III – Silence's Tale
Zhang Bo's POV
Zhang Bo stood at the central console, the top button of his white shirt undone, sleeves rolled to the forearm. A faint crease held beneath his eyes.
Layered display panels curved along the command room wall, each screen set within the reinforced frame ribs of the chamber. Surveillance feeds occupied separate sectors of the panoramic array, timecodes ticking in fine white numerals along the lower edges. Maintenance Level Five expanded across the central wall display.
Inside the displayed screen, Talgat crouched beside the opened thorium grid console set into the reinforced wall. Overhead strip lights cast a faint red pulse across the grated floor and conduit-lined corridor, barely interrupting the industrial wash of the normal lighting.
He held the opened-lid trigger casing close to his chest, fingers wrapped tight around its edge. His head angled forward slightly. The line of his jaw shifted in slow, controlled intervals. Muscles along his cheek tightened and released as his lips moved in a steady cadence, the rhythm visible even without sound.
Zhang's eyes stayed on the feed. His fingers rested against the edge of the console while, on the projection, Talgat's other hand gripped a circuit casing with the toggle switch exposed.
He's speaking to someone, perhaps to correspond. Zhang Thought.
"AI. Initiate lip-synchronization reconstruction. Increase sampling density. Predict external phoneme correlation."
Zhang's gaze held on the central frame.
The projection tightened around Talgat's face. Pixels resolved into sharper edges. A mesh grid overlaid the jaw hinge and cheek line, adjusting in real time as each frame recalculated. Thin tracking vectors anchored at the corners of the mouth. Along the right margin, phoneme bars populated in staggered columns, rising and falling with each captured movement.
The system paused just long enough for the data to evaluate.
At the corner of the screen, a small rectangular box formed. Inside, curvy, wave-like frequencies began to form. The lines blurred at first as the system translated Talgat's jaw movements into predicted sound. The model recalculated frame by frame, smoothing the output as phoneme probabilities stabilized, and eventually, the frequency wave became fully aligned.
Here's a refined version of the dialogue:
"Lip reconstruction complete for Subject: Talgat," the A.I. reported. "Anomalous pattern detected."
A secondary wavelength audio frequency was traced, appearing on the display screen beneath the first—thinner and fragmented. The intercepted comm channel was pulled from the maintenance network's internal routing. The second waveform strengthened as error correction aligned the main carrier signature.
A voice reconstruction output was generated through the security room speakers.
"You think you can disobey him, raider?"
Zhang's lower lip pressed against his teeth.
"Daren."
"Voice pattern match confirmed," the A.I. responded a fraction later. "Merchant Tier council member Daren Al-Keshev. Cross-signal detected within settlement boundary. Merchant administrative credentials embedded in maintenance channel."
Zhang drew air through his nose once slowly and let it out fast.
"So that's the missing hand."
Zhang Bo raised both hands, fingers splayed. The screen before him responded. The maintenance feed contracted, snapping into the upper-left quadrant of the curved display wall. As his hands separated, adjacent panels dimmed and shifted. Merchant-tier surveillance expanded across the central span, grids widening and locking edge to edge. Timestamps and sector markers recalibrated along the margins, settling into alignment.
Freight corridors and stacked cargo platforms resolved into sharper density. Blue containment glow traveled through recessed floor conduits beneath the grated walkways, reflecting faintly along steel edges. Along the upper structural ribs, segmented emergency seams began to warm—thin crimson lines threading through ceiling channels at measured intervals, implying the attentive time for the civilians rather than flooding the chamber with the terrifying red flared to signal the impending threat.
Merchant-tier workers broke from cargo lanes. Boots struck metal grating as forklifts were left mid-load. Crates hung half-secured on lift arms while operators climbed down cycling shutdown protocols. Along the walkway edges, narrow crimson guidance strips activated in sequence, embedded into the floor rails and bending toward the designated assembly routes.
Men and women funneled along those lines, shoulders brushing as voices overlapped in tight bursts. At the second junction, the crimson strip split cleanly—one branch angling toward the residential wing, the other toward the reinforced muster platform at center. Overhead shutters descended in controlled intervals behind the last wave of workers, sealing machinery bays once each threshold cleared.
All but one.
He paced behind the sorting lanes designated for caravan shipment. Datapad active. Commlink pressed low near his collar.
Daren. No distortion in the carrier. Internal routing. Merchant credentials embedded clean. That means he contacted the external faction from inside my grid. Bold enough to believe I would miss it. Fucking idiot.
Zhang's fingers moved across the console in tight, precise motions. Surveillance layers shifted. Access logs unfolded in cascading columns.
Crimson Veil remains in partial state. Civilian evacuation incomplete. Vertical access shafts cycling between open and restricted. If I seal Maintenance Level Five now, personnel get trapped inside surge range. If I deploy a team, they enter a conduit under unstable load. The main Thorium artery runs beneath residential blocks. A misstep locks civilians inside the blast radius.
"Immediately transmit encrypted notice to Mrs. Hong. Traditional Chinese. Instruct immediate evacuation of the workshop," Zhang said. The vein along his temple stood out beneath the overhead light as his hands hovered over the projection.
"Notification, Sent per ordered." A.I. responded almost instantly.
Across the entire CSDS subterranean vault, faint crimson latticework traced itself along the settlement's structural ribs, thin lines crisscrossing at measured intervals. The ceiling and floor conduits ran beneath the walkway, but the wires now glowed faintly, their presence marked by soft red lines that intersected the metallic beams at precise locations. Corridor guidance strips immediately shifted red lattice along transit floors, marking the transition of zones under the crimson protocol. Perimeter glyphs pulsed with low intensity near sector junctions, their rhythms subtly shifting with each passing second.
The crimson overlay was confined to the projection layer and alert panels, while the thorium blue conduits continued their steady hum, wrapped around a narrow white core. The glow of the conduits was reflected along the walls, lending a slight metallic sheen to the room's structure.
A status pane appeared in crimson seam across the projection. Elevator access to lower maintenance levels was now restricted. Stairwell routes were flagged as conditional, responding to fluctuations in load variance.
Zhang's hand hovered over the sector lockdown control button on the hand-tracking interactive screen. If I cut power abruptly, Daren gains full override through merchant routing. If I interrupt Talgat mid-sever, the relay remains half-open. The grid will try to compensate; thus, the surge is inevitable.
His hand resolved into a crossarm, the right arm grabbing his beard across his jawline to his chin.
"Hold vertical deployment," he commanded. "Team Alpha to Level Eight staging. Do not descend until load stabilizes."
"Confirmed.", A.I. responded after a small paused just enough for the information to be relayed across the Team Alpha's HDI.
The thorium-blue conduits pulsed steadily below. As the load increased, the blue transmission lines intensified, a white surge forming within the same channels, brightening along their length without breaking containment. The hum shifted upward in register, a tighter vibration threading through the reinforced framework, felt more in the sternum than in the ear.
Zhang's eyes returned to the maintenance feed; his focus anchored.
He then leaned slightly closer to the projection display of the Maintenance Level Five. Talgat remained crouched by the open-lid trigger casing, fingers still resting along its edge, thumb hovering just above the exposed seam.
Zhang's eyes remained on the projection, but another image surfaced. The day Talgat first entered the settlement. During separation protocol, drone cameras captured him walking behind Kaodin and Cee-Too, escorted by Cee-Ar-Tee toward intake processing. He stopped a step behind the marked boundary line.
The other scavengers walked through the three green-lit intake arches when signaled, moving toward their assigned lanes. Talgat stayed where he was. His head lowered slightly, just enough to keep the boys within his line of sight. Kaodin and Cee-Too walked ahead, their voices overlapping in bright, unguarded chatter after their return. The corner of Talgat's mouth lifted a fraction, a brief shift that passed almost as soon as it formed.
His eyes glared on them until the corridor angle swallowed their figures. Only then did his shoulders shift, per Cee-Ar-Tee's slightly forceful pull on his arm to proceed.
At that time, the archived intake feed slowed by a fraction as the system initiated behavioral screening prior to authorize access. Talgat's pupils were isolated and tracked across successive frames. Micro-movements registered along the orbicularis oculi and zygomatic region, mapped against baseline hostility indicators through the Facial Action Coding System.
Zhang Bo thought as he recalled his memory.
A notation surfaced along the frame margin: attention fixation, duration three-point-zero-two seconds. Threat index recalculated within acceptable parameters. Clearance granted. The entry archived under non-hostile variance before the intake sequence resumed.
Currently, on the displayed screen, the same man crouched beside the open circuit casing. Cables ran from the housing into the Thorium grid's console panel. His fingers remained wrapped around the edge of the lid, knuckles pale under the conduit lighting, the thorium-blue reflection tracing along the back of his hand.
Zhang leaned attentively closer to the display.
"Don't do it, Talgat," Zhang said, his voice low enough, almost like he was whispering only for a ghost to hear.
Zhang's hand hovered over a single switch, the Emergency Alert Key, the red hexagonal panel locked behind tempered glass.
He whispered, almost to himself, "Just one more reassurance, one more, to believe in you."
Talgat's thumb pressed down. The lid folded back into place, sealing the trigger switch inside the circuit casing with a faint mechanical click. Zhang kept his eyes on the feed. The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, a brief acknowledgment of his own read on the man.
The vibration beneath his shoes shifted. The steady thorium-blue current became more pronounced, with the white core inside the conduit intensifying, brightening in gradual pulses.
A crimson warning pane flared along the edge of the projection.
"Director Zhang. Thorium flow increasing by point-eight percent. External node activating through merchant frequency bands."
The maintenance schematic expanded automatically, new lines threading into the grid where none had existed seconds earlier.
Zhang's jaw tightened.
"Daren, you were done for."
"Estimated time to overload?", he asked the A.I.
Zhang's hand hovered above the containment control.
"T minus sixty seconds," the AI reported.
Across the entire CSDS subterranean vault, the corridor strips shifted from standby to solid crimson., their pulse quickening, flickering in sharp intervals. The faint crimson lattice along the dome ribs grew more vivid, its intersections thickening where sector boundaries converged. the corridor strips shifted from standby to solid crimson red along the east conduit schematic. The load-distribution graph spiked, redlining at its upper margin as the thorium-blue sheath surrounding the mapped artery tightened, constricting around an expanding white core.
In the feed, Talgat's lip-synced A.I. generated voice came through in broken fragments.
"Korren, abort. The sequence is compromised."
"You're stalling again.", Korren answered through a wash of interference.
"It's not me. Someone spoofed the…."
The signal fractured into white noise and the channel went flat.
Zhang's teeth pressed together. A tendon along his jaw stood out beneath the console light as his finger came down on the flashing control that surfaced at the corner of the screen where Talgat's live feed was projected. He did not hesitate. His hand moved in a deliberate gesture toward the interactive screen the moment the autonomous system flagged the external communication thread.
"Tsk… I should have sealed outbound routing earlier."
A thin vein rose along his temple, catching the console light as his jaw tightened.
He shifted toward the command tier interface.
The auxiliary display filled with branching red pathways. One by one, communication lines dimmed and vanished, nodes collapsing across the grid map.
A new banner surfaced across the primary projection.
[PRIMARY OVERRIDE ACCEPTED]
[GRID INTEGRITY STATUS: CRITICAL THRESHOLD APPROACHING]
[FULL SEQUENCE REINITIALIZATION ADVISED]
Zhang hand gesture to signaling the crimson veil full initiation.
"A.I. Full Crimson Veil engagement. Grid isolation. Now."
Above the Central Oversight Chamber, the crimson structural alert grid spread across the projection layer, snapping into alignment over every mapped corridor and sector boundary. What had appeared as thin guide markers during partial protocol now resolved into solid red structural overlays across the settlement model. Floor guidance channels along the safest unblocked route to the nearest highly secured-facility areas; held steady in solid red, running unbroken across grating and panel joints.
Simultaneously, the siren tore through the command tier. Its tone doubled in depth as a secondary frequency layered beneath the first, reverberating along the structural ribs. Across the grid map, sector indicators flipped from crimson lattice in rapid succession.
Metal shutters dropped along each major transit corridors throughout the entire shaft and residential arteries where they had remained open after the earlier warning signal, each impact traveling through the floor as a metallic concussion shuddered. Perimeter defense markers activated along the outer ring, their radius bands projecting across the tactical overlay.
The floor beneath his station split along a circular seam. A reinforced platform pushed upward, metal guides sliding against their tracks with a restrained hydraulic vibration: a disc-shaped command table came into place at waist height. Locking pins seated with a slight thud as mechanical clicked into place, the surface stabilized.
The projection table engaged.
Concentric interface rings ignited across its surface, blue gridlines locking into alignment before a vertical column of structured light rose from the center. The settlement assembled within it in layered relief. Structural tiers stacked upward from the base grid. Surface towers registered above, subterranean corridors descending beneath. Transit shafts, merchant platforms, and residential arteries rendered in translucent strata, each sector defined by hard-edged red boundary blocks under full Crimson Veil authority.
The chamber lighting remained red. Every surrounding display wall carried opaque crimson overlays. Sector indicators no longer pulsed but held static lines.
Zhang Bo leaned closer to the volumetric model. He lifted both hands and grasped into the projection field, fingers closing as if securing a physical mass. The model stabilized under his hold. He flicked his wrists upward and pivoted the settlement along its vertical axis. Thorium-blue conduit lines traced through the lower infrastructure, brightening toward white within the same channel where load intensified.
He then rotated the model. The intense white light along the east-section seam enveloped the conduit line, running parallel to the solid red boundary of the eastern sector. He pulled it inwardly to settle the model right at the at the center of the projection field and right where he could promptly observe and analyze the area.
A status marker appeared beside the affected corridor:
Integrity degradation: 89%. Rising.
"Crimson Veil protocol active. Territory-wide live feed distribution initiated to registered security personnel, mercenary units, and authorized scavengers. Hostile tracking engaged. Energy containment nodes locking. CSDS security personnel and civilians, east sector containment instability. Hold your positions. Maintain formation until further instruction."
Corridor strips fixed into solid red. Overhead ribs ignited in sequence. Steel shutters dropped through transit shafts, each impact traveling through the floor. Comms vibrated against chests and wrists. Security units shifted toward assigned sectors without breaking stride.
Zhang's voice carried through stairwells and cargo lanes, steady, without rise or strain.
On the central display, the east-sector conduit line became excessively intensified. The thorium blue transmission brightened as thermal became accumulated before glowing into a blazing energy line.
At the junction hub where multiple lines converged, the concentrated heat drove the channel past its regulation threshold. The white intensity compressed at the convergence point and surged beyond control.
The conduit trace at that node surged to peak intensity. The white current at the junction exceeded regulation limits.
Telemetry spiked across the east-sector panel.
The mapped hub compressed into a saturated white point. The conduit line at that coordinate vanished from the grid overlay as the channel ruptured. Structural readouts at the junction cut to zero.
A discharge event registered.
The shock traveled through the settlement foundation before the sound reached the chamber. The floor lifted under his boots. Load-bearing columns transmitted the impulse upward through the command level. Ceiling seams released a fine drift of dust across the console surface while a low mechanical grind moved through the structure.
Zhang Bo extended both hands and locked onto the volumetric model. He drew the projection outward, widening the field, then pushed toward the eastern quadrant. The display magnified the affected zone, multiple junction nodes surfacing into view where crimson lockdown markers burned along the sector boundaries.
Three surveillance feeds tied to those marked sections expanded across the screen at once.
"A.I. give me the last seen recorded footage across the three marked spots."
Across the room, the three center-row display screens lit up.
In the first, Talgat threw an arm across his face and dove behind a concrete pillar. The conduit housing ruptured in a burst of white glare, debris lifting from the floor as the shockwave drove outward.
In the second, Daren staggered back from his console. The merchant grid behind him remained lit, thorium-blue current lines steady and intact, while the surge signature spiked elsewhere across the settlement map. His datapad slipped from his grip and struck the floor. The red alert wash drained the color from his face.
However, in the third feed, there was only blank feed, screen displayed fuzzy.
"What happened to the third feed?" Zhang's hand struck the console edge, the projection jittering under the impact.
"We lost the final sequence preceding integrity collapse. Buffer corruption detected at timestamp minus zero-point-four seconds. Partial cache remains available."
"Can the partial cache be reconstructed?"
The center screen cut in. The recovered buffer played on the center display.
Cee-Too stood at the transformer cabinet, shoulders squared to the open panel. His fingers moved across the exposed console in a continuous sweep, lifting thermal caps, reseating contact pins, rotating the transfer dial through its resistance until the indicator bar intensified from electric blue to white.
Minutes later, Mrs. Hong entered the frame in her dark navy jumpsuit, apron still tied at her waist, hair secured high at the back of her head. A metal toolbox hung from her right hand. Xiao Ying moved in behind her, dropping to one knee beside the relay casing as her portable display lit with cascading load graphs.
The camera feed jolted. The image rippled sideways, then snapped back out of alignment as a tremor passed through the room. A fraction later, the frame washed white and cut to static. The blast registered through the chamber floor a heartbeat after the feed failed.
"What now?" Zhang said under his breath.
He turned to the interactive settlement overview model.
Across the screen and on the volumetric live-feed interface, only one zone rendered solid red: the eastern residential sector.
Immediately, a column of blue energy current shot upward from the rupture point, bursting through one of the photonic generators before curling along the outer settlement wall, tearing it open and enveloping the section in blazing flame.
"A.I., damage assessment. Send Team Alpha to the lower grid. Detain Talgat. Dispatch another unit to assist Qiran in securing Daren. We need both alive for questioning. Prioritize the eastern residential sector. Now."
"And divert the remaining team above ground. We have an external presence. The primary actor has chosen to surface."