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  The black site hid deep in Sycamore Mountain, its Faraday-caged walls smothering all electromagnetic waves in or out. LED lights cast harsh shadows across the observation bay, where Victor Chan stood, his cybernetic leg, nearly indistinguishable from flesh, allowed him to stand for hours without strain. Through one-way glasses, three subjects sat alone in interrogation chambers, their forms etched against cold, clinical light: Amin, Kim Eun-hee, and Ruoxi Lam. Neural cuffs bound their wrists, pulsing faintly with biometric scans, and a thin sheen of sweat glistened on their skin, betraying the low-dose sedative that kept them pliant yet alert.

  Iron Skull’s voice rasped through Chan’s earpiece, rough as shattered concrete. “NeonEdge was grabbed in Nanshan, per your orders, sir. Split Brain and the Korean got pinned by our drones at Circuit North. They were hauling Soul Ore hard drives—SpecterForge leaks, tagged to BladeScar and HuaCent. They’re neck-deep in this mess, no question.”

  Chan’s gaze settled on Amin, the trucker pursuing his sister, Lili. His face was a map of despair, eyes hollow with the anguish of a man clinging to a fading ember of hope. Kim Eun-hee sat rigid, lips curled in a smirk that dared the world to break her. Ruoxi was a coiled spring, her eyes scouring the chamber for any exploitable flaw.

  “Anything else?” Chan asked, his voice low and precise, each syllable honed by years of command.

  “Cargo site EMP—found fragments. Confirmed U.S. military, war-era MK-17 EMP Dart. Drone-deployed, small, and nasty. Unexploded ordnance from the Pacific theater. No black-market trail. It’s a dead end.”

  Chan nodded curtly, filing the detail away. The MK-17 EMP Dart was a ghost of the war, irrelevant in a city built on fresher wounds. His focus was razor-sharp: Old Li’s smuggling network, HuaCent’s Chest-Born plan, and the elusive SilverEye orchestrating it all from the corporate spires. Father Joe’s warning gnawed at him—“The soul is not for sale, Victor. Trade it, and you trade humanity.” But humanity was a luxury when Terminus cast its shadow across the Pacific, and the New Unity Faction’s whispers grew bolder from the north. Director Lin’s encrypted chatter with the Faction had surged—too timed, too convenient. A traitor in SouthSea’s ranks, bleeding their plans to enemies unseen. Without solid evidence, he was untouchable, rooting deep in the Fleet’s political wing. Or is the Fleet also involved in the New Unity movement?

  “Begin interrogations,” Chan ordered, his tone admitting no delay.

  The observation bay hummed as Iron Skull relayed commands, his team of interrogators—SouthSea’s elite, trained in neural analytics and psychological warfare—moving into position. Chan’s eyes flicked to the monitors, each displaying biometric feeds: heart rates, neural spikes, stress markers. Amin’s pulse was erratic, Kim’s steady but spiked with defiance, Ruoxi’s a jagged line of barely contained fury. This was no game of chance; it was a chessboard, and Chan intended to play every piece with precision.

  Interrogation One: Amin

  The chamber’s air was thick with grimness and objectiveness, its seamless steel walls swallowing sound. Amin flinched as the door hissed open, admitting a SouthSea interrogator—a wiry man with a neural analyzer strapped to his temple, its red light pulsing like a predator’s eye. A holo-screen flickered to life, casting Amin’s file, his photo, residency permission, driver’s license, and photos of his mother and sister.

  “You’re Split Brain,” the interrogator said, his voice flat and clinical. “Trucker. Black-market runner. Old Li’s errand boy. The hard drives you were carrying—SpecterForge’s loot. How did you get them?”

  Amin’s jaw clenched, his headache pounding like a jackhammer through his skull. The sedative dulled his thoughts, but anger burned through the haze, raw and unrelenting. “Go to hell,” he spat, his voice rough with exhaustion. “I move cargo. That’s it. I don’t know anything about hard drives.”

  The interrogator’s lips twitched, a ghost of a smile. He tapped the analyzer, and the holo-screen shifted to a video that struck Amin like a physical blow: his own face, his own voice, but not his words, coaxing Lili to Shenzhen. “Come quick, sis. The bus is safe. I’ve got you.” A forgery, woven from his consciousness—the essence he’d sold to feed his family. The photo in his hands creased under his grip, Lili’s smile a silent accusation that tore at his heart.

  “Lili trusted you,” the interrogator said, his voice slicing like a scalpel. “You sold her out. Where is she now? HuaCent’s labs, carving up her mind? A Pheonix Sauna, peddling her to the highest bidder?”

  Amin’s breath caught, his voice breaking. “I didn’t know!” he shouted, tears stinging his eyes. “They used me—HuaCent screwed me over! I’ve been tearing this city apart to find her, you bastard!” His hands shook, each memory of Lili’s laugh a shard in his chest—her voice calling him bro, her trust when he had promised to keep her safe.

  “Then talk,” the interrogator pressed, leaning closer, his tone unrelenting. “Old Li’s network—where’s it running? Who’s he feeding Soul Ore to? Give me something, or Lili’s just another 10-dollar street hooker in Shenzhen’s gutters.”

  Amin slumped, the fight draining out of him. The weight of his guilt was crushing, a millstone grinding him down. He saw Lili in his mind’s eye, her small frame huddled in their cracked peasant house, sharing cheap noodles under flickering lights. He’d failed her, sold his mind to HuaCent for a pittance, and now she was gone. “Old Li… he moves Soul Ore from Bastion,” he said, his voice hoarse, barely above a whisper. “It’s a hub, encrypted tight, buried in Salt Port’s underbelly. Bastion’s the real line, straight from their headquarters. Big shots, suits with names I don’t know. That’s all I’ve got.”

  The door slid open, and Chan stepped in, his suit crisp, his presence a quiet storm that filled the room. The interrogator stepped back, deferring. Chan’s eyes locked on Amin, cold as winter steel, but his voice was measured, deliberate, each word a calculated strike. “Amin, I know about Lili. SouthSea’s StarLink network can track her—saunas, sweatshops, labs, black markets, wherever she’s been taken. We have eyes in places HuaCent can’t touch. But you need to earn it.”

  Amin’s head snapped up, hope and dread colliding in his chest. “You can find her?” His voice was raw, pleading, a man clinging to a lifeline. “You swear to heaven?”

  “I don’t swear,” Chan said, his tone unyielding, a commander who brooked no illusions. “I deliver. Old Li’s our target. His Bastion network is HuaCent’s lifeline, and we need it—preferably with him alive to spill his secrets. If he forces our hand, dead works too. You’re his runner. You know his routes, his contacts. Get us his Bastion players—names, faces, anything—and we’ll tear Shenzhen apart to find Lili.”

  Amin’s hands trembled, the photo of Lili glowing on the holo-screen. Old Li had been his lifeline, the man who’d offered good money when he came with nothing but debts and a hopeless job. But Lili… her laugh, her trust, the way she’d looked at him like he was her hero. He saw her in his mind, her eyes bright with dreams of a better life. “Alright,” he whispered, his voice breaking, tears spilling down his cheeks. “I’ll do it. Just… bring her back.”

  Chan’s nod was curt, final, a contract sealed in blood and desperation. “We’ll set terms later. Rest up. You’ll need it.”

  As Chan turned to leave, Amin’s voice stopped him, barely audible, a plea wrapped in fear. “If she’s… if she’s gone, like the others… what then?”

  Chan paused, his back to Amin. He saw the faces of soldiers he’d lost. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” he said, his voice low, and the door sealed shut with a hiss, leaving Amin alone with his guilt.

  Interrogation Two: Kim Eun-hee

  Kim Eun-hee’s chamber was a steel trap, but she lounged as if it were her private penthouse, one leg crossed over the other, her smirk a challenge to the world. The interrogator—a woman with a jar-head and a neural scanner strapped to her wrist—cut straight to the chase, her eyes hard as flint. A holo-screen flared, displaying dark web logs, HuaCent’s encrypted signature on the Chest-Born files. The interrogator said, her tone a blade’s edge. “You copied their drives. We’ve got your logs—HuaCent’s encryption, cracked by your rig. You’re in deep, Kim. Talk.”

  Kim’s smirk sharpened, her faint North Korean accent betraying her origin. “You think I’m some cheap script-kid who’ll fold? SouthSea’s just America’s errand boy, sniffing Shenzhen’s garbage. I don’t sing for dogs.”

  The interrogator’s eyes narrowed, unyielding. She tapped the scanner, pulling up a fragment from Kim’s copied drive: “Chest-Born Project, consciousness manipulation, 43% success rate. Potential Target: political assets.” Kim’s smirk faltered, a hairline crack in her defiance. The interrogator leaned in, relentless. “South African president. Abai attack, Soul Ore-driven, traced to Shenzhen’s black market. You analyzed and copied the drive for Amin, didn’t you? Who’s he working for?”

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  Kim’s fingers grazed the cuff chain, her mind racing like a quantum processor. She’d seen the logs when she copied Amin’s drive—Chest-Born project. “You’re grasping！That drive’s old news. Fish somewhere else.”

  The door hissed open, and Victor Chan stepped in. His cybernetic leg clicked faintly as he leaned against the wall, arms crossed, eyes dissecting Kim like a predator sizing up prey. “Fresh enough,” he said, voice low and unyielding. “We know you’re not HuaCent’s asset, Kim. You’re the tech, the one who cracked the drive Amin brought you. BladeScar’s hoarding consciousnesses from HuaCent, straight from the executives. SilverEye’s pulling the strings—maybe Suechin Liang. What else do you know about ‘Chest-Born’? How many copies do you have?”

  Kim met Chan’s gaze, realizing he was a foe as dangerous as ThunderVolt. She forced a laugh, sharp and brittle. “Nice suit, old man. You think I’m your snitch? I fix bots, not conspiracies, yo. Amin’s just a driver with a sob story.”

  The interrogator tapped her scanner, pulling up a new file: Kim’s forged Shenzhen ID, her dark web alias “CircuitFang,” and an ID photo from Sinuiju’s police department, a younger Kim, noticeably gaunt. “Kim Eun-hee, North Korean defector. Illegal immigrant. No residence permit, no legal status. One call to Shenzhen’s immigration bureau, and you’re on a boat back to Pyongyang by dawn. Your family in Sinuiju? They’ll pay for your defiance.” The interrogator’s voice was ice, her eyes boring into Kim’s. “Cooperate, or we ship you home in chains.”

  Kim’s smirk vanished, her breath catching. The room seemed to shrink, the steel walls closing in. Her family’s faces—parents, little brother, trapped in that hellhole—flashed in her mind, their survival tied to the cash she smuggled through black-market channels. She swallowed, her voice low, edged with fury. “You bastards. What do you want?”

  Chan’s lips curled into a faint, predatory smile. “We know you’ve got the skills to dig dirt. Work with Amin—find Renyi Li and his source. That drive you copied? It’s tied to their networks in HuaCent. You help Amin, you help us. Do it, and we’ll wipe your record clean. Refuse, and you’re on that boat.”

  Kim’s eyes flicked between Chan and the interrogator, her mind calculating like code unraveling. Amin’s desperation—his sister—burned in her memory. She’d promised to help, but SouthSea’s leash felt like a chokehold. She needed freedom, but defiance now meant deportation, a death sentence for her family. “You’re not giving me a choice,” she spat, her voice resigned.

  Chan straightened, his cybernetic leg clicking as he stepped closer. “Nobody gets choices in Shenzhen, Kim. You know that. Amin’s waiting for answers. You’re his shadow now—find Renyi Li, track the Soul Ore pipeline, and report to us. You’ve got three days. Screw it up, and North Korea’s waiting.” His eyes bored into hers, unyielding. “We have a tracing implant on you. Play smart.”

  Kim’s jaw clenched, her nails digging into her palms. Amin’s haunted eyes, chasing a sister already lost to the scam. “Fine,” she hissed, her voice a blade. “I’ll work with Amin. But don’t think I’m your dog. I’ll find Old Li, and I’ll tear HuaCent’s secrets apart for me, not you.”

  The interrogator tapped her scanner, logging Kim’s compliance, the screen flashing green. “Smart move. We’ll be watching, CircuitFang.” She slid a burner phone across the table, its screen blank but ready. “Use this to report. No dark web tricks.”

  Chan turned to leave, his voice a low growl. “Three days, Kim. Don’t test us.” Kim’s eyes burned into his back, her smirk returning, bitter and defiant. “You think you’re clean in this, suit? Everything with Soul Ore’s poison, and you’re neck-deep.”

  Chan paused, his cybernetic leg clicking softly, phantom pain attacking. “Nobody’s clean,” he said, the door sealing shut, leaving Kim alone with her rage and the weight of her family’s survival.

  Interrogation Three: Ruoxi Lam

  Ruoxi’s chamber was her caged inferno, every muscle taut with barely contained rage. Her interrogator—a burly man with an AR glass glowing—projected SpecterForge logs onto a holo-screen: Avei’s consciousness, flagged as a Chest-Born template, its data signature a spiderweb of HuaCent’s experiments. “NeonEdge,” he growled, his voice like gravel grinding underfoot. “You hit Weak Water Sea, found your brother there. HuaCent’s using him for their twisted games. Did you get what you wanted?”

  Ruoxi’s voice trembled with resentment. “HuaCent stole Avei’s soul, and you SouthSea pigs let them! I’m taking him back, and I’ll burn their servers to slag!” Her eyes blazed, each word a spark ready to ignite the room.

  The interrogator smirked, unfazed. He pulled up Weak Water Sea records, a cascade of data showing Avei’s consciousness locked in Nanshan’s data center, tied to AbyssNet’s neural labyrinth. “You traded with Suying Ren, aka LureSiren,” he said, his tone mocking. “One hard drive down, two to go for AbyssNet access codes. BladeScar’s link to HuaCent—what is it?”

  Ruoxi’s lips pressed into a thin line, her mind racing like a neural hack gone rogue. She’d tried cracking the neural cuffs, probing their firmware with mental commands, but the sedative dulled her edge, leaving her trapped. Avei was out there, a ghost in HuaCent’s machine, his laughter in their virtual flower sea a fading echo. “Go screw yourself,” she hissed, but her voice trembled, betraying the fear beneath her fury.

  Chan stepped in, his calm a stark contrast to her fire. His eyes locked on Ruoxi, dissecting her rage, her pain, her unbreakable resolve. “Ruoxi,” he said, his voice steady, almost gentle. “You’re fighting a war you can’t win alone. Avei’s consciousness is in Chest-Born’s blueprint—mind control, political puppets, the works. SilverEye’s behind it, likely Suechin Liang, HuaCent’s CTO. We want HuaCent down as much as you do.”

  Ruoxi laughed, sharp and bitter, the sound like shattering glass. “You? I know you! You’re just another suit, Chan, playing power games while my brother’s soul rots! Why the hell should I trust you?”

  “Because I’m offering you a shot,” Chan said, unflinching, his gaze never wavering. “Your hacking skills, our resources. Hit Nanshan’s data center, crack AbyssNet, and we’ll pull Avei out. But Chest-Born’s tech… it could bring him back, or it could break him, turn him into something that’s not your brother. Are you ready to make that call?”

  Ruoxi bit her lip, drawing blood. Memories of Avei flooded her—the way he’d coded her first hack, the brother who’d been her purpose living in Shenzhen’s chaos. Now he was a file, a template for HuaCent’s abominations, his essence played up like lab rat. “I’ll face anything,” she said, her voice low, fierce, a vow etched in fire. “Get me to those servers, and I’ll tear HuaCent apart.”

  Chan’s nod was final, the third contract sealed in blood and desperation. “Done. We move soon.”

  As he turned to leave, Ruoxi’s voice stopped him, softer now, almost a plea. “If Avei’s… changed, if he’s not him anymore… what then?”

  Chan paused, “You don’t know that,” he said, his voice low, weighted with a truth he wasn’t ready to face. The door sealed shut with a hiss, leaving Ruoxi alone with her ghosts.

  Chan’s Gambit

  The command room was a nerve center of flickering StarLink feeds, Salt Port’s neon skyline pulsing beyond armored glass like a living heartbeat. Iron Skull stood at attention, his neural implant glowing faintly, a beacon in the dim light. “Director Lin’s chatter with the New Unity Faction is spiking,” he reported, his voice low, urgent. “Encrypted, but it’s no accident. He’s leaking our moves, sir.”

  Chan’s face was stone, his mind a battlefield of calculations, each move weighed against a city teetering on the edge. “Keep eyes on him,” he said, his tone unyielding. “No confrontation yet. We’ve got bigger fish.” He turned to the screens, interrogation data scrolling in a relentless cascade, a digital river of secrets and lies. Old Li’s Bastion network was the linchpin—a direct conduit to HuaCent’s headquarters, Nanshan relegated to a mere data lab for fringe experiments and ghosts. SouthSea needed Old Li alive, his intel a map to HuaCent’s inner sanctum. But if he couldn’t be turned… Chan’s hand grazed his naval academy ring, a grim reminder. Dead was cleaner, but messier in the long game.

  Amin was the vanguard, Lili’s absence a chain SouthSea could yank with ruthless precision. Kim’s dark web prowess could unravel Bastion’s players, her fingers dancing through encrypted nodes like a maestro of chaos. Ruoxi was the assassin, cracking Nanshan’s data center, her rage a blade to carve through AbyssNet’s defenses. The trio was fractured, bound by necessity, but they’d deliver. They had to. The brilliance of this move lies in the fact that all three of them had no ties to SouthSea, remaining expendable pawns. Chan had them released, Amin with Kim back in Circuit North. And Ruoxi was sent back to Nanshan, where she was picked up.

  Chan’s mind was already racing to the next move. Old Li was the key, but HuaCent’s counterstrike was closing in. ThunderVolt’s drones were circling, their Abai avatars a whispered threat in Salt Port’s underbelly, their cybernetic forms rumored to be laced with Soul Ore—a perversion of life itself. SilverEye was watching, her gaze a weight Chan felt in his bones, a predator in the shadows of Shenzhen’s spires.

  Chan stood alone in the command room, the StarLink feeds casting a ghostly glow across his weathered face. Salt Port’s skyline pulsed beyond the armored glass, a city of neon and shadows, its arteries throbbing with data, power, and blood. He lit a Marlboro, the smoke curling like a specter, its acrid bite grounding him in the moment. The interrogations had yielded pieces of the puzzle—Old Li’s Bastion network, Chest-Born’s ambitions, SilverEye’s shadow—but the board remained murky, a chess game with half the pieces hidden. Director Lin’s betrayal was a knife in SouthSea’s back, his encrypted chatter with the New Unity Faction a ticking bomb. ThunderVolt’s drones were closing in, their Abai avatars a whispered threat in Salt Port’s underbelly, their cybernetic forms rumored to be laced with Soul Ore—a perversion of life that chilled even Chan’s battle-hardened heart.

  Father Joe’s voice echoed, unbidden, a splinter in his mind: “Trade the soul, lose the self.” Chan exhaled, the smoke stinging his eyes, blurring the skyline’s neon haze. Chest-Born was more than a corporate scheme; it was a violation, a theft of what made humans human, a line even he hesitated to cross. Yet here he was, playing the same game, wielding Amin’s grief, Kim’s defiance, Ruoxi’s rage like weapons in a war he couldn’t afford to lose. Was he any different from HuaCent? The question gnawed, sharp and unrelenting, but he buried it deep. Shenzhen didn’t reward doubt; it rewarded blood, steel, and results.

  His cybernetic leg ached, a phantom pain from a war that had taken his flesh and left him half-machine, a man caught between human and tool. He’d survived then, outwitting death in the Pacific’s burning skies, and he’d survive now.

  Chan’s comm buzzed, Iron Skull’s voice cutting through the silence like a blade. “Drone scans show ThunderVolt’s units locking down Nanshan. BladeScar’s factory is a fortress—barricades, drones, the works. We’ve got a window, but it’s tight.”

  “Prep eight teams, Hot Standby. 12-hour rotation cycle, the teams and helos,” Chan ordered, his voice steady, unyielding. “Amin and Kim moves on Old Li’s hideout. Ruoxi hit Nanshan. We strike before HuaCent tightens the noose.”

  “Copy,” Iron Skull said, his tone clipped. “And Lin?”

  Chan’s jaw tightened, his mind flashing to Lin’s smug face, his encrypted betrayals. “Watch him. Every move, every breath. No move unless he will jeopardize the operation. If he’s feeding the north, we’ll know.”

  “Copy,” Iron Skull said, his tone clipped. “And Lin?”

  Chan’s jaw tightened, his mind flashing to Lin’s smug face, his encrypted betrayals. “Watch him. Every move, every breath. No move unless he will jeopardize the operation. If he’s feeding the north, we’ll know.”