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  Foo-shing Village, a gritty enclave swallowed by Bastion Precinct’s sprawl, had its night shredded by neon. Towering buildings, so close they seemed to shake hands, loomed like a jagged stack of battered matchboxes, their peeling tiles gnawed by time’s relentless teeth. LED signs crammed the narrow gaps between buildings, their red, green, and purple halos staining the humid air with a blinding glare, as if the village were spewing toxic colors into the night sky. Passersby could only sidle through the back alleys, so tight that dangling cables nearly strangled them. The greasy smoke from barbecue stalls, laced with cumin and chili, choked the air. In the far distance, the colossal HuaCent Tower pierced the night like an iron spire, its black facade flashing the LED slogan “Innovation Leads the Future,” pulsing like the city’s heartbeat, carving a hollow in the clamor.

  Ruoxi Lam, 29, hid behind the flickering holographic screens of a backstreet cyber repair shop in Foo-shing Village, the air thick with endless AI-generated pop songs. Petite and short-haired, she wore a white cartoon T-shirt and canvas pants, clinging to youth’s fraying edge. The shop’s dim lights, tuned for screen clarity, cast shadows over shelves crammed with electronics and robot parts, reeking of motor oil and scorched circuits, cut by the chill of air conditioning.

  An Abai sprawled on a barber-chair workbench, a BioSynth Vanguard Alpha robot, Tesla’s game-changer from last year. Synthetic muscles gave it eerie grace, smoother than any human, wrapped in lifelike skin and hair, its expressions almost too real. Marketed for $100,000 as a household servant and emotional companion, U.S. tech sanctions spiked its black-market price to a million in the Shenzhen Republic, where the U.S. dollar now reigned, earning the nickname Abai—BioSynth fused with “bai,” Chinese for the “hundred” in its million-dollar tag. This male-modeled Abai lay stiff, a corpse awaiting a shave. Ruoxi strapped a knockoff Circuit North diagnostic cap onto its head, plugged data cables into AR glasses, and prepped to crack its core. A rare find in the village, it piqued her curiosity.

  The Sino-American War had stolen Ruoxi’s parents and torched their family’s wealth. She and her brother Avei scavenged ruins for years. One day, an airstrike obliterated Meilin Metro Station, a bunker-buster sparking panic in tunnels far away, the crowd tearing them apart. After endless searching, Ruoxi learned Avei had been taken by HuaCent Tech Group with other young survivors, sheltered in their sealed headquarters in Bastion Precinct, a secure corporate compound with armed protection, for engineer training. To see him, she signed a contract bordering on slavery, becoming a junior engineer at HuaCent. The work was brutal—endless overtime, rare weekend breaks—yet she caught only fleeting glimpses of Avei in the headquarters’ crowds.

  HuaCent chased “unrivaled dominance” by any means. That year, they unveiled the AbyssNet Project, boasting consciousness uploads to server arrays for digital immortality—energy-efficient, transcending flesh, and offering a grand blueprint of an ocean of stars for young engineers. “They are yours to conquer!” Being brainwashed, Avei ignored Ruoxi’s pleas and volunteered, his consciousness having been sent into AbyssNet. His body, deemed brain-dead post-upload, was “donated” to HuaCent per contract.

  At first, it seemed flawless. Ruoxi jacked into AbyssNet’s virtual realm via a Neuropulser, roaming glowing flower fields under neon skies with Avei, soaring through nebulae at the universe’s edge. Avei laughed, pointing at an ion storm near a black hole: “Sis, look, our ocean of stars!” Then, he vanished. Ruoxi couldn’t trace him; HuaCent’s AbyssNet support snapped: “Sorry, no Avei here.”

  Soon after, Ruoxi found herself locked out of AbyssNet. She asked around desperately, but could produce no proof of Avei’s existence—her phone and the internet held no record of him, as if he were a figment of her imagination. Her department head and colleagues labeled her paranoid, sending her to the medical wing for neural functional scans and mental restoration therapy. Gripped by fear and fury, she burned her savings, teamed with a hacker crew, and fled HuaCent’s Bastion compound. Living under an alias as a repair tech in Foo-shing Village, she hunted for Avei.

  “Ruoxi, watch it—this Abai ain’t cheap, lah!” Slade, the shopkeeper, muttered, his bionic eye flashing blue, a Cantonese lilt in his smoke-rough rasp. Ruoxi stayed locked on the virtual screen, hands dancing as data cascaded like a waterfall. The Abai’s Soul Ore on chip was shattered—billions of tiny files with no structure, only endless lists and folders within folders. Ruoxi had seen this discussed on the dark web—some claimed it was HuaCent’s latest tech, shredding the operating system, splintering the Soul Ore. The fix? Grab a Premium Soul Ore from Sima at Circuit North, reflash the core and reinstall its skill library.

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  “Boss, we’re hitting paydirt!” Ruoxi called, voice sharp with a hacker’s edge. A Premium Soul Ore cost a fortune, and no owner would ditch a million-dollar Abai—by her estimate, a 100-grand deal, easy.

  “Aiya! Heavendamn right!” Slade leaned in, squinting at the synced wall screen, his drawl thickening. “Soul Ore’s smashed to dust, lah. Hold up—I’ll ping Sima for a quote, no muckin’ about.”

  Ruoxi kept browsing curiously through fragmented files, stumbling upon a memory scene file. She opened it, and a face flashed—her own. She screamed, voice cracking: “Oh heaven, that’s me!” Onscreen, Ruoxi was scavenging through General Che Temple Industrial Park’s ruins, debris scattered around. A voice called: “Sis, watch out!” A rotten king coconut tree crashed down. “This is Avei’s memory!” Ruoxi’s throat went dry, gasping as she shouted: “Boss, it’s my brother, Avei! It’s Avei!”

  Her AR glasses blared a red alert—her vitals and brainwaves signaled emotional overload. “Memory file log’s encrypted!” Ruoxi plugged in a USB drive to back it up, clipped her Neuropulser behind her ear to fuse with the glasses, and tapped a hacked StarLink link to a U.S.-based AI for a crack. The AI’s logo spun three minutes, then cracked open, piecemeal: “August 15, 2034 … Soul Ore Split … Consciousness Multiply … Requested by: ‘IronGrip,’ Approved by: ‘SilverEye. ’”

  August 15, 2034—the day Avei vanished!

  A shrill alarm blared, red light pulsing from the AR glasses—her AI crack had tripped HuaCent’s anti-tamper system, sending the intruder’s data back to their servers. No worries. Usually, no one cared; at worst, you’d get a warning email days later. Ruoxi yanked off the glasses, unplugged the USB drive, and shouted, “Who dropped off this Abai?”

  Slade frowned, flipping through records. “Some boss this afternoon, referred by Old Li from the New District. Told him we’d check it out and quote later. What’s up?”

  “I’ve got reason to believe this Abai’s Soul Ore was a copy of my brother!” Ruoxi said, voice steely. “Can you help me trace where it came from?”

  Slade scratched his head, his bionic eye glinting. “Your brother? Oh, the one uploaded to AbyssNet?” He let out a heavy sigh. “Look, someone drops a pricey Abai like this at our rinky-dink shop? That screams shady. Why not hit up the big-name joints in Circuit North?” He paused, eyeing the USB drive in Ruoxi’s hand. “You’re not chasing hardware—it’s the Soul Ore you want. Head to Circuit North and find Sima. Guy’s a data wizard, knows this stuff inside out. Or ping Ajay first, let him poke at that file.”

  Ruoxi couldn’t wait for the closing. She begged off early from Slade, grabbed her canvas bag—half a pack of Red Double Happiness smokes, iced tea, a scuffed Peppa Pig keychain from Avei, her only proof he existed—and bolted. She shoved the back door open, heart hammering. Foo-shing’s neon glow hung like toxic fog, LED signs flashing in a dizzying blur, the hot greasy tang of barbecue stalls mingling with the stench of sweat hitting her face. She’d barely stepped out when a buzz hummed overhead—three palm-sized drones, swarming like hornet military drones during the wartime. Ruoxi ducked, weaving into the crowd, her eyes catching a carpet of discarded fast-food boxes underfoot.

  Outside a corner convenience store, Ruoxi tapped her ChainCoin card on a bootleg StarLink terminal bolted to the wall. Her Neuropulser beeped, connection locked in. A virtual screen flared, and Ajay’s face popped up, hooded in a sweat-soaked shirt, his background cluttered with busted gadgets. He grinned wide. “NeonEdge! You again? Last time you flashed that rig, I nearly got nabbed!” Ruoxi smirked—NeonEdge was her hacker alias—choking back the fumes of chili-fried pork intestines, “Ajay, do me a solid. I cracked an Abai and found my brother’s memory file. Check it out, quick.”

  He grinned, Sichuan drawl bursting: “Heavendamn, girl! HuaCent’s Premium Soul Ore? You’re pokin’ that? Dark web’s blowin’ up—HuaCent’s InfoSec slapped a 100-grand bounty on a ghost hacker! Address? Longgang District, Bastion Precinct, Foo-shing Village—that’s you! Holy shit, log off! Hood up, mask on! Fuck, log off now! My junk server’s about to get smoked!” He glanced off-camera, sighing. “Fine, you saved my ass once. Head to the old ancestral hall in the village. I’ll patch in remotely—safer, yeah?”

  Ruoxi killed the terminal, yanked the Neuropulser off, and stuffed it into her bag. She slapped on her AR glasses, flipping to anti-facial-recog mode, random geometric shapes flashing across the lenses. She melted into the crowd, steps quick. Another drone whirred overhead, prop wash kicking cool air. She veered sharply, squeezing by a barbecue grill, oily smoke masking her sweat and infrared, head low to dodge cameras.

  The old ancestral hall crouched deep in the village, half-buried beside rubble heaps. Ruoxi forced the warped wooden door open and plugged into a hardwired dark web hub jerry-rigged by hackers in the wall’s corner. Her virtual screen sparked to life, and Ajay flashed a grim smirk. “Alright, we’re good. Sling me the file—let’s see how deep this shit goes.” She fired off the data, muggy air choking her lungs. Ajay hissed: “Heaven, HuaCent’s Ore Shredder! Pulverized on purpose, clear as day—this memory fragment’s a heavendamn ghost trap. Your brother must’ve stumbled over their black-ops experiment. Check it: ‘Approved by SilverEye’, and that’s high-level as hell!” His screen blazed red, and he flipped out. “Shit! They’ve pinged us again! We’re fucked! Bolt, now!”

  Ruoxi yanked the USB drive, kicked the door wide, and tore into the alley, weaving through the crowd. Drones screeched through the misty neon haze, tightening the net. The village’s glow pulsed like a toxic shroud, HuaCent Tower’s red-yellow glare looming: No escape. Ruoxi clenched the USB drive, heart pounding: Avei, I’m coming! She was Bastion’s ghost hunter, NeonEdge.