The silence of the apartment was broken by a new energy. It was no longer one of waiting and vigilance, but of focus—a calculated calm, akin to that before a hunt.
The fire in Chen Ke's eyes had not extinguished; it had turned inward, condensing into two cold embers. He activated his personal terminal once more, this time connecting to a highly encrypted offline database—a "private collection" he had amassed over the years as an order maintainer, operating at the very edge of his authority. It contained no classified secrets, only fragments from countless public or semi-public records that the System had marked as "irrelevant," "archived," or "logical errors."
His target was the nearly erased coordinate from the chip.
[...not a triangle... it's a coordinate... leading to... 'The Cradle'...]
"Not a triangle." Li Ming's dying words were the key. It ruled out triangulation, suggesting the coordinate was encoded in a more archaic, hidden manner, or based on a completely different logic.
He projected his hand-drawn schematic of the ring-like structure into the air. Points of light orbited it. A ring.
Polar coordinates?
A thought flashed through his mind. He pulled up a panoramic grid map of the city, setting the origin point in District 7—the epicenter of Li Ming's death and where the chip was found. He superimposed the ring structure onto the map, attempting to find a match.
Failure. The scale was completely wrong, and the structure didn't correspond to any known building or location.
He leaned back in his chair, his gaze sweeping over the room's only decoration—an old e-reader displaying a book on ancient navigation techniques. His fingers absently swiped the screen, and it landed on an image of a star chart.
A star chart... points of light...
Chen Ke sat bolt upright. He understood.
The ring-like structure might not be a map at all. It could be a segment of a star chart. Those orbiting points of light weren't street lamps or signal towers; they were stars.
The entrance to "The Cradle," or its location, required celestial navigation.
He worked swiftly, calling up historical positional data for all known deep-space navigation beacons and significant pulsars beyond near-Earth orbit. It was a massive database, typically used by the System to calibrate long-range navigation for interstellar vessels—almost useless for planetary affairs.
He began cross-referencing the ring structure with star charts from different times and observation angles. Data streamed like a waterfall, and the terminal hummed under the heavy computational load.
Minutes later, a clear chime signaled a successful match.
On the screen, the ring structure perfectly aligned with a remote region of the sky. The geometric pattern formed by several key stars, at one specific historical moment, saw their relative position lines coincide with the axes of the ring structure. The System automatically generated absolute coordinates based on that stellar configuration and converted them into planetary latitude and longitude.
A single location was clearly marked.
[The Scrap Haven]
It was the planet's largest scrapyard for derelict starships and interstellar junk, located in the remote outskirts of the city. A corner utterly forgotten by civilization, a graveyard of metal. The System's presence there was tenuous at best, a natural haven for drifters, scavengers, and all manner of illicit dealings.
"The Cradle" was in a place like that.
The moment the coordinate was locked in, Chen Ke's private communicator—the one on his theoretically personal, highest-security channel—activated again without any warning.
No alert, no red light this time. Only a single line of white text, silently hovering in the center of the interface.
[You've found the path.]
Chen Ke's blood ran cold.
This wasn't a warning or a deterrent. It was an... acknowledgment. As if an unseen observer had been quietly following his every struggle and inquiry, and now, just as he was about to touch the door, whispered those words in his ear.
The System, or the "thing" behind it, not only knew of his actions but might even be... guiding him?
A profound chill crawled up his spine. He felt like a chess piece being moved by an invisible hand across a board he didn't understand.
But he wasn't the only player.
Almost simultaneously with the System's message, an alert came from another hidden sensor he had placed on the apartment's periphery—this one monitoring low-frequency vibrations in the building's ventilation shaft system. Something, or someone, was infiltrating his floor via that unconventional route.
They were fast. Efficient. These were no ordinary trackers.
The organization with the ring emblem had arrived. And they seemed no longer content with merely following and testing him.
Ahead lay the mysterious "Cradle." Above him, the inscrutable "System." Behind, the lethal "Ring."
Chen Ke took a deep breath, his face an impassive mask. He swiftly cleared and destroyed all computational data, searing the coordinate into his memory. He stood up, retrieving a uniquely designed pistol covered in energy patterns from a hidden weapons locker. He checked the energy cell, chambered a round.
He didn't head for the door. Instead, he walked to a corner of the room, pried up a section of seemingly solid flooring, and revealed a dark, vertical maintenance shaft beneath. It was a secret emergency exit he had built himself, leading directly to the labyrinthine, antiquated drainage systems at the building's base.
He took one last look at the communicator screen, still displaying [You've found the path.].
Then, he dropped into the darkness.
The hunt was on. And he was both the prey and the hunter.