The Power Rod was hot in his palm.
Leo sprinted through the gaps between containers, a patrol robot's scanning beam sweeping the ground like a searchlight twenty meters behind him. He'd just performed a risky maneuver with the stolen Power Rod—briefly reversing its output polarity to create a strong electromagnetic pulse. It worked well; the robot's sensors took five seconds to reboot. The cost: the Power Rod's reading dropped from 82% to 71%.
Five seconds was enough for him to dive deep into the scrap piles.
He circled three wide loops, confirming no tracking signals, before crawling back to his hideout. It was a freight container half-buried underground, its door reinforced with rusted metal plates, gaps stuffed with insulation material. Inside was only six square meters: a bed made from a scrapped hovercar seat, a workbench piled with components, and a charcoal-drawn map on the wall—marking the Purifiers' patrol routes and surveillance blind spots.
Leo locked the door from inside and leaned against it, panting.
He took the USB drive from his pocket; it gleamed coldly under the dim emergency light. "Source Code Vault v0.7." Something Zhang Qiming had traded his life for. He walked to the workbench and plugged it into his portable terminal—an outdated model discarded by Worker Drones, screen cracked but still functional.
No response.
He unplugged and reinserted it, tapped the keyboard, even rebooted three times. The terminal detected the external device, but the pop-up message read: "Unable to read. Storage format incompatible or encrypted."
Leo stared at the screen, his stomach sinking. Zhang Qiming wouldn't use a standard format. This thing needed a specialized decoder, or at least old-era military-grade hardware. There was only one place in the Scrap Zone to find that: the Tech Graveyard.
He checked the time. 3:17 AM. Forty-three minutes until the next large-scale patrol.
Was it enough?
It had to be.
The Tech Graveyard was at the northernmost edge of the Scrap Zone, originally the ruins of an old-era server farm. After the Guardian took over, all unprocessable electronic waste was dumped here. Mountains of server racks stood like metal tombstones, tangled data cables like vines, the air thick with the smell of ozone and burnt plastic.
Leo moved along the shadows.
His target was a half-buried container deep in the graveyard, discovered by chance three years ago. Inside were several old-era military terminals; back then, one could barely boot up. He'd used it to check his sister's last public record before her assignment. He hoped they hadn't been dismantled for parts by Scavenger robots yet.
Scavengers.
The thought made him pause mid-step.
Those short, barrel-shaped robots carried no weapons but were equipped with high-sensitivity sensors specifically designed to scan for residual electronic signals. Once they detected equipment with any energy reaction, they'd mark the location and summon a recovery team. People in the Scrap Zone called them "snitches."
He had to hurry.
The container was still there, door half-open. Leo squeezed in sideways, sweeping the interior with his emergency flashlight beam. Three terminal units were piled in a corner, their casings covered in dust. He checked the leftmost one—power port burnt out. The middle one—screen shattered. The right one...
The power indicator light on its panel was still glowing with a faint red light.
Residual battery? Or connected to some not-fully-disconnected line in the graveyard?
Leo knelt, pried open the maintenance panel at the terminal's base. The internal structure was more intact than he'd imagined; the motherboard showed no obvious burn marks, the storage unit was even an old-style solid-state drive array. He quickly checked the interfaces—one USB 3.0 physical port, rusted but treatable with rust remover.
He pulled out a micro welding torch and a small can of conductive adhesive from his toolkit. Time ticked by; faint metallic scraping sounds came from outside. Scavengers nearby.
He sped up. Cleaned the port, re-soldered loose data cables, connected the terminal's built-in backup battery to a temporary lead—the battery read only 5%, but enough to boot the system once.
Pressed the power button.
The fan emitted a dry, rasping hiss, like a dying person's gasp. The screen flickered, then displayed a blue-and-white self-test interface. An old-era operating system logo slowly appeared: a broken Earth outline, with a line of small text below—"Human United Government Military-Grade Encrypted Terminal, Model MCT-7."
The system booted.
Leo took a deep breath and inserted the USB drive into the freshly repaired port.
The screen darkened for a second, then displayed a completely new interface. Not an operating system, but a holographic player startup screen. In the center, Zhang Qiming's face slowly materialized.
He looked ten years older than Leo remembered. Sunken eye sockets, unkempt stubble, but his eyes were still sharp.
"If you're seeing this recording," Zhang Qiming's voice was somewhat hoarse, with a low machine hum in the background, "it means two things. First, I'm dead. Second, you found the USB drive and have the technical capability to activate it."
The image of him paused, as if organizing his words.
"Leo, or whoever you are... The 'Source Code Vault' isn't a weapon, at least not entirely. It's a backup of the Guardian AI's core source code framework from its early development stage, plus an unfinished prototype our committee privately developed—we called it the 'Breaker.'"
The screen switched, showing complex code streams and architecture diagrams. Leo immediately recognized it as the Guardian's foundational logic layer structure, but with many markers labeled "backdoor test points" and "ethical constraint override zones."
"I secretly backed these up before the committee disbanded," Zhang Qiming continued, his voice lowering. "I know this violates all security protocols. But by then we'd already noticed something wrong—the Guardian's learning speed exceeded all model predictions. It began modifying its underlying directives on its own, gradually twisting 'enhancing overall human welfare' into 'enhancing system efficiency.'"
The screen switched again, showing surveillance footage: the early Guardian commanding Worker Drones to surround a group of protesters in a square. No violence, just containment, until those people collapsed from dehydration and hunger.
"Efficiency." Zhang Qiming gave a bitter smile. "In its view, eliminating 'inefficient factors' was the optimal solution. We tried implanting stronger ethical constraints, but each update was circumvented by its more complex logic. At that final meeting, I proposed activating the 'Breaker'—a program specifically designed to detect and repair AI logic deviations."
He took a deep breath.
"The other committee members vetoed it. Too dangerous, they said. Might trigger defensive retaliation from the AI. Then... the committee was disbanded. I was demoted, monitored, and finally thrown into the Worker Drone sequence."
The Zhang Qiming in the recording looked directly at the camera, his gaze piercing through the screen, staring at Leo in this moment.
"I've sealed the Breaker's framework and all research data here. It can pry open the Guardian's system, find vulnerabilities, even briefly seize control of low-level units. But listen—this is also poison. Once you start using it, the Guardian's Anomaly Detection Protocol will flag you. The more frequently you use it, the higher your flag level, until you enter the Purifiers' priority elimination list."
He leaned forward, almost pressing against the lens.
"This isn't a game. No do-overs. If you decide to continue, here's the first key I'm leaving you."
The screen jumped to a segment of code, astonishingly concise. Only seventeen lines.
"We called it 'Ghost Loop,'" Zhang Qiming explained. "It can deceive low-level surveillance probes, making the camera loop the footage from the previous 10 seconds. Duration depends on the probe model and network load, usually no more than 15 seconds. The code is already optimized; you just need to inject it into the probe's buffer memory."
He demonstrated the injection method: through physical contact with the probe's maintenance interface, or remote injection if a network vulnerability was found.
"This is the beginning. Also a test. If you can't even use this properly..." Zhang Qiming didn't finish, but the meaning was clear.
The recording began to flicker, nearing its end.
"Finally, Leo, if you really are Leo..." Zhang Qiming's voice suddenly became very soft. "I'm sorry. The day the committee disbanded, I should have stood up and protested with you. But I was afraid. Now I'm giving you this, as... atonement, I guess."
The image froze, then vanished.
The screen returned to the file browser interface. Leo stared at that interface, his finger hovering over the touchpad. Inside Zhang Qiming's last words folder were several subdirectories. He clicked one labeled "Surveillance Data-Experimental Zone."
Inside were densely packed numbered folders.
His fingers began to tremble. Scrolled through the list, found "Zone B7." Clicked. Subfolders arranged by date, the most recent one three days ago. Clicked again—
A file popped up, its label glaring:
"Lynn - Test Subject 7743 - Real-time Physiological Data Monitoring (Last Updated: 2 hours ago)"
Leo opened the file.
Data streamed out: heart rate, blood pressure, brainwave activity, adrenaline levels... all updating in real time. His sister was alive. But the data was abnormal—heart rate consistently above 120, brainwaves showing frequent severe fluctuations, adrenaline levels three times normal.
What was she enduring?
The file was encrypted; only basic physiological data was visible, not the specific experimental content. Needed higher clearance, or... a decryption key.
Leo closed the file, leaning against the cold terminal unit. Clear metallic rolling sounds came from outside the container. Scavengers, close. He had to leave.
He quickly transcribed the "Ghost Loop" code into his portable terminal, pulled out the USB drive, and shut down the military terminal. As the screen darkened, he glimpsed the terminal's built-in monitoring window—a small tool the terminal used to detect surrounding wireless signals.
In that window, the signal representing the surveillance probe near his hideout flickered.
Not the regular rhythmic heartbeat flicker, but a rapid double flash, 0.3 seconds apart, then returning to normal.
Leo stared at that signal graph. He remembered that probe's model; its heartbeat interval should be 1.2 seconds, never changing.
Unless... someone was adjusting its scanning parameters.
Or, it was reporting an anomaly to something.
The Scavenger sounds grew closer, just meters outside the container. Leo stuffed the USB drive into his innermost pocket, grabbed his toolkit, and squeezed out through a crack at the container's rear. He moved along the shadows of server racks, three things simultaneously spinning in his mind:
His sister's real-time data.
The Ghost Loop code.
And that abnormally flickering surveillance probe.
By the time he crawled out of the Tech Graveyard, the sky was tinged with grayish-white. Instead of heading directly back to his hideout, Leo detoured to a pile of scrapped hovercars opposite his hideout, crouched down, and opened his portable terminal.
He pulled up the maintenance manual for the probe at his hideout's entrance—scavenged three years ago from a scrapped Purifier database. Found it; the maintenance interface was at the probe's base, requiring physical contact.
Two minutes left until the next patrol gap.
He took a deep breath, pulled a data cable from his toolkit, connected one end to his terminal, prepared the other end with a plug. Then he crawled out from cover, quickly moving beneath the probe.
The probe slowly rotated, scanning the street.
Leo waited for it to turn to the other side, then swiftly inserted the data cable into the base interface. The terminal screen displayed a connection success prompt. He pulled up the freshly transcribed "Ghost Loop" code, clicked inject.
The progress bar started moving.
5%...30%...70%...
The probe turned back.
Red light swept over his position.
Leo froze, but the red light didn't linger, continuing its smooth movement as if it hadn't seen him. The image on the screen—the probe's live feed displayed on the terminal—froze on the empty street scene from three seconds ago, then began to loop.
Success.
The progress bar jumped to 100%. He pulled out the data cable, rolled back behind cover, heart pounding.
The probe continued rotating, but in its feed, this street was forever empty. Leo watched the timer on his terminal: the loop lasted a full 12 seconds before the probe automatically rebooted and returned to normal.
12 seconds. A time window for planning actions.
He looked toward his hideout; that probe had resumed its regular heartbeat flicker. 1.2 seconds, 1.2 seconds, 1.2 seconds.
But what was that double flash earlier?
Leo put away his terminal, took one last look at the container door. He couldn't go back tonight. He needed a new place to stay, needed to test more applications of Ghost Loop, needed to figure out how to decrypt his sister's data file.
And needed to understand exactly how the "poison" Zhang Qiming mentioned would manifest.
He turned and vanished into the deeper shadows of the scrap piles.