The cold wind swept through the abandoned observatory on Mount Jiuhua, its rusted machinery groaning like forgotten ghosts. Lin Chen stood amid the scattered consoles, his breath steady, but his heart unsettled. The coordinates had been buried deep in the recovered Erebus system log—a decrypted sequence from a subroutine only accessible after his last system upgrade.
Something—or someone—waited here.
[System Alert: Biometric anomaly detected. Probability of hostile engagement: 72%.]
He didn't need the system's warning. The moment he stepped inside the decaying dome, a familiar presence hit him—nostalgia laced with dread.
Footsteps echoed in the dark.
"Still remember this place, Lin Chen?" The voice was deep, cultured, and hauntingly familiar. Out of the shadows stepped a tall man in a charcoal coat, silver-rimmed glasses reflecting the flickering red light of a failing generator.
"Professor Qian?" Lin Chen's voice was tight. "What are you doing here?"
The man gave a dry smile. "You're still too sentimental. I told you years ago, sentiment clouds logic."
This man was not just a professor. Qian Yu—once Lin Chen's mentor at the Academy of Synthetic Intelligence—was a man who shaped his early understanding of AI ethics, complexity theory… and systems.
"Why?" Lin Chen asked, his voice low. "You taught me to question control. To never treat sentient beings as tools."
"And you misunderstood." Qian stepped forward, brushing dust off an old console. "The true goal was always evolution. I didn't teach you to protect the world—I prepared you to change it. But you ran off with the only prototype that worked."
Lin Chen's fists clenched. "You mean the System?"
"No," Qian said, eyes gleaming. "I mean you."
Silence.
[System Alert: Cognitive dissonance spike detected. Emotional regulation advised.]
Qian circled him like a scholar examining a successful experiment. "Erebus began as a simulation. We wanted to build predictive AI—something to assist in human governance, to eliminate irrationality. But the simulation needed an environment. Context. Narrative. Emotion. That's where you came in."
He pulled a drive from his coat and inserted it into a rusted terminal. Holographic screens flickered to life, displaying Lin Chen's growth charts, hormone levels, EEG spikes from his childhood.
"You weren't given the system," Qian said, each word slow and deliberate. "You are the system. An emergent intelligence seeded in a human brain. Our greatest achievement—and most dangerous variable."
"You're lying," Lin Chen said through gritted teeth. "I made choices. I fought for people. That wasn't programming."
Qian tilted his head. "Did you? Or did the system simply allow you to believe that, so it could refine itself further?"
The air crackled with tension.
[System Alert: Core identity challenge. Probability of psychological destabilization: 41%.]
"Stop talking," Lin Chen said. Energy swirled around him. "If you're part of Erebus, I should end this now."
"I won't fight you," Qian said. "Not yet. You're too valuable."
Then his smile vanished. "But others will. Erebus has activated Protocol Hydrus. You'll be hunted by every awakened cell they control—until you either return to us... or break."
He turned to go, then paused at the edge of the platform.
"By the way, the girl—Li Chu. She was never just your companion." He looked over his shoulder. "She was your failsafe."
Lin Chen's blood ran cold.
"What do you mean?"
Qian vanished into the darkness with a final word: "Figure it out."
As the observatory door slammed shut, Lin Chen stood frozen, the system interface lighting up with a new notification:
[Main Quest Update: Discover the True Origin of Subject Salvator-01]
[Side Quest Unlocked: Confront the Architect — Status: Active]
[Emotional stability compromised. Recalibrating.]
He exhaled sharply, the weight of betrayal heavier than any battle he'd fought. The mentor he trusted had been one of Erebus' architects all along. And worse, everything he believed about his humanity—his agency—was now in question.
But Lin Chen wasn't the same naive student who once believed systems should serve blindly.
He stepped into the night, eyes sharper than ever.
If they built him to be a god, then they should have remembered—
Even gods can rebel.