**Chapter 23: Expedition to the Wasteland**
The ash didn't just coat the ground; it was part of the air, a suspension of grey grit that tasted of burnt copper and old bones.
Su Yuan walked.
His boots, standard-issue combat leather reinforced with polymer, crunched through the crust of the dune. Every step was a heavy, deliberate punctuation mark. Beside him, Chen Feng wheezed, the sound wet and rattling in the boy's chest. The air filtration unit on Chen's collar was blinking amber, struggling to scrub the heavy metals from the wind.
"Keep the pace," Su Yuan said. He didn't look at Chen. He kept his eyes on the horizon, where the jagged silhouettes of the Refinery clawed at the purple sky.
"I can't... the filter..." Chen gasped, stumbling over a piece of rebar jutting from the sand like a broken rib.
Su Yuan reached out. He didn't offer a hand to hold; he grabbed Chen's webbing and hauled him upright with a single, jerking motion. The boy weighed nothing. Su Yuan's *Iron Body* felt gravity differently now. He wasn't fighting the earth; he was anchoring it.
"Filter's fine," Su Yuan said, his voice flat. "You're hyperventilating. Close your mouth. Breath through your nose. If you pass out, Kovacs leaves you."
It wasn't a threat. It was an observation of the local weather.
Fifty meters ahead, Sergeant Kovacs marched with the rhythmic, hydraulic stomp of his exoskeleton. The man was a walking tank, smoking a lho-stick inside his helmet, the smoke venting through his exhaust ports. He hadn't looked back in an hour.
To the left, Mei, the healer assigned to their squad, adjusted her pack. She was small, pale, with eyes that seemed too large for her face. She looked at Su Yuan, then at his hand still gripping Chen's vest.
"You're not even breathing hard," she said. It wasn't a compliment. It was an accusation.
Su Yuan released Chen. "I pace myself."
"You're carrying double ration packs," Mei noted. "And the heavy ammo crate for the squad. That's eighty kilos."
"I did my back exercises," Su Yuan said.
He checked the internal clock. *1100 Hours.* Three hours since they left the drop zone. Three hours since he force-fed the *Ghost_Walker* protocol to fifty terrified students.
He tapped the implant behind his ear, not for the Spire, but for the ghost in the machine.
*Status.*
**[ CONNECTION: STABLE. ]**
**[ ACTIVE LOCAL NODES: 50. ]**
**[ SIGNAL STRENGTH TO CITY: 14% (DEGRADING). ]**
The tether was fraying. The massive, throbbing power of the 3,450 souls back in the slums was growing distant. It felt like trying to drink water through a straw that was ten kilometers long. The lag was increasing. The processing power he relied on—the borrowed genius of the masses—was becoming sluggish.
And the *Protocol_Omega* file in his root directory was breathing.
*Expand,* the Logic-Core whispered. *Starvation imminent.*
He needed new batteries.
The terrain shifted. The dunes gave way to the Ruins proper. This had once been a suburb, centuries ago. Now it was a labyrinth of concrete husks, collapsed roofs, and streets paved with shattered glass.
"Halt!" Kovacs's voice boomed over the squad comms.
The students froze, dropping to crouches. Rifles came up, shaking in sweaty hands.
"Scanner contact," Kovacs growled. "Thermal plume. Sector 4, inside the convenience store structure."
Su Yuan squinted. The building was a hollowed-out shell, the sign above the door faded to illegible rust.
"Beast?" Chen whispered.
"Too cold for a warm-blood," Su Yuan murmured. "Reptile. Or machine."
"Squad A, flush it out," Kovacs ordered. "Su Yuan. Point."
Of course.
Su Yuan didn't argue. He shifted the ammo crate on his shoulder, letting the weight settle, and stepped forward. The grey dust swirled around his ankles.
He didn't raise his rifle. He didn't need it.
He walked into the gloom of the structure. The light here was dim, filtered through collapsed slabs of concrete. The smell changed—less sulfur, more rot. The sweet, cloying scent of meat that had turned liquid.
*Scan.*
He didn't use the Spire's tech. He pushed a pulse of Soul Power out through his feet, using the *Resonance* principle he'd derived from the *Shockwave* skill.
The vibration traveled through the floor. It hit something in the back corner. Something dense. Coiled.
*Heartbeat: 4 beats per minute. Slow. Ambush predator.*
Su Yuan signaled 'Stop' with a closed fist behind his back.
A low hiss filled the room.
From the shadows of the ceiling, it dropped.
It was a Gecko-Strain mutant, scaled in mottled grey and black, the size of a small car. It landed with a wet slap, its throat sac inflating with a bioluminescent toxic green.
"Contact!" someone screamed behind him.
Plasma bolts seared the air, flying wide. The students were panicking, firing at shadows.
The Gecko lunged. Not at the students. At the biggest threat.
At Su Yuan.
He saw the muscle fibers twitch in the beast's hind legs before it moved. The *Genesis Protocol*, even operating on low bandwidth, processed the trajectory instantly.
*Jump. vector: 30 degrees left. Claw strike.*
Su Yuan didn't dodge.
He stepped *into* the guard.
As the beast flew through the air, jaws wide enough to crush a man's torso, Su Yuan dropped the ammo crate.
*Clang.*
His right hand shot out, not in a punch, but a grab. His fingers, hard as rebar, clamped onto the beast's throat sac.
The momentum of the creature should have bowled him over. Instead, his boots skidded six inches through the dust, digging furrows in the concrete, and stopped. *Iron Body* locked his skeletal structure into a rigid frame.
The beast thrashed, its claws raking harmlessly against Su Yuan's chest plate.
"Hold fire!" Su Yuan shouted.
The plasma fire sputtered and died.
Mei stood in the doorway, her mouth open. She saw Su Yuan holding a four-hundred-pound reptile by the throat with one hand, lifting it off the ground.
"Don't kill it," Su Yuan whispered to himself.
He looked into the beast's eyes. They were vertical slits, yellow and mindless. Pure instinct. Hunger and fear.
*Can I use you?*
"System," Su Yuan subvocalized. "Attempt connection. Node establishment."
**[ TARGET: NON-HUMAN. ]**
**[ INTELLIGENCE: LOW. ]**
**[ SOUL DENSITY: TRACE. ]**
"Force it."
He tightened his grip. The beast gurgled. Su Yuan pushed his own Qi, his own data stream, into the creature's nervous system. It wasn't a handshake; it was a breach.
He felt the mind of the beast. It was a chaotic mess of sensory inputs—*heat, hunger, pain, light*. There was no logic. No processing power to borrow. It was like trying to run a complex algorithm on a toaster.
**[ CONNECTION ESTABLISHED. ]**
**[ PROCESSING GAIN: 0.001%. ]**
**[ STATUS: VIABLE RELAY ONLY. ]**
Useless as a processor. But as a repeater?
Su Yuan narrowed his eyes. He injected a packet of command data. *Fear. Flight. North.*
He released the throat.
The Gecko hit the floor, coughing green bile. It scrambled backward, claws scrabbling on the concrete. It looked at Su Yuan with terror that transcended species, then turned and bolted through the back wall, smashing through the rotten drywall.
"Target neutralized," Su Yuan called out.
Kovacs stomped into the room. He looked at the hole in the wall. He looked at Su Yuan.
"You let it go," Kovacs said. His mechanical hand whirred as he clenched it.
"It was routing back to its nest," Su Yuan lied smoothly. "I tagged it with a tracker. If we follow, it leads us to the rest."
Kovacs stared at him. The red eye of his helmet glowing in the gloom.
"Smart," Kovacs grunted. "Or cowardice. We'll see."
Su Yuan picked up the ammo crate. He felt the faint ping of the Gecko moving north, away from them. It was a tiny, moving dot on his internal radar. A mobile sensor.
Better than nothing. But not enough.
***
They stopped for water at the edge of the Ruins, overlooking a vast, flat expanse of cracked earth that led to the Refinery.
Su Yuan sat apart from the group, chewing on a nutrient bar that tasted like chalk and vitamins.
Mei sat down next to him. She didn't ask permission. She popped the seal on her canteen and took a drink, watching him over the rim.
"You didn't tag it," she said softly.
Su Yuan stopped chewing. He turned his head slowly. "Excuse me?"
"I'm a Sensor-Type," Mei said. She tapped her temple. "My aptitude is biological resonance. I saw what you did. You didn't put a physical tracker on that lizard. You... pushed something into it. Energy."
She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"It felt like the same energy you pushed into us this morning. The 'file share'."
Su Yuan swallowed the nutrient paste. It went down like cold lead.
He had underestimated her. The Academy classified Healers as support, passive and soft. He had forgotten that to heal the body, you had to understand the engine.
"And?" Su Yuan asked.
"And," Mei said, her eyes searching his face, "Chen's asthma is gone. Since he accepted your file, his meridian flow is up 20%. He's moving better. We all are."
She paused.
"What are you, Su Yuan? F-Rank physicals don't wrestle mutants. F-Ranks don't fix meridians with a data packet."
Su Yuan looked at her. Really looked at her.
Mei wasn't beautiful in the classic, engineered way of the Sector 1 elites. She was rougher, sharper. There was intelligence behind the fear.
A node with high intelligence. A processor.
"I'm a survivor," Su Yuan said. "The Academy measures potential based on genetics. I measure it based on application."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting. The file keeps you alive. The file keeps Chen alive. Do you want me to uninstall it?"
Mei flinched. The thought of losing that newfound fluidity, that sudden clarity of movement, terrified her. It was a drug.
"No," she whispered.
"Then drink your water," Su Yuan said, looking back out at the wasteland. "We have company."
Mei stiffened. "Scanner shows nothing."
"Scanners look for heat," Su Yuan said. "They don't look for intent."
He could feel them.
Five kilometers out. The signal he had intercepted the night before. The Burrows.
But they weren't in the Burrows anymore.
They were moving. A cluster of forty, maybe fifty signals. Human. Ragged. Desperate.
They were flanking the squad.
Su Yuan stood up.
"Sergeant!" he barked.
Kovacs turned, annoyed. "What now, maggot?"
"Seismic activity," Su Yuan said. "Vibration in the ground. Multiple contacts. East flank, moving through the drainage tunnels."
Kovacs checked his sensors. "Negative contact. You hallucinating, boy?"
*Thump.*
A mortar shell, crude and homemade, whistled out of the grey sky.
It didn't hit the squad. It hit the dune behind them.
*BOOM.*
Sand and shrapnel sprayed the air. The shockwave knocked three students flat.
"Ambush!" Kovacs roared. "Defensive perimeter! East flank!"
The students scrambled, screaming orders that conflicted with one another. They dove behind rocks, behind the transport tracks.
Su Yuan didn't dive. He stood still, letting the dust wash over him.
He closed his eyes.
*SoulNet: Localize.*
He reached out.
He found the attackers. They weren't soldiers. Their mental signatures were jagged, filled with the static of malnutrition and madness. They were Scavengers. Tech-cultists who worshipped the scrap they found.
They were using old-tech blockers to hide from the thermal scanners. But they couldn't hide their souls.
There were forty-two of them.
Su Yuan smiled.
*Forty-two new processors.*
"Suppressing fire!" Kovacs opened up with his rotary cannon. The whine of the motor was a scream, followed by the deafening *BRRT* of high-velocity slugs tearing up the drainage ditch.
"They're underground!" Chen yelled, firing blindly into the dirt.
"Su Yuan!" Mei grabbed his arm. "Get down!"
Su Yuan shook her off.
"Cover me," he said.
He ran.
Not away from the fight. Toward it.
"Su Yuan, you suicidal idiot!" Kovacs shouted, but he didn't stop firing.
Su Yuan activated *Ghost_Walker*. He moved in a zigzag pattern, a grey blur against the grey sand. Bullets kicked up ash around his feet, but nothing touched him. The algorithm calculated the trajectory of the incoming fire based on the muzzle flashes and the intention of the shooters.
He reached the lip of the drainage ditch and jumped.
He landed in the mud below, three meters down.
Three Scavengers were there, clad in rags and bits of rusted armor, holding kinetic rifles held together with tape. They looked at Su Yuan with wide, white eyes. Their teeth were filed to points.
"Meat!" one of them shrieked, raising a rusted machete.
Su Yuan stepped inside the swing.
*Resonance Palm.*
He slapped the man's chest. Not hard.
The vibration traveled through the ribs, bypassing the bone, and detonated the heart. The man dropped without a sound.
**[ HOSTILE ELIMINATED. SOUL HARVEST: NEGLIGIBLE. ]**
*Waste,* Su Yuan thought. *Dead batteries are useless.*
The other two leveled their rifles.
Su Yuan didn't strike. He extended his hands, palms open.
"System," he commanded. "Broadcast. Maximum gain. Frequency: Terror."
He didn't send a file this time. He sent a feeling.
He channeled the cold, metallic dread of the *Genesis Protocol*. He projected the image of the Void, the crushing weight of the infinite data stream.
**[ SKILL: MENTAL SHOCK (E-RANK). ]**
The two Scavengers froze. Their pupils dilated until their eyes were black holes. They dropped their weapons, clutching their heads, screaming silently. Their brains were trying to process a terabyte of existential dread through a biological modem.
Su Yuan walked forward. He placed a hand on each of their foreheads.
"Submit," he whispered.
It wasn't a request. It was an override command.
He forced the connection. He tore down their mental firewalls—flimsy things made of superstition and madness—and installed the rootkit.
**[ NODES ACQUIRED: 2. ]**
**[ STATUS: SLAVE-LINK. ]**
The screaming stopped. The two Scavengers lowered their hands. They looked at Su Yuan, not with hate, but with a vacant, terrifying adoration.
"Master," one croaked.
"Where are the others?" Su Yuan asked.
" tunnels... the junction..."
"Go," Su Yuan ordered. "Touch them. Spread the word. The Architect is here."
"The Architect," they repeated.
They turned and ran back into the darkness of the tunnel.
Su Yuan waited.
Above him, the battle raged. Kovacs was chewing through his ammo, keeping the students alive by sheer volume of fire.
Below, the infection spread.
He watched the HUD.
**[ NODES: 53... 55... 60... ]**
It was working. The two he had converted were acting as carriers. They were running to their kin, shouting the gospel of the Architect, or perhaps just touching them and passing the viral packet. These people were broken, looking for a god in the machine. Su Yuan just gave them one.
**[ NODES: 85. ]**
**[ ALERT: LOCAL NETWORK DENSITY INCREASING. ]**
**[ UNLOCKING: AUTHORITY LEVEL 1.5 FEATURES. ]**
**[ NEW SKILL AVAILABLE FOR SYNTHESIS: HIVE MIND CONTROL (LIMITED). ]**
The gunfire above began to die down.
Su Yuan climbed out of the ditch.
Kovacs was reloading, his barrel glowing red hot. The students were huddled in the dirt, checking for wounds.
"They stopped," Chen said, peering over the berm. "Why did they stop?"
"They're retreating?" Mei asked, hopeful.
"No," Su Yuan said, walking back into the perimeter. He dusted off his hands.
From the drainage ditch, figures began to emerge.
Dozens of them. Scavengers. Filthy, armed, dangerous.
"Contact!" Kovacs spun the barrel. "Open fire!"
"Belay that order!" Su Yuan's voice cracked like a whip. It wasn't loud, but it carried the weight of the System.
Kovacs froze. His finger hovered over the trigger. He looked at Su Yuan, confused by his own hesitation.
The Scavengers didn't attack. They walked out of the smoke and the ash, dragging their weapons in the dirt. They formed a line, ten meters from the squad.
Then, they knelt.
Forty Scavengers, bowing their heads in the dust.
Silence stretched tight across the wasteland. The wind howled, but nobody moved.
"What..." Kovacs lowered his weapon, his mechanical eye whirring as it tried to make sense of the tactical data. "What is this?"
Su Yuan walked past the stunned Sergeant. He walked past Mei, who was staring at him with a mix of awe and horror.
He stood before the kneeling Scavengers.
"They surrender," Su Yuan said calmly. "They recognize superior strength."
He looked at the leader of the Scavengers—the one he had touched first. The man looked up, eyes streaming with tears of joy.
"Batteries," Su Yuan thought.
He turned to the squad.
"We need porters," Su Yuan said. "We need guides for the Refinery. Why waste ammo killing them when we can use them?"
Kovacs spat on the ground. "This is irregular. Protocol says purge all hostiles."
"Protocol says complete the mission," Su Yuan countered. "With these guides, we hit the Refinery in an hour. We secure the salvage. Casualties: Zero. Unless you prefer to explain to the Spire why you lost half your squad fighting trash?"
Kovacs stared at him. He looked at the kneeling army. He looked at the terrifying efficiency of it.
"You're a strange animal, Su Yuan," Kovacs muttered. "Fine. Put them to work. But if one of them twitches, I execute you first."
"Understood," Su Yuan said.
He turned back to his new flock.
*Stand,* he projected through the Net.
Forty people stood up in perfect unison.
Su Yuan felt the rush of power. It wasn't the distant ocean of the city anymore. This was a local wellspring. Eighty distinct minds—fifty students, forty scavengers—all linked, all processing, all feeding the Logic-Core.
The lag vanished. The *Genesis Protocol* hummed with a predatory satisfaction.
**[ TIME TO PROTOCOL OMEGA ACTIVATION: 29 DAYS, 23 HOURS. ]**
**[ PROCESSING SPEED: OPTIMIZED. ]**
Su Yuan adjusted his pack. He looked toward the north.
"Let's go," he said.
As they marched, Mei fell in step beside him. She kept her distance, walking just out of arm's reach.
"You didn't just scare them," she whispered, looking at the Scavengers who walked with blank, peaceful expressions. "You broke them."
Su Yuan didn't look at her. He looked at the sky.
"I gave them a purpose," he said. "In the Wasteland, that's better than bread."
He clenched his fist. The air around his hand distorted, rippling with the gathered psychic weight of ninety souls.
*And I'm just getting started.*