The underground pipe maintenance room smelled of rust and mold.
Leo wedged the last piece of insulation board into a wall crack, blocking the cold wind seeping through the ventilation duct. This new hideout was more concealed than the previous container—the entrance was hidden behind the base of a scrapped water treatment tower, requiring a crawl through a five-meter-long narrow pipe to reach this six-square-meter space. The downside was dampness; the upside was only one surveillance probe could see the entrance, and from a very oblique angle.
He opened his portable terminal and pulled up the maintenance interface for that probe.
The "Ghost Loop" code was already pre-injected, set to activate automatically every three hours, lasting 12 seconds each time. He'd tested it three times; each time, the probe obediently looped empty footage, with no abnormal logs after reboot. The first key Zhang Qiming left was more reliable than he'd expected.
Reliable enough to be unsettling.
Leo shut down the terminal and took out last night's haul from his toolkit: the storage module scavenged from a Worker Drone supply transfer station. Palm-sized, its casing showed burn marks, but the interface was intact. He cleaned the contacts with rust remover and connected it to the terminal.
The system identified it as "Old-Gen Access Token Module - Supply Management Class."
Nothing auto-unlocked; manual cracking was required. Leo pulled up his self-written decryption tool—a code library painstakingly assembled over three years in the Scrap Zone, specifically designed to tackle old-era encryption protocols. The progress bar began its slow climb.
He leaned against the wall, staring at the terminal screen, but his mind was calculating something else.
His sister's data file had high encryption levels, requiring a specific key. The management terminal at the supply transfer station might contain access logs, or at least backups of old access tokens. If luck was on his side, this module might contain the access credentials of a decommissioned Worker Drone, and that drone might have once had clearance to access low-level databases in the experimental zones.
Even if the chance was one in ten thousand.
The progress bar jumped to 100%. The module unlocked, popping up a file list. Mostly outdated supply inventories and handover records, all timestamps from five years ago. Leo quickly scanned until he saw a folder: "Access Token Backups - Decommissioned."
Clicked.
Inside were seven encrypted token files. He tried cracking them one by one. The first six were passes for low-level Worker Drones, with permissions limited to living quarters and basic work areas. The seventh, filename: "Tech_Level2_Beta."
The cracking tool ran for a full three minutes.
Then an interface popped up: pale blue background, a small logo in the upper left corner—the broken Earth outline, with text below reading "Human United Government - Technical Support Level 2 Clearance (Beta Period)."
Valid until: December 31, 2072.
Expired five years ago. But old systems had a vulnerability: if the token holder's biometric data wasn't completely purged from the database, expired tokens could sometimes still be used to query non-sensitive information. Leo took a deep breath, imported this token into the decryption tool, then pointed it at his sister's data file.
Clicked "Attempt Associated Decryption."
The terminal fan whirred frantically, screen flickering. This crack was slower than any previous attempt, the progress bar crawling like a snail. 10%...25%...50%...
Leo stared at the screen, fingers unconsciously tapping his knee.
70%...85%...99%...
The screen suddenly went black.
Then lit up again, popping up a completely new data window. Not the full experimental record, but a set of metadata—the file's attribute information. Leo quickly scanned:
File Subject: Lynn - Test Subject 7743 - Complete Experiment Log (Encryption Level: Gamma)
Associated Project: Prometheus
Last Updated: 3 hours ago
Next Scheduled Operation: Optimization Iteration - Phase 3
Scheduled Time: 72 hours (from current system time)
Execution Zone: Experimental Zone B7, Surgical Bay 4
Required Clearance: Medical Director Level or Project Lead Direct Approval
72 hours.
Leo stared at that line, ice forming in his stomach. Three days. His sister's next "Optimization Iteration" was in three days. What was Phase 3? The first two phases had already turned her into the state reflected in the data—heart rate above 120, adrenaline off the charts. What would Phase 3 be?
He closed the metadata window, tried using the token to access more detailed content, but a red warning popped up: "Insufficient clearance. Access request logged."
Request logged.
Those four words sent a chill down his spine. Every attempt left a trace in the system. Was the "poison" Zhang Qiming mentioned already beginning to vaporize?
Just then, a new message window popped up in the terminal's lower right corner. Not a system notification, but an independent encrypted pop-up, pure black background, white text:
"Unconventional data access pattern detected. Source token: Tech_Level2_Beta (expired). Access target: Gamma-level encrypted file (Project: Prometheus). Warning: This behavior will trigger Anomaly Detection Protocol Lv.2."
Below, a line of smaller text:
"Recommendation: Terminate all related operations immediately. Clear local logs. Countdown to protocol scan: 00:04:59."
The countdown began ticking: 00:04:58...00:04:57...
Leo yanked out the storage module, powered off the terminal. The maintenance room plunged into darkness, only a sliver of light seeping through the ventilation duct. He leaned against the wall, listening to his own heartbeat.
Four minutes. What was Anomaly Detection Protocol Lv.2? Would it send Purifiers? Or just mark his location and escalate surveillance?
He couldn't gamble.
Quickly packed his toolkit, stuffed the terminal and module into the innermost layer, grabbed his homemade insulated cloak. Walked to the maintenance room door, pressed his ear against it to listen for outside sounds.
Only the drip of water from deep within the pipes.
He gently pushed the door open and crawled into the entrance pipe. Twenty seconds to traverse the five-meter-long narrow passage, then he squeezed out through a crack in the water treatment tower base. Outside was the typical Scrap Zone scenery: mountains of metal waste, Worker Drones slowly moving garbage in the distance, the sky stained dark orange by the Dome's ambient light.
No Purifiers in sight.
No unusual sounds.
Leo crouched in the shadows, glanced at the old screen on his wrist—a secondary display scavenged from a Worker Drone, only showing basic time and a simple map. The countdown should have reached zero by now, but nothing was happening around him.
A false alarm? Or was the warning message itself a trap?
He decided to leave the area first. Moving along the shadows of the scrap piles, planning to circle to the old cooling tower ruins to the south—complex structure, good for hiding.
Halfway there, he stopped.
Thirty meters ahead was the surveillance probe he'd previously tested "Ghost Loop" on. It was slowly rotating, scanning the street. Leo habitually waited for it to turn to the other side, preparing to dash past.
But as the probe rotated halfway, it suddenly stopped.
Then, slowly, extremely slowly, it rotated back, its red light aimed directly at the scrap pile where Leo was hiding.
Stopped.
Didn't move.
Leo held his breath. The probe's scanning pattern had changed—no longer the regular扇形扫描, but a fixed-point stare. The red light stared in his direction like an eye.
He slowly retreated, shrinking into deeper shadow. The probe didn't follow, but didn't look away either. It just stayed there, as if confirming something.
Ten seconds later, it resumed normal scanning.
Leo waited for it to turn away, then dashed across the street, diving into the scrap passage opposite. Heart pounding. Was that part of the Anomaly Detection Protocol? Or coincidence?
He didn't dare stop, continuing toward the cooling tower. Twenty minutes later, he reached the tower's outer perimeter. This place was more desolate than the maintenance room; the massive cooling tower lay like a fallen giant, its metal skeleton twisted and broken, forming countless gaps and hollows.
He chose an entrance to a half-buried maintenance tunnel, confirmed no signs of biological or mechanical activity inside, then crawled in.
The tunnel ended in a small equipment room, about four square meters, with a rusted workbench and several empty shelves. He set down his toolkit, leaning against the wall to catch his breath.
Temporarily safe.
He opened the terminal, rebooted. System self-check normal, no foreign intrusion or tracking programs detected. That warning pop-up didn't reappear. As if everything just now was an illusion.
But Leo knew it wasn't.
He pulled up the probe's monitoring logs—for convenience during testing, he'd left a backdoor program that could read the probe's basic status data. The logs showed that exactly four minutes ago, that probe received a "priority directive," its content encrypted, but the directive type was "fixed-point stare - suspicious target confirmation."
Directive source: Regional Monitoring Node-A7.
Not a coincidence. The system had already noticed the anomalous data access and begun active reconnaissance.
Zhang Qiming was right; this was poison. Each use deepened the toxicity.
Leo shut down the terminal, sat down in the darkness. Three days. Seventy-two hours. He needed faster progress, more effective tools, needed... allies?
The thought had just surfaced when he heard sounds.
Not the hydraulic sounds of robots, nor the dull footsteps of Worker Drones.
Human footsteps. Very light, deliberately softened, but the metal floor still transmitted faint scraping sounds. More than one person. At least two, maybe three.
The sounds came from the other end of the maintenance tunnel, approaching.
Leo immediately turned off all light sources, crouched behind the workbench, pulled the homemade insulated pliers from his toolkit—the tips sharpened to a point, usable as a weapon if necessary.
The footsteps stopped outside the equipment room door.
Silence.
Then, the door was gently pushed open.
Leo tightened his grip on the pliers, staring at the patch of darkness at the doorway.
A figure slipped in sideways, movements agile. Then a second. Both wore dark clothes, simple respirator masks covering their faces, features unclear.
The first person raised a hand, palm open—no weapon, just a gesture signaling calm.
Then, a lowered female voice spoke, carrying a hint of hoarseness and undeniable calm:
"Don't be tense, Engineer. We saw your little trick. That loop code... quite interesting."
She paused.
"If you want to save your sister, we need to talk."