At the same time...
In the heart of Taipingzhou—a chaotic, neon-soaked district torn between the old world and the new—two major gangs ruled the underworld with a grip of steel and chrome.
The first was an animalistic group obsessed with body modification. Their belief was simple and brutal: strength lies in transformation. They merged flesh and metal indiscriminately, chasing power through surgical madness.
The second was more elusive, more dangerous: the Voodoo Gang.
Composed primarily of Haitian immigrants, the Voodoo Gang was smaller in numbers but far more terrifying. They were fiercely xenophobic, operating in total secrecy, and were masters of the Net. Known for their shamanistic beliefs and deadly precision in cyberspace, they made their power felt through whispered hacks, crashed data centers, and digital ghosts.
And tonight, Qi Wei had them in her crosshairs.
Real World – Taipingzhou District
In a luxurious yet dimly lit hotel suite that reeked of antiseptic and synth-alcohol, Qi Wei lay submerged in a tub of ice water. Her naked body shivered slightly from the cold, but her mind was elsewhere.
From the base of her skull, a thick neural cord connected her directly to the interface port—a data transmission line snaking from her cerebral jack into the terminal across the room.
The room itself had been cleared and secured hours before. No guards. No trackers. Only a customized Netrunner rig glowing faintly beside the bathtub, its screen flashing with deep-red sync pulses.
Her eyes, once amber, now glowed with a fiery red hue.
She was logged in.
Cyberspace – Virtual Taipingzhou
Qi Wei's consciousness surged forward like a lightning bolt through fiber-optic veins, launching her straight into the Net.
Her arrival was marked by a cascade of data halos and a soft thrum that echoed through her neural pathways.
And just like that, she appeared.
The virtual version of Taipingzhou was a twisted reflection of the city she knew. Gone were the bright signs and rushing traffic. Here, everything was abstract and raw.
Binary code formed the skeleton of the world.
Black. White. Gray.
The sky above her flickered like an old television set stuck between stations—an endless snowstorm of digital static. The ground beneath her feet was a grid of luminous lines, stretching into infinity, giving the sense that the world was both vast and flat.
There was no wind, no scent, but there was presence.
Qi Wei stood still for a moment, taking it in. Despite its artificial nature, cyberspace carried a strange authenticity. Every sound she heard, every surface she touched, every sensation her avatar perceived—it all felt real.
But this world wasn't just illusion.
It was code—and code could be controlled.
Her avatar, like many first-time entries, defaulted to a template: a graceful woman in a flowing black robe. But Qi Wei was no amateur.
The black robe shimmered and shifted slightly, embedded with hidden symbols and glyphs. On the back of her cloak, a stylized black dragon spiraled upward, forming the insignia of Team David, the elite strike force that she was part of in the real world.
In reality, the emblem was gold.
But in the virtual realm, gold was just a texture—black was power.
Qi Wei's eyes swept across the digital skyline.
According to the forged data packet she'd uploaded earlier, she had successfully spoofed the credentials of a low-ranking Voodoo Gang affiliate. That gave her just enough access to enter the gang's cyber stronghold.
But not enough to be safe.
"Find the node. Get the intel. Get out," she whispered to herself.
The information provided by David was precise. The Voodoo Gang operated their digital base from a cyber-church located deep within this simulated Taipingzhou. It wasn't marked. It wouldn't appear on any virtual maps.
But with her hacked ID and access credentials, she could follow the system-generated trails.
Her figure glided through the digital realm like a ghost in the grid.
After several turns—left past a corridor of firewall-code, right through a mirror-like data tunnel—she finally found it.
Before her stood a massive gothic structure—towering spires made of flickering code, stained glass simulated through layered pixel fragments, and digital mist pouring from the entrance.
A church, but not of any known faith.
Above the entryway, glyphs twisted and reshaped endlessly. They weren't in any language she recognized, but their function was clear.
Warning. Caution. Death.
The Voodoo Gang's home.
Qi Wei took a breath—instinctual, even though her avatar had no lungs—and walked inside.
Inside the Voodoo Church – The Digital Sanctuary
The interior was even more disorienting.
Digital pews lined up in perfect rows, each flickering in and out of existence. At the far end stood an altar—code bleeding down its sides like black rain. Floating above it, suspended in a vortex of distorted soundwaves, was a man.
Or what had once been a man.
His body was cloaked in data shadows, but faint outlines showed dreadlocks floating as if underwater. His eyes glowed with a sickly green hue—a shaman of the digital underworld.
Behind him, other avatars floated in kneeling positions—motionless, as if in prayer. Or perhaps… disconnected bodies left as decoys.
This was a ritual. A digital séance.
Qi Wei remained silent and slipped into the back row. Her forged credentials hadn't failed—yet. The system accepted her presence.
But she couldn't stay long.
She activated her secondary tool: a data probe embedded in her avatar's palm. Slowly, she extended it under the robe, sending a small filament toward the altar's code stream.
"Download core files. Scrub metadata. Leave no trace," she instructed mentally.
The probe began to extract information—gang plans, darknet connections, security bypasses, and names.
Names she could trace in the real world.
Suddenly, a voice boomed in the sanctuary.
"We are not blind, sister."
Qi Wei's eyes widened.
The shaman floated down slowly, his virtual body reconfiguring with every second. His face morphed between different avatars—man, woman, animal, machine—before settling on a glitching visage that flickered like an old holo-projector.
"You carry the scent of deception," he said. "Your heart... is not one of us."
Around her, the kneeling avatars began to rise, their forms crackling and breaking into corrupted shapes.
They were waking up.
"Abort."
Qi Wei snapped her fingers, triggering the emergency exit.
The probe retracted instantly. She reached for the system's logout command—
But it was blocked.
"You cannot leave now, spy."
The church began to collapse into itself, turning inside out. The walls became jagged lines of code. Static surged at her feet.
Qi Wei didn't hesitate.
She activated a final failsafe: a ghost protocol, given to her by David before the mission.
Her avatar split into three identical copies, all scattering in opposite directions.
The Voodoo Gang's virtual drones screamed after them, chasing the shadows.
Only one of them was real.
And she ran.
Real World – Hotel Suite, Taipingzhou
The bathtub water splashed wildly as Qi Wei jolted upward, gasping.
Her eyes were wide, red light still flashing in her irises as the neural cable auto-ejected with a hiss of steam.
She collapsed forward, coughing, steam rising from her skin as the ice had nearly melted from the heat her body generated during the virtual chase.
The data was secured.
She reached for the wet towel nearby and wiped the sweat from her face.
Then she reached for her comm link and opened a secure line.
"David… I got it."
There was a pause.
Then his calm voice crackled through.
"Good work. We'll dissect the data. Rest now."
Qi Wei leaned back in the tub, her breathing steadying.
She had entered the dragon's den and made it out alive.
But the Voodoo Gang now knew someone had infiltrated their sanctum.
This wasn't over.
It had only just begun.
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