The ruined outskirts of the Jiangnan Industrial Zone had long been marked "sealed." On the surface, it was due to chemical contamination and urban decay. But Lin Chen's Tactical Core had revealed otherwise:
Subsurface radiation signatures. Artificial data pulses. A buried signal loop tracing back twenty years.
This wasn't a dead zone.
It was a forgotten lab.
A cradle of monsters.
He stepped through the collapsed gates, eyes scanning the burned signage still faintly bearing the name: Shuangxing Biotech Division — Restricted Protocols. His breath fogged in the cold air. Below his feet, seismic mapping drew a skeletal 3D outline of the hidden levels underground.
[System Alert: Sync resonance detected. Memory Fragment Signature — Match 74%. Core Proximity: 22 meters.]
Lin Chen's pulse skipped.
This was it.
He followed the signal down a cracked elevator shaft, metal groaning beneath each step. At the base, a sealed bulkhead glowed faintly—power still flowing through backup nodes.
He reached out. His system synced instantly, bypassing the old Erebus encryption like muscle memory.
The doors hissed open.
The lab was preserved in eerie stasis. Broken terminals blinked faintly. Stasis tanks stood cracked and dry, their contents long gone or eroded by time. Dried blood marked the floors. Scorch patterns clung to the walls. Someone had tried to erase history.
But not fast enough.
At the far end, a glass pod remained intact—housing a single black cube hovering mid-air, rotating slowly in stasis.
[System Alert: Primary Memory Fragment Detected.]
[Identifier: Core Piece 1 — Genesis Implantation Record.]
Lin Chen stepped forward. The cube pulsed—then shattered into light.
The memory hit like a tidal wave.
He was a child. Barely more than a baby. Wrapped in sterile cloth, unconscious. Surrounded by researchers in full-body suits. Monitors beeped as a silver liquid was injected directly into the base of his skull.
"Subject 017: Neural phase syncing initiated."
"It's stabilizing. God—it's actually stabilizing."
"Inject core code string. Beginning Salvator matrix bonding…"
In a corner, an older man watched, face hidden behind a visor.
"Another failure, and Erebus will shut this arm down," someone muttered.
"No," the man replied coldly. "This one's different."
"This one… will survive."
Lin Chen stumbled back, gasping.
His knees hit the floor of the lab.
The room around him blurred, overwritten by echoes of screams, machines, childhood he never remembered.
They implanted the system in him as a baby.
Not a choice.
Not an accident.
He wasn't just part of Project Salvator.
He was the prototype. The first. The only one to survive the original full-sequence integration.
[System Notice: First Memory Core acquired.]
[Unlocking Salvator Identity Module—Phase I.]
[New Passive: Core Resonance — +20% System Energy Efficiency, Enhanced Memory Recovery Potential.]
A faint light shimmered beneath his skin—subtle threads of gold that hadn't been there before. His heartbeat steadied, and with it, clarity.
His entire life had been engineered.
But now, the engineer had become the rogue variable.
He stood, eyes hard, voice quiet:
"They made me a weapon…"
"But I choose who I aim at."
Outside, static buzzed through his comms—an encoded voice breaking through.
"Lin Chen. I know what you just saw. This is only the first piece. The others are scattered—protected. Erebus will hunt you for every step you take."
Pause.
"But you're not alone in this."
He recognized the voice.
It was hers. Li Chu.
And even as the signal cut, her final words stayed burned in his mind:
"Find the truth. Or it will find you first."