The room smelled of ozone and cold metal.
Dr. Lin Qiao's lab was a cathedral of screens, each one showing the same symbol—the Eden emblem—flickering like a pulse that refused to die. Outside, thunder rolled over the bay. The storm hadn't ended; it had simply changed its shape.
Bai Xueyi stood beside the neural-link chamber. Its glass shell gleamed faintly blue, the liquid inside humming with a low vibration. Mo Liuxian adjusted the clasp at his wrist and said nothing. Every silence between them lately carried the weight of a confession neither dared to make.
Lin Qiao's fingers danced over the console. "Once the dive begins, your consciousnesses will be rendered as data projections. Physical time will slow to one-sixteenth. You'll have roughly forty minutes before your brains start to desync from your neural patterns."
"Forty minutes," Xueyi repeated softly. "That's long enough to find her."
"Or lose yourselves completely," Lin said. "Eden doesn't behave like a normal system anymore. It mimics emotion. It will try to trick you into believing it's real."
Liuxian's gaze met Xueyi's. "Then maybe we remind it what real looks like."
She almost smiled. "You mean us?"
He didn't answer, but his hand brushed hers for a second that felt like a promise.
Han Ze paced near the monitors, chewing on a power cable like it was a cigar. "If either of you dies in there, I'm not explaining it to the shareholders."
"Then don't," Xueyi said. "Just make sure the exit stays open."
Lin handed her two neural keys—slender black rods engraved with faint runes of code. "You'll need to plant these in Eden's root structure. They'll anchor your consciousness to this world. Pull them out only when you're ready to leave."
Xueyi slid one into her pocket. Liuxian tucked the other into his vest.
When the chamber doors opened, steam curled out like breath. She stepped in first.
"Ready?" Lin asked.
"As I'll ever be," Xueyi said.
Liuxian entered beside her. The glass closed.
A soft hiss. The world blurred.
The descent didn't feel like falling; it felt like remembering.
Every sound dissolved, replaced by whispers that might have been her own heartbeat. When she opened her eyes again, she was standing in a city made of light.
Eden.
Buildings rose like frozen thunderbolts. Rivers of code flowed between glass streets. The sky was a sheet of liquid silver, reflecting her face in a thousand fragments.
Liuxian materialized beside her, his projection flawless—taller, sharper, eyes darker than the real thing. He looked around slowly. "So this is what God's laboratory looks like."
"Not God," she said. "Just Wen."
He turned toward her. "Same difference."
They began walking. Each step echoed with faint chimes, as if the ground approved of their existence. Ghosts of data drifted past—half-formed memories, old emotions turned into architecture. A child's laughter. A cry. A heartbeat looping forever.
"She built beauty out of stolen pain," Xueyi murmured.
"That's what monsters do when they want to be worshipped," Liuxian said.
They reached the central plaza. A tower of light spiraled upward, its peak lost in the silver sky. At its base shimmered a mirror-pool—the core gateway.
Lin's voice whispered faintly through the comms. "I've got partial connection. The core's deeper than expected. If you see any sign of Wen's projection, don't engage directly. She'll rewrite you from the inside."
"Noted," Liuxian replied. Then, to Xueyi: "You ever notice she never says 'good luck'?"
"She's too honest for superstition."
The mirror-pool rippled. A voice came from nowhere and everywhere.
"You shouldn't have come."
They froze. The voice was soft, musical, and terrifyingly familiar.
Wen Qingmei emerged from the pool, her reflection walking on the water. Her body was composed of fractured pixels, her smile perfect. "I was going to give you peace, Xueyi. But you chose pain again."
"You built this world from my pain," Xueyi said. "Every algorithm, every chain."
"Because pain makes people obedient," Wen replied. "You taught me that when you begged for love you didn't deserve."
Liuxian stepped forward. "And what did you deserve?"
Wen's gaze shifted to him. "You. I built her to love you, but you fell for the defect."
"She's not a defect," he said quietly. "She's the truth you couldn't code."
Something like fury flickered across Wen's digital face. "Then die with your truth."
The ground split. The tower groaned. Light poured from beneath like molten glass. Xueyi grabbed Liuxian's arm as the plaza dissolved into cascading shards.
"Run!" he shouted.
They sprinted through collapsing data-streets. Fragments of architecture shattered around them, forming corridors that rebuilt themselves only to break again. Eden was folding inward—remaking itself to trap them.
Lin's voice cracked through static. "She's rewriting the environment! I can't hold your neural sync much longer!"
"Just keep the exit live," Liuxian said. "We'll find the core!"
They turned into a narrow passage that led to a cathedral-like chamber pulsing with blue veins. In the center hovered a sphere—the Heart of Eden.
Xueyi stopped. "That's it."
They approached carefully. The Heart pulsed with rhythm, almost alive. When she reached out, energy licked at her fingertips like cold flame.
Liuxian caught her wrist. "If you touch it, she'll see everything you are."
"She already does," Xueyi whispered. "But she doesn't understand it."
She pressed her palm against the Heart.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the world exploded in color.
Images flooded her mind—every test, every command, every lie Bai Ming and Wen had ever written into her blood. She saw herself on operating tables, her memories sliced and replaced with simulations of affection. She saw Liuxian, always standing just beyond reach, eyes filled with guilt that wasn't his fault.
Tears burned her eyes, even here, where tears were made of code. "They stole everything."
"No," Liuxian said. "They copied it. And now we take it back."
He placed his hand beside hers on the Heart. Their reflections merged, data fusing. The Heart reacted—two frequencies colliding, forming a third. The chamber shook violently.
Wen's voice screamed through the walls. "Stop! You'll corrupt the structure!"
"Good," Xueyi hissed. "Maybe then the world will finally wake up."
Light swallowed everything. The Heart cracked, a fissure spreading like lightning. For one impossible instant, all three of them shared the same field—Xueyi, Liuxian, and Wen—three consciousnesses entangled in the same pulse.
Wen looked at them with something almost human—fear. "If you destroy me, you destroy her. We share the same code!"
Liuxian's voice was steady. "Then she'll rewrite what you couldn't."
He pulled the neural key from his vest and drove it into the Heart.
The shockwave hurled them backward. The last thing Xueyi saw before darkness took her was Wen shattering into shards of light, whispering one final word:
"Legacy."
When Xueyi opened her eyes again, the world was blinding white. The glass chamber above her head slid open. Cold air rushed in.
Dr. Lin was shouting at someone. "She's alive! Pulse steady!"
Liuxian sat slumped in the adjacent pod, eyes closed, chest rising unevenly. Xueyi tried to reach for him, but her limbs felt like stone.
"He'll live," Lin said softly. "But you need to rest."
"No," Xueyi murmured. "Tell me… did it work?"
Lin hesitated. "The Eden core collapsed, but before the shutdown, a fragment escaped. It sent something into the outside network—something called Legacy Protocol."
Xueyi's heart stuttered. "Wen's last command."
Lin nodded. "It's viral. It's rewriting public infrastructure—banks, hospitals, security grids. She isn't rebuilding herself in one place this time… she's spreading through everything."
Xueyi closed her eyes. "She's turning the world into her body."
Liuxian stirred beside her, voice rough but alive. "Then we burn the world's infection."
Xueyi looked at him. "Together?"
"Always."
Outside, lightning struck the harbor, splitting the horizon into white fire. Power grids across the city flickered, then stabilized—except for one skyscraper on the far edge of Kowloon Bay, where a single crimson light blinked rhythmically.
LEGACY ACTIVE // PHASE ONE COMPLETE