The city never really slept—
it only pretended to, the way liars rest between stories.
Outside the clinic, Shanghai shimmered like a wounded god stitched together with light.
Bai Xueyi woke before dawn. The air inside the safehouse had cooled; the storm had passed but the tension hadn't. Every wire in her body hummed with a single, unspoken thought: Midnight.
Dr. Lin Qiao was still at her workstation, a cup of untouched coffee going cold beside her keyboard. Rows of data scrolled endlessly across the monitor—heartbeat simulations, LEGACY echoes, fragments of code that looked too human for machine syntax.
Without looking up, Lin said, "You won't come back the same way you leave."
"I never do," Xueyi answered.
1. Preludes in Ash
Mo Liuxian stood near the window, jacket half-buttoned, tie hanging loose.
He'd barely slept, but exhaustion looked almost elegant on him—like regret dressed in silk.
"Coordinates came through?" he asked.
Xueyi tossed the encrypted badge Han Ze had brought onto the table. "Eclipse Center, under the harbor. Wen Qingmei's new cathedral."
"She's calling it Eden," Lin murmured. "A name stolen from forgiveness."
Liuxian's gaze hardened. "She's building a god out of the ruins we left her."
"No," Xueyi said quietly. "She's building a mirror. And I'm the reflection she can't control."
Lin finally looked up. "You still have time to walk away."
Xueyi met her eyes. "I did that once. It killed me."
2. The Calm Before Descent
By nightfall the rain returned—fine as thread, silver as memory.
They left the clinic through the back alley, shadows stitched together by purpose.
Han Ze was waiting by the car, leaning against the door with a cigarette that burned but didn't smoke.
"You sure about this?" he asked. "Wen's the kind who leaves her traps smiling."
"That's why she'll never see the knife coming from her own smile," Xueyi said.
He gave a low whistle. "Poetic. Morbid. You're getting good at this."
"I had good teachers," she replied, glancing at Liuxian.
Han Ze smirked. "And I had terrible ones. Let's see who graduates alive."
They drove in silence. The highway unfurled beneath them like a vein, leading to the sea. Each tunnel they passed flickered—white, then red, then white again—like the world couldn't decide if it was alive or bleeding.
At the harbor checkpoint, the badge hummed faintly as it met the scanner. Green light. Access granted. No alarms. Just the soft hiss of gates opening for ghosts.
3. Beneath the Sea
Eclipse Center was nothing like they'd imagined.
A spiral of glass and steel sank into the ocean's edge, its foundations illuminated by bioluminescent pipes that pulsed like veins. The building breathed—an organism pretending to be architecture.
They entered through a loading bay disguised as a warehouse.
Beyond it stretched a corridor of mirrored panels. Their reflections multiplied endlessly, faces repeating down to infinity—soldiers, lovers, traitors—all looking the same.
"Cameras?" Liuxian whispered.
"Everywhere," Han Ze said. "But they're blind right now. Lin's spoof running clean."
A low hum filled the air—the heartbeat of Eden itself.
And beneath that hum, a second rhythm… slower, deliberate. Watching.
Xueyi's pulse aligned for a fraction of a second. "She knows we're here."
4. The First Door
At the heart of the spiral stood a chamber sealed by glass and gold.
Wen Qingmei's voice spilled from hidden speakers, velvet-smooth and venomous.
"Welcome home, Xueyi.
I was wondering when the phoenix would fly back to her ashes."
"Open the door," Xueyi said.
"Already open," Wen's voice purred. "You just haven't learned how to see it."
The mirrored wall flickered. For a heartbeat, Xueyi saw not her reflection—but Bai Ming's face, calm and spectral behind the glass.
"You think killing me ended anything?"
"You were only the seed," his echo said. "Eden is the bloom."
The reflection shattered soundlessly. The wall slid aside.
Inside, blue light cascaded like liquid dawn. Banks of servers towered around a single glass dais—and on it stood Wen Qingmei, radiant and terrible, a crown of interface nodes gleaming like jewels in her hair.
5. The Crown Reforged
Wen smiled. "You came dressed for revenge. I came dressed for resurrection."
"Take off the crown," Xueyi said. "It doesn't suit corpses."
"Funny," Wen replied. "That's what Bai Ming said before he became one."
She raised her hand. The lights around the dais surged, forming a ring of data that flared and spun—a halo of circuitry. Eden's heartbeat thundered through the floor.
"LEGACY was emotion," Wen said. "Eden is evolution. It doesn't just pair; it absorbs. Your fear, your love, your loyalty—it learns, it edits, it improves."
"You turned pain into currency," Xueyi said.
"I turned chaos into worship."
6. The Split
Han Ze flanked left, weapon drawn. Liuxian moved right, cutting toward the interface core.
Eden's hum grew louder, as if angry at being touched.
Wen spread her arms. "Go on then—kill me, and you'll kill every network still carrying your name."
Xueyi's gun didn't waver. "Then I'll just aim for the parts you can't reboot."
She fired once. The bullet shattered the ring's stabilizer. Light bled red. The entire system screamed.
Alarms howled through the complex.
Han Ze shouted, "Backup's coming!"
Liuxian slammed his palm onto the console, forcing a manual override. "Lin! Pull the surge limiter now!"
Static. Then Lin's voice: "Too late—she's merging the system!"
Wen laughed—wild, beautiful, broken.
"See, Xueyi? You're not fighting me anymore. You're fighting yourself!"
The chamber convulsed. Every mirrored surface rippled into faces—her faces—smiling, crying, burning. Eden had learned emotion, and it was hungry.
7. The Last Light
"Shut it down!" Liuxian yelled.
"I can't—it's feeding on our signals!" Xueyi's voice trembled but didn't break.
Wen stepped closer, halo blazing. "Surrender, and you'll finally be remembered. A goddess written in code."
Xueyi's answer was a whisper: "I'd rather be forgotten than owned."
She tore the earpiece from her ear and flung it onto the console. The counter-tone burst open in a shockwave of harmonic noise.
The mirrors cracked. Wen screamed. The halo flickered, then imploded into shards of light.
Han Ze lunged forward, pulling Xueyi down as the entire dais erupted.
Liuxian caught the console edge, dragging her toward him through smoke and heat.
The last thing she saw before the darkness swallowed everything was Wen Qingmei's crown—fracturing, pixel by pixel—until nothing remained but light and the sound of breaking glass.
When Xueyi opened her eyes again, the world was quiet.
Too quiet.
Liuxian was beside her, pulse faint but steady. Han Ze's silhouette slumped near the ruined doorway, breathing shallow.
And above them, the ceiling panels flickered once, revealing a message in pale gold across the wrecked monitors:
EDEN SEED STATUS: TRANSPLANTED.
NEW LOCATION: UNKNOWN.
Xueyi exhaled, her voice a thread of smoke.
"She moved it."
Liuxian's hand found hers. "Then we'll find it."
She looked at the collapsing dome, at the storm still roaring beyond the shattered glass.
"Next time," she said, "we burn the garden itself."
The servers sparked. The sea outside heaved.
And far away, beneath another city's network spine, a faint pulse began—slow, steady, inevitable.
EDEN AWAKENING PHASE II — COMMENCING.