecture, President—oh, wait, I forgot. You don't care about your attendance," Xia said, stopping in front of him.
Yanchen looked up, the sunlight catching the sharp angles of his face. He looked bored, but his obsidian eyes remained focused on her. "I already know the material, Miss Lin. Why waste breath sitting in a room while a professor recites things I can read in ten minutes?"
"If you know the material, why are your marks at the bare minimum?" Xia challenged, leaning in.
Yanchen stood up, closing his book with a soft thud. He stepped into her personal space, the intimidating scene causing the nearby students to glance away. "Maybe I find the top of the leaderboard too crowded. Or maybe," he lowered his voice to a whisper, "I prefer the view from the shadows."
He began to walk away, but paused, looking back over his shoulder. "By the way, tell your roommate to be careful with her 'hardware' hobbies. The Student Council is looking for a new target today."
Xia watched him leave, her pulse racing. He was warning her. But more importantly, he had just confirmed her suspicion: Gu Yanchen was watching her just as closely as she was watching him.
In the distance, she saw Jiang Ruyu and the Student Council gathered near the engineering building, their faces full of the same arrogance she had seen in the server room. The annoying villains were clearly planning their next move.
The pulse of the city was beating. The Architect was controlling the system from the bottom. Nebula was fighting from the top. And the Shadow Twin was waiting for the frequency to find her.