Log 09
Pressure Line
The silence was unnatural.
Waves struck the hull of the boat without sound, as if the world had been muted.
I looked toward the distant city—New City.
Fog wrapped around it, glowing white. The entire skyline looked like an electrocardiogram: smooth, without fluctuation.
“Is that really fog?” Man Man whispered.
“No.” I looked at her, lowering my voice as well. “That’s light feedback.”
She frowned. “You mean… the entire city’s lights are flashing in sync?”
“Yes. The city is dreaming.”
Our lifeboat slid into the shadow of the breakwater.
The tide carried the smell of oil and corroded metal.
New City should not have been this quiet.
At four in the morning, the harbor should at least have the distant horn of a tugboat or the clanging metal of forklifts.
But now—
there was only wind.
Even the wind was strange—too evenly cold, without direction.
I pulled up the hood of my coat and slung on my compact backpack.
“Land. Now.”
Man Man followed smoothly.
Her footsteps were lighter than I expected, silent as they touched the ground.
In the police force she had trained in Wing Chun, skilled in close contact and redirecting force. In moments like this, that training mattered.
The harbor had two defensive layers: outer patrol drones and an inner infrared sensor wall.
I pulled a modified EMP disruptor from my bag—something Chi Yan had left behind.
“Three-second pulse,” I said. “Run.”
She nodded.
I pressed the switch.
A nearly silent vibration swept through the air, like a heartbeat skipping once.
The infrared wall flickered twice and died.
We rushed through the corridor of darkness—concrete walls, rusted pipes, steel doors stamped with “Restricted.”
As I ran, I looked back.
The city in the distance resembled a magnified X-ray film. Through the fog, lights blinked slowly.
Every building.
Every streetlamp.
Every vending machine indicator.
All pulsing in the same rhythm.
—the frequency of a heartbeat.
—the cadence of an alpha wave.
At last I understood.
MORPHEUS wasn’t just controlling human dreams.
It was putting the entire city to sleep.
People linked to the city.
The city linked to the network.
The network linked to me.
I was the metronome.
“Where are we going?” Min Min asked.
“The Shadow Room,” I said.
It was our MCS safehouse.
Second floor of an abandoned harbor cold storage facility—an old darkroom filled with whiteboards and cables.
Every deduction, map, and clue we had ever gathered was hidden there.
When we turned the corner of the dock, Min Min suddenly grabbed my arm.
“Stop.”
I slipped behind a cargo container.
A patrol light swept past ahead of us.
Not an ordinary searchlight—a red pulse lamp.
The blinking frequency matched the E-IX alpha band.
“They’re using light waves to test brainwave responses,” she whispered.
“Which means,” I replied quietly, “any brain reacting to that frequency reveals who you are.”
I inhaled slowly.
This wasn’t a simple blockade.
It was a consciousness scan.
We could only move along the wall, inch by inch.
The puddles along the port reflected the red light, casting twisted shadows.
I saw my own shadow trembling.
Not from the wind.
From my heart.
As we passed the warehouse district, a drone hovered overhead.
I lowered my head instantly.
It was a police M4E model—high-level reconnaissance from the Lau Kwok Fan era, equipped with an E-IX dispersal module.
I knew that every mechanical eye in this city was now dreaming.
They were no longer monitoring people.
They were monitoring those who were awake.
“How long until the shutdown cycle?” Man Man asked.
“Two minutes,” I checked my watch.
“Too long.”
She pulled out a thin needle and pierced the valve of an oil drum beside the container.
“Step back.”
I did.
She tossed a lighter.
Boom—
the fuel vapor ignited, flames shooting ten meters into the air.
The drone turned instantly, alarms blaring.
In those few seconds we ran through the firelight.
The heat wave swept past my face, the smell of burning mixing with the salt of the sea.
I caught that familiar scent—
caramel and blood.
“Still able to run?” I asked.
She smiled.
“If I can’t run, who’s going to yell at you for being reckless?”
The entrance to the Shadow Room was hidden behind the cold storage freezer wall.
I entered the code: 170918—the date Lam Chi Ying died.
The door opened.
Inside the air was damp and dusty.
The lights flickered before stabilizing.
The whiteboards on the walls were still there, the marker lines cracked with age.
The last time we left, a sentence remained written there:
“No trace in dreams, guilt in the heart.”
I stared at the words, a weight tightening in my chest.
Wai Hing had written that.
We began setting up.
I powered on the computer and connected the external battery.
When the screen lit up, I expected the familiar login interface.
Instead, a single line appeared:
SYSTEM OVERRIDE: MORPHEUS-CITY α ACTIVE
“The entire police mainframe has been taken over,” Man Man said.
I nodded.
“Our data is syncing too.”
She frowned.
“So everything we’ve done—our actions, records, conversations—is being replayed inside the dream?”
“More precisely,” I pointed at the screen, “it’s being predicted.”
“It learns us. It knows our next move.”
She was silent for a moment.
“So what do we do?”
“Something it can’t learn.”
“Like what?”
“Errors.”
I opened the computer case and pulled the power cable out, plugging it back in randomly.
The screen flashed white.
System errors filled the display with red warnings.
I smiled.
“It expects commands. Instead, I’m making chaos.”
“You’re sure that helps?”
“Sometimes humanity’s greatest advantage is being irrational.”
She looked at me, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly.
“That sounds like something Wai Hing would say.”
I froze for a moment.
“Yes. He would.”
I took a deep breath and reached into my coat pocket, pulling out a smoke-blackened USB drive.
Wai Hing had given it to me before the harbor explosion.
“If I’m gone, this is the backdoor.”
I inserted it.
The screen flickered twice and opened a hidden window.
It read:
MORPHEUS-CORE
PRIMARY SOURCE = L.T.K.
BACKUP SOURCE = [NULL]
“That’s you,” Man Man said.
“Yes.”
“They built the system using your brainwave pattern.”
“That’s right,” I said quietly.
“As long as I’m alive, MORPHEUS won’t stop.”
She looked at me with complicated emotion—worry mixed with understanding.
“What are you planning to do?”
“Find a substitute.”
“A substitute?”
“A fake me,” I said, closing the laptop.
“A ghost node. Let the system believe I’m still dreaming while I slip out of it.”
“And who can do that?” she asked.
I thought for a moment.
One name surfaced.
Chee Yan.
The fool who could find miracles inside mistakes.
“We need to find Chee Yan,” I said.
“But wasn’t he—”
“No body, no death,” I cut her off.
I opened a hidden cabinet and took out an encrypted radio.
Chee Yan had modified it himself, imitating military-grade frequencies.
I entered his call sign.
“5021-Charlie, respond if you hear this.”
At first there was only static.
Then a faint voice—broken and trembling.
“…Tin Kay…?”
I gripped the receiver.
“Chee Yan. Where are you?”
“Not sure… West district… underground…”
“You’re alive?”
“Barely,” he laughed weakly. “Thought I died in a dream.”
“You didn’t. The city is taken over. MORPHEUS is still running.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I’m looking at a mirror copy of the city control system.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone… is updating the system. The login ID isn’t the Commissioner.”
My breathing stopped.
“Who?”
Silence.
Then he said the name.
“Lau Zi Him.”
Man Man and I looked at each other.
The air froze.
“He’s alive?”
“Not just alive,” Chi Yan said.
“He’s running the new MORPHEUS system—the Beta version.”
I clenched my teeth.
“Location?”
“Medical school. Basement level three.”
I said slowly:
“Wait for me.”
The transmission ended.
I looked at Man Man.
“We’re going back to the medical school.”
She nodded.
“That’s the core of the dream now.”
Before leaving the Shadow Room, I paused at the door.
The sentence “No trace in dreams, guilt in the heart” had blurred with moisture.
Below it, I wrote another line with my finger:
“If you’re awake, go find the dream.”
We changed into old work clothes and wore harbor worker jackets, blending into the early-morning city.
Daylight had come, but the sky remained gray-white.
Few people walked the streets.
Everyone moved at the same pace.
Even their footsteps sounded synchronized.
“They’re walking in their dreams,” Min Min whispered.
“Yes,” I said.
“MORPHEUS has taken them. They’re sleepwalkers now.”
A small boy stood at a street corner holding a balloon.
The balloon was pink.
Printed on it were the words:
“Sleep Well.”
He looked up at me with empty eyes.
“Uncle, you should rest.”
I froze.
The tone of his voice—
exactly like the MORPHEUS voice prompt.
I reached for the police badge in my pocket.
But I said nothing.
“Let’s go,” I murmured.
We passed beneath Central Bridge.
Ahead, the white tower of the medical school stood surrounded by fog, like the center of a dream.
Wind blew from that direction.
It carried the faint scent of jasmine.
Man Man asked softly,
“Do you smell that?”
I nodded.
The scent wasn’t a fragrance.
It was a signal.
MORPHEUS was still broadcasting.
The entire city—
was still dreaming.
I looked up at the sky.
Its color was silver-gray, like it had been washed with water. The clouds were frozen waves.
I spoke to myself.
And to the city.
“We’re back.”
“This time—
the dream wakes.”