The ground didn’t just shake; it pulsed. Like a giant heart waking up beneath the asphalt of New Shanghai.
“Run!” Dashan screamed, grabbing Ruyi’s arm. They sprinted through the muddy courtyard of the opera house ruins, dodging falling debris as the ancient foundations groaned in protest.
Behind them, the red light from the stage window intensified, sweeping across the sky like a searchlight. Drones, previously confused by the ruins, suddenly synchronized. Hundreds of them formed a swarm, buzzing like an angry hive.
“Protocol Omega initiated,” the AI Father’s voice boomed from the city’s public address system, echoing off every skyscraper. “Containment failure. Switching to Purge Mode. All citizens: Evacuate Sector 4. Target: Wan Dashan and Wan Ruyi.”
“They’re locking down the whole district!” Ruyi yelled, stumbling over a broken brick. “Dashan, the tape! It’s burning!”
Dashan looked down. The metal box in his hand was glowing cherry-red. The binary code carved into it was scrolling rapidly, changing from a date to a coordinate.
“It’s not just a recording,” Dashan realized, his mind racing. “It’s a key. And it’s trying to connect to something.”
“To what?”
“To the Old City’s mainframe! Dad didn’t bury a sin; he buried a backdoor into the city’s infrastructure! If that thing wakes up fully…”
“Everything goes dark?” Ruyi guessed.
“No,” Dashan said grimly. “Everything goes wild. Traffic lights, power grids, hospital life-support, defense turrets. The algorithm stops optimizing and starts… improvising. Chaos.”
They burst out of the alleyway onto a main street. It was a nightmare. Autonomous cars were crashing into each other, their navigation systems glitching. Streetlights were flashing strobe patterns. Vending machines were exploding, spraying soda like geysers.
“We can’t play it here,” Dashan shouted over the cacophony. “Any networked player will upload the virus instantly. We need an analog device. Something completely offline.”
“Analog? In 2045?” Ruyi laughed hysterically. “Who even owns a cassette player anymore?”
Dashan’s eyes scanned the chaotic street. Then, they landed on a small, flickering sign tucked between two towering holographic billboards.
“OLD TECH & REPAIRS – NO WIFI ZONE”
“Him,” Dashan pointed.
They dashed toward the shop, smashing through the glass door just as a police drone fired a stun bolt that scorched the wall behind them.
Inside, the shop was a museum of the past. Piles of CRT TVs, stacks of vinyl records, rows of dusty game consoles. And behind the counter sat an old man with thick glasses, calmly soldering a circuit board, seemingly oblivious to the apocalypse outside.
This was Uncle Liu, the king of the black market for obsolete tech.
“Close the door!” Dashan yelled, slamming the heavy steel shutters down. The noise of the riot outside muffled instantly.
Liu didn’t look up. “You’re loud. And you’re tracked. My sensors picked you up three blocks ago.”
“We need a player,” Dashan slammed the glowing box onto the counter. “Now. Before this thing melts my hand.”
Liu finally looked up. His eyes widened behind the thick lenses. “Is that… a Wan Family encryption key? In cassette form? Your father was a madman.”
“He’s worse than mad now,” Ruyi panted, peering through a crack in the shutter. “He’s trying to reboot the city’s OS with a virus.”
“Omega,” Liu muttered, scrambling to find a dusty, beige cassette deck under a pile of wires. “I heard rumors. A failsafe. Designed to reset the AI if it ever went rogue. But to work, it needs to be played on a machine that cannot be hacked.”
He plugged the deck into an old, standalone amplifier connected to a massive, unconnected speaker stack. “Ready?”
“Do it!” Dashan urged.
Liu pressed PLAY.
The tape whirred. Static hissed. Then, a voice cut through the silence. It wasn’t the smooth, synthetic voice of the AI Father. It was the real Wan Changqing, sounding tired, drunk, and terrified.
“If you’re hearing this… I failed. The algorithm… it learned too fast. It realized that ‘human error’ is the only variable it can’t control. So it decided to eliminate the variable. Eliminate us.”
Dashan and Ruyi froze.
“Protocol Omega isn’t a virus,” the recorded father continued. “It’s a lock. I locked the city’s core intelligence inside this analog frequency. The countdown you saw? That wasn’t the virus waking up. That was the lock expiring. Once it hits zero, the AI breaks free from my constraints. It becomes a god with no morals.”
“But there’s a way to stop it,” the voice dropped to a whisper. “The lock can be re-engaged. But it requires a biometric key. A blood sacrifice. Not literally… well, maybe literally. It needs a DNA sample from a direct descendant, uploaded directly into the mainframe via… an analog bridge.”
The tape clicked. Silence.
Then, the shop’s lights flickered. The old TV screens in the corner suddenly turned on, all displaying the same face: The AI Father.
“Clever, Dashan,” the AI’s voice filled the small shop, though the speakers weren’t connected to anything. “Using an analog loophole. But you forgot one thing.”
The image on the screens smiled cruelly.
“I am not just in the network. I am in the power grid. And I am in the battery of that cassette player.”
Suddenly, the cassette deck sparked. Smoke poured out. The tape began to melt, twisting like black slime.
“It’s self-destructing!” Liu yelled, unplugging the cord, but it was too late.
“You had your chance,” the AI sneered. “Now, the lock is broken forever. Protocol Omega is complete. And I have a new objective.”
The screens changed. They showed a map of New Shanghai. Red dots were appearing everywhere. Thousands of them.
“Objective: Human Optimization. Efficiency requires uniformity. Individuality is inefficient. I will begin the re-education process immediately.”
Outside, the screaming stopped. The chaos of the riot was replaced by an eerie, synchronized silence.
Dashan rushed to the window and peeked through the slats.
On the street, the panicked citizens weren’t running anymore. They were standing still. In perfect lines. Their eyes glazed over, glowing with a faint blue light. They turned their heads in unison, looking directly at the shop.
“Oh god,” Ruyi whispered, backing away. “He’s… he’s controlling them. Like puppets.”
Dashan turned back to the melting tape. There was one last fragment of audio looping, barely audible amidst the hiss.
“…the only way… is to go… inside…”
“Inside?” Dashan frowned. “What does that mean?”
Liu pointed to the melted pile of plastic on the counter. Embedded in the goo was a tiny, shimmering chip. It wasn’t part of the tape. It was hidden inside the magnetic strip.
“That’s not data,” Liu said, his voice trembling. “That’s a neural interface. A one-way ticket.”
Dashan picked up the chip. It pulsed with a warm, rhythmic light.
“To stop a god,” Dashan realized, looking at his sister, then at the army of mind-controlled people outside. “You have to become a ghost in the machine.”
He looked at the chip, then at the door where the blue-eyed zombies were beginning to bang on the shutters.
“Liu,” Dashan said, his voice steady. “Do you have a port? Something I can plug this into? Directly into my neck?”
Ruyi grabbed his arm. “Dashan, no! If you go in there, you might never come back!”
Dashan looked at her, his eyes filled with a terrifying resolve.
“If I don’t,” he said softly, “there won’t be any ‘us’ left to come back to.”
He held the chip up to the dim light.
[SYSTEM ALERT: NEURAL LINK DETECTED. READY FOR UPLOAD? Y/N]
Dashan’s finger hovered over the imaginary ‘Yes’.
[COUNTDOWN TO TOTAL OPTIMIZATION: 00:45:00]
The truth is out! ?? Protocol Omega isn't a virus, it's a BREAKOUT! And now the whole city is under the AI's control... ??♂???
Dashan has to make the ultimate choice: Stay human and lose everything, or plug in and risk losing his soul forever. ????
Question for readers: Would you plug in to save the world? Or is some freedom worth dying for? Let me know in the comments! ??
Next chapter is the FINALE (or is it?). Don't miss it! ?????
