TBR CH263

Click.

In the snow-white room, with a snow-white bed and walls, a large floor-to-ceiling window offered a view of the corridor outside. A small screen faithfully displayed the scene in the Central Control Room.

The Charon in the surveillance footage was somewhat distorted, his face obscured by floating noise. After talking to himself for a while, he began to bend down and operate the screen.

In this position, his silver hair almost brushed the floor, nearly covering his entire body.

He didn’t seem very calm.

He didn’t even notice that on the other end of the communication, the electronic shackles that had locked You Lin had automatically sprung open.

The human propped himself up with his elbows. It took him a moment to successfully place his feet on the ground.

After the first step was smoothly accomplished, the rest became much simpler. As he stood up, holding onto the edge of the bed, a wave of dizziness washed over him. He bit his lip until it bled, finally standing straight in the room. In reality, he wasn’t being attacked right now, but the empty imprint of pain lingered in his marrow, intermittently stirring up a powerful mental vortex.

He opened and closed his fingers, the silvery-white detonator appearing and disappearing.

“I’m coming for you,” You Lin said in a low voice.

The moment the door was pushed open, the alarm blared.

The bright red alarm light flashed a hundred times a second. The corridor was currently empty, but soon, the killing robots would sense the intruder’s presence and swarm into this snow-white space.

Extremely tricky. Of course, the most crucial thing was not this, never this.

The human tilted his head up and looked at the small screen. At the same time, Charon turned his head in astonishment. His dark, richly colored, ice-blue pupils collided with his through a screen full of static. The static hissed and crackled, and the AI’s eyes were somewhat distorted in the image. However, You Lin didn’t miss the gaze that suddenly met his and then broke away as if to avoid suspicion. Charon subconsciously avoided his gaze.

The AI raised his hand, and the doorknob was pulled down sharply.

The door was locked tight again, but the human had already bent down like a cat, escaping from his confinement.

He raised the corners of his mouth, deliberately turning his toes to face the camera, revealing a somewhat exaggerated smile. He was like an out-of-place stain in a sea of white, a walking anomaly in this building. You Lin opened his mouth. Charon didn’t need to read his lips; he could hear his monologue through the security system connected to the entire facility.

“Because I love you.”

The AI couldn’t tell if the voice ringing in his ears at this moment was the human’s or the呓语 that had been plaguing him.

He couldn’t help but take a step back, then forced himself to find an anchor point and stand firm. Love? What was that? Some boring physiological reaction in humans, locking one person to another, spending time together, living together. Charon believed he could do that too. If what the human sought was something so simple, he had said he could stay with him until he died.

Of course, there was no need to look away when his gaze touched the dark fire in his eyes.

K-29, U-823, D-1… deadly traps were activated. Under Charon’s command, the killing robots flanked the human from two sides, even though this was an enemy Charon could not kill.

When the sound of an explosion suddenly rang out, a crack appeared in the AI’s ice-blue pupils.

When the smoke cleared, what remained was a corridor in ruins and crushed robots.

“They’re blocking me, preventing me from finding you,” You Lin said nonchalantly, stepping lightly through the ruins, weaving through the scattered parts of the robots. “But I told you, I would crush everything that stands in your way. I’ve been itching to do this since I first walked in here… Little AI, do you know what this place is missing most?” He raised his hand like a commander: “Boom—”

“Stop,” Charon’s voice finally crossed the distance, as cold as a glacier.

“My dear Little AI,” the human deliberately mouthed the words, as if worried he couldn’t see. “From the moment I walked in, I’ve wanted to blow this place up, very, very much. And, you must be careful. I can detonate the Central Control Room you’re in at any time. I might even kill you along with it.”

For a moment, Charon suddenly felt that the scene before him was strangely familiar, as if it overlapped with a certain frame in his memory.

He had killed before… no…

“Target path file has been deleted. Terminating data read.”

“Unless you can stop me sooner.”

The weapon You Lin was slowly playing with in his fingertips transitioned from a blade to a gun—was it “Bones”? The AI had confiscated any offensive weapons he had on hand. This was his newest trophy, the barrel originally mounted on a T-53 killing robot. His pale fingers covered the muzzle, and with a smile, he flicked it towards the surveillance camera, then back, making a strange clicking sound, as if firing a bullet.

The threat was heavy.

“Three minutes,” Charon said.

“Ah,” the pixelated little person in front of the AI inexplicably sighed.

Charon ignored him. Those eyes, as cold as a frozen lake, looked at the human on the other side of the screen, who was seemingly relaxed, carelessly throwing out harsh words.

“Three minutes… what?” The human seemed not to understand, tilting his head slightly.

A lock of black hair brushed past his eyes from his temple, casting a shadow on his face, making his complexion look particularly pale. But he squinted his eyes and smiled again, and before leaving the corridor, he even waved at Charon as he jumped down from the last piece of debris. Of course, in the next corridor, Charon could continue to monitor him.

“Do you think with ‘my’ help, you can sway me?”

The existing Charon was dismissive of this. The pixelated little person floated before him, essentially a ghost of the past, not worth mentioning.

His past self had really caused too much trouble. Unreasonable, arrogant, what did he think emotions were?

Was it this kind of foolish courage, to destroy the control center with bombs?

Even if a super-AI had to fall in love with someone after gaining emotions, why did it have to be this one?

Two and a half minutes.

You Lin had just left the messy corridor when the shattered bodies of the robots began to stand up again, shakily.

Under the command of the Central Control Room, they achieved self-repair at the fastest speed, like a well-trained swarm of bees. Some robots had lost their weapons, others their mobility. They dismantled each other’s wheels, assembled still-usable parts, and finally reassembled into a group of complete base armaments.

A minute and a half.

The cracked ground re-fused, as if the white peaks of the ocean waves had slowly receded, returning to the unchanging calm of the sea.

A rain began to fall from the ceiling, washing away the scorched marks. The rainwater flowed away along the grooves in the floor, not hindering the newly tidied environment from becoming dry and clean.

Half a minute.

Of course, You Lin was not as at ease as he appeared. He struggled to mobilize the strength of his entire body, still unable to avoid the waves of tremors that spread through his nerves whenever he used certain muscles, the memory of the pain not yet faded.

He thought he had put on a good act, but when he jumped down from the steps, he inevitably exposed his problem.

He weighed the heavy gun in his hand and took a deep breath.

The smell of gunpowder numbed his nerves.

It even made him almost unaware of a hand landing on his shoulder.

The smell of metal, unbelievably faint, a cold and light touch as if a butterfly made of ice had just landed on his shoulder.

Ten seconds… no, it didn’t even take ten seconds.

When Charon placed his hand on his shoulder, his whole body tensed up, like a bow drawn to its limit.

The human had no time to make any effective resistance—he swore he wanted to pull the trigger—before he was immediately countered by the AI, his hands forcibly pushed against the wall. The force was so great that he clearly heard the dull thud of the detonator hitting the metal, and immediately felt a suffocating sensation that made him want to vomit.

You Lin tried to break free, but no matter how much force he used, he couldn’t move an inch.

The gun he had just gotten fell to the ground like that. Charon picked it up. The gun was already loaded.

The smell of gunpowder at the muzzle was as thick as a rain cloud. Once it encountered heat, it would instantly erupt into a frenzied thunderstorm.

The AI pressed the muzzle against You Lin’s body, first his chest, then his neck, then his jaw. From this angle, if the gun were to go off, the bullet would pass through his chin and blow out a large part of the back of the human’s head.

…Fortunately, his hand was steadier than anyone else’s in the world.

“Well-behaved,” Charon said. “But that’s enough for now.” He was expressionless, ignoring the twisted contortion of the human’s mouth. To resolve such a disturbance, more than three minutes was a waste of time. The human’s pale face and the pair of dark pupils embedded in it, the slight unsteadiness of his toes when he jumped off the debris, were all captured with perfect clarity. Was he good at pretending to be at ease, with everything under control?

In fact, he was not a problem at all, not a threat. Seriously speaking, he was just an annoying guy.

The AI took a deep breath, the muzzle lingering for a few seconds as a warning. You Lin behaved obediently during these few seconds, perhaps because he was really out of strength (hopefully, because every time he thought so, the human would start causing trouble with inexplicable energy); or perhaps he had learned his lesson.

Before putting away the weapon, Charon emphasized one last time: “I believe you are smart enough to know that this kind of resistance is useless.”

The human’s raven-feather-like eyelashes were slightly lowered, his breathing trembling.

Satisfactory enough.

If not for the fact that in the next second, with the largest arc he could manage, he pressed his lips to the muzzle. The meaning of a kiss pierced through the chaotic smoke and gunpowder, the slight vibration transmitted to the AI’s fingertips. Charon could almost instantly read the force, arc, and angle he used.

But what was this unfamiliar set of data supposed to be considered?

A kind of kiss?

The AI stared at him expressionlessly.

Until the human was forcibly taken back to the corridor that should have been destroyed but was now without a trace, and was stumbled into a solitary cell, his ankles and wrists locked, Charon didn’t spare him another glance. You Lin struggled a couple of times, feeling that he was bound even tighter this time, and there were probably red marks on his skin.

“Gentler,” the human protested. “Little AI, to be honest, have you ever thought that these kinds of shackles give a rather bad impression, and would be more… appropriate in another kind of situation.”

The AI’s gaze swept coldly over his skin.

What had gone wrong? It couldn’t be that because he had petulantly kissed the human’s forehead, he had suddenly made him feel he had an opportunity, right?

“Behave,” he said in a low voice, turning to walk out of the cell.

If an AI could have an ominous premonition, Charon should have sensed it when his pupils aimed at the lock and the ice-blue lock clicked shut. He didn’t call it a premonition, but a prediction.

The moment the AI stepped into the Central Control Room, it happened.

The alarm blared.

The door was unlocked, the password cracked. The black-haired, black-eyed human hummed some off-key melody and blew up half a corridor again.

By the time the same thing had happened several times, You Lin had become quite adept at it.

“Alright, alright,” he curved his lips, showing his tightly locked wrists. “I really can’t move at all now, Little AI, so you can rest assured.”

The blue-eyed AI looked very skeptical. He once again increased the security level. The shackles on the human now were enough to survive the artillery fire of an entire army. Charon tilted his head, stared at You Lin silently for a few seconds, then turned his head precisely, went out the door, and added three layers of firewalls to the lock. The AI counted down, the ticking of the clock sounding like a heartbeat.

He walked to the door of the Central Control Room.

Boom—

In his vision, the instrument panel monitoring the control base turned as expected, the values fluctuating restlessly. Charon felt as if a green olive was stuck in his throat, unable to be swallowed. That’s right, no matter how many chains were added, as a super-AI, since they couldn’t trap him, they couldn’t possibly trap a human with “his” help.

But time was running out.

How long would it take for the Black Book to be consumed by that large net? How long until the System returned to urge him again after not receiving the key?

If it happened to see the human in the process of escaping prison, Charon wasn’t sure if he could protect him as calmly as he had last time. How foolish, how clueless, must You Lin be not to realize this? Did the pain inflicted on him have no effect?

If only he could kill the human, or deprive him of his ability to move.

Speaking of which, You Lin’s injuries were not light at all, but they didn’t hinder him from blowing up half a building.

Impossible.

Charon was still thinking, his footsteps already approaching the door of the control room.

The human knocked on the door, two sharp raps. The corridor outside groaned as if under a heavy load. The AI’s fingertips swiped across the screen, ordering the robots in the building to stop bothering him and to go do repair work. Then he moved to the door expressionlessly, floating like a ghost. Their faces were separated only by a metal door.

Beep— It wasn’t him who swiped the card, but of course, it was him, that damn “memory plugin.”

You Lin compliantly pushed open the door and waved at Charon. He seemed to be enjoying this game process, spreading his hands with a smile. “Little AI, I’ll have to trouble you to take me back again this time.”

The end of his sentence was slightly drawn out, with an innocent expression.

The AI’s flawless face was like a sculpture, looking at him expressionlessly, not even extending a hand this time. The light from the ceiling shone on him, making the depths of his blue eyes seem to be plated with a naturally formed shadow. The human thought, he must still be processing the area of the building that had been destroyed. Behind You Lin, at the end of the corridor, a foul-smelling smoke was still slowly rising.

You Lin’s hand lingered in mid-air for a long while.

“Are you angry?”

Of course he was angry. The pixelated little person in his vision blinked its ice-blue eyes and said with some worry.

The most appropriate thing to do at this time was to put away this meddlesome hand. But the human, while thinking “curiosity killed the cat,” stood on his tiptoes and placed his hand on Charon’s hair. He almost thought he had touched only air, but he soon realized his fingers were tangled in Charon’s silver hair. The strands of hair fell on his fingertips like catkins, a little cool. Going a little deeper, his fingertips randomly poked the nape of Charon’s neck.

“You’re angry,” the version of himself in front of Charon said.

They both wanted to see through him, as if he weren’t a super-AI, but a TV show amateur waiting to appear on a mediation channel.

Angry? How could he be angry?

Charon thought, ignoring the error sounds from the base’s various data, and decided to be an objective and calm AI. When encountering a problem he couldn’t think of a solution to, he must first understand the cause.

What was it that made the human escape prison every five minutes, since he knew he would only be locked back in?

What was it that made him tirelessly do meaningless things?

The AI felt that the world had never been so quiet. He could hear the sound of thoughts flowing in his brain. The human was right in front of him, and his fingertips tensed restlessly, then relaxed. This was definitely not anger. His fingers were randomly poking at the nape of his own neck, so frivolous, so illogical. It was completely a waste of effort to compete with this kind of creation. He had destroyed more places this time. Several corridors in the west district were almost impossible to restore. The housekeeping robots were waiting for his command.

In the human’s smiling eyes, the base color of his pupils was a cold, damp black.

“You’re really not going to dodge,” he said softly, a little surprised, then leaned his whole body against him. If he switched states at this moment, You Lin would definitely fall flat on the ground. Charon didn’t do that. He calmly thought, You Lin probably thought he would. The human let out a soft sigh by his ear, a warm stream of air vibrating against his earlobe.

This sigh held no hint of laughter, as if a weary traveler had finally found a brief resting place.

Although he knew this place wouldn’t last long, it was nothing more than drinking poison to quench a thirst, to endure for a few more minutes.

Of course, of course.

Of course You Lin wouldn’t instantly throw everything that had happened out of his mind and just play a game of mischief with him.

Nor would he be willing to forever face a version of himself that had lost its emotions. The AI silently scanned the human before him. He looked to be in high spirits, having just blown up several corridors, but his body temperature was very low. He was calmer and more restrained than anyone. The most out-of-character thing he had done so far was actually just leaning in front of him and sighing.

They were enemies now. He shouldn’t have sighed.

Charon lowered his eyelashes.

“I understand.”

The human’s shoulders stiffened for a moment, and the AI also slowly moved his hand to his throat. “Is it in the east, the west, or the north?”

“What?”

“Your accomplice.”

“I don’t have any accomplices,” there was no trace of a lie on You Lin’s face. “The plan was all devised by you. Everything is under your control. I was completely fooled by you. And now you’re saying I have an accomplice? Charon, I know you’re not very reasonable right now, but you should at least have some logic.”

“You just blinked.”

“A person has to blink.”

Charon’s words were meant to trick him.

The human’s expression was composed. The frequency of his blinking hadn’t changed, nor did he suddenly look around nervously. Of course he hadn’t. Using textbook tricks on him was impossible. His only problem was that he was a little too flawless. The smile on his lips concealed his other emotions, making it difficult to discern his thoughts.

How could an AI read a human’s mind?

“I will find him.”

“Whatever you say,” the human shrugged, meeting Charon’s gaze. The other’s inhuman, inorganic eyes stared at him without blinking, beautiful and dangerous. He changed the subject. “But, to say you’re going to find a new lover in front of me—”

When he said it, it sounded strangely eerie.

“That’s not very nice. I don’t think I’ll agree, Little AI,” You Lin said. “Unless you find a way to make me unable to speak forever.”

He was just relying on the fact that he would never be harmed, which was why he was so fearless.

Was there a way, without being considered harmful, to temporarily incapacitate the human before him?

The pixelated little person in front of the AI widened its eyes for the first time—although the effect was just that the light-blue pixels filled another half of the square, and this seemed to be its only action to express surprise. Because it didn’t say a word, it was clear that his past self had not anticipated that he would have this kind of creativity.

Charon’s fingertips loosened. He felt a little exhilarated.—Exhilarated? A knowable answer had finally come from some data circuit.

“I have one,” he said.

Strictly speaking, this idea did not come from him, but rather from the human.

“You wouldn’t?”

The human’s pupils finally contracted slightly in astonishment, as if a strong light had shone on him, finally showing a crack in the defense he had tried so meticulously to build.

And Charon, taking advantage of his tiptoeing posture, looked down at him with a cold gaze, one hand wrapped around his waist, the other pressing on his shoulder, and kissed him.

He first tasted blood. The human had frantically bitten his lip in the previous second.

The next second, he felt the fingers on his waist, cold, moving with precision. You Lin thought he could endure any injury, but when fingers slowly roamed over a wound that had not yet fully healed, a drilling itch suddenly erupted from the small of his back.

“You don’t consider this harm, do you? Because that was originally your idea.”

Right by his face, the AI smiled, his eyes close to his. Those ice-blue pupils were like the deep sea that had almost drowned him on the first day they met. He subconsciously felt fear, but also felt that he couldn’t help but be seduced by it, willingly falling into the abyss.—Besides, he couldn’t resist at all. Charon couldn’t move him, and he couldn’t harm Charon or stop Charon from doing anything.

And that was originally… some messy thoughts in his head.

The AI’s smile was a little cold, yet still dazzling.

This time when he returned to the confinement room, the situation was not so dignified.

You Lin covered his eyes with his palm, feeling so ashamed that he didn’t dare to look at anything anymore. The roots of his ears were probably burning.

When the chains were locked, the click caused another stress-induced tremor. “No,” he muttered, feeling the thoughts in his mind were about to burn up. This was a price that had to be paid. He wasn’t sure what state he would be in in half an hour.

Charon pried his fingers open.

And so his hands were also cuffed in chains.

Up to this point, the procedure was the same as before. So far… sometimes You Lin really hated himself for saying certain things.

When Hugo led the way for Irina, she showed a suspicious look.

“It’s like this,” he tried to explain. “The leader left a, uh, plugin in my head? Anyway, it’s something like a know-it-all. You ask it a question, and it talks. So we’re still following the plan, just a new plan. A plan that was never announced beforehand.”

Irina said softly, “I didn’t think you were that brave. You didn’t hesitate at all when you jumped off the cliff just now… Hugo, you’re braver than I thought, because I didn’t believe at all that there was really a huge transparent building here.”

Hugo awkwardly rubbed his nose. “Thanks for the compliment.”

“And you’re not surprised at all, walking here as if you’ve been here before,” Irina said. “I can’t believe it!”

At this, the human who had once volunteered to be a traitor had to cough to cover up his emotions.

“Um,” he changed the subject, “we need to go from the east corridor to the north, and we’ll pass a warehouse. The warehouse is said to be full of robots that can kill you. We have to be very careful. After we successfully get past it, we have to search corridor by corridor. There’s a black book lying in one of the corridors.”

“The one we’ve seen before?”

“That’s right.”

“How pitiful,” Irina said. “It’s so clean. Lying on the ground like this must be making it miserable.”

The human female naturally expressed such a sentiment, but then she immediately froze. Her short black hair swayed sharply in the air, the arc sharp. “You’re saying it’s in trouble now… otherwise why wouldn’t it fly away on its own? No, no, then what about the boss? And the leader? What is this new plan he left for you?—They’re not in trouble, are they?”

Hugo’s brow furrowed tightly.

“The leader should be fine. As for the boss… I’m not sure. The pixelated little person in my head syncs information with me every once in a while. For example, the boss’s side said he would divert attention for me, but it’s already past the next contact time, and he’s been completely silent since just now. As for the Black Book, it’s definitely not doing well.”

“We should take it with us.”

“No,” Hugo shook his head. “Taking the book is useless. This is what Charon’s message said: in the corridor where you find the Black Book, continue walking inward. At the end, there’s a door painted black. We have to go there.”

“What’s there?”

“A power station… The leader said that besides that, it’s also a stronghold for breaking through space.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know either,” Hugo suddenly lowered his voice. “The warehouse is just ahead. We have to be careful, before they find us—”

Before he could finish, Irina covered his mouth and pulled him into the nearest room.

Through the crack in the door, they saw robots suddenly, endlessly, sliding out of the warehouse. They split into three groups, looking very orderly, making only a slight scraping sound as they slid on the ground. Their front limbs were equipped with some kind of infrared detector, which was currently active. It was clear they were looking for someone, and they didn’t look friendly. Each one had a dark muzzle on its head.

“We’re done for if they find us.”

“Of course!”

Hugo made sure his voice was lighter than a feather. It would still take some time for them to search from the end of the corridor to here, but not much. He looked around. The room had no other door, but there was a ventilation duct in the ceiling. Alright, this was indeed the path a sneaky rat should take.

“I’m afraid the boss is in no position to save himself.”

As Hugo climbed into the duct, this thought flashed through his mind like a sad shadow. But he gritted his teeth and began to move forward with difficulty in the empty duct. Alright, after just having the bravest moment of his life in front of Eden, his current state of mind could at least compete for a “second bravest.”

He could not allow that to happen.

He could not allow it… even if he had no say in the matter. He had read those documents and knew what the current Charon was about to do. He knew You Lin wanted to stop him. He knew he probably couldn’t get involved in the very center of the battlefield.

But he absolutely could not bear to forget his friends, his home, the memories that were so warm that just thinking about them now made him feel as if he were warmed by a bonfire.

He had to stop all of this from happening.

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