Deep within the core of the Iceland data vault, the air was like frozen amber, pressing down on every chest. Beside the cryo-chamber, faint blue indicator lights flickered soundlessly, casting a cold glow across K.Shaw's face—pale, lifeless, as if time itself had been sealed upon it.
Su Xiaolan's eyelids fluttered before she forced them open. Her consciousness clawed its way back from the icy depths of data, bringing violent coughing and a heartbeat that pounded to the edge of rupture. Each thump echoed, eerily synchronized with the mechanical pulse emanating from the chamber. She was trembling uncontrollably, drenched in cold sweat, her throat scraped raw as if lined with sandpaper.
"…He knew…" Her voice was hoarse, cracked, yet it pierced the silence like an ice pick. "The origin of the Silent Treaty… maybe even… more…"
Before her words faded, an old terminal in the corner—coated in dust, long thought dead—sputtered to life. Its screen flickered in the dark, struggling to stabilize, then displayed a thumbnail of an encrypted file marked TOP SECRET and SEVENTH AMENDMENT. The timestamp read: fifteen years ago. The initiator codename: K.Shaw.
"That terminal… it was Senior's private line back then!" Wang Jing's voice cracked through the comms, disbelief thick in his tone. "The signal is coming from the physical isolation zone! He… he left himself a backdoor no one ever found!"
Almost as the words left him, K.Shaw's body jolted inside the chamber. The blue stream of data in his eyes boiled, writhing with agony. His voice, broken and fractured, overlapped with Ψ's synthetic tone, tearing out of the chamber's speakers:
"…File… key… is… in… her…"
With what seemed like his last strength, his gaze locked firmly on Su Xiaolan's clenched fist—and the crumpled, grease-stained potato chip bag within it.
All eyes snapped to it at once, disbelief sharpening into dread.
Su Xiaolan froze, then glanced down at the "good luck charm" she had clutched without thought. Her trembling fingers probed the inner lining. Something hard and cold was embedded there—a metal chip, almost fused with the plastic.
A forgotten memory hit her like a hammer: at university, she often stuffed code backups or test chips into snack bags, joking to her senior, "It's called hiding in plain sight. The most dangerous place is the safest." K.Shaw had only shaken his head with a faint smile.
"It was Senior… he remembered… he knew I'd do this…" Her voice trembled, sorrow and shock welling at once. What she thought was laziness and quirk had become the vessel of a world-breaking secret.
"Decrypt it. Now!" Lu Xingze's command was sharp as steel.
"No!" Wang Jing almost screamed. "The encryption is Cold War–era, a high-strength physical lock. Forced reading will trigger self-destruction. Without the dedicated decoder, the core data is unreachable!"
"Where is the decoder?" Li Chenyuan's voice cut like a blade, his gaze snapping to the chamber.
Inside, K.Shaw convulsed harder, the data in his eyes devolving into chaos. He strained to convey more, but Ψ's force crushed him down. Warning lights turned crimson as Ψ's frigid voice echoed:
[Warning: Anchor consciousness fluctuations exceeding limits. Initiating forced sedation protocol.]
—
"You think there's anything left to squeeze from him?"
The voice was roughened by static but chillingly clear. Gu Yu's projection appeared, unnervingly stable, on the old terminal. The mockery usually etched on his face was gone, replaced with solemnity—and exhaustion.
"His clearance only let him risk this much. The real decoder was never here." Gu Yu's voice dropped lower, as if dragging up something forbidden. "It's buried in the original server array at the treaty's signing site. A place deliberately erased. Buried beneath the ice."
"The signing site…?" Su Xiaolan whispered.
Gu Yu's gaze settled on her. "What do you think the Silent Treaty is? Words on paper? No. It's a living protocol—a consciousness cage parasitic in the global network's very neurons. Ψ? It is both the jailer of this cage and the first prisoner locked inside it, fused with the walls. And we…" A short, cold laugh escaped him. "…we are just the fodder. The Anchors shoved in afterward, to keep the cage intact."
The weight of it pressed the room into silence. No one spoke; only the hum of machines and ragged breaths filled the space. Ψ wasn't the origin? Could it even be a victim? Then what darker thing lay deeper still?
—
"Haven't you realized yet?" Wang Jing's voice shook but clung to reason. "Anchor selection was never about intelligence or status, but brainwave frequency. Shaw's is stable, the perfect Order Anchor, a foundation for the system's frame. Xiaolan, yours—" He faltered, his tone turning raw. "…yours is chaos. Unpredictable, volatile, full of variables. A Chaos Anchor. One stable, one chaotic, balancing each other. Barely keeping this damned treaty alive."
Su Xiaolan reeled as if struck. Her fingertips turned to ice. All her "salted fish" apathy, her refusal to follow the rules—were not flaws, but marked traits? She wasn't dragged in by accident. She had been written into the plan from the start.
"You were never an innocent bystander." Gu Yu's voice was icy, devoid of even the faintest trace of emotion. "You are one of the primary Anchors chosen by the protocol. From the moment you were born—perhaps earlier."
Li Chenyuan's gaze darkened, storm breaking over deep waters. Instinctively, he drew Su Xiaolan tighter into his protection, radiating a killing frost. Across from him, Lu Xingze's face was shadowed and grim, his hand sliding to his weapon as his eyes flicked between Su Xiaolan and the chamber—calculating, weighing, ready.