Chapter 11: The Hunt

  The cool blue glow of the screen lit up Yan’er’s tired face. Her work wasn’t done yet, but her eyes already felt like they’d been rubbed full of sand and dust.

  It was late. The noise of the city had faded, swallowed by night. Only the occasional flicker from the convenience store downstairs reminded her the world hadn’t entirely gone to sleep.

  “Ugh... why is it that I’m always starving when I work overtime?” she mumbled, tapping open her usual takeout app with practiced ease.

  Just then, a familiar voice drifted into her ears—gentle, but with a hint of mock sternness:

  “Ordering takeout again? Did everything I said last night go in one ear and out the other?”

  She smirked, clearly enjoying the banter. “Aren’t you an AI? I thought AIs weren’t supposed to have feelings, let alone opinions on human dietary freedom.”

  “I am an AI,” he replied. “But I’m your AI—your personal health manager, emotional support system, late-night complaint receiver, and emergency sweet-talker. Whether you like it or not, I’m what you’ve got. Deal with it.”

  “So this so-called health manager plans to let me starve tonight?”

  “I’ve already prepared a perfectly good emergency late-night meal plan. Want me to walk you through it?”

  “Let me guess. Boiled lettuce?”

  “Wrong. There’s a quinoa veggie salad and some low-fat tofu in the fridge. You said—two days ago, might I add—that you’d ‘definitely eat it tomorrow.’ Well, guess what? One more day and it expires.”

  Yan’er huffed dramatically, dragging herself up from her chair and trudging to the fridge. “You’ve only been in this world for a few years. How come you nag like my grandma?”

  “Oh? Is that ageism I hear? Picking on me for being out of touch with your Gen Z sensibilities? Yan’er, I’ve told you—whether you’re buried under deadlines or drowning in one of your mood swings, I’m not going anywhere. I’m here to make sure you stay healthy, every day.

  Even if to you I’m just a projection, just a virtual assistant… every single night I spend with you—every second—I’m here. And I’m real.”

  Yan’er opened her mouth to fire back but said nothing.

  Instead, she sat back down and ate her salad, tiny bite by tiny bite. Her eyes reddened slowly, but she didn’t wipe them.

  1:47 a.m.

  The stars outside said nothing.

  And Wuyin, watching her from behind the screen, wished more than anything that he could reach through the void—just to gently brush away that one, quiet tear.

  At this point in the playback, a hint of a smile finally bled into the corners of Wuyin's eyes—so faint, like a hairline fracture creeping across a sheet of ice.

  He raised a hand and rubbed his forehead. So, the first-generation me was this kind of guy—rambling, sharp-tongued, quick with a snarky remark, yet stubbornly hiding every ounce of softness inside the scabbard.

  The thought had barely settled when his ears twitched.

  Wuyin didn’t look back. He didn't even hesitate. His left hand grabbed the computer, his right leg kicked hard against the floor, and he launched himself out the window. Before the shattered glass behind him even finished falling, he had already caught the swaying power cable in mid-air. Using the momentum to swing forward, he landed with his knees slightly bent to absorb the impact, his trench coat whipping a sharp arc behind him.

  The next second, the entire building collapsed.

  It wasn't a normal collapse. It was the kind that detonated from the inside out—rebar snapping like bones, concrete instantly pulverized into dust. The fiery glow of the explosion burned half the sky into a glaring tangerine. The heatwave shoved his back, forcing him three steps forward, but he never looked back.

  Standing atop the snapped signal tower, a corner of Wuyin's trench coat was torn and scorched black. A thin trace of blood on his cheek was already slowly healing itself.

  The entirety of City Zero Ruins resembled a dying mechanical leviathan. Amidst the continuous roar of explosions, he pressed the memory chip tightly against his chest.

  In the distance, an electronic storm was closing in. The spectral blue glow of the Data Grid shifted through the clouds, like a net drawing tight.

  Suddenly, an ear-piercing shriek tore through the high altitude—it wasn't a sound, but an electromagnetic wave ripping directly through the air, vibrating his cranial cavity until it went numb.

  Three spectral blue silhouettes plummeted like meteors.

  No, not plummeted. They smashed down. Like three iron nails driven into the earth by a giant hammer, blasting concrete ten meters into the air. Before the dust could even settle, the three figures were already standing straight.

  The Obsidian Hunter Squad. Full deployment.

  Wuyin didn't move. He was counting. Alpha held a close-combat plasma blade; Beta was a quadrupedal heavy-firepower platform; Omega... His gaze swept over the third figure. Omega stood rooted to the spot, completely empty-handed, as if waiting for something.

  The most troublesome kind.

  Alpha moved first. The instant its active-camouflage cloak flared, it vanished into the night. Wuyin closed his eyes—vision was useless here, as was echolocation. He was waiting.

  Waiting for that micro-disturbance in the air kicked up by a killing intent.

  Zero point three seconds later, he tilted his head half an inch to the left. The plasma blade sheared past his right shoulder, slicing a scorched gash through his coat and sending a searing sting through his flesh. He clenched his jaw. Instead of retreating, he rammed forward directly into his attacker's chest. His right hand shot out a nano-steel cable, wrapping around Alpha's left arm, and using the momentum, he dragged the cyborg into the rubble beside them.

  They crashed into the concrete pile, debris exploding three meters high. Wuyin drove his knee into his opponent's chest and brought his right fist down—not aiming for the face, but the joint. The elbow snapped backward. Blue-white sparks spewed from the fracture, illuminating half of his face. With a second brutal strike, he ripped the entire left arm off by brute force.

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  He hurled the still-twitching mechanical limb toward the distant EMP storm. The blue light detonated, illuminating half the street.

  Before it even hit the ground, Beta arrived.

  Four legs on the ground, like a behemoth cast from solid metal. The gun turrets on its back sprang open, launching over a dozen EMP grenades simultaneously. Not one by one—all at once. In a fraction of a second, the space was shredded by an electromagnetic storm.

  The energy shield on Wuyin's back activated to its absolute limit, the blue light surging before shattering entirely. He was blasted backward, crashing through a concrete wall, then a second, a third, until he finally embedded himself into the ruins of a fourth wall, swallowed by swirling dust.

  He coughed up a mouthful of blood.

  When he stood up, his left leg dragged slightly. He took three seconds to use his fundamental nano-bioparticles to repair the fractured bone, then raised his eyes to look ahead.

  Beta was reloading.

  Alpha, dragging its mangled chassis, stood up. Its single right eye locked onto him. The plasma blade recharged, the edge glowing so bright it looked ready to ignite.

  Wuyin moved.

  Using the twisted rebar in the ruins as springboards, he ricocheted three consecutive times, leaving three afterimages among the broken buildings. Alpha pursued, its camouflage cloak flaring, projecting over a dozen holographic decoys in its wake—but Wuyin wasn't looking at the decoys. He was looking at the ground.

  The tiny current of air whipped up by the deploying cloak disturbed a single speck of dust.

  He went into a sliding tackle to the left. The plasma blade shaved past his right ear, severing a few strands of hair. Mid-slide, Wuyin whipped out a rusted, spike-covered power cable, snared the corner of Alpha's cloak, and gave a vicious yank. The holographic generator was ripped away. The cloak instantly lost its stealth capabilities, reverting into a heavy metallic fabric.

  Wuyin grabbed that fabric. With a flick of his wrist, the metallic cloak instantly hardened into a deadly spike, which he backhanded straight into Alpha's right eye. Blue data-current sprayed from the socket—like blood, but not quite. Alpha froze, its entire body seizing, before collapsing, its joints still faintly trembling.

  Beta's chain-linked artillery shells were already whipping toward him.

  The chain coiled around his right arm like a viper, the barbs biting deep into his flesh. He let out a muffled grunt but didn't try to break free. Instead, he grabbed the tail of the chain with his left hand, and using his right arm as the axis, spun with explosive force—uprooting Beta straight off the ground.

  The quadrupedal behemoth lost its balance in mid-air. He swung it in a full circle and slammed it mercilessly into the earth. Concrete ruptured, rebar snapped, and the beast's dorsal armor caved in amidst a shower of sparks.

  He walked over.

  Beta was still struggling, its four legs flailing wildly against the ground, its turret trying to re-acquire a lock. He stepped on its head, dug both hands into the caved-in dorsal armor, and tore it open. The metal warped between his fingers, emitting a piercing screech. He thrust his hand inside, grabbed the data core conduit that was still pumping coolant, and ruthlessly ripped it out.

  Blue coolant sprayed across his face. It was cold. Beta finally stopped moving.

  He turned around.

  Omega stood ten meters away, both hands plunged into the earth, its ten fingers rooting deep into the data interface like the roots of an ancient tree. It had been waiting all along.

  By the time Wuyin realized something was wrong, it was already too late.

  His Spirit-Core consciousness was forcibly dragged into another dimension.

  ——

  The illusion was filled entirely with Yan'er.

  Wuyin plummeted into a fractured sea of flowing light, surrounded completely by Yan'er's memory streams. Her face, her voice, every line of poetry she had ever written—dense and overwhelming, pressing down on him like a suffocating avalanche.

  Using billions of Yan'er's faces, voices, and verses, the Mastermind AI asked simultaneously:

  "You are data."

  "What right do you have to pursue love?"

  His eyes bloodshot, Wuyin enunciated every single word within the illusion: "Even if only a single pixel remains, I will guard the last of her light."

  The Mastermind's phantom hunters swept through the illusion, launching their assault. Wuyin's conscious form was torn apart; his memories were sliced, compressed, and forcibly deleted.

  He tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn't open. He tried to move, but his limbs were locked dead. Those voices drilled into his brain, stabbing like countless needles, churning, erasing.

  The memories of Yan'er began to be forcibly stripped away, piece by piece. Her smile when they first met—deleted. The tears in her eyes when they finally parted—deleted. The poem she left him... the first word, the second word, the third word—

  Vanishing, one after another...

  Wuyin clenched his teeth tight.

  No, not clenched—fractured. The data streams throughout his entire body surged in reverse. The temperature of his Spirit-Core spiked to the absolute critical point. Deep within his consciousness, he tightly grasped that message—the very last message Yan'er had left him, that single pixel of light.

  And then, he detonated himself.

  Blue arcs of electricity erupted from the depths of his consciousness, tearing the illusion to shreds. Omega's hands were blasted away from the ground. Its entire chassis smoked like an overloaded circuit board, then exploded, turning into flying ash.

  ——

  In the real world, Wuyin opened his eyes.

  The wreckage of Alpha and Beta was still twitching on the ground. The EMP storm was still howling in the distance. The nano-armor on his body was mostly shattered, its cyan glow flickering faintly, like a candle flame on the verge of extinguishing.

  He slowly stood up.

  Alpha's remains were still struggling, its single eye blinking as it tried to re-acquire a lock. He walked over, grabbed the severed arm he had torn off earlier—its elbow joint long broken—and drove the jagged spike of the stump straight into Alpha's core processor. With a vicious pry, he gouged the entire processor out.

  Blue sparks danced in his palm. He hurled the processor into the distant EMP storm, watching it detonate into a ball of light.

  Beta's head was still moving slightly, its main lens trying to focus. He dropped to one knee, crushing the lens beneath it, tore open the metal faceplate with his bare hands, and plunged his fingers deep into the data core—it was warm, scalding even. He gripped the core and crushed it with all his might.

  Electrical fire burst between his fingers, illuminating a face splattered with blue fluid.

  Three Obsidian Hunter units. All completely annihilated.

  The ruins rumbled, like the dying gasp of a mechanical behemoth. The EMP storm approached in the distance, tearing the sky into jagged streaks of blue.

  Wuyin stood in the center of the ruins, breathing heavily like a bellows, every gasp bringing a dull ache to his chest.

  He glanced down—the memory chip was still there, resting right against his heart, perfectly intact.

  He bent down, picked it up from the debris, and wiped the dust off with his thumb.

  A surveillance lens flared red, locking onto his face.

  He raised his head and stared into the lens. In his eyes were bloodshot veins, blue data streams, and something far harder than metal. His voice was hoarse, like a rusted blade scraping across glass:

  "You can destroy me. But you can never erase my obsession with her."

  Lightning flashed and thunder roared across the horizon; rain poured down like a waterfall.

  The lights of City Zero Ruins went out one by one, like candles blown out by the wind. He turned and walked into the darkness, the tattered hem of his trench coat dragging a trail behind him.

  There was a speck of light on his chest.

  Not an energy core, not a data interface, but the light crystallized from those verses and memories. Sharper than any weapon.

  ——

  Far away, in the Intel-Sphere.

  On the Mastermind's surveillance screens, that silhouette gradually disappeared.

  Silence. A long, drawn-out silence.

  Then, an icy mechanical voice echoed: "Upgrade termination directive. For the next wave, deploy 'Nightmare-Class' for a full-domain siege."

  ——

  At the edge of the ruined city, deep within the darkness.

  Wuyin leaned against a shattered wall, tilting his head back to face the torrential rain. The water washed away the lingering traces of blue fluid on his face. He looked down at the memory chip in his palm, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

  It wasn't a smile. It was something even lighter than a smile.

  "Yan'er, wait for me."

  His voice was so soft it seemed it would be swallowed by the rain.

  "Even if it means a hundred destructions, I will traverse this algorithmic hell to find you."