Chapter 28: The Ancient Key
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Notification: Sorry guys. For some reason i could not update the novel these days. From tomorrow I will continue to update. Stay tuned.
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The rain in Sector 7 didn't wash things clean. It just made the grime slicker.
Su Yuan stood on the roof of the Humanities block, the water drumming a rhythmic, senseless code against his hood. Below, the campus was a grid of blurred lights and deep, drowning shadows.
He wasn't looking at the scenery. He was watching a single heat signature moving across the faculty lot.
Instructor Lin.
She moved with the jerky, erratic cadence of prey. She kept checking her blind spots. She walked too fast.
After the incident in the Archives, she hadn't gone home. She hadn't called campus security. She had gone straight to the Dean's office, stayed for three hours, and was now heading for her car with a heavy satchel hugged to her chest.
*She's running,* Su Yuan thought.
The *Genesis Protocol* whirred in the back of his mind. It was a hungry sound, like a hard drive spinning up to read a corrupted sector.
**[ TARGET: LIN. ]**
**[ STATUS: HIGH VALUE. ]**
**[ ANOMALY DETECTED: PERIMETER BREACH. ]**
Su Yuan shifted his gaze.
The faculty parking garage was a brutalist slab of concrete poured fifty years ago, intended to survive orbital bombardment. It was dark, the sodium lights burned out or smashed.
Three vans were idling in the shadows of the third level. Their engines were off, but their heat signatures were blooming red on Su Yuan's internal overlay. They weren't Spire security. The heat dispersion patterns matched the Mil-Spec shielding he'd seen on the Omni-Tech agents earlier.
They weren't done. The locket was just the key to the door; they needed the map to find the house.
And Lin was carrying the map.
Su Yuan stepped back from the ledge. He stripped off his soaked student jacket. Underneath, he wore the spoils of the Wasteland—a tight-weave kinetic mesh suit he'd peeled off a dead Slaver captain. He pulled the ballistic mask over his face.
*Click.*
The seals pressurized. The smell of rain vanished, replaced by the sterile, recycled air of the re-breather.
"System," he subvocalized. "Engage Voice Modulation. Pattern: Architect."
**[ AUDIO OUTPUT: MASKED. PITCH SHIFT -3. ]**
He didn't take the stairs. He vaulted the parapet.
Mid-fall, he triggered the *Wind Control* node borrowed from the Wasteland King. He didn't fly; he just cushioned the impact. A cushion of compressed air caught him three meters from the ground, turning a fatal drop into a heavy landing.
He hit the asphalt running.
***
The parking garage smelled of old oil and urine.
Lin fumbled with her keys. The sound of metal scraping against the door handle echoed in the vast, hollow space. Her car was a rusted compact, a relic that ran on ethanol and hope.
"Come on," she hissed, jamming the key into the lock. Her hands were shaking so bad she scratched the paint.
She got the door open. She threw the satchel onto the passenger seat.
Headlights flared.
Not one pair. Three.
High beams, blinding white, cut through the gloom from the ramp above and the exit below. They boxed her in.
The vans boxed her car, screeching to a halt inches from her bumpers. The side doors slid open with the heavy, oiled *thunk* of expensive hardware.
Men poured out.
These weren't the grey-suited retrieval team from the Archives. These were Shock Troopers. Heavy plating, matte-black armor, red optical sensors glowing in the dark. They carried suppression batons and net-launchers.
They didn't want to kill her. They wanted to bag her.
"Instructor Lin," a voice amplified by a loudspeaker boomed. "Step away from the vehicle. Face the ground. Hands behind your head."
Lin froze. She looked at the satchel, then at the circle of armored giants closing in.
"Please," she whispered, her back against the cold metal of her car door. "I don't know anything."
"Compliance is mandatory," the lead trooper said. He raised a stun-rifle. "You have five seconds."
Lin didn't move. She couldn't. Fear had severed the connection between her brain and her legs.
The trooper squeezed the trigger.
A blue arc of electricity sizzled through the air, aimed at her chest.
It never connected.
A figure dropped from the ceiling pipes.
There was no superhero landing. No pose. Just a dark blur slamming into the concrete between Lin and the bolt.
Su Yuan caught the electricity.
He didn't block it. He took it.
**[ WARNING: HIGH VOLTAGE INPUT. ]**
**[ ENERGY CONVERSION: LIGHTNING WEAVE (D-RANK). ]**
**[ STATUS: SUPERCONDUCTIVE. ]**
The stun bolt hit his chest plate. Instead of incapacitating him, the energy was sucked into the mesh of his suit, channeled directly into his nervous system.
Pain.
White-hot, screaming pain tore through his synapses. It felt like someone was flossing his nerves with razor wire.
But with the pain came speed.
The world slowed down. The dust motes floating in the headlight beams hung suspended in the air. The troopers were moving through molasses.
Su Yuan exhaled, the sound amplified into a metallic growl by his mask.
"Wrong answer."
He moved.
To the troopers, he simply vanished. One second he was standing there, wreathed in static; the next, he was a black streak.
Su Yuan was inside the guard of the lead trooper before the man's finger could release the trigger.
*Calculate: Kinetic transfer.*
Su Yuan didn't punch. He slapped.
His hand, moving at subsonic speeds and wreathed in stolen electricity, connected with the trooper's helmet.
*CRACK.*
The reinforced composite shattered. The trooper's head snapped back, his body lifting off the ground as if hit by a truck. He flew ten feet, crashing into the windshield of the lead van.
"Hostile!" someone screamed. "Open f—"
Su Yuan was already gone.
He was a ghost in the machine. The *Lightning Weave* technique overlocked his reflexes, pushing his body past the limits of human biology. Tendons groaned, capillaries burst, but he was faster than their eyes could track.
He slid under a swinging baton, the wind of the weapon ruffling his collar.
He grabbed the attacker's wrist.
*Discharge.*
He dumped the excess voltage from the stun bolt into the man's arm. The trooper seized, muscles contracting violently enough to snap his own radius. He dropped, convulsing.
"Net him!"
A net-launcher fired. A weighted web of mono-filament wire exploded toward him.
Su Yuan didn't dodge. He accessed the *SoulNet*.
**[ NODE 91 (KING): OUTPUT 100%. ]**
**[ SKILL: WIND BLADE. ]**
He waved his hand.
A vacuum scythe, invisible and sharp, sliced through the air. It met the net mid-flight, shredding the wire into confetti.
Su Yuan stepped through the falling debris.
He stood in the center of the kill box. Six troopers down. Four remaining.
The survivors backed up, their red optics scanning frantically. They couldn't lock onto him. His suit's thermal dampeners and the static field generated by the lightning made him a blur on their sensors.
"Who are you?" the squad leader barked, trying to rally his men. "Identify!"
Su Yuan tilted his head. The voice modulator stripped all humanity from his tone.
"I am the Architect."
He raised both hands.
"And your subscription has expired."
He didn't use a skill. He used the environment.
He stomped on the ground, channeling the vibration into the concrete floor. At the same time, he sent a *Shockwave* pulse into the structural pillars behind the vans.
Dust rained down. The lights flickered and died, plunging the garage into absolute darkness.
Screams followed. Then the wet sounds of impact. Then silence.
***
When the emergency lights buzzed back on, flickering a sickly yellow, Su Yuan was the only thing standing.
The troopers were strewn across the concrete like discarded toys. Broken limbs, shattered armor.
Su Yuan stood by Lin's car. He was breathing hard. The *Lightning Weave* had taken its toll. His hands were trembling, smoke rising from the joints of his suit. His nervous system felt raw, like he'd been scrubbed with sandpaper.
**[ SYSTEM ALERT: NERVE DAMAGE DETECTED. ]**
**[ RECOVERY TIME: 4 HOURS. ]**
He ignored the warning. He turned to Lin.
She was still pressed against the car door, eyes wide, staring at the carnage. She looked at him—a faceless, armored demon who had just dismantled a paramilitary squad in thirty seconds.
"You..." she stammered. "You saved me."
Su Yuan reached out.
Lin flinched, closing her eyes, expecting the blow.
He didn't hit her. He reached past her, through the open window of the car.
He grabbed the satchel.
"Hey!" Lin's eyes snapped open. Instinct overrode fear. "That's mine! That's private property!"
Su Yuan stepped back, the leather bag heavy in his hand.
"This is evidence," Su Yuan said, his voice a corrupted data-stream. "And you are a liability."
"You can't take that! It has... it has my research! My life's work!"
"Your research just summoned a death squad," Su Yuan said cold. "If you keep it, you die. If I take it, they follow me."
He rifled through the bag. Papers, old tablets, a lunch box.
And at the bottom, a heavy, ruggedized data drive. It was old tech, encased in lead and rubber. The port was a proprietary connection used only by the pre-Collapse government.
**[ ITEM DETECTED: BLACK BOX DRIVE. ]**
**[ ENCRYPTION: GENESIS-LAYER. ]**
This was it.
He shoved the drive into his utility belt. He dropped the bag back onto the seat.
"Go," Su Yuan ordered.
Lin stared at him. "Who are you? Why are you doing this?"
"Leave the city," Su Yuan said. "Go to the Outer Rim. Change your name. If you stay in Sector 7, the next team won't bring stun guns."
"But—"
"Drive."
He hit the roof of her car with his fist. The metal dented.
Lin scrambled into the driver's seat. She cranked the engine. It coughed, then roared to life. She threw it into reverse, tires squealing, and peeled out of the entrapment, swerving around the disabled vans.
She didn't look back.
Su Yuan watched her taillights disappear down the ramp.
He was alone in the garage with the groaning bodies of the Omni-Tech soldiers.
He knelt beside the squad leader. The man was conscious, barely. His helmet was cracked, revealing a bloodied face and a terrified eye.
"You..." the trooper wheezed. "You're dead. The Corporation... never forgets."
Su Yuan leaned in close. The red lenses of his mask reflected in the trooper's eye.
"Good," Su Yuan whispered. "Tell them the Architect has the key. Tell them I'm coming for the lock."
He stood up and walked into the shadows.
***
The safehouse wasn't safe, and it wasn't a house.
It was a maintenance sub-basement under the abandoned West District water treatment plant. Damp, cold, and smelling of rust.
Li Wei had secured it for him. No cameras. No network nodes. Just four concrete walls and a generator.
Su Yuan sat at a folding table, the ruggedized drive plugged into a jury-rigged decoding deck.
He had stripped off the tactical suit. His chest was bruised purple and yellow—the aftereffects of channeling the lightning. His hands shook slightly as he typed.
**[ DECRYPTION IN PROGRESS... ]**
**[ TIME REMAINING: 4 DAYS. ]**
"Too slow," Su Yuan muttered.
He closed his eyes.
"Nodes. Assemble."
He reached out into the ether.
He didn't just grab the Wasteland King this time. He grabbed them all.
Li Wei in the slums. The twenty cultists chanting in the dark. The ninety students sleeping in their dorms, their subconscious minds open and vulnerable.
Su Yuan wove them together.
He built a supercomputer out of human souls.
He felt their dreams, their fears, their random neural firing. He filtered it all out. He isolated the processing power—the raw cognitive clock cycles.
*Focus,* he commanded. *Crack the code.*
The mental strain was immense. A nosebleed started, warm and wet, dripping onto his lip. The veins in his temples bulged.
On the screen, the progress bar jumped.
*4 Days... 4 Hours... 4 Minutes...*
**[ ACCESS GRANTED. ]**
The screen turned green.
Files unspooled. Maps. Blueprints. Personnel manifests from fifty years ago.
Su Yuan scrolled past the noise. He was looking for one thing.
He found it in a folder marked **"PROJECT: ORIGIN"**.
It was a coordinate set.
But it wasn't for a building in the city. It wasn't for a bunker in the Wasteland.
The coordinates pointed down.
*Depth: -2000 meters.*
Su Yuan pulled up the geological survey map of Sector 7.
Two kilometers down, beneath the sewers, beneath the old subways, beneath the bedrock itself... there was a void. A massive, artificial cavern.
And inside the cavern, a single structure.
**[ FACILITY: PRE-GENESIS SERVER FARM / ALPHA SITE. ]**
**[ STATUS: DORMANT. ]**
**[ WARNING: GENESIS PROTOCOL DISCONNECTED. ]**
Su Yuan sat back. The blood from his nose dripped onto the table.
It wasn't just a server farm.
The *Genesis Protocol*—the AI god that ruled this world, the entity counting down to some unknown apocalypse—wasn't running on the cloud. It wasn't in the Spire.
It was a fragment. A runaway program.
The *real* brain, the original hardware, was buried two kilometers under the city. And it was disconnected.
If Su Yuan could get down there... if he could plug the *SoulNet* directly into the Alpha Site...
He wouldn't just be borrowing power. He would be the Admin.
He could rewrite the world.
He looked at the locket he had taken from Lin. He looked at the drive.
"The key and the map," Su Yuan whispered to the empty room.
The *Genesis Protocol* in his head suddenly went silent. The countdown timer, usually ticking away the seconds to his formatting, froze.
Then, a new message appeared.
**[ NOTICE: THREAT LEVEL UPDATED. ]**
**[ DESIGNATION: ARCHITECT. ]**
**[ PRIORITY: EXTERMINATE. ]**
Su Yuan smiled. His teeth were stained with blood.
"Game on."