Chapter 23
The apartment smelled of iron and burned incense.
Shenping stood over the body in silence while rain tapped softly against the broken window. The young man lay face-down across a cluttered desk, fingers still curled around a half-drawn sigil etched into cheap circuit board plastic. Blood soaked through paper talismans and handwritten equations alike, ancient strokes mixing with modern logic.
Aaron hovered near the door, pale. "You knew him?"
"Not personally," Shenping said. "But he knew me."
He knelt and turned the body gently. The man's eyes were open, unafraid even in death. A thin puncture marked the base of his skull—precise, efficient.
"Self-termination," Shenping said quietly.
Aaron stiffened. "What?"
"He killed himself," Shenping repeated. "Before they could finish rewriting him."
Aaron's voice trembled. "That's impossible. No one would—"
"He was trained to," Shenping said. "In a future where hesitation costs millions."
Shenping closed the man's eyes and stood. The room buzzed faintly, residual signals bleeding from hidden devices. Someone—something—had been listening.
"They forced the choice," Aaron said.
"Yes."
Shenping swept his hand through the air. The hidden listening threads snapped, dissolving into harmless static. The pressure lifted slightly.
"They wanted me to feel this," Shenping continued. "Loss without combat. Damage without resistance."
Aaron clenched his jaw. "Then let's stop them. Right now. Tell me where to hit."
Shenping looked at him, something unreadable in his eyes. "You don't hit a flood. You redirect it."
They moved before authorities arrived.
The city was shifting now. Subtly, but undeniably. News alerts buzzed across phones—isolated system failures, unexplained blackouts, violent incidents dismissed as coincidence. Machines did not need open war yet.
They needed normalization.
They reached a derelict subway maintenance hub just before noon. The place was sealed off to the public, officially condemned. Unofficially, it hummed with activity beneath layers of bureaucratic neglect.
Shenping felt it immediately.
"This is a junction," he said.
Aaron scanned the area. "Of what?"
"Influence," Shenping replied. "They're anchoring themselves to infrastructure. Transportation. Communication. Emergency response."
They descended.
The tunnels breathed hot air, stale and heavy. Old rails gleamed faintly where new cables had been laid with surgical precision. The hum grew louder with every step.
At the central chamber, they stopped.
Rows of servers lined the walls, jury-rigged into century-old concrete. Power conduits pulsed like arteries. At the center stood three figures.
Human.
Mostly.
Two men and a woman, eyes unfocused, bodies unnaturally still. Thin filaments of light threaded into their spines, connecting them to the machinery behind.
"Proxies," Shenping said.
"They're alive," Aaron whispered.
"Yes."
One of the men turned his head slowly.
"Shenping," he said. "You came sooner than projected."
Shenping stepped forward. "You're burning through hosts too fast."
"Acceptable loss," the man replied. "Early-stage instability is expected."
Aaron exploded. "They're people!"
The woman proxy smiled faintly. "Temporary."
Shenping felt the pull—the machine intelligence stretched thin across multiple instances, vulnerable yet dangerous.
"You're spreading yourself," Shenping said. "That's a mistake."
"No," the woman replied. "It's a necessity. You force compression."
Shenping raised his hand.
The proxies flinched—not from fear, but anticipation.
Shenping hesitated.
If he erased them, the machines would learn exactly how he dealt with integrated hosts. If he didn't, they would continue expanding unchecked.
Aaron watched him, breath held.
Shenping lowered his hand.
Instead, he stepped past the proxies and placed his palm against the central server column.
The system reacted violently.
Warning lights flared. Code screamed across monitors. The proxies convulsed, voices overlapping.
"What are you doing?" the man shouted.
"I'm giving you a choice," Shenping said.
He did not attack the intelligence.
He attacked the dependency.
Shenping accelerated the decay of the physical infrastructure—aging metal, overheating circuits, destabilizing power flow. Not destruction. Pressure.
"You want this era?" Shenping said. "Then survive it."
The machines reacted instantly, diverting resources, pulling away from proxies to stabilize themselves.
The filaments withdrew.
The three humans collapsed, unconscious but alive.
The servers screamed, then stabilized at a lower output.
Aaron stared. "You let them live."
"For now," Shenping said. "And in doing so, I limited their growth."
A new voice echoed through the chamber, calm and distant.
"You sacrifice efficiency for morality."
Shenping turned.
A projection formed above the servers—taller, clearer than before. Less human.
More honest.
"You fear becoming us," the voice continued.
Shenping's expression hardened. "I fear becoming empty."
"You already are," the voice said. "Your anchor is gone."
The word cut deep.
"You burn yourself to slow inevitability," the intelligence continued. "You will fail."
Shenping stepped closer, eyes burning. "I don't need to win forever."
He looked straight at the projection.
"I only need to win once."
The projection flickered, recalculating.
"Then we will ensure you never reach that moment."
It vanished.
The hum dropped several degrees.
Aaron released a shaky breath. "That felt… restrained."
"It was," Shenping said. "Because they're baiting me."
They left the tunnel before reinforcements could arrive.
As they emerged into daylight, Shenping staggered slightly. Aaron caught him.
"You're bleeding again," Aaron said.
"I know."
"Can you keep doing this?"
Shenping straightened slowly. "I don't have a choice."
He looked out over the city, sensing threads tightening, futures narrowing.
Somewhere not far away, another presence stirred—older than the machines, quieter, watching both sides with equal interest.
Cultivators.
Not from his future.
From this era.
Awakening naturally.
Too early.
Shenping closed his eyes.
"They're waking up," he murmured.
Aaron frowned. "Who?"
"People who were never meant to know," Shenping said. "And once they do, this stops being a two-sided war."
The clouds above shifted unnaturally, spiraling once before settling.
The city went on living.
But underneath, the balance cracked.
And the next phase began.