Acid rain stung Lin's eyes as he dropped into Scrapyard Sigma—a graveyard of dead tech stretching beneath Pangu Tower's shadow. Mountains of shattered drones, eviscerated server racks, and skeletal hover-transports bled rust into neon-lit puddles. The air reeked of ozone and decay.
His right hand screamed. Charred flesh pulsed with a dull, radioactive glow beneath makeshift bandages torn from his shirt. >> SYSTEM ALERT << flickered at the edge of his vision:
[ENERGY RESERVES: 0.8/3.4 Qi UNITS]
[INTEGRITY WARNING: RIGHT HAND - CRITICAL. SEEK BIO-FABRICATOR.]
Not an option. Bio-fabs were corpo-controlled. One scan would flag him for dissection.
"You're late, Jolt."
Yin Mei materialized from behind a gutted security mech, violet optics cutting through the downpour. She'd shed her hood, revealing sharp features framed by rain-slicked black hair. The scar over her eyebrow gleamed pale under a flickering hazard light.
"Had to lose Pangu's hounds," Lin rasped, flexing his ruined hand. Pain lanced up his arm. "You knew they'd come."
"Knew? I counted on it." Her smile didn't touch her eyes. "Needed to see if you'd survive." She tossed him a dented hydration canister. "Drink. Spirit-Volt Lite. Corpo swill, but it'll stabilize your Qi-shock."
Lin caught it, suspicious. The liquid inside shimmered toxic green. "Why help me?"
"Because Ryke murdered your parents." Her voice was ice. "And he murdered mine."
MEMORY TRIGGER (YIN MEI'S POV):
A sterile lab. Her mother, Dr. Elara Ryke, injecting nanites into her own meridians. "This will free us, Mei. No more corpo chains."
Magnus Ryke's face on a viewscreen: "TERMINATE THE TRAITOR."
White-clad enforcers breaking down the door. A scream. Violet optics flickering—online for the first time as she fled.
Lin's breath hitched. The memory had slammed into him—her memory—via the canister's data-laced bio-signature. "Your mother… she worked for Pangu?"
"Against Pangu." Yin Mei's knuckles whitened on the mech's rusted hull. "She discovered Ryke was rigging Qi-mines to collapse, sacrificing workers to create high-purity Qi-crystals. Your parents weren't collateral damage—they were fuel."
Rage ignited in Lin's chest, hotter than the voltage. "And you?"
"Her failsafe." Yin Mei tapped her violet ocular implant. "She jailbroken my optics, spliced her research into my neural firmware. Ryke's been hunting me for five years to erase the evidence." She nodded at Lin's glowing hand. "Your mutation? It's no accident. Elara bio-engineered it into Iron Hill workers as a counter-weapon. Ryke triggered the collapse to burn the experiment."
Lin stared at his hand. The glow pulsed like a diseased heart. His parents weren't victims. They were soldiers.
"Show me," he demanded.
Yin Mei gestured. A holoscreen flickered from her palm—a blueprint of a human neural network interwoven with crystalline circuitry. "Project Lazarus: Bio-Electric Qi Conversion."
"Elara's masterpiece," Yin Mei said bitterly. "Turn the human body into a self-sustaining Qi reactor. Ryke wanted it weaponized for enforcers. She refused." The hologram zoomed into a DNA strand. "You're Generation 1. Stable, but…"
"Flawed," Lin finished. His hand throbbed. "It burns me from the inside."
"Because you need raw voltage to catalyze pure Qi. Spirit-Volt Lite is diluted garbage." Yin Mei pointed to a towering transformer station humming beyond the scrapyard fence—Pangu's main power hub for Sector 7. "You need the source. Unfiltered."
>> SYSTEM ALERT <<
[NEW OBJECTIVE: CATALYST ACQUISITION]
[WARNING: 10,000V MINIMUM REQUIRED. SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 17%]
Before Lin could respond, searchlights speared the rain. Three Pangu enforcer drones descended, rotors churning acid mist into vortices. Heavy-caliber railguns whined as they charged.
"Scanners locked!" a synthesized voice boomed. "QI-MUTANT AND GHOST LEADER. TERMINATE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE."
Yin Mei moved. Her palm slammed against the rusted security mech. Violet light spiderwebbed from her implant through the metal. "RISE!"
Gears shrieked. The mech's dead optics blazed crimson. It lurched upright—a 4-meter titan of corroded alloy—and intercepted the first railgun salvo. Sparks exploded as depleted-uranium slugs cratered its chest plating.
"Get to the transformer!" Yin Mei shouted, fingers dancing mid-air as she hacked the mech's crippled systems. "I'll hold them!"
Lin didn't argue. He ran, boots splashing through oily puddles. Pain blurred his vision. 0.8 Qi units left. The transformer station loomed—a fortress of buzzing wires and crackling insulators. Ten thousand volts hummed in the air, making his teeth ache.
A drone broke formation, skimming low. Its railgun tracked him.
Too slow. Lin dove behind a stack of shattered solar panels as slugs shredded the space he'd occupied. Shrapnel stung his face.
>> SYSTEM ALERT <<
[ENERGY RESERVES CRITICAL: 0.3 Qi UNITS]
[PROPOSAL: EMERGENCY ABSORPTION - ENVIRONMENTAL SOURCE]
The drone hovered closer, railgun cycling. Lin saw his reflection in its black carapace—bloodied, desperate. Behind it, Yin Mei's mech grappled with the other two drones, violet light flickering erratically as Pangu counter-hacks eroded her control.
No choice.
Lin lunged toward the drone, not away. His bandaged right hand slapped against its chassis, fingers digging into a cracked power conduit.
"INITIATE OVERLO—"
ZZZRRT-KRAKOOM!
Raw electricity exploded from the drone into Lin. Not a trickle—a tsunami. His vision whited out. Bones vibrated like tuning forks. The SYSTEM ALERT blared incoherent static.
MEMORY FRAGMENT (IRON HILL MINE):
His father's voice, clearer now: "Don't touch the live wires, Lin! Your meridians aren't calibrated for—"
Too late.
Agony became ecstasy became power. The drone detonated, shrapnel peppering Lin's chest. He staggered back, whole body incandescent. Blue-white energy crackled over his skin. Charred bandages fell away, revealing his right hand—now sheathed in solidified lightning, fingers like plasma claws.
>> SYSTEM ALERT <<
[CATALYST ACQUIRED: 10,000V CONVERTED]
[QI RESERVES: 8.7/10.0 UNITS]
[MUTATION STABILIZED: LAZARUS PROTOCOL - ONLINE]
Across the scrapyard, Yin Mei's mech crumbled under enforcer fire. She crouched behind its wreckage, optics flaring as she deflected data-attacks. One drone leveled its railgun at her exposed back.
Lin moved.
Not with speed—with teleportation. A bolt of living lightning crossed the 50-meter gap in a nanosecond. He materialized between Yin Mei and the drone, his plasma-clawed hand already thrust forward.
"Override: SYSTEM CRASH."
His fingers punched through the drone's armor. Lightning surged. The drone convulsed, systems overloading, and crashed into a mountain of dead servers.
Silence fell, broken only by the transformer station's hungry hum and Yin Mei's shaky breaths. She stared at Lin's lightning-wreathed hand, then at his eyes—now flickering with the same blue-white ferocity.
"Welcome to the Ghost Sects, Jolt," she whispered.
High above, in Pangu Tower's apex suite, Magnus Ryke watched the security feed. He paused the image: Lin's plasma claws buried in the drone, Yin Mei at his back.
"Project Lazarus… alive," he murmured, a smile touching his lips. He turned to his aide. "Recall the drones. And prepare a message."
He slid a jade pendant—identical to Lin's shattered childhood relic—across his desk.
"Invite my daughter… and her new weapon… to dinner."