Ah Ming took a deep breath, memories surfacing through the fog of black threads in his mind, as if he were trying to pull pieces of himself back from something that had already taken too much, as if he were trying to remember who he had been before the darkness found him.
"Underground lab. Scrap Iron Creek Zone. Outer rim of the city."
Lin Shen nodded.
That made sense—industrial wasteland where Atlas conducted experiments away from prying eyes, hidden in layers of pollution and decay where no one would look or care what was happening, where the poorest people lived and no one with power paid attention.
"How did you get there?"
"Recruitment drive. Three months ago. Atlas scouts came to Dragon Spine Lane. Promised credits, dream enhancement, future in the Neon Tower for those who succeeded."
Ah Ming's voice became distant, as if speaking of another life, of another person who had existed before the threads had found him, before everything had become this darkness.
"There were fifty of us initially. Workers, students, people who needed credits—anyone they could recruit, anyone desperate enough to believe what they were offering, anyone who had no choice but to say yes."
"What happened?"
"Testing began immediately. They hooked us up to devices—consciousness probes, dream matrix interfaces. Quantum chips implanted at the base of the skull, connecting us directly to their systems."
Lin Shen's fingers tightened, anger rising that he tried to keep hidden, tried to keep from overwhelming the fragile trust he was building, anger at what Atlas was doing to people who had no choice.
"Forced consciousness access. Illegal by international consensus, but no one enforces it here."
"Not here." Ah Ming's voice was bitter, emotion breaking through the emptiness, showing that he still felt something beneath the darkness. "Atlas owns Norn Ruins. They make the rules now."
He rubbed his temples again, movements becoming more desperate, as if the threads were tightening around him even while they were talking, as if something in the darkness knew he was trying to remember and was trying to stop him.
"For the first month, nothing unusual. Dreams became clearer, more vivid. We could control them, shape them. We felt powerful, like gods of our own minds, like we could do anything."
"Then the black threads appeared?"
"Gradually. Fleeting shadows in dreams at first. Whispers in consciousness when we woke, voices that weren't ours, thoughts that came from somewhere else."
Ah Ming's hands shook more violently, as if something were trying to stop him from talking, as if the darkness were responding to his attempt to speak.
"Then people started disappearing. One by one. Those who complained about shadows. Those who couldn't handle the dreams. They said they moved on, but no one saw them leave."
He looked at Lin Shen with a terrible realization in his eyes, as if he were only now understanding what had happened, as if he were only now realizing what Atlas had actually done to them.
"I think they're being used. Their consciousness, fed to something bigger. Something that grows stronger with each mind it consumes."
Lin Shen's mind raced with implications, with the horror of what Atlas was actually doing, with the scale of what they'd unleashed on people who had no idea what they were agreeing to.
Consciousness farming.
Atlas harvesting negative emotions to power their control systems, using human minds as batteries, feeding their systems with human suffering and fear, growing something in the Matrix that no one was supposed to know existed.
"Tell me about your dreams now. The ones with the black threads."
Ah Ming closed his eyes, visual memories surfacing, as if he were seeing them again even with his eyes closed, as if the dreams were always there, always waiting.
"Alleyways. Always alleyways. Narrow, twisting, lit by flickering neon. I'm running, but never fast enough. No matter how fast I go, they're always behind me."
"From what?"
"Shadows. Not just shapeless darkness anymore. They have forms now. Twisted figures, like humans but wrong. Too many limbs. No faces. They move in ways that shouldn't be possible."
Lin Shen's consciousness tingled, recognition of something grandfather had written about, warnings about what happened when shadow archetypes became strong enough to manifest, about the danger they posed when they became physical in the dream layers.
Shadow archetypes solidifying, taking physical form in the dream layers, becoming something that could hunt and trap people, that could reach into the waking world and pull minds back into the darkness.
"The black threads connect to them. Anchor me to the dreams. Each time I fall asleep, I'm pulled deeper into the maze, and it gets harder to wake."
"How many layers have you reached?"
"Lost track after five. Each layer gets darker. More twisted. The shadows get closer, more determined."
Ah Ming opened his eyes, terrified, the most emotion Lin Shen had seen in him since he'd arrived.
"I don't know what happens if I reach the bottom. Part of me suspects I already have. That this conversation, this clinic, everything—is just another layer of dream."
Lin Shen leaned forward, his voice carrying certainty he didn't fully feel yet but knew he had to project, had to offer somehow to someone whose reality had completely collapsed.
"This is real, Ah Ming. I promise you that. But your danger is genuine."
He made his decision.
"Stay here tonight. The couch in the back room folds out. I'll monitor your sleep."
"Can you stop the dreams?"
"Not yet. But I can try to understand them better. Maybe even find a way back up through the layers before you're lost completely, before you fall so deep you can never wake again."
Ah Ming hesitated, fear warring with hope, the desperation of someone who'd been trapped too long, whose reality had become so uncertain that even hope felt dangerous.
"I'm putting you in danger. If they know..."
Lin Shen's expression hardened, his grandfather's words suddenly clear in his mind as if he'd heard them moments ago instead of years ago, as if the old man were standing right here, right now.
"Consciousness manipulation is my business. Fighting Atlas's control is my purpose, whether I chose it or not."
He tapped the table again—pattern forming in the rhythm.
Three quick taps, pause, two slow taps.
Subconscious communication from a future self, message encoded in the gesture that he couldn't yet decode but knew was important, that carried meaning beyond what conscious thought could process.
We are connected. You are not alone. The awakening has begun.
"Now rest. Tomorrow we start planning."
As Ah Ming moved to the back room, Lin Shen opened the Chuanxi Lu again.
Flipped through grandfather's notes until he found a passage about shadow archetypes and how to resist them, notes written in handwriting he recognized but whose contents he was only beginning to understand.
"When darkness seeks to consume, light must become anchor."
He closed the book, determination settling into his bones, a sense of purpose that felt both new and familiar, as if something that had been waiting was finally ready to begin, as if this was what he'd been born to do even if he'd never known it.
Tomorrow's mission became clear—find Atlas's lab, understand what they were doing, and stop them.
Whatever the cost.