Log 12
System Breach
The message was so brief it was almost cold:
“See you underwater — Gamma Level.”
I stared at the screen for a full thirty seconds before Man Man spoke. “Who sent it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could it be Lau Zi Him?”
“If it were him, he wouldn’t ask me to come meet him.” I slipped the phone into my coat pocket. “It might be… one of ours.”
Outside, the wind still carried salt. The White Tower stood far off in the mist, like a bone polished until it had no edges left.
New City’s morning had returned to its noise—
car horns, the wet market, newspaper vendors shouting headlines. Everything looked normal.
But I knew there was a sound underground that hadn’t been erased. It didn’t belong to the wind.
It belonged to the sea.
When we returned to the “Shadow Room,” people were already there.
Lee Chee Yan, Min Zheng, Iris, RootKnot, Nori, P — all of them.
The table was piled high with equipment: diving tanks, steel cables, submersible cameras, acoustic jammers. They didn’t look surprised to see me, as if they had expected a second round.
“I got the message too,” Chee Yan said.
“You did?” I asked.
He nodded and pulled up the same text on his laptop—except his had two additional letters at the end: LC.
“LC?” Man Man frowned.
“Local Core,” P answered quietly. “It means a local node.”
That reminded me of the phrase on the recorder: two cold backups.
“They said MORPHEUS Beta has cold backups… meaning Gamma.”
Chee Yan nodded. “Beta is the city’s primary control. Gamma is the data insurance. In other words, if Beta dies, Gamma resurrects. The system never truly shuts down.”
“So where is Gamma?”
“Under the sea.” Nori projected an infrared map.
A red dot blinked off the eastern harbor, in the subsea energy pipeline zone—where only tidal generators and cooling systems were supposed to exist.
“Here,” he said, pointing. “It’s actually a data center. Officially called ‘AquaVault.’ Jointly held by the Energy Ministry and the Medical School.”
My chest tightened. “The Medical School?”
Iris gave a bitter smile. “The White Tower’s underground communication line connects directly to it. Beta is the upper layer. Gamma is the lower. They mirror each other. When Beta wakes, Gamma sleeps. When Beta sleeps, Gamma wakes.”
“So,” Chee Yan concluded, “we smashed Beta—Gamma opens its eyes.”
“The eye beneath the sea,” I murmured.
Lee Wai Hing wasn’t there.
He had gone to track down remaining “White Robe” operatives. Before leaving,
he said only one thing:
“The dream isn’t over. The sea is still breathing.”
I pressed play on the recorder again. A new audio file had appeared—no source metadata.
“Loke Tin Kei, the answer you want is under the sea. Don’t fear the cold. Cold reminds you that you’re alive.”
It was Wai Hing’s voice.
He was watching from somewhere in the dark, clearing a path for us.
Before departure, I stood before the mirror on the wall.
The man staring back looked hollowed by light. Too many nights lingered in his eyes.
Man Man leaned against the doorframe. “Have you slept?”
“I closed my eyes.”
“That doesn’t count.”
I smiled faintly. “I’m still working inside the dream.”
“Then I’ll be the one to wake you,” she said. It sounded like a joke, but it weighed more than a vow.
We boarded a harbor maintenance vessel. Chee Yan took the helm; Iris and Nori monitored depth.
Night was swallowed by mist. Only strips of reflected wave-light remained.
The sonar beneath the hull hummed steadily, forming pale red circles on the display. Each returning echo sounded like the city breathing.
“Water temperature dropping to eleven degrees,” Nori reported. “That’s abnormal. The cooling system is overclocking.”
“Gamma is running,” P said quietly. “It’s self-initiating.”
Chee Yan pressed his lips thin. “Less than twelve hours after Beta’s death, it wakes? That’s too fast.”
“Maybe someone helped it,” I said.
“You mean—?”
“Lau Zi Him.”
Silence filled the cabin. Everyone knew what that name meant.
He was the doctor of dreams. And the disease.
The wind strengthened; waves struck harder. The boat lurched and Chee Yan cursed.
“There’s something moving under us.”
“A current?”
“No. Artificial propulsion.”
Iris’s eyes lit up. “Defense system.”
“They’re guarding Gamma,” I said, gripping my seat.
On the screen, a curve pulsed like the breath of a whale.
P analyzed it. “Patrol submersible. Codename Oculus—the vanguard of the Eye Beneath the Sea.”
“So it’s not a metaphor,” Man Man said coldly. “It’s literally an eye.”
We had to dive before it blinked.
Iris activated acoustic interference, and the vessel sank swiftly beneath the surface.
Cold seawater pressed against the hull like invisible walls. The mechanical vibration and the heavy thrum of water sounded like hearing your own heartbeat in a deep dream.
“Depth twenty meters… thirty…”
“Reached pipeline sector two.”
“Four hundred meters ahead—intake airlock.”
That was Gamma’s external interface.
We suited up, sealed pressure masks, and slipped into the water one by one.
Cold flooded into my sleeves. Even breath turned white.
My heartbeat slowed, but my thoughts sharpened.
The seabed had no sound. Only pressure spoke.
Man Man led, pushing aside drifting silt with smooth precision, almost like a marine creature.
Watching her, I thought: humans are better suited for places like this than machines. Because we feel fear. And fear makes us careful.
We reached the intake airlock.
Faded letters marked the metal door:
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY / LEVEL GAMMA ACCESS REQUIRED
Chee Yan’s voice crackled inside my helmet. “Eight-digit code. I need five seconds.”
“You have three,” I said.
“Damn. Same old line.” His fingers flew across the controller.
In under three seconds, the red light turned green. The door opened.
Seawater rushed into the chamber, dragging us inside.
The interior was a vast circular space. Cooling pipes lined the walls like gills.
At the center hovered a transparent cylinder glowing blue.
It wasn’t illumination. It was computation.
Streams of data pulsed outward like jellyfish tendrils.
“That’s one of Gamma’s cores,” P explained through the comms. “It dissipates heat through ocean temperature gradients and transmits data via ion flow. In simple terms—it’s using the sea as its brain.”
I stepped closer. A faint vibration radiated from the cylinder—like a heartbeat, slower than Beta’s.
“Is it sleeping?”
“No,” P replied. “It’s breathing.”
Chee Yan plugged in an external port. Code flooded the screen.
“Encryption level R-0. Self-destruct protocols active. To infiltrate, we must first decode its rhythm.”
“Rhythm?” Man Man asked.
“The system’s computational tempo simulates human alpha waves—based on Loke Sir’s old data.”
“Me. Again,” I said coldly.
“You’re the seed of the dream,” Chee Yan replied. “Without you, the system has no soul. But souls don’t obey.”
Iris spoke quietly. “I found a secondary channel. Not energy—more like… a neural bridge?”
Nori confirmed. “It connects to a terrestrial research institute. Which means—Gamma is communicating with someone.”
“Who?”
“Unknown.”
P suddenly cut in. “Someone’s on your channel.”
We froze.
A voice came through the headset—calm, low, echoing like sound through water.
“You really came.”
I recognized it immediately.
“Lau Zi Him.”
“Loke Sir,” he said, his tone like laughter behind glass. “You’re even more stubborn than I expected.”
“You’re in Gamma?”
“No. I’m in Delta.”
My pulse spiked.
“There’s another layer?”
“Dreams have no end,” he said evenly. “Smash one mirror, and it becomes fragments. Each fragment holds you.”
Chee Yan muttered, “Crazy bastard.”
“He’s not crazy,” P corrected. “He’s migrating. Gamma is transferring his consciousness data to the next layer—Delta’s subsea server matrix.”
“He wants to dream with the sea,” Man Man said coldly.
“No,” I said through clenched teeth. “He wants the dream to swallow the sea.”
A command flashed on-screen:
DELTA-INITIATE / 30:00 COUNTDOWN
Thirty minutes.
“In thirty minutes,” Chee Yan said, staring at the timer, “Gamma will fully descend and fuse with the seabed cables. After that, MORPHEUS can never be extracted.”
I inhaled deeply.
“Then we have thirty minutes.”
Man Man met my eyes. “Plan?”
“Find the heart. Cut off its blood supply,” I said. “Make Gamma suffocate.”
“And you?”
“I’ll be the bait.”
Chee Yan immediately objected. “No. The moment you interface, it’ll drag you back into phase.”
“Unless I let it grab me,” I said, eyes cold, “and make it choke.”
The lights flickered.
It had heard us.
P’s voice lowered. “Loke Sir. Once we start, there’s no turning back.”
I nodded. “Dreams never turn back.”
I looked up at the blue light pulsing inside the cylinder.
That glow wasn’t mechanical. It was the electricity of a heart.
And I spoke—to it, to Lau Zi Him, to the entire city beneath the sea:
“This time, I’m going to make you hear the sound of silence.”
The message was so brief it was almost cold:
“See you underwater — Gamma Level.”
I stared at the screen for a full thirty seconds before Man Man spoke. “Who sent it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could it be Lau Zi Him?”
“If it were him, he wouldn’t ask me to come meet him.” I slipped the phone into my coat pocket. “It might be… one of ours.”
Outside, the wind still carried salt. The White Tower stood far off in the mist, like a bone polished until it had no edges left.
New City’s morning had returned to its noise—
car horns, the wet market, newspaper vendors shouting headlines. Everything looked normal.
But I knew there was a sound underground that hadn’t been erased. It didn’t belong to the wind.
It belonged to the sea.
When we returned to the “Shadow Room,” people were already there.
Chee Yan, Mun Tseng, Iris, RootKnot, Nori, P — all of them.
The table was piled high with equipment: diving tanks, steel cables, submersible cameras, acoustic jammers. They didn’t look surprised to see me, as if they had expected a second round.
“I got the message too,” Chee Yan said.
“You did?” I asked.
He nodded and pulled up the same text on his laptop—except his had two additional letters at the end: LC.
“LC?” Man Man frowned.
“Local Core,” P answered quietly. “It means a local node.”
That reminded me of the phrase on the recorder: two cold backups.
“They said MORPHEUS Beta has cold backups… meaning Gamma.”
Chee Yan nodded. “Beta is the city’s primary control. Gamma is the data insurance. In other words, if Beta dies, Gamma resurrects. The system never truly shuts down.”
“So where is Gamma?”
“Under the sea.” Nori projected an infrared map.
A red dot blinked off the eastern harbor, in the subsea energy pipeline zone—where only tidal generators and cooling systems were supposed to exist.
“Here,” he said, pointing. “It’s actually a data center. Officially called ‘AquaVault.’ Jointly held by the Energy Ministry and the Medical School.”
My chest tightened. “The Medical School?”
Iris gave a bitter smile. “The White Tower’s underground communication line connects directly to it. Beta is the upper layer. Gamma is the lower. They mirror each other. When Beta wakes, Gamma sleeps. When Beta sleeps, Gamma wakes.”
“So,” Chee Yan concluded, “we smashed Beta—Gamma opens its eyes.”
“The Abyssal Eye,” I murmured.
惠興不在。
他去追查「白袍」殘餘的內線。臨走前只留一句：「夢沒完，海還在喘。」
我點開桌上的錄音筆，裡面新增了一段音檔，沒有聲源紀錄。
「駱天祈，你要的答案在海底。別怕冷，冷能讓你記得你活著。」
那是惠興的聲音。
我知道，他在暗處盯著我們，替我們鋪路。
準備出發前，我走到牆邊的鏡子前。
鏡中的自己像被光掏空，眼神裡有太多夜晚的影子。
珉敏靠在門邊，看著我：「你睡過嗎？」
「閉過眼。」
「那不算。」
我笑笑：「我還在夢裡工作。」
「那我負責叫醒你。」她說，語氣像玩笑，卻比誓言更沉。
我們搭乘港區維修艇，志仁操舵，豆蔻與Nori檢測深度。
夜色被霧吞掉，只剩海浪反光的縫。
艇底的聲納發出規律嗡鳴，聲波在儀表上形成淡紅的圓。
每一次回波，都像城市在呼吸。
「水溫下降到十一度，」Nori報道，「這不正常，冷卻系統在超頻。」
「γ在運轉。」P低聲，「它正在自我啟動。」
志仁抿嘴：「β死後不到十二小時，它就醒，這反應太快。」
「也許有人幫它。」我說。
「你指的是？」
「劉子謙。」
船艙陷入短暫的沉默。
每個人都知道那名字代表什麼。
他是夢的醫生，也是病。
海面上的風越來越重，浪拍得更急。艇身一晃，志仁罵了一聲。
「有東西在水下動。」
「潛流？」
「不是。那是人工動力波。」
豆蔻眼睛一亮：「防禦系統。」
我握緊座椅：「他們在守γ。」
螢幕上跳出一道曲線，像鯨魚呼吸的軌跡。
P分析：「是巡邏型潛航器，代號Oculus——水底之眼的前哨。」
「所以名字不是比喻，是真的眼睛。」珉敏冷冷道。
我們得在它「眨眼」之前潛下去。
豆蔻啟動聲波干擾，艇體迅速沉入水下。
冰冷的海水像無形的牆，一層層壓在外殼上。
耳邊是機械振動與水的重音，像在深夢裡聽到自己的心跳。
「深度二十米……三十……」
「到達底部二號管道。」
「前方四百公尺，有進氣閘口。」
那是γ層的外部接口。
我們穿上潛行裝備，帶上防壓面罩，一個個潛出艙口。
冷水瞬間侵入袖口，連呼吸都結成白。
我心跳變慢，思緒卻異常清晰。
海底沒有聲音，只有壓力在說話。
珉敏在前，雙手推開懸浮的沙霧。
她的動作乾淨，幾乎像水生物。
我看著那道身影，忽然覺得——人比機器更適合潛入這樣的地方。因為我們害怕，而恐懼能讓人小心。
我們抵達進氣閘口。
金屬門上刻著褪色的警告標誌：AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY / LEVEL GAMMA ACCESS REQUIRED。
志仁把通訊釘在我頭盔內側：「代碼鎖是八位數，我需要五秒。」
「你只有三。」我說。
「靠，還是那句老話。」他苦笑，指尖飛快敲擊控制器。
三秒不到，紅燈轉綠，門緩緩打開。
海水捲入氣閘的瞬間，我們全被吸了進去。
閘室內部是巨大的圓形空間，牆上布滿像鰓一樣的冷卻管線。
中間懸浮著一個透明圓柱，裡頭閃爍著藍光。
那光不是照明，是運算流。
一條條資訊像水母觸手，向外擴散。
P的聲音從耳機裡傳來：「那是γ的核心之一。它透過海水溫差散熱，同時以離子流進行資料傳輸。簡單說——它在用海當腦。」
我走近圓柱，感覺到一股細微的振動——像心跳，但節奏比β更慢。
「它在睡？」
「不，」P回答，「它在呼吸。」
志仁在控制台上插入外掛端口，螢幕跳出密密麻麻的代碼。
「資料加密等級R-0，」他邊看邊念，「同時有自毀程序。要入侵，得先破解心律。」
「心律？」珉敏不解。
「這系統的運算節奏模擬人腦α波——駱Sir的舊數據。」
我冷冷道：「又是我。」
「你是整個夢的種子。」志仁苦笑，「他們沒了你，系統就沒靈魂。可偏偏靈魂最不聽話。」
豆蔻低聲：「我發現一個副通道。這不是能量管線，而是……神經橋？」
Nori立刻調出影像：「確定。它通往陸上研究院。也就是說——γ在與某人對話。」
「誰？」
「未知。」
P忽然插話：「有人在你們頻道裡。」
我們全愣。
耳機裡傳來一個聲音——平靜、低沉，帶水的回音。
「你們真來了。」
我認出那聲音。
「劉子謙。」
「駱 Sir，」他的聲音像隔著玻璃的笑，「我該說你比我想的更固執。」
「你在γ層？」
「不，我在δ。」
我心頭一震。
「還有一層？」
「夢沒有盡頭。」他語氣平淡，「你砸碎一面鏡，它會生出更多碎片。每個碎片裡，都有你。」
志仁罵了一聲：「該死的瘋子。」
「他不是瘋，」P說，「他在轉移。γ正在把他的意識數據導入下一層——δ層的水下伺服矩陣。」
「他想用海做夢。」珉敏冷聲道。
「不，是讓夢吞海。」我咬牙。
螢幕上跳出一條指令：DELTA-INITIATE / 30:00 COUNTDOWN
倒數計時。
「三十分鐘後，γ層將完全下潛，與海底電纜融合。」志仁看著數字，「到那時，MORPHEUS就沒人能拔掉。」
我深吸一口氣。
「那我們只有三十分鐘。」
珉敏抬眼看我：「計畫？」
「先找心臟，再掐斷它的血管。」我說，「讓γ自己窒息。」
「那你呢？」
「我當誘餌。」
志仁立刻否決：「不行，你一接入它就會被再抓回相位。」
「除非我讓它抓——」我眼神冷，「再讓它噎死。」
屋內的燈光閃動。
我知道，它已經「聽見」我們的打算。
P低聲：「駱Sir，一旦開始，就沒回頭。」
我點頭：「夢從來沒回頭。」
我抬頭，看著那圓柱深處緩緩流動的藍光。
那不是機械的亮，那是心臟裡的電。
我對它說——也對劉子謙說，也對整個海底的城說：
「這次，我要讓你聽聽沉默的聲音。」