Copyright 2025 Old Man. All rights reserved

  The dawn sky over the New District blushed rose, streaked with orange, as two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters sliced through the cool air toward a cargo depot. Victor Chan sat rigid in the lead chopper, his cybernetic leg twitching with phantom pain that gnawed like a persistent wound. Clad in SouthSea Transport’s navy-blue jumpsuit, he stared out the window, the scarred industrial zone and residential ruins sprawled below, silently recounting their wounds. His secretary sat beside him, her tablet glowing with logistics data, her fingers tapping nervously as she scanned reports. Across from them, an Abai—a BioSynth Vanguard Alpha robot—sat motionless, its synth-eyes glinting under the cabin’s dim lights, dressed in an identical jumpsuit, its synthetic calm a stark contrast to the tension in the air. The second Black Hawk, carrying a SouthSea on standby security team—South Sea Fleet Marine special operators disguised as corporate guards—had landed minutes earlier, securing the landing zone with textbook VIP protection protocol. Chan’s jaw tightened, his mind racing. Iron Skull called him at 0400 about the incident and insisted on his presence at the site. Last night’s chaos at the depot appeared not to be the drunken brawl the New District police claimed. The truth could be bloodier and messier, and it reeked of HuaCent’s shadow.

  The depot sprawled below, a labyrinth of rusting containers, cracked asphalt, and flickering LED signs, now cordoned off by blue-white police tape, fluttering in the breeze. SouthSea’s drones had captured the scene 10 minutes after the blast: bullet-riddled containers, bloodstains pooling on gravel, and the aftermath of an electromagnetic pulse blast—scorched circuits and cyberlimbs. The police’s story—workers fighting, the depot boss killed in a scuffle—was a flimsy lie. An EMP of that magnitude wasn’t civilian tech; it screamed military-grade, likely U.S.-made. Chan’s gut churned, his instincts honed by years of war screaming that this was no accident. If HuaCent was behind this, they’d overplayed their hand, but the police’s cover-up meant deeper strings were being pulled—strings that could choke Shenzhen’s fragile recovery and unravel the Republic’s precarious balance.

  The Black Hawk’s landing gear kissed the ground, kicking up dust and gravel that stung Chan’s face as he stepped out. The secretary and the Abai followed close behind, their jumpsuits stark against the depot’s grime. Iron Skull, Chan’s security chief, was already at the perimeter, his hulking frame squared off against a stone-faced police superintendent. Iron Skull’s neural implant, linked to StarLink’s global network, gave him a lawyer’s edge. His voice boomed across the lot, citing legal clauses with surgical precision. “This depot’s a SouthSea affiliate! Under Republic Code of Commerce—Article 17, Section 4—we have rights to inspect losses, secure assets, and protect our interests!” Beside him, the logistics guild chairman, a wiry man with a smoker’s rasp and sweat-stained shirt, piled on, his words dripping with calculated outrage. “If Shenzhen’s logistics hubs aren’t safe, global trust—hard-won after years of war—collapses. Armed goons storming a depot, shredding the unspoken business code? It’s a death knell for trade!” He avoided naming HuaCent, but the accusation hung heavy, a silent indictment of the corporate giant’s overreach. The superintendent shifted uncomfortably, his eyes darting to his officers, but he clung doggedly to the “public order incident” narrative. Neither man dared utter HuaCent’s name aloud, as if speaking it would summon ThunderVolt’s cybernetic wrath.

  Chan strode forward, his presence cutting through the standoff like a plasma torch. The superintendent’s posture stiffened, recognizing the retired admiral’s authority, his diplomatic immunity a legacy of the South Sea Fleet’s postwar trade deal with the Republic. “Superintendent,” Chan said, voice cold as steel, “many containers here are diplomatic cargo under SouthSea’s lease with the Shenzhen Republic. That’s fleet privilege, protected by international law, beyond your jurisdiction. Step aside, or I’ll escalate this to the Ministry.” His words were a calculated jab, leveraging the fleet’s quasi-sovereign status. The superintendent’s jaw worked silently, his face a mask of frustration, but he seized the diplomatic excuse to save face. “Clear the way,” he muttered to his officers, waving them back. The tape parted, and Chan’s team—Iron Skull, his tech crew, the secretary, the Abai, and armed guards—marched into the depot, boots crunching on gravel. The police watched the team advance, a wave of curses rising in their hearts.

  Inside, the scene had been hastily cleaned to conceal the truth, but the traces of battle couldn’t be erased in time. Corpses and major debris had been cleared, likely hauled off by police or HuaCent’s cleanup crew under cover of darkness, but telltale signs lingered: a scattering of 5.8mm bullet casings in a container-turned-armory, blood smears on asphalt, and container walls warped and twisted by cybernetic strength. The air had stung with the acrid bite of burnt metal, ozone, and fried circuits—a chemical cocktail that screamed EMP aftermath. Iron Skull’s techs, moving discreetly with handheld scanners, confirmed the devastation. “Every electronic device is toast,” one whispered, holding up a fried circuit board, its components melted into a blackened mess. “Cameras, bots, lights—gone. This wasn’t a civilian pulse—one of those Circuit North toys for smugglers. It’s military-grade, low-yield, sir.” Chan’s mind raced, fragments of intel snapping into place. HuaCent’s enforcers, led by the notorious ThunderVolt, had stormed the depot, but an EMP? The depot boss likely acquired an unexploded wartime EMP bomb as a last resort for defense.

  Chan stepped into a shadowed corner, away from the superintendent’s prying eyes, and patched a StarLink call to Lieutenant Colonel Kwong Sun, the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) attaché in Tokyo. Kwong, a Chinese-American officer, was Chan’s designated liaison—a glorified coffee-runner for his commander before the Sino-American War, elevated for his Mandarin fluency and little else thanks to the war. The call connected, Kwong’s face bleary on the screen, his Tokyo apartment a mess of empty sake bottles and takeout cartons. “Victor, it’s Saturday,” he groaned, rubbing bloodshot eyes. “I’m hungover. What’s this about?” Chan kept his tone flat, outlining the depot’s chaos: the raid, the blood, the EMP’s unmistakable U.S. signature. Kwong’s expression turned to weariness. “EMP? American-made?” He leaned back, his voice turning into a nonchalant sneer. “It’s no big deal, we left dozens of unexploded EMPs during the war. Everyone was using them in the Civil War. Could be one of them. Listen, I was out late—New Unity Faction folks, drinks, you know. They mentioned their Northwest Wind Plan, uh… Search the site, bag evidence, send it over. I’ll dig into it.” He hung up abruptly, leaving Chan cursing under his breath.

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  Chan recalled earlier whispers of the New Unity Faction, their northern ambitions a quiet threat that had simmered in Shenzhen’s underbelly for months. Kwong’s slip about the New Unity Faction—a northern political group pushing for China’s reunification—confirmed his loose lips and questionable loyalties. A mid-level ONI officer cozying up to radicals was sloppy, dangerous even. Kwong wasn’t just a drunk; he was a liability, and his mention of the Northwest Wind Plan—a vague scheme tied to northern factions—set Chan’s nerves on edge. If New Unity was entangled with HuaCent, the depot raid wasn’t just corporate muscle; it was a move in a larger game, one that could destabilize Shenzhen and drag the Republic into chaos.

  Iron Skull approached, his neural implant’s faint glow pulsing as he disconnected from StarLink. “Boss, my informant was here last night—the one who slipped me that drive with Chest-Born Project file. He called me at 1130. He said he was exposed and asked for an exfiltration. But we were late.” Chan’s pulse quickened, the memory of the incomplete document flooding back. He’d read it, forwarded it to the fleet’s intelligence office: HuaCent’s audacious plan to reverse-engineer consciousness, injecting it into human brains via brain-computer interfaces. The file detailed chilling progress: erasing human consciousness (achieved), implanting skill libraries (partially successful), replacing a brain’s identity with Premium Soul Ore (43% success rate in trials), and remotely planting memories or thoughts by hijacking Abais (still in early R&D). The missing second half hinted at even darker ambitions—perhaps weaponizing consciousness itself, turning humans into puppets. “Where’s your guy now?” Chan asked, flicking ash from the Marlboro he’d lit to steady his nerves.

  Iron Skull’s face darkened, his voice low and bitter. “Police nabbed him post-EMP. My contact inside says HuaCent triggered the raid, claiming he stole trade secrets. They dragged him to Bastion’s precinct, probably for ‘questioning’—or worse.” He shook his head, a rare crack in his stoic facade. “HuaCent planned this down to the second. ThunderVolt’s cyborgs hit the depot. When EMP fried everything by surprise, police swooped in to clean up and grab my guy, as a backup plan. Surgical. Witnesses reported that, before the EMP blast, a truck driver fled the depot with three women. I am looking into it to see if it was connected.” Chan’s jaw clenched, his cigarette’s ember flaring as he inhaled. HuaCent’s precision was terrifying, a machine of calculated moves.

  A tech jogged over, his voice a hushed whisper, eyes wide with urgency. “Sir, we found something—between a container and a brick wall. A disabled cyborg, missed in the police’s cleanup.” Chan and Iron Skull exchanged glances, a silent agreement passing between them. They followed, slipping through the depot’s maze of towering containers, their shadows long in the dawn light. In a narrow gap, barely wide enough for a man, a cyborg lay crumpled, his alloy frame dented, eyes closed, unconscious but alive, and cyberlimbs splayed at unnatural angles. Iron Skull crouched, linking to StarLink, and whistled softly. “U.S.-made, military-grade prosthetics. DARPA-level, not HuaCent’s knockoff junk.” Chan’s gut sank, the implications hitting like a gut punch. This wasn’t just a corporate enforcer. A foreign player—either American providing technology to HuaCent, or HuaCent buying from the black market—was in the mix, and the stakes were climbing.

  Chan reopened the StarLink link to Kwong, video streaming to Tokyo. Kwong, now alert, paled at the cyborg’s image. Kwong’s bleary eyes sharpened abruptly, his Naval Intelligence training overriding the hangover as the cyborg’s implications sank in, his voice cracking with rare alarm. “Jesus, Victor, that’s high-end—DARPA’s best. No way HuaCent’s got this unless…” The Abai looked at cyberlimbs, feeding the cyborg’s serials and configuration real-time data to Tokyo. Kwong trailed off, then muttered, “Didn’t think New Unity and HuaCent were this tight.” Chan’s mind spun, gears grinding. New Unity, Kwong’s drinking buddies, colluding with HuaCent? The implications were explosive. Kwong communicated with the Abai via video, exchanging codes and issuing commands. “I’m joining remotely—get me eyes on that cyborg.” Kwong logged in. The Abai knelt, probing the cyborg’s limbs, trying to download diagnostic logs from its fried neural core. The robot’s precision was unnerving, a reminder of the tech gap between SouthSea and the U.S. The Abai shook its head and said, “These cyberlimbs are well done. No data retrievable. I gotta take him to Sasebo for research. Mr. Chan, can you sort it out?”

  Chan stepped back, the depot’s acrid air choking him, his cigarette’s smoke curling upward like a prayer he didn’t believe in. The secretary, tablet in hand, whispered, “Sir, our findings show this depot handled robot shipments—unmarked, routed through Salt Port. High-value, Premium-grade, probably Abais.” Iron Skull nodded, his implant flickering as he cross-referenced data. “My informant’s drive came from here. Chest-Born’s tied to this mess, no question.” The Sino-American War had cost him his leg, but HuaCent’s shadow war could cost Shenzhen’s soul. HuaCent wasn’t just smuggling Soul Ore; they were rewriting minds, weaponizing consciousness. And now, American tech and northern factions were in play, muddying the board with motives Chan could only guess at.

  “Secure the cyborg,” Chan ordered Iron Skull, his voice low and hard. “No police, no leaks. Get it to a SouthSea safehouse, full lockdown. I want him interrogated and cracked by tonight.” He turned to the Abai, Kwong’s voice crackling through its speakers. “Victor, this is bigger than Salt Port. If HuaCent’s got U.S. gear, we’re looking at a major leak from our side.” Chan’s eyes narrowed, the StarLink tower’s cold glow visible through the depot’s gate, a silent sentinel of American control. “Then we move fast,” he said, crushing his cigarette under his boot. “I’ll arrange the cyborg’s transfer within ten days, Kwong. Until then, he’s all mine.”

  The Abai nodded, Kwong’s voice grim. “Deal. But watch your back, Victor. New Unity’s got eyes everywhere, and HuaCent’s not playing small.” He cut the feed. Chan’s gaze swept the depot’s wreckage. Father Joe’s warning about souls echoed in his mind, a faint challenge to the cold logic of HuaCent’s game. The secretary’s tablet pinged, a message from SouthSea’s intel team: Salt Port customs had flagged another altered Abai shipment, marked as “industrial components.” Chan’s lips curled into a grim smile. HuaCent was bold, but every move left a trail, and he’d hunt it to the source.

  He turned to Iron Skull, his voice a low growl. “Get your team to sweep every container. Anything tied to Abai or Chest-Born, tag it and lock it down. We’ve got something solid.” Iron Skull saluted, his implant glowing as he barked orders to his techs, who fanned out like wolves on a scent. The secretary hesitated, then spoke softly, her voice barely above the hum of SouthSea drones circling overhead. “Victor, if HuaCent’s working with New Unity, they might have moles in SouthSea. Director Lin’s been… too quiet lately.” Chan’s eyes flicked to her, the warning sinking in like a blade. Lin, with his polished glasses and scheming smiles. How much intel had he fed to New Unity or even HuaCent?

  The team fanned out, their boots echoing in the depot’s hollow expanse. The silence was broken by the distant hum of drones and the clatter of techs prying open containers.