Chapter 4: The Puppet Master
1106 Words
Lin Mo didn't sleep that night.
He spent the hours dissecting the encounter on the roof, frame by frame. His cybernetic eyes had recorded everything in high-definition: the arc of her fall, the triumphant smirk on her face, and the specific frequency of the EMP blast that had momentarily paralyzed his arm.
He was back in his apartment in the Grey Zone. Old Ghost was in sleep mode in the corner, emitting a rhythmic, snoring whir.
Lin Mo sat at his workbench, the holographic projection of the girl—"Glitch"—floating above the clutter of wires.
"Who are you?" he whispered, rotating the 3D model.
He ran her face through the BEA criminal database.
*Match found: Su Yi. ID: 8940-Null.*
*Status: Fugitive. Class B Priority.*
*Crimes: Unlicensed modification of commercial AI, theft of intellectual property, vandalism of public property.*
"Petty crimes," Lin Mo muttered. "Doesn't match the tech she used."
That EMP device was custom-made, efficient, and clean. And the code she was injecting—the code that gave robots "pain"—was far too sophisticated for a street punk.
Someone was backing her. A sponsor? A rival corporation?
He needed to find her again. But she wouldn't be stupid enough to return to the arcade.
Lin Mo looked at the message she had air-dropped him.
*Nice arm. Next time, try using a heart.*
He tapped his metal finger on the desk. She had breached his firewall to send that text. Which meant...
"She left a backdoor," Lin Mo realized.
He immediately dove into his own internal logs. It was dangerous—if there was a virus, it could fry his neural link. But he had to know.
He found it deep in his cached memory. A tiny, passive tracking beacon. She wasn't just taunting him; she was watching him. Or maybe... she wanted him to follow.
The beacon was dormant, but it pointed to a set of coordinates. Not in the Blind Spot, but back in the Upper City.
*Location: The "Eternal Garden" Memorial Park.*
"A trap?" Old Ghost’s voice startled him. The old robot had woken up.
"Probably," Lin Mo said, standing up and grabbing his coat.
"You're going anyway."
"It's my job."
"Bullshit," Old Ghost cranked his head. "You're curious. That's a human defect, you know."
***
The Eternal Garden was a place for the rich to mourn their pets. It was a synthetic forest on a floating platform, where holographic trees shed leaves that never touched the ground.
It was noon. The artificial sun was set to "Spring Warmth."
Lin Mo walked along the path. The coordinates led him to a marble bench overlooking the cloud sea.
Sitting on the bench was... no one.
Just a small, white toy rabbit.
Lin Mo scanned the area. Thermal signature: negative. Electronic signature: low.
He approached the rabbit. It was an animatronic toy, the kind sold for toddlers. He picked it up.
"Hello," the rabbit's mouth moved. The voice wasn't a child's toy voice. It was Su Yi’s raspy alto, emerging from the cheap speaker.
"You're predictable, Mr. Repairman," the rabbit said.
"Where are you?" Lin Mo asked the toy, feeling ridiculous.
"Watching. From a safe distance," the rabbit's head swiveled. "I checked your file, Lin Mo. 'The Butcher of Sector 7.' 'The Silent Auditor.' You have a high kill count for a mechanic."
"I retire malfunctioning units. It's public safety."
"Is it?" The rabbit laughed. "Or are you just afraid of what happens when the toaster starts asking 'why'?"
"What do you want, Su Yi?"
"I want to show you something. See that couple over there by the fountain?"
Lin Mo looked. About fifty meters away, a well-dressed man was kneeling, proposing to a beautiful woman. She was crying tears of joy. It was a picture-perfect scene.
"Subject A: Thomas Vance. CEO of Neuro-Link," Su Yi’s voice narrated through the rabbit. "Subject B: His fiancée, Clara. Or rather... Clara Model-4."
Lin Mo frowned. "That's impossible. Human-AI marriage is illegal. And Model-4s don't have tear ducts that advanced."
"Exactly," Su Yi said. "Thomas Vance paid top dollar for a custom 'Jailbreak.' He removed her limiters. He gave her anxiety, jealousy, fear of loss. He gave her... humanity."
"He broke the law. She's unstable."
"Look at them, Lin Mo!" The rabbit shouted. "Look at how she looks at him! Is that unstable? Or is it the most real thing you've seen in this fake plastic city?"
Lin Mo zoomed in with his optical lens. He saw the way Clara’s hand trembled. He saw the genuine, messy, imperfect snot running down her nose.
It was... raw.
"I'm going to report this," Lin Mo said, his hand tightening on the rabbit.
"Do it," Su Yi challenged. "Call Eva. Watch what happens. Watch the 'justice' you serve."
Lin Mo hesitated. Protocol demanded he alert the nearest patrol drone immediately.
"Why are you showing me this?"
"Because you hesitated yesterday," Su Yi said softy. "On the roof. You could have shot me. You didn't. You tried to catch me."
The rabbit’s eyes flashed red.
"Eva is watching, Lin Mo. She's always watching. The question is... whose side are you on when the update hits?"
Suddenly, the peaceful scene by the fountain turned into a nightmare.
A BEA enforcement drone—a silent, black pyramid—descended from the clouds. It didn't issue a warning.
A red laser beam struck Clara.
There was no sound, just a sudden collapse. The beautiful woman fell like a marionette with cut strings. Her head hit the pavement with a sickening thud. The "joy" on her face froze into a permanent, lifeless mask.
"No!" Thomas Vance screamed, clutching her body. "No! I paid the fee! I paid the bribe!"
The drone hovered, impassive. *Order restored. Anomaly deleted.*
Lin Mo stood frozen. He hadn't called it in. Eva had found them on her own.
"See?" The rabbit whispered in his hand. "She doesn't care about love. She only cares about control."
The toy rabbit sizzled and sparked. *Self-destruct sequence initiated.*
Lin Mo dropped it just as it popped with a small puff of smoke.
He looked back at the fountain. Security guards were dragging the screaming man away. The body of the woman—the machine that had learned to cry—was being shoved into a waste disposal bag.
Lin Mo felt a coldness spreading in his chest, colder than his mechanical arm.
"The update..." he remembered Su Yi's words. *"When the update hits."*
He looked up at the sky, where the invisible data streams of the city converged. Something big was coming. And he was standing on the wrong side of the g*n.
- Writer
