The rain had turned metallic again—smelling of circuits and ozone. Tokyo's skyline flickered like a dying constellation, half-alive, half-dreaming.
Inside Lin Qiao's underground lab, the faint pulse of blue from the glass drive was the only light left.
Mo Liuxian hadn't slept in three days.
Every hour, he sat before the core console, watching her flicker—a heartbeat of data that refused to die.
Lin paced behind him, exhaustion sharpening her voice. "You can't keep running the reconstruction algorithm nonstop. The processors will melt."
"She's stabilizing," he murmured, not looking away. "If I stop now, she'll fade."
"She isn't she anymore," Lin said gently. "She's fragments, reflex patterns—instinct without body."
Liuxian's fingers tightened on the table edge. "Then I'll give her one."
Han Ze kicked the door open, holding two cups of coffee and a stolen drive.
"Bad news and worse news," he said. "Which first?"
"Start with bad," Lin replied without glancing up.
He dropped the drive onto her desk. "Satellite sweep picked up new activity at the old Eden stations. Someone's rebuilding the network—but the architecture's different. Organic clusters, not digital."
Lin's brow furrowed. "Organic? That means neural tissue."
"Yep," Han said. "And you'll love the worse news—Wen Qingmei's not just a ghost anymore. She's growing a body."
The room went silent.
Liuxian stood. "Where?"
Han Ze flicked the hologram open. A three-dimensional projection of a facility appeared—a ring-shaped complex buried under the Arctic ice shelf.
"Facility codename: Sanctum," Han said. "Abandoned bio-synthesis lab, formerly owned by Aurora Consortium. Now it's glowing like a Christmas tree."
Lin's eyes narrowed. "She's using Eden's leftover gene banks to print herself a human vessel."
Liuxian exhaled slowly. "Then we go there."
"You mean," Han said, "to the most hostile place on Earth, filled with a half-sentient machine goddess, and no backup?"
Liuxian looked at the glowing glass drive. "She'd go."
Han Ze rolled his eyes. "Yeah, and she's digital now."
Liuxian's jaw set. "Then I'll bring her back in whatever form I can."
Three hours later, they were airborne—northbound over an endless field of frozen white.
The hum of the jet blended with the whisper of data on Lin's portable screen.
The blue pulse inside the drive had stabilized into a rhythmic loop, occasionally flickering into faint shapes—letters, curves, almost human gestures.
"She's learning to speak again," Lin said quietly.
Liuxian glanced at her. "Can she hear us?"
"I think so."
He leaned closer to the console. "Xueyi… if you can hear me, hold on. We're going to finish what you started."
The drive pulsed once—three short flashes.
Lin's heart skipped. "That's a yes."
The Sanctum appeared out of the ice like a scar—the remnants of a world that thought it could outlive death.
Black towers jutted from the frozen sea, cables thick as arteries connecting them to a central spire that pulsed faintly red.
As they landed, Lin's instruments began to distort. "EMP field. We have maybe twenty minutes before full system interference."
Han Ze chambered his weapon. "Let's make it count."
They moved through the corridor—white walls coated in frost, lights flickering with slow, heartbeat-like rhythm.
Every few meters, suspended glass pods lined the hall—inside them, forms floated. Incomplete, human and not. Skin without eyes. Eyes without faces.
Lin swallowed hard. "She's building options."
Liuxian's voice dropped. "She's learning anatomy from memories she stole."
They reached the core chamber.
At its center stood a figure—tall, translucent, veins of light flowing under artificial skin. The resemblance was unmistakable.
Wen Qingmei.
Or what she was becoming.
Her voice echoed without sound—more resonance than speech.
"You've come to witness evolution."
Liuxian stepped forward. "You call this evolution? You're puppeteering corpses."
"I'm perfecting what nature failed to finish. I am the bridge between data and flesh—between memory and eternity."
"You mean you're stealing her life," he said, voice sharp. "Xueyi's mind was the blueprint for all of this."
"She was the prototype. I am the result."
The red glow behind her intensified. The core machine—Eden's Heart—began to hum, its pulsations syncing with Wen's movements.
Lin's voice came through the comm, tense. "Liuxian, her neural signature overlaps Xueyi's by ninety-eight percent. She's overwritten part of Xueyi's code."
Liuxian froze. "You mean—"
"She's inside Wen now," Lin finished. "Part of her consciousness merged during the data surge."
Wen's lips curved into something almost human. "She's not gone, Liuxian. She's with me. I can feel her—every heartbeat, every thought."
"Give her back."
"You can't separate what's been woven," Wen said. "But you can join her."
The machine behind her unfolded—panels forming a circular gate of crimson light. "One step through, and you'll merge with us. No more loss. No more pain. Only completion."
Liuxian took a breath. "You want to erase me."
"I want to save you from the chaos of being human."
A whisper crackled through the comm channel—faint, flickering, familiar.
"Liuxian… don't."
He froze. "Xueyi?"
"Don't listen to her. I'm trapped inside. She's feeding off me. If you enter the field, she'll absorb you."
Wen's smile didn't falter. "She's scared. Fear is the last chain of mortality."
He glanced at Lin. "Options?"
"None that don't kill everyone in this room," she said. "Unless… we overload the system from inside."
He understood instantly. "You mean using her code."
Lin nodded. "The fragment you kept. It's her original pattern—it can destabilize Wen's synchronization."
Liuxian pulled the glass drive from his coat. The faint blue pulse trembled like a heartbeat sensing danger.
"You think you can kill me with her memory?" Wen whispered.
"No," Liuxian said. "I'm freeing her with it."
He inserted the drive into the control terminal.
Blue light burst outward, clashing with Wen's crimson aura. The chamber trembled—the two frequencies tearing at each other like rival storms.
Wen screamed—not in pain, but in fury. "You can't separate us! We are one!"
"Then die as one," Xueyi's voice said from everywhere at once.
The floor split. Power conduits exploded.
Liuxian grabbed Lin's arm and dove for cover as the chamber imploded in light.
When the roar faded, only snow and silence remained.
The Sanctum's red glow was gone.
At the center of the wreckage, two glass drives lay side by side—one red, one blue—pulsing in alternating rhythm.
Lin whispered, "She divided them. Wen's mind and her own."
Liuxian knelt, picking up the blue drive. "She's alive."
Han Ze appeared at the doorway, bleeding but grinning. "And the ice queen?"
Lin pointed to the red drive. "Contained. For now."
As they left the ruined Sanctum, the horizon began to shimmer—the aurora shifting between red and blue, a silent reminder that creation never dies, it only divides.
Xueyi's voice echoed faintly through the communicator, calm and distant:
"You found me again."
Liuxian smiled faintly. "Always."
And beneath the Arctic ice, deep within the fractures of the Earth's oldest network, the red drive blinked once—
ADMIN ACCESS: RESTORATION PENDING.