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  Foo-shing Village, a gritty enclave swallowed by Bastion Precinct’s sprawl, had its night shredded by neon. Towering buildings, so close they seemed to shake hands, loomed like a jagged stack of battered matchboxes, their peeling tiles gnawed by time’s relentless teeth. LED signs crammed the narrow gaps, red, green, and purple halos staining the humid air, as if spewing toxic colors into the night sky. Passersby sidled through back alleys, so tight that dangling cables nearly strangled them. Greasy smoke from barbecue stalls, laced with cumin and chili, choked the air. In the distance, HuaCent Technology Group Tower pierced the night like an iron spire, its black facade flashing “Innovation Saves the Nation!”—no one dared ask which nation. HuaCent’s ads blanketed the Shenzhen Republic, their tech monopoly churning out cheap, functional gear, outshining SouthSea Transport’s overpriced Western imports. Under U.S. sanctions, their exports fueled the young Republic’s economy, dwarfing the government itself. Whispers spoke of HuaCent’s LAPSS (Low Air Public Security Surveillance) drones—low-air sentinels that “caught even cockroaches,” their red beams slicing through the neon haze.

  Ruoxi Lam, 29, a robotic engineer and hacker, slipped through the creaking door of a backstreet cyber repair shop in Foo-shing Village, hiding behind flickering holographic screens as AI-generated pop songs droned on. Petite and short-haired, she wore a white cartoon T-shirt and canvas pants, clinging to youth’s fraying edge. The shop’s dim lights, tuned for screen clarity, cast shadows over shelves crammed with electronics and robot parts, reeking of motor oil and scorched circuits, cut by the chill of air conditioning. A faint buzz of HuaCent’s LAPSS drones hummed outside, and Ruoxi’s fingers twitched, eyes darting to the alley—those red beams, they said, could “catch even cockroaches,” missing nothing in the neon fog.

  An Abai sprawled on a barber-chair workbench, a BioSynth Vanguard Alpha robot, Tesla’s game-changer from last year. Synthetic muscles gave it eerie grace, smoother than any human, wrapped in lifelike bionic flesh with realistic hair, its expressions almost too real. Marketed for $100,000 as a household servant and emotional companion, it saw its black-market price spike to a million in the Shenzhen Republic due to U.S. tech sanctions, where the U.S. dollar reigned, earning the nickname Abai—a blend of BioSynth and “bai,” Chinese for the “hundred” in its million-dollar tag. This male-modeled Abai lay stiff, a corpse awaiting a shave. Ruoxi strapped a knockoff Circuit North diagnostic cap onto its head, plugged data cables into AR glasses, and prepped to crack its core. Shenzhen’s geofence would lock the Abai’s AI core within 24 hours, but dark web rumors claimed HuaCent had bypassed it, implanting a Soul Ore to rewrite the AI core. A rare find in the village, it sparked Ruoxi’s hacker curiosity.

  The Sino-American War had stolen Ruoxi’s parents and torched their family’s wealth. She and her brother Avei scavenged ruins for years. One day, an airstrike obliterated Meilin Metro Station, a bunker-buster sparking panic in tunnels far away, the crowd tearing them apart. After endless searching, Ruoxi learned Avei had been taken by HuaCent with other young survivors, sheltered in their sealed headquarters in Bastion Precinct, a secure corporate compound with armed protection, for engineer training. To see him, she signed a contract bordering on slavery, becoming a junior engineer at HuaCent. The work was brutal—endless overtime, rare weekend breaks—yet she caught only fleeting glimpses of Avei in the headquarters’ crowds.

  HuaCent, touting its “Supreme, Way Beyond!” mantra, unveiled the AbyssNet Project that year, hyping consciousness uploads to server arrays for digital immortality—energy-efficient, transcending flesh, promising young engineers an ocean of stars with the slogan, “They are yours to conquer!” Brainwashed, Avei ignored Ruoxi’s pleas and volunteered, his consciousness sent into AbyssNet. Under the contract, his body, deemed brain-dead after the upload, was “donated” to HuaCent.

  At first, it seemed flawless. Ruoxi jacked into AbyssNet’s virtual realm via a Neuropulser, roaming glowing flower fields under neon skies with Avei, soaring through nebulae at the universe’s edge. Avei laughed, pointing at an ion storm near a black hole: “Sis, look, our ocean of stars!” Then, he vanished. Ruoxi couldn’t trace him; HuaCent’s AbyssNet support snapped: “Sorry, no Avei here.”

  Soon after, Ruoxi found herself locked out of AbyssNet. She asked around desperately, but could not prove Avei’s existence—her phone and the internet held no record of him, as if he were a figment of her imagination. Her department head and colleagues labeled her paranoid, sending her to the medical wing for neural functional scans and mental restoration therapy. Gripped by fear and fury, she burned her savings, teamed with a hacker crew, and fled HuaCent’s Bastion compound. Living under an alias as a repair tech in Foo-shing Village, she hunted for Avei.

  “Ruoxi, watch it—this Abai ain’t cheap, lah!” Slade, the shopkeeper, muttered, his bionic eye flashing blue, a Cantonese lilt in his smoke-rough rasp. Ruoxi stayed locked on the virtual screen, hands dancing as data cascaded like a waterfall. The Abai’s Soul Ore on chip was shattered—billions of tiny files with no structure, only endless lists and folders within folders. Ruoxi had seen this discussed on the dark web—some claimed it was HuaCent’s latest tech, shredding the operating system and splintering the Soul Ore. The fix? Grab a Premium Soul Ore from Sima at Circuit North, and reflash the core with its skill library.

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  “Boss, we’re hitting paydirt!” Ruoxi called, voice sharp with a hacker’s edge. A Premium Soul Ore cost a fortune, and no owner would ditch a million-dollar Abai—by her estimate, a 100-grand deal, easy.

  “Aiya! Heavendamn right!” Slade leaned in, squinting at the synced wall screen, his drawl thickening. “Soul Ore’s smashed to dust, lah. Hold up—I’ll ping Sima for a quote, no muckin’ about.”

  Ruoxi kept browsing curiously through fragmented files, stumbling upon a memory scene file, a larger piece in the pile. She opened it, and a face flashed—her own. She screamed, voice cracking: “Heaven, that’s me!” Onscreen, Ruoxi was scavenging through General Che Temple Industrial Park’s ruins, debris scattered around. A voice called: “Sis, watch out!” A rotten king coconut tree crashed down. “This is Avei’s memory!” Ruoxi’s throat went dry, gasping as she shouted: “Boss, it’s my brother, Avei! It’s Avei!”

  Her AR glasses blared a red alert—her vitals and brainwaves signaled emotional overload. “Memory file log’s encrypted!” Ruoxi plugged in a USB drive to back it up, clipped her Neuropulser behind her ear to fuse with the glasses, and accessed a hacked StarLink connection to a U.S.-based AI for a crack. The AI’s logo spun for three minutes, then cracked open piecemeal: “August 15, 2034 … Consciousness Transfer … Requested by: ‘IronGrip,’ Approved by: ‘SilverEye. ’”

  August 15, 2034—the day Avei vanished!

  A shrill alarm blared, red light pulsing from the AR glasses—her AI crack had tripped HuaCent’s anti-tamper system, sending the intruder’s data back to their servers. No worries. Usually, no one cared; at worst, a warning email would arrive days later. Ruoxi yanked off the glasses, unplugged the USB drive, and shouted, “Who dropped off this Abai?”

  Slade scratched his chin, bionic eye glinting. “This Abai’s fishy, lah. Million-dollar bot dropped at our dump? Smells like shady. Salt Port’s hot on water-way goods, and and HuaCent doesn’t take kindly to folks poking into their Soul Ore. Serious business, girl.” Ruoxi’s jaw tightened, her mind on Avei’s fragmented memory. “Just tell me who brought it,” she snapped, dodging the politics. Slade shrugged, flipping through records. “Some suit, Old Li’s connect. Let’s trace it, but keep your head down, lah.”

  “I believe this Abai’s Soul Ore is a copy of my brother!” Ruoxi said, voice steely. “Can you help me trace where it came from?”

  “Your brother? Oh, the one uploaded to AbyssNet?” He let out a heavy sigh. “Look, someone drops a pricey Abai like this at our rinky-dink shop? That screams shady. Why not hit up the big-name joints in Circuit North?” He paused, eyeing the USB drive in Ruoxi’s hand. “You’re not chasing hardware—it’s the Soul Ore you want. Head to Circuit North and find Sima. Guy’s a data wizard, knows this stuff inside out. Or ping Ajay first, let him poke at that file.”

  Ruoxi couldn’t wait for closing. She begged off early from Slade, grabbed her canvas bag—half a pack of Red Double Happiness smokes, iced tea, an illegal drone jammer, a scuffed Peppa Pig keychain from Avei, her only proof of his existence—and bolted. She shoved the back door open, heart hammering. Foo-shing’s neon glow hung like toxic fog, LED signs flashing in a dizzying blur, sewer stench and garbage mingling with acrid sweat. A buzz hummed overhead—three palm-sized HuaCent LAPSS drones, swarming like wartime hornets, their red beams catching even cockroaches’ shadows. Ruoxi ducked, weaving into the crowd, eyes catching a carpet of discarded fast-food boxes underfoot.

  Ruoxi tapped her ChainCoin card on a bootleg StarLink terminal bolted to the wall outside a corner convenience store. Her Neuropulser beeped, connection locked in. A virtual screen flared, and Ajay’s face popped up, hooded in a sweat-soaked shirt, his background cluttered with busted gadgets. He grinned wide. “NeonEdge! You again? Last time you flashed that rig, I nearly got nabbed!” Ruoxi smirked—NeonEdge was her hacker alias—choking back the fumes of chili-fried pork intestines, “Ajay, do me a solid. I cracked an Abai and found my brother’s memory file. Check it out, quick.”

  He grinned, Sichuan drawl bursting: “Heavendamn, girl! HuaCent’s Premium Soul Ore? You’re pokin’ that? Dark web’s blowin’ up—HuaCent’s InfoSec slapped a 100-grand bounty on a ghost hacker! Address? Longgang District, Bastion Precinct, Foo-shing Village—that’s you! Holy shit, log off! Hood up, mask on! Fuck, log off now! My junk server’s about to get smoked!” He glanced off-camera, sighing. “Fine, you saved my ass once. Head to the old ancestral hall in the village. I’ll patch in remotely—safer, yeah?”

  Ruoxi killed the terminal, yanked the Neuropulser off, and stuffed it into her bag. She slapped on her AR glasses, flipping to anti-facial-recog mode, random geometric shapes flashing across the lenses. She melted into the crowd, steps quick. Another HuaCent LAPSS drone whirred overhead, prop wash kicking cool air, its red beam sweeping every shadow. She veered sharply, squeezing by a barbecue grill, oily smoke masking her sweat and infrared, head low to dodge cameras.

  The old ancestral hall crouched deep in the village, half-buried beside rubble heaps. Ruoxi forced the warped wooden door open and plugged it into a hardwired dark web hub jerry-rigged by hackers in the wall’s corner. Her virtual screen sparked to life, and Ajay flashed a grim smirk. “Alright, we’re good. Sling me the file—let’s see how deep this shit goes.” She fired off the data, muggy air choking her lungs. Ajay hissed: “Heaven, HuaCent’s Ore Shredder! Pulverized on purpose, clear as day—this memory fragment’s a heavendamn ghost trap. Your brother must’ve stumbled over their black-ops experiment. Check it: ‘Approved by SilverEye’, and that’s high-level as hell!” His screen blazed red, and he flipped out. “Shit! They’ve pinged us again! We’re fucked! Bolt, now!”

  Ruoxi yanked the USB drive, kicked the door wide, and tore into the alley, weaving through the crowd. HuaCent LAPSS drones screeched through the misty neon haze, their red beams locking every corner, tightening the net. The village’s glow pulsed like a toxic shroud, HuaCent Tower’s red-yellow glare looming: no escape. Ruoxi clenched the USB drive, acrid sweat and fear stinging her nose, heart pounding: Avei, I’m coming! She was Bastion’s ghost hunter, NeonEdge.