Chapter 15: Instructor Lin's Suspicion
The bandage behind Su Yuan's left ear was fresh. The adhesive tape pulled at the skin every time he swallowed, a sharp, grounding reminder of the drill bit that had bored into his skull six hours ago.
He sat on the metal bench outside Instructor Lin's office. The corridor was empty, save for a cleaning drone humming along the baseboards, scrubbing away the scuff marks of student combat boots.
Su Yuan closed his eyes.
He expected the usual chaotic roar of the SoulNet—the tangled thoughts of fourteen hundred sleepers, the distant static of the city's subconscious.
Instead, there was silence.
It wasn't the silence of an empty room. It was the silence of a vacuum.
**[ Logic-Core: Online. ]**
**[ Neural Bridge: Stable. ]**
**[ Incoming Data Stream: Rerouted to Auxiliary Processing. ]**
Wei had done good work. The positronic sphere she'd embedded in his skull was acting as a dam. The raw sewage of human emotion that usually flooded Su Yuan's mind was now being filtered, categorized, and sterilized before it touched his conscious thought. He didn't feel the hunger of the laborers in Sector 9. He didn't feel the fear of the students in the dorms.
He saw them as data points. *Hunger: 42%. Fear: 18%.*
It was cold. It was efficient. It was terrifying.
The door to the office slid open with a pneumatic hiss.
"Enter," a voice said.
It wasn't a request.
Su Yuan stood up. He adjusted the collar of his uniform to hide the bandage. He checked his pulse. 62 beats per minute. Steady as a rock.
He walked into the lion's den.
***
Instructor Lin's office looked less like an academic study and more like an autopsy room.
The walls were slate grey, unadorned. There were no books, no holographic awards, no pictures of family. The only light came from the massive desk in the center, where a suspended hologram displayed a rotating 3D model of a shattered robotic limb.
Lin sat behind the desk. She didn't look up. She was tapping a stylus against the glass surface of the desk, the rhythm slow and deliberate. *Tap. Tap. Tap.*
She was a striking woman, sharp-edged and severe, with hair pulled back so tight it pulled at the corners of her eyes. She wore the dark blue tactical bodysuit of the Academy instructors, the fabric shifting slightly as she breathed.
Su Yuan stood in front of the desk. He didn't salute. He didn't speak. He waited.
Lin stopped tapping.
"Do you know what this is, Cadet Su?" she asked, gesturing to the hologram with her stylus.
"It looks like a hydraulic actuator assembly," Su Yuan said. "Class-C. Probably from a heavy loader or a sparring droid."
"Sparring droid," Lin corrected. "Unit 734. The one you dismantled yesterday."
She finally looked up. Her eyes were grey, the color of wet cement. They were predator's eyes—unblinking, dilated, searching for weakness.
"The maintenance logs are interesting," she said softly. "The droid suffered a catastrophic pressure failure in the primary hydraulic line. The metal didn't fatigue. It didn't bend. It burst."
She spun the hologram. A red simulation line traced the point of impact.
"The force required to rupture a reinforced tube like that is roughly four thousand psi," she continued. "But the external sensors recorded an impact force of... zero."
She let the word hang in the cold air.
"Zero force, Su Yuan. You touched it. And it exploded."
Su Yuan felt the Logic-Core hum at the base of his skull. It wasn't a sound; it was a vibration in the bone.
**[ Threat Assessment: High. ]**
**[ Subject: Lin. Rank: A-Tier Cultivator. ]**
**[ Analysis: She suspects internal resonance manipulation. ]**
"I got lucky," Su Yuan said. His voice was level. "The droid was old. Maintenance in Sector 7 is underfunded. I hit a stress point."
"Luck," Lin repeated. She stood up, walking slowly around the desk. She moved like a cat, weightless and balanced. "I don't believe in luck. I believe in physics. And physics says that for a first-year student with a mining background and zero cultivation base to locate a microscopic stress fracture and exploit it in 0.4 seconds... that is a statistical anomaly."
She stopped right in front of him. She was tall. She smelled of ozone and expensive tea.
"You remind me of someone," she whispered.
Su Yuan didn't flinch. "Who?"
"There are rumors," Lin said, watching his face. "From the slums. A phantom programmer. Someone selling high-grade combat algorithms for free. Someone who broke the legs of a pit fighter named Iron Ox yesterday using nothing but a touch."
Su Yuan's heart didn't skip. The Logic-Core regulated the electrical impulses to the cardiac muscle.
**[ Observation Mode: Micro-Expression Analysis. ]**
**[ Source: SoulNet Node 1,002 (Poker Player/Gambler). ]**
The world slowed down.
Su Yuan looked at Lin. He didn't just see her face. He saw the map.
The tiny twitch at the corner of her left eye. *Stress.*
The slight flaring of her nostrils. *Aggression.*
The way her pulse throbbed in the jugular vein visible beneath her pale skin. *Anticipation.*
But there was something else.
A micro-tremor in her right hand, the one holding the stylus. A slight shift in weight to her back foot.
*She isn't sure,* the Logic-Core deduced. *She has the data, but she doesn't have the link. She is fishing.*
"I don't go to the slums, Instructor," Su Yuan said. "I study. I train. I sleep."
"Do you?"
Lin reached out. Her hand moved faster than human eyesight should allow. She grabbed Su Yuan's wrist.
It wasn't an attack. It was a test.
She channeled a pulse of *Qi* into his meridian system.
It felt like hot mercury flooding his veins. It burned. Most students would have cried out, yanked their hand away.
Su Yuan let it happen. He didn't resist. He didn't shield his internal channels.
**[ Warning: External Energy Intrusion. ]**
**[ Protocol: Mask the SoulNet. Simulate E-Rank trash meridians. ]**
The Genesis Protocol routed the energy. It hid the burning sun of the 1,400 connected souls behind a firewall of muddy, blocked channels. It presented Lin with exactly what she expected to find: garbage.
Lin frowned. She held his wrist for five seconds, her internal energy scouring his body for a hidden power source, a cybernetic implant, anything.
She found blocked pathways. She found scar tissue from the mines. She found mediocrity.
She released his wrist. She looked disappointed.
"Trash channels," she muttered. "Barely enough flow to light a lightbulb."
"I know," Su Yuan said. He rubbed his wrist. "That's why I have to be lucky."
Lin walked back to her desk and sat down. The tension in the room dialed down, but only slightly. She was confused. The data said he was a monster. The physical exam said he was a cripple.
"Explain the movement then," she said sharply. "The footage from the obstacle course. You moved like water. That isn't luck. That is technique."
Su Yuan had prepared for this. The lie was already constructed, polished by the cold intellect of the machine in his head.
"I didn't invent it," Su Yuan said.
"Then who taught you?"
"I saw someone," Su Yuan said. He lowered his voice, adding a tremor of hesitation. Not fear—reluctance. "Last week. Behind the incinerator block in Sector 9. I was looking for spare parts."
Lin's eyes narrowed. "Who did you see?"
"A man. He was wearing a grey cloak. No insignia. But he had a tattoo on his neck. A black tortoise."
The lie was precise. The Black Tortoise Academy was the Azure Dragon's bitter rival to the north. They specialized in defensive fluid arts.
Lin went still. The stylus stopped moving.
**[ Target Reaction: Validated. ]**
**[ Pupil dilation: 2mm. Recognition detected. ]**
"A Black Tortoise spy," Lin whispered. "Here?"
"I watched him practice," Su Yuan continued. "He was moving through the steam vents. He didn't fight the steam; he moved with it. I... I just tried to copy what he did. It took me a hundred tries to get it right once."
He looked down at his boots. "I didn't report it because I thought... I thought I was seeing things. Or that maybe he was a guest instructor."
Lin slammed her hand onto the desk. The hologram flickered.
"Idiot," she hissed. "There are no guests from the North. Only spies and saboteurs."
She stood up, pacing behind her desk. The predator had found a new scent. The anomaly of Su Yuan—the lucky cripple—was suddenly less interesting than the prospect of a rival infiltrator. It fit her worldview. It explained the unexplainable technique without breaking the laws of physics she held dear.
"Show me the tattoo," she commanded. "Draw it."
She threw a datapad across the desk.
Su Yuan caught it. He sketched a rough, stylized tortoise shell. He deliberately made the lines shaky, imperfect.
Lin stared at the drawing. Her jaw tightened.
"Sector 9," she muttered. "Blind spots in the sensor grid. It makes sense."
She looked back at Su Yuan. The suspicion was still there, coiled in the back of her grey eyes, but the immediate threat of violence had passed. She had categorized him: *Useful Witness. Potential Liability. Not the mastermind.*
"You are dismissed, Cadet," Lin said coldly. "If you see this man again, you do not engage. You do not copy him. You signal the faculty immediately."
"Yes, Instructor."
Su Yuan turned to leave.
"Wait."
Su Yuan stopped, his hand on the door panel.
Lin opened a drawer in her desk. She pulled out a small, metallic object. It looked like a silver coin, but the edges were serrated.
"Come here."
Su Yuan walked back.
"Turn around. Head down."
He obeyed.
He felt her cold fingers brush the nape of his neck, right above the collar. Then, a sharp pinch.
*Click.*
**[ Alert: Foreign Object Attached. ]**
**[ Device: Neural-Link Calibrator (Class B). ]**
**[ Function: GPS Tracking. Biometric Monitoring. Audio Surveillance. ]**
**[ Countermeasure: EMP Burst available. Disabling will alert the owner. ]**
"It's a calibrator," Lin lied smoothly. "It will help stabilize your Qi flow. Given your... poor constitution, you need all the help you can get. Consider it a gift for the information."
Su Yuan felt the device latch onto his skin. Micro-needles dug in, tapping into his nervous system. It was a leash. She was tagging him like a wild animal she intended to study.
The Logic-Core analyzed the options.
*Option A: Rip it off. Consequence: Immediate combat. Death probability: 98%.*
*Option B: Hack it. Consequence: Suspicion confirmed.*
*Option C: Accept.*
"Thank you, Instructor," Su Yuan said. He touched the cold metal disc on his neck. "I appreciate the help."
"Don't take it off," Lin said. "It needs to bond with your nervous system. If you remove it, the shock could paralyze you."
Another lie. But effective.
"I won't."
"Go."
Su Yuan walked out. The door hissed shut behind him.
***
The hallway air felt colder now.
Su Yuan walked towards the elevators. He didn't hurry. He kept his breathing rhythmic, knowing that Lin was likely watching his biometrics on a screen right now.
*Pulse: 65. Cortisol: Low.*
He touched the device on his neck again.
**[ Genesis Protocol: Inquiry. ]**
**[ The device broadcasts audio and location. Do you wish to loop the feed? ]**
*Not yet,* Su Yuan projected. *If the data loops, she'll know. Let her see me walking to the cafeteria. Let her hear me eating. Let her get bored.*
He stepped into the elevator. The mirrored walls reflected a young man who looked too thin, too pale, with dark circles under his eyes that spoke of sleepless nights. He looked like a victim.
Su Yuan stared into his own pupils in the reflection.
Deep behind the black, behind the exhaustion, something shifted. A grid of silver light.
*The Black Tortoise lie won't hold forever,* he thought. *She'll sweep Sector 9. She'll find nothing. Then she'll come back.*
**[ Suggestion: Manufacture evidence. ]**
The voice of the Logic-Core was crisp.
**[ Node 402 works in the textile district. We can fabricate a grey cloak with Northern stitching. Node 89 is a chemically dependent vagrant. We can implant a false memory and leave him in the sector to be found. ]**
Su Yuan closed his eyes.
Frame a vagrant. Sacrifice a pawn to satisfy the predator.
Yesterday, the thought would have sickened him. Yesterday, he would have hesitated.
Today, the Logic-Core presented it as a simple equation. *Cost: One Mind. Benefit: Survival of the Administrator.*
"No," Su Yuan whispered to the empty elevator.
**[ Illogical. The risk increases with time. ]**
"We don't sacrifice pawns unless it's checkmate," Su Yuan said. "We create a ghost. I'll become the Black Tortoise spy."
**[ Variable: Instructor Lin is A-Rank. Combat simulation predicts defeat in 0.8 seconds. ]**
"Then I need to get stronger," Su Yuan said. "Faster than 0.8 seconds."
The elevator dinged. Ground floor.
The doors opened to the clamor of the student union. Noise. Life. The smell of cheap synth-noodles and sweat.
Su Yuan stepped out. The noise washed over him, but the filter held. He didn't wince.
He walked through the crowd, a ghost in the machine, the silver coin on his neck pulsing a silent signal back to the woman who wanted to dissect him.
He needed a place to think. A place where the audio surveillance wouldn't matter.
He headed for the library.
***
The Academy Library was a cathedral of silence. Rows of holographic servers stretched up into the darkness of the vaulted ceiling.
Su Yuan found a terminal in the back, hidden behind a stack of physical books—relics from the Old World that nobody touched anymore.
He sat down. He didn't turn on the terminal. He didn't need to.
*System. Access the SoulNet.*
The library vanished. The world fell away.
He stood on the surface of the black ocean. The 1,400 nodes drifted beneath him, a galaxy of bioluminescent jellyfish.
The silence here was different now. Before the purge, it had been a murmur of dreams. Now, with the fifty-three addicts gone—erased by the Logic Sword—the remaining minds felt... subdued. Fearful.
They didn't know what had happened. They only felt the sudden void where their neighbors used to be.
Su Yuan walked across the water.
He needed a skill. Not movement. Not strength. He needed something to counter the surveillance.
He scanned the nodes.
*Laborer. Student. Mechanic. thief.*
He paused on a dim, flickering light near the edge of the cluster.
**[ Node 882: Technician, Class-D. ]**
**[ Location: Comms Tower 4. ]**
**[ Current State: Daydreaming. ]**
**[ Skill: Signal Modulation. ]**
Su Yuan reached out.
He didn't ask. He took.
The sensation was smooth, lubricated by the Logic-Core. He dove into Node 882's mind, bypassing the subconscious defenses, and located the knowledge of radio frequencies and encryption.
He downloaded it.
It took three seconds.
Su Yuan opened his eyes in the physical library.
He focused on the device on his neck.
He couldn't remove it. But he could *hum* at it.
He tapped into his own meager Qi. He didn't push it through his meridians. He vibrated it in his vocal cords, creating a sub-sonic frequency that the human ear couldn't hear.
*Modulation.*
He pitched the vibration to match the carrier wave of the Neural-Link Calibrator.
**[ Interference Generated. ]**
**[ Audio Feed: White Noise overlay active. ]**
To Lin, it would sound like a bad connection. Atmospheric static. Just enough to obscure a whispered conversation, but not enough to trigger a tampering alert.
"Safe," Su Yuan breathed.
" talking to yourself?"
The voice came from the aisle to his left.
Su Yuan turned slowly.
It was Wei.
She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by a fortress of disassembled hard drives. She looked smaller than usual, her oversized hoodie swallowing her knees.
She wasn't looking at him. She was looking at the air above his head.
"You changed," she said. Her voice was flat, devoid of the curiosity she had shown in the Scrapyard.
"I upgraded," Su Yuan said.
"No," Wei said. She picked up a hard drive and spun it on her finger. "You subtracted."
She finally looked at him. The opaque glasses were gone. Her eyes were dark, rimmed with red, and frighteningly intelligent.
"The hum is gone," she said. "The messy, jagged noise. Now it's just... a straight line. Like a flatline."
She pointed a greasy finger at his head.
"You cut out the human part to make room for the math."
Su Yuan felt a flicker of irritation. The Logic-Core flagged it: *Useless Emotion.* It suppressed it.
"I did what I had to do to survive the feedback," Su Yuan said. "You installed it, Wei."
"I installed a dam," Wei said. "You built a tomb."
She stood up, kicking the hard drives aside. She walked over to his table. She leaned in close, smelling of solder and stale sugar.
"Lin tagged you," she noted, glancing at his neck. "Class-B tracker. Sloppy."
"I'm handling it."
"With audio interference? Amateur. She'll filter that out in an hour."
Wei reached into her pocket and pulled out a small patch of foil. She slapped it over the device on his neck.
"Faraday weave," she said. "It simulates a signal drop due to environmental interference. Like walking into a basement. It buys you ten minutes of total silence. Use them."
Su Yuan touched the patch. "Why are you helping me?"
Wei stared at him.
"Because the machine part of you is boring," she said. "And I want to see if the human part is still in there."
She turned and walked away, back to her fortress of dead drives.
"Ten minutes," she called out. "Don't waste them."
Su Yuan sat alone in the dim light.
Ten minutes of silence.
He should use it to plan. To strategize against the Black Tortoise deception. To deduce the next expansion of the SoulNet.
But instead, Su Yuan did something illogical.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, crumpled piece of paper. It was a receipt from the cafeteria. On the back, in shaky handwriting, were a series of numbers.
The ID codes of the fifty-three addicts he had purged.
The Logic-Core screamed at him. *Data is irrelevant. Delete.*
Su Yuan stared at the numbers. He traced them with his finger.
He remembered the feeling of the sword. The silence of the cut.
"I remember," he whispered to the paper.
The machine in his head offered him efficiency. It offered him power without pain.
But as he looked at the graveyard of numbers in his hand, Su Yuan realized that pain was the only thing proving he wasn't just another droid on Lin's desk.
He folded the paper and put it back in his pocket, right next to his heart.
**[ Warning: Sentimentality detected. Efficiency decreased by 0.4%. ]**
"Shut up," Su Yuan said.
He stood up. The ten minutes were ticking.
He had a war to win. And he needed to find the Phantom Market again. Not to purge. But to recruit.
The predator in the office wanted a spy?
He would give her an army.