这座城市从未真正沉睡.
即使黎明时分,灰港上空仍带着紫蓝色的淤青,下层区依然像活生生的生物一样呼吸着——蒸汽从破裂的通风口升起,雨水斑驳的窗户后灯光闪烁,远处发电机如机械心脏般跳动的嗡鸣.
伊桑·维尔站在屋顶上,让风吹过脸庞.
在他脚下,车流沿着快速车道缓缓驶过,自动驾驶卡车无动于衷地擦肩而过.在那无尽的钢铁与数据网格中,他需要的答案.或者是等待他的陷阱.
昨晚的信息在他脑海中反复回放.
别挖了.
没有发件人ID,也没有可追踪的路由.干净.太干净了.
仅凭这一点,伊桑就明白了一切.
有真正权威的人注意到了他.
他活动了手指,皮肤下的微光脉动了一下,随后消散.植入体现在对压力有反应,这是他没告诉诊所的副作用——那时诊所还假装会问问题.
"还活着?"
声音从他身后传来.
玛拉走出楼梯间,外套紧紧拉着,黑发束起,看起来大概睡了三个小时.一块数据板夹在她腋下,表面爬满了加密符号.
"很遗憾,"伊桑说."你看起来比我感觉的还糟."
她哼了一声."那是因为你不知道我发现了什么."
他转身正面面对她."那就说吧."
玛拉没有交出石板.相反,她靠在低矮的混凝土墙上,紧咬着下巴凝视着城市.
"他们掩埋了事故,"她说."不仅仅是法律上的.数字化.医疗记录已重写.监控环路已接通.甚至死亡证明也被篡改了."
伊桑胸口一紧.
"子午线站倒塌?"他问.
She nodded. "Officially, seventeen casualties. Unofficially?" She swallowed. "At least fifty-two."
He closed his eyes.
His sister's name was still listed among the seventeen.
"Why now?" he asked quietly. "Why let anything leak after all these years?"
Mara finally looked at him. "Because someone inside wants it exposed. Or because someone wants you exposed."
The wind picked up, rattling loose debris across the rooftop.
Ethan laughed once, short and humorless. "I'm not important enough for that."
"You are if you're the only one who can open the vault," she said.
That got his attention.
"What vault?"
Mara activated the slate. A schematic bloomed into the air between them—layers of security rings, biometric locks, neural-auth gates stacked like a digital fortress.
"Blacksite archive," she said. "Corporate-government joint custody. Old tech. Analog failsafes mixed with neural keys."
Ethan stared at the center of the diagram.
The authorization signature.
It was his.
Or close enough to make no difference.
"That's impossible," he said. "I never worked for them."
"You didn't," Mara replied. "Your sister did."
Silence slammed into him harder than any threat message.
"She was a systems engineer," Mara continued. "Recruited under a civilian shell company. When Meridian went down, she was inside the core data wing."
Ethan's throat felt dry. "You're saying she built this."
"I'm saying she locked it."
The implications unfolded in his mind, ugly and sharp.
If the vault existed—and if his neural pattern could open it—then the warning message wasn't a bluff. It was a deadline.
"You accessed classified layers to find this," he said.
Mara gave a tired smile. "You think I still care about my record?"
He studied her for a moment. "You could walk away. Sell this to someone richer. Safer."
She met his gaze without hesitation. "So could you."
Below them, a patrol drone swept past the building, sensors scanning, red eye flicking briefly toward the rooftop before moving on.
Ethan made his decision.
"When?" he asked.
Mara exhaled slowly. "Tonight. Before they realize the archive key is alive."
---
They moved through the city separately.
Ethan took the long way down—freight elevators, maintenance corridors, streets where facial recognition lagged just enough to be useful. Every reflective surface felt like an accusation. Every passerby a potential observer.
The implant hummed softly at the base of his skull, feeding him micro-adjustments: route deviations, signal shadows, moments of silence between surveillance sweeps.
Someone had designed this system for him.
That thought unsettled him more than the threat.
The blacksite entrance wasn't marked. It never was.
Just an old transit hub sealed after the collapse, its platforms abandoned, its signage frozen in a past that no longer existed. Mara waited near the gate, hood up, hands in her pockets.
"You're late," she said.
"You said tonight," Ethan replied.
She smirked. "Tonight is a shrinking window."
它们在维护周期中滑入,重置了外部锁.
地下空气冰冷而陈旧,带着早已死去机器的淡淡金属气味.灯光闪烁