The night lay heavy like an iron blanket. Wind from the west carried drifting ash. Broken beams of flashlights from the patrol swept across fallen pillars, rusted pipes, and a curved silver trace on the ground the residue of something that had just passed through.
Phạm Quân stood at the center of his unit's perimeter, rain soaking his coat, eyes fixed on the handheld display where data still pulsed erratically.
"Area secured. No DNA traces. Surveillance cameras lost signal seconds before the phenomenon occurred."
"But thermal sensors recorded a body temperature…" a technician reported, voice trembling.
"…then it collapsed."
Quân stepped over debris, his gloved hand brushing a warped railing metal twisted as if locked by sudden heat. He no longer believed in coincidence. Someone or something had chosen this place, as if answering an invisible call.
His first step led him into a scorched machinery room. In the corner, on bare concrete, lay a faint blue glow shaped like a footprint.
Quân knelt, reaching out. The moment his fingers touched the mark, a wave of cold surged through him. The hair on his neck rose.
"Listen," he said to the team, voice dry.
"This isn't explosive residue. It's an energy trace. It's like… the footprint of a person walking through another layer of matter."
A young soldier stiffened.
"Captain… are we dealing with biological displacement?"
Quân looked up at the sky. Distant blue flashes flickered like lightning then vanished. His heart pounded, fear and attraction tangled together, like staring into an abyss and wanting to leap.
Far away, inside an abandoned cavern, Trần Trung lay on a luminous table, his body still trembling from the Western Bureau blast. Professor An sat beside him, eyes sunken, fingers gliding across a rusted keyboard. The screen flickered ships, laboratories, glass chambers, half human half machine forms floating in silvery fluid.
"They don't just want to copy the body," An said quietly, voice hoarse.
"They want to replicate the mind. The emotional core. And you, Trần Trung, are the turning point."
Trung opened his eyes. Inside him was something that felt both like a wound and a source of strength a soft blue light pulsing at his throat, along his veins. He raised his arm, staring at the scarred letters SÁT THÁT as if they were breathing.
"If they truly intend to strip away emotion," he whispered,
"then I won't let them."
An sighed. Hiding someone like Trung here was a risk but there was no other option. He entered coordinates. On the map, disappearances formed a spiral tightening toward the old capital.
"They've expanded," An muttered.
"They've learned to operate remotely. Subtle. They collect samples where no one notices… then activate. Those chosen or taken."
Trung forced himself upright despite the pain. Outside, the distant hum of engines echoed through the cavern walls.
"They're here," Trung said.
Phạm Quân received the alert at a checkpoint: an unregistered vehicle had entered the restricted zone. He deployed his unit, cut laser grids. From the dust stepped a tall figure its feet leaving impressions on the ground without fully touching it. Blue light glinted in its eyes.
Initial scans showed an abnormal bio-organic structure patches of skin like silver scales, others unmistakably human. As Quân approached, the figure bent slightly, as if a moment of humanity surfaced within the machine.
"Stop! Identify yourself!" Quân shouted.
The figure turned. A familiar face flashed in the glow hair, posture, a thin scar. Quân froze. He had seen that outline once before, in a blurred image from the Western Bureau incident a faintly glowing silhouette, disturbingly recognizable.
"Identify the target!" a scout demanded over comms.
The figure stood still, breath like wind. The voice that emerged was not fully human but something had stitched it together.
"I… am just looking for home."
The voice was low, fractured, unmistakably male.
Quân's pulse spiked. It sounded like someone trying to remember a line of poetry. He stepped forward but his wrist sensor screamed. Blue light surged from the figure, rattling every detector.
"No contact!" Quân ordered.
"Fall back! If it destabilizes terminate!"
The figure retreated then suddenly shot forward like an arrow, tearing through the cordon. In a blink, it was gone, leaving behind a drifting luminous dust and a footprint pressed into molten concrete.
The same footprint as Western Bureau.
Quân stood rigid, staring after it, his blood running cold.
"Someone…" he whispered.
"He's following a path. I can feel it."
Back in the cavern, a radio crackled. Surveillance footage appeared a glowing figure entering an old boiler facility on the city's edge. On the recording, a fragment of sound slipped through, the tone like a broken plea:
"Dad… don't leave me."
Professor An stared at the screen, face drained of color.
"They hire people to extract samples from refugee zones," he said.
"They search for stable emotional codes. Then they… install them into machines."
Trung clenched his fists. The image of Mai her consciousness, or her copy cut through him like a blade.
"If that's her… if it's a replica…"
His voice broke.
"I have to find out."
"Careful, Trung," An cut in.
"He's not human. Direct contact is dangerous. He could strip away even the smallest fragment of your memory."
Trung said nothing but his eyes held the answer. He would trace every mark, no matter the pain.
Phạm Quân collected samples, captured images. As he analyzed the data, an energy model emerged an electronic fingerprint shaped like a branching spiral. At its center was a distant focal point: a rural edge, nothing but poor villages places technology had nearly abandoned.
His heartbeat quickened. Why the poorest areas? Why people untouched by upgrades?
Because of the bio-chips?
Or because someone was searching for pure emotional cores something not sold in the tech markets?
"Prepare a small tactical unit," Quân ordered.
"Follow this route. We check the outskirts. If there's a trail I want it."
He knew he was stepping into something unnamed. But the silence of his team, their unsettled eyes, told him this was no longer just an investigation.
It was a battle to preserve the line between human and machine.
That night, in a small riverside village where smartphones were rare as gemstones, doors were left ajar as people slept.
They woke to strange signs. An old woman saw a faint glow drifting across her rice field.
A child said "the blue man" had visited, leaving a ring of ash by the well.
A couple heard someone singing from afar a lullaby remembered from their grandparents' time.
These fragments made Quân understand An's words. They weren't searching where technology ruled but where memory remained intact.
Footprints in steel. Light across the fields. A forgotten lullaby.
All pieces of a being collecting traces where the soul was still whole.
Quân narrowed his eyes. This couldn't be solved by cold technology alone. It demanded intuition, compassionand the resolve to never let humans become objects.
In the cavern, Trung watched a new signal appear on the energy map not far from his location. A breath escaped him not mechanical, but human.
"They're close," he said, voice hard as forged steel.
"I feel them the way you feel a child's sorrow. They're calling… something."
An placed a hand on his shoulder warm, smelling faintly of oil and tobacco.
"If you go, I'll follow. If you can't make it… I'll contact Quân. There are still people we can trust."
Trung nodded. They rose, preparing to leave the cavern.
Out there, something or someone was searching for home.
In a moment of stillness, Phạm Quân and Trần Trung, unaware of each other, both looked toward the same direction where a blue light had just flickered in the night sky.
An invisible thread of truth was pulling them together. To unravel what the world had begun to call The Electronic Ghosts. The night fell silent. Ash drifted.
And somewhere, from the fracture between human and machine, a whisper escaped:
"Remember… they need humans not statues of steel."