Log 06
Fractured Signal
The world is loudest when it is silent.
The quieter it gets, the more sounds there are—only they stay hidden inside, refusing to let you hear them.
And I, of all people, can hear them.
On the third day after the explosion at the Forensic Center, New City appeared to have returned to order. The news was calm, as if reporting the weather:
“Preliminary police investigation suggests an accidental chemical reaction. The case remains under further investigation.”
Every word sounded like a requiem written for someone.
We were ordered to “remain on leave and standby.”
In the world of police work, those four words mean a polite form of exile.
You are still there, but no longer trusted.
Man Man and I changed into plain clothes and took shelter in an abandoned warehouse on the edge of the coastal industrial zone.
Outside the door stood a metal wall of stacked shipping containers. When the wind passed through, sheets of iron scraped against one another with a hollow sound.
We parked the car inside, connected the laptop to a storage battery, shut off all network access, and worked only in offline mode.
It felt like we were fugitives—
in truth, we were.
“Chee Yan’s side has progress,” Man Man said, holding her phone, her voice lowered.
On the screen, a block of garbled code was gradually being decrypted.
I saw filenames appear in fragments:
M-9_SUBJECT001
Consciousness Intervention Log
Protocol Record_Audio
“He says they recovered thirty percent of the SSD data.” She looked up at me. “There’s video. And audio.”
I stayed silent for a moment before speaking.
“We wait until he confirms he’s safe. Then we watch.”
Man Man nodded, but there was a trace of unease in her eyes.
“Tin Kay, if the Commissioner really was part of this project…”
“Then he’s not just a criminal,” I cut in. “He’s an architect.”
“An architect?”
“He’s building an invisible prison. Making everyone sleep inside it, dreaming the same dream.”
My voice was calm, but my fingers trembled.
It wasn’t fear.
It was a kind of coldness—the kind you get after seeing too many lies.
At noon, Li Wai Hing sent a coded message:
“Parrot flies.”
It was an old phrase from our narcotics days. It meant one thing:
there’s substance.
I went to the designated location—an underground bar in old Chinatown.
A Closed for Repairs sign hung outside. In truth, it was one of his informants’ meeting spots.
Inside, the lighting was dim and yellow. The air smelled of smoke and cheap liquor.
Wai Hing sat at the bar with two untouched glasses of whisky in front of him.
“This place has more noise than alcohol,” I said, taking a seat.
He smiled. “Everyone here is eavesdropping on someone else. That makes it safer.”
He handed me an envelope.
Inside was a photograph—a high-angle night-vision image, probably taken from surveillance footage.
In the picture was Commissioner Lau Kwok Fan, standing inside an underground facility. Behind him was a row of sleep pods.
The timestamp in the corner read September 14, 2021—four days before Lan Chi Ying’s death.
“Where was this taken?” I asked.
“Cold Storage Warehouse No. 1 in the dock district. Outwardly it’s listed as Wing Sing Frozen Logistics.”
“How did your informant get this?”
“He was one of the night-shift security guards there.”
“Is he still alive?”
Wai Hing fell silent for a few seconds.
“He was hit by a car yesterday. The report says accident.”
I crushed out my cigarette.
“This world really loves writing endings for people.”
“And we’re the ones who tear the cover off,” Wai Hing said lightly. “There’s one more thing. The night before the Forensic Center explosion, the Commissioner was there.”
“Evidence?”
“Someone saw him walk in. He left fifteen minutes later.”
I looked at the reflection in the whisky. Its surface was red, like a liquid sunset.
“He was cleaning the scene,” I said quietly.
“To be more precise,” Wai Hing replied, “he was terminating an experiment.”
At eight that night, Chi Yan sent an encrypted file with a single text message attached:
Don’t connect to the internet. Once opened, it self-destructs in fifteen minutes.
Man Man and I sat in the dim warehouse, the laptop screen lighting her face.
The video quality was poor, like old surveillance footage.
The room in the video was a laboratory—we recognized it immediately.
It was the basement level of the Forensic Center.
In front of the camera, a young woman was strapped to a chair, wearing a brainwave monitor.
The screen beside her displayed:
Subject 7 – L..C.Y.
Lam Chi Ying.
The image flickered and shifted to another angle.
The Commissioner stepped into the frame, removed his coat, and said in a steady voice:
“Prepare for Phase Seven.”
Dr. Lau Zi Him hesitated beside him.
“Her brainwaves are beyond threshold. She’s been inside the dream too long. It could—”
“I said start.”
The Commissioner’s voice was as cold as a machine command.
The sound of the machinery rose.
The waveforms on the monitor spiked.
Lam Chi Ying’s eyes widened. Her lips parted. No sound came out—only an expression of pain.
And then—
she smiled.
A calm smile.
Lau Kwok Fan’s shadow fell across her face like a black hand.
The video cut off.
An error message flashed:
Data Corrupted
Man Man paused the video and let out a long breath.
“That’s how she died.”
I nodded.
“She was an experiment. The Commissioner needed proof that E-IX could control consciousness—make dreams into a tool.”
“Then why burn the Forensic Center?”
“Because Lin Chi Ying was never supposed to wake up. There may still have been evidence in her mind that he didn’t want left behind.”
Silence.
Man Man looked at me.
“What are you going to do?”
“Keep digging.”
“Even if the entire police administration is the enemy?”
I looked into her eyes. There was fire there.
“I’m not investigating them,” I said. “I’m investigating who the truth is supposed to belong to.”
At the same time, elsewhere.
Chee Yan’s apartment, in the old residential district of the western side.
The light from the soldering iron flashed on and off. The walls were lined with dismantled hard drives and circuit boards.
Mun Tseng sat on the sofa, recording the decoding process in a notebook.
“We have seven more hours to recover the files,” Chi Yan said, fingers still flying over the keyboard.
“In seven hours, they may find us,” she replied, looking up.
“I know.” He smiled faintly. “But if I were the type to be afraid, I wouldn’t have fallen for you.”
She froze for half a second.
“You saved me in a fire. What else is there I can’t be afraid of?” he said, still typing, his tone as light as a joke.
“That wasn’t saving,” she said quietly. “That was… a choice.”
He stopped and looked up.
“A choice?”
“I chose to believe you would come back.”
When she said it, her tone was calm, but there was light at the corner of her eyes.
Chee Yan reached out and placed his hand over hers.
They said nothing more, yet that silence carried more weight than words.
Then the screen lit up with a new folder:
Project MORPHEUS / Directive
They looked at each other.
“Open it,” Mun Tseng said.
Chee Yan pressed Enter.
The screen displayed a text record:
Objective: Establish a controllable collective-consciousness model.
Method: Use E-IX to induce a shared dream state, allowing test subjects to share memory and form a collective subconscious.
Application: Social stability management, behavioral guidance, emotional regulation.
Primary Supervisor: L.K.F.
L.K.F.—Lau Kwok Fan.
Chee Yan swore under his breath.
“He wants to build a dream society,” Mun Tseng said quietly. “A group with no resistance, no emotion.”
Chee Yan was silent for a long time. Then he said,
“Then we’ll be the first ones awake inside the dream.”
That night, the four of us split up.
Man Man and I infiltrated Wing Sing Frozen Logistics—the place in the photograph.
From the outside, the warehouse looked like any cold-storage facility, but infrared scanning showed an underground level.
I pried open an air vent. Cold mist poured out from within, and beneath it was a steel ladder.
Below the ladder—
darkness.
The lights flickered three times before stabilizing.
The underground level was larger than we expected.
An entire row of silver-white sleep pods stood in perfect order.
The familiar fragrance filled the air—jasmine, white sandalwood, sweetness and bitterness intertwined.
On the wall was a slogan:
No guilt in dreams.
I stepped closer to the first pod.
Beneath the transparent cover, a man slept with no expression on his face.
The monitor showed: heartbeat stable, alpha waves elevated.
Man Man studied the instruments.
“They’re not dead.”
“No,” I said. “They’ve been left inside the dream.”
I moved from pod to pod, reading the labels.
Then I froze.
The seventh name—
LAM, CHI YING (林芷瑩).
My chest tightened.
Her pod was intact. Her heartbeat was slow but steady.
Man Man whispered,
“She’s still alive?”
I stared at the data.
A faint pulse every three seconds.
That wasn’t alive.
That was being kept.
Suddenly, the monitor beside the pod lit up.
Words appeared automatically on the screen:
Welcome back, Loke Tin Kay.
We both drew our guns at the same time.
Every light in the warehouse shifted to pink.
The fragrance in the air thickened until it was almost sweet enough to taste.
Then a voice came through the speakers—low, steady, commanding.
“Loke Tin Kay, stop running.”
“The dream you’re investigating does not belong to you.”
“Come back.”
“Sleep.”
That voice was the Commissioner’s.
I aimed my gun at the main console.
“If this is a dream,” I said, “then I’ll wake it.”
One shot shattered the central screen. Sparks flew.
The lights flickered twice—
then everything went black.
In the darkness, only the fragrance remained.
Like blood.
Like flowers.
Then I heard machinery begin to move in the distance.
One pod after another started opening.
Man Man tightened her grip on my hand.
“He’s waiting for us to go in.”
I squeezed her hand back and laughed coldly.
“Then let him wait a lifetime.”
We turned and ran upward.
Behind us, pod lids opened one after another like beasts waking.
Every stair felt like stepping across the border between dream and reality.
And I knew—
this war was no longer about solving a case.
It was a war to take wakefulness back from the dream.