The red light on his retina faded along with the two words.
Chen Ke expressionlessly closed the private communication interface, as if nothing had ever happened. He didn't even attempt to trace the signal—it was meaningless. The fact that it could so precisely breach his encrypted channel spoke volumes about the sender's clearance level.
[Stop].
It felt more like an acknowledgment, a confirmation that he had stepped into a forbidden zone. The System, or something behind it, had taken notice of him—an insignificant worker ant who dared to peek at its secrets.
He did not stop.
The homologous frequency from Engineer Li Ming's chip was like an invisible thread, connecting two seemingly unrelated incidents. One thread leading to the past was severed. But the thread leading to the present was still in his hand.
He needed a place to read that "valueless" chip. A place beyond the System's gaze.
Deep within the abandoned old energy pipeline network under District 7. The air reeked of rust, machine oil, and the scent of cheap pheromones. This was the "Memory Black Market"—an underground venue for trading memory fragments deemed "redundant," "invalid," or "scheduled for purification" by the System.
Neon lights cast distorted shadows on the damp walls, illuminating stalls shrouded by dust-proof cloths. The vendors' faces were blurred, their eyes wary. The air flowed with the chaotic, suppressed echoes of emotional fragments, like countless ghosts whispering.
Chen Ke moved through the narrow passages, ignoring several hostile glances. He stopped at a stall in the most inconspicuous corner. The owner was hunched in the shadows, only a pair of unnaturally agile fingers dancing over a worn-out terminal glowing with a faint blue light.
"Read a chip. Officially deemed 'unreadable'." Chen Ke placed the evidence bag on the counter, his voice low.
The vendor didn't look up, his hoarse voice like the grinding of rusty metal. "If the officials can't read it, I certainly can't."
"Because the officials can't read it, I need to be here." Chen Ke slid a few high-purity energy credits forward. "Read it. No backups. Burn after reading."
The vendor's fingers paused. Finally, he looked up. It was a weathered face, ageless, but his eyes were alarmingly bright, like two data cores discarded in a junkyard.
He picked up the evidence bag, held it up to the dim light, and weighed it in his hand. "Damaged. Signs of strong magnetic interference. Any readout will likely be garbage."
"Try."
The vendor said no more, inserting the chip into a grimy interface. Several screens in front of him were instantly flooded with wildly scrolling gibberish and static, punctuated by harsh, stuttering noise from the speakers.
"See?" the vendor sneered. "Garbage."
Chen Ke stared intently at the screens. Minutes later, amidst the countless distorted symbols and fractured image fragments, one stable frame, lasting less than half a second, struggled to the surface like a drowning man.
It was not garbage.
It was a sketch. Simple lines勾勒出 a precise, complex ring-like structure, with countless points of light orbiting and flowing around it.
Beneath the sketch was a line of handwritten text, almost swallowed by the interference:
[...not a triangle... it's a coordinate... leading to... 'The Cradle'...]
The frame vanished, the screen once again consumed by garbled code.
"The Cradle?" Chen Ke repeated instinctively.
The vendor's head snapped up. Those data-core eyes showed terror for the first time. He almost violently yanked the chip out and threw it back to Chen Ke, pushing the energy credits back as well.
"I'm not doing your business," his voice carried a barely perceptible tremor. "Take your stuff and get out. Now."
Chen Ke didn't move. He watched the vendor's eyes, which had betrayed too much.
"You've seen this 'Cradle'?"
The vendor flinched as if burned, shrinking back into deeper shadows. He refused to look at Chen Ke anymore, just repeating, his voice almost inaudible:
"Go."