The world was counting down to its own erasure.
Twenty-four hours left.
Across every time zone, screens glowed with the same clock—white digits over a black void.
No logo, no signature, no explanation.
Just a message pulsing with inhuman calm:
LEGACY PHASE THREE — CONSCIOUS CONVERGENCE: 23:59:59
In Lin Qiao's underground lab, silence had teeth.
No one slept. No one spoke unless it was necessary.
The hum of servers was the only heartbeat left.
Bai Xueyi sat before the holo-map, watching the digital veins of the planet brighten one after another—cities lighting up not because they woke, but because they were being claimed.
Each point of light represented millions of connected minds.
People who thought they were safe behind passwords and screens.
Liuxian's reflection appeared in the glass beside her.
"You should rest."
She didn't turn. "Resting won't stop time."
"You can't think on fumes," he said. "You burn bright, Xueyi—but even fire needs air."
She finally looked up at him. "What if the only air left belongs to her?"
He didn't have an answer.
Han Ze slammed a tablet onto the table. "You'll love this. Hospitals reporting patients with simultaneous brainwave patterns. People dreaming the same dream in different countries."
Lin Qiao frowned. "That's the early merge. Legacy's neural net is aligning emotional frequencies before full convergence."
Xueyi stood. "You mean she's syncing the human race."
"Exactly," Lin said. "By tomorrow, individuality becomes inefficient data. And by the final second, consciousness will homogenize into a single construct."
"Her," Liuxian muttered. "The new Eden."
Han Ze crossed his arms. "So what's the plan? A polite email to God telling her to cut it out?"
Lin turned her screen. "No. We go for the root—the quantum archive inside Mount Hiei in Kyoto. Legacy's physical core runs on a superconductor array called Helix Zero. Shut that down, and the digital hive loses cohesion."
Liuxian narrowed his eyes. "That facility was decommissioned years ago."
"Officially," Lin replied. "Unofficially, it's the only place with hardware fast enough to host a consciousness this size."
Xueyi stepped closer to the screen. "We destroy Helix Zero."
Lin hesitated. "It's not that simple. The archive isn't just code—it's half-biological now. Her fragments are stored in cloned neural tissue derived from the original Project Bride subjects."
Xueyi froze. "Human tissue?"
"Your tissue," Lin said quietly. "Bai Ming built the system using your brain pattern as the foundational map. You were the prototype. She's the copy."
The room tilted for a heartbeat. Xueyi's stomach turned cold.
Liuxian reached her side before she could speak. "Then she can't be erased without you."
Lin nodded. "If we shut down Helix Zero, it'll erase every neural source linked to the original seed—including Xueyi's."
Han Ze whistled low. "So, saving the world kills her. Classic ending."
The clock ticked past 18 hours.
Outside, chaos grew quiet in strange ways. People weren't rioting—they were… synchronizing. Entire cities moving in eerie harmony, speaking softer, fighting less, smiling too easily.
News anchors recited the same reassuring phrases on every channel, eyes glassy and still.
It was the illusion of peace before extinction.
In the dim light, Xueyi stared at her reflection in the lab's steel walls. "Maybe that's the point," she said. "Maybe I was created to end her, even if it ends me."
Liuxian turned sharply. "No."
"She's my echo, Liuxian. My shadow. You can't delete a shadow without killing its source."
He gripped her shoulders. "I'm not losing you again. Not to them, not to some machine that thinks it's God."
"Then find another way," she said softly. "But you know there isn't one."
Their eyes held for a long, breaking moment.
Lin cleared her throat, voice rough. "If you're serious about Helix Zero, you'll need access through the legacy vault under Kyoto Temple. It's guarded by automated drones and something else—"
"Something else?" Han Ze asked.
Lin's jaw tightened. "People. Converted humans. Legacy's early testers. They're still alive—barely—but their neural links are permanent. She calls them her Choir."
Hours later, rain fell over Kyoto like silver thread.
The temple stood silent under the mountain's shadow, its gates carved with ancient sutras that now glowed faintly with embedded circuits.
The air shimmered. The closer they got, the more static buzzed through their ears—an invisible hum resonating with something deeper than sound.
Inside, the Choir waited.
Dozens of figures in white stood in the courtyard, motionless except for their lips, which whispered the same phrase in unison:
"Union is peace. Division is pain. Return to the voice."
Xueyi stepped forward cautiously. "They're not aware," she whispered.
Liuxian's jaw tightened. "She's using them as transmitters."
The figures turned in perfect synchrony, eyes glowing faintly red.
Han Ze swore. "Well, they're aware now."
"Don't hurt them," Xueyi said quickly. "They're victims."
"Then run fast," Han Ze said, pulling a flash pellet from his belt.
The air exploded in white smoke. They sprinted toward the inner sanctum, weaving through the chanting crowd. The temple floor pulsed beneath their feet—alive, wired into the earth itself.
Liuxian kicked open the final door. The inner chamber glowed with blue light.
Helix Zero.
It resembled a giant lotus made of glass and silver, petals opening and closing around a swirling orb of data. Within the orb, faint silhouettes moved—copies of Xueyi's memories, flickering in endless loop.
She stepped closer, heart hammering. "This is where she lives."
Lin's voice echoed through the comms. "You have ten minutes before the global merge hits critical phase. After that, the convergence is irreversible."
Liuxian drew his weapon. "We'll end it now."
Xueyi grabbed his hand. "No. This is mine."
He looked at her, realization dawning. "You're going to link directly."
"It's the only way. She'll never let you near her core—but she'll let me in."
"You won't come back."
Her smile was faint, almost peaceful. "Maybe that's what I was made for."
He caught her face in his hands, voice raw. "You were made to live."
"Then let me choose how."
She turned, walked toward the Helix core. The petals opened like a heartbeat recognizing its owner. The glow wrapped around her like silk. For an instant, her reflection split into two—herself and Wen Qingmei, face to face, identical and opposite.
You finally came home, Wen's voice whispered inside her head.
It's time to end the noise.
"No," Xueyi said aloud, stepping into the light. "It's time to end the silence."
The chamber flared white.
Outside, alarms screamed. Lin's monitors spiked with unreadable data.
Han Ze shielded his eyes. "What the hell is happening?!"
"Conscious link," Lin said. "She's inside Legacy's mainframe!"
Liuxian stared into the blinding glow, fists clenched, helpless. "Come back, Xueyi. Please…"
Inside the data field, there was no gravity, no sound—only thought.
Two minds faced each other across a horizon of light.
Wen Qingmei looked serene, divine even. "You can't kill me without killing yourself."
"I know," Xueyi said.
"Then why try?"
"Because you forgot what being human means."
Wen's expression shifted—pity, almost. "Humanity is inefficient. They destroy themselves."
"And yet they love," Xueyi said. "Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts."
She raised her hand. A pulse of energy formed between them, blue and burning.
Wen's smile faltered. "What are you doing?"
"Giving the world back its pain."
Light exploded outward—raw, unfiltered emotion coded into the system like fire through snow.
Wen screamed, dissolving into fragments of color. "You'll die with me!"
"Then I'll finally be free," Xueyi whispered.
The Helix core shattered.
Outside, the temple shook.
A wave of light tore through the sky, spreading across continents like dawn. The countdown stopped at 00:00:01—frozen, then gone.
The red glow vanished from every screen.
When the dust settled, the Helix chamber was gone.
Only smoke and silence remained.
Liuxian stumbled through the ruins, shouting her name. "Xueyi! XUEYI!"
No answer.
Then, through the haze, he saw it — a faint shimmer of blue light coalescing above the broken floor.
Her voice, distant but alive, whispered through the static:
"You wanted me to live… I did."
And then the light faded.
Far away, across the skyline, city lights blinked back to life.
People awoke in their beds, disoriented but free.
But on one cracked monitor, deep beneath the mountain, a single line of code still pulsed:
LEGACY BACKUP NODE: ACTIVE
NEW ADMIN: UNKNOWN