Shanghai, Zhangjiang, 2:14 a.m.
Null Boundary Energy – Warehouse 17, lights dimmed to 10 %.
Lin Kexin stood alone between rows of silent battery racks. The prototype cells glowed faint cobalt through their observation windows, humming at exactly 4.2 V. Perfect. Untouchable.
She had not left the building in thirty-six hours.
The lake incident was already sliding down the news cycle (geologists arguing about limestone dissolution, the Party promising an investigation that would never find anything). Good. The world was learning to look away.
But she was done with half measures.
She opened a new text file and began to type the most dangerous definition yet.
Definition package – simultaneous:
1. Restoration and aesthetic perfection of my body:
- Regrow left little toe, flawless
- Peak human symmetry and beauty, parameters: Northern Song imperial portrait standards adjusted +12 % for modern Han Chinese bone structure, skin like cold porcelain, eyes black to the point of swallowing light
- Zero health side-effects, zero hormonal imbalance
2. Summon a living man:
Name: Hassan Ahmad
Apparent age: 23
Height: 189 cm
Physical ideal: lethal beauty, the kind that makes heartbeats skip from pure self-preservation instinct
Eyes: obsidian ringed with old gold, gaze that carries the memory of stars dying
Core authorities:
- Absolute command of darkness (true void, not shadow)
- Spatial displacement (local and intercontinental, line-of-sight or coordinate)
- Fractional time dilation (personal ratio up to 1:30 for 0.3 seconds real-time, non-paradoxical)
Personality template: perfect loyalty to me alone, competence without arrogance, dry humour, ancient soul in young flesh
Legal identity: clean PRC hukou (overseas Chinese returnee), all records backdated, speaks flawless Mandarin, Arabic, English
Role: personal butler, corporate fixer, public face of Null Boundary when I choose not to appear
Clothing upon arrival: matte-black three-piece suit, white shirt, no tie, black gloves
Constraints:
- Must be genuinely alive, free-willed, capable of refusing me if I ever violate his core code (though that code will make refusal almost impossible)
- Must not age normally
- Must not lie to me, ever
Energy extraction: off-world, minimum 5 million light-years from Blue Star, zero impact on any sentient species currently known to me.
She read it four times. Every character deliberate.
Then she pressed Enter in her mind.
The warehouse lights flickered once.
A circle of perfect blackness opened in the air two metres in front of her—like a hole cut out of reality itself, edges trembling with starless night. The temperature dropped ten degrees in a heartbeat.
He stepped through.
Black suit drinking the light, skin the colour of desert dusk, hair the blue-black of deep space. The moment his eyes met hers the overhead LEDs dimmed further, as though the bulbs themselves were afraid to look directly at him.
He inclined his head, not quite a bow.
"Madam Lin."
Voice low, precise, carrying the faintest echo of places that have no names. "Hassan Ahmad, at your service until the heat death or your word ends me; whichever comes first."
She felt her new toe flex inside her shoe, perfect, painless. In the polished steel of a battery casing she caught her reflection: cheekbones sharper, lips fuller, eyes that now looked like someone had poured the night sky into them.
Beautiful. Terrifyingly so.
Hassan's gaze flicked to the reflection, then back to her. Something unreadable moved behind the old-gold rings.
"The price has been paid," he said quietly. "Five million light-years rimward, spinward quadrant. A civilisation of silicate minds that never developed radio. Their star went dark eight minutes ago, their time. They felt nothing."
He paused, studying her reaction.
"You look unwell, Madam. Shall I fetch water?"
She realised she was shaking; not from fear, but from the sheer vertigo of holding this much power in her palms.
"No," she said. Her voice came out steady. "From now on you call me Kexin when we're alone. And you stand on my right, half a pace back, unless I say otherwise."
A faint curve touched his mouth; not quite a smile.
"As you wish, Kexin."
The blackness behind him folded in on itself and was gone.
In the sudden silence she could hear her own heartbeat; and, very faintly, another one, perfectly synchronised, coming from the man who had just been born from her words and the death of an alien sun.
End of Chapter 3