The elevator jolted violently between the 19th floor and -B floor, and Li Xiaoming's knuckles turned white from holding Kailan's hand tightly. The burn on her wrist was overlapping with his own at a speed visible to the naked eye. The electric shock came from the skin where they met, mixed with the smell of formalin in the laboratory, which brought back fragments of memories of the snowy night when he was seven years old - he also protected Kailan in this way at that time, the golden light of the metal stick reflected the snowflakes on her eyelashes, and the lights of the convenience store in the distance were like a star that was always warm.
The moment the iron door was blasted open by the electromagnetic pulse, Li Xiaoming suddenly turned sideways and hit the abandoned car frame, and the rusty car bell made a shrill sound. The first electromagnetic cannon of the cleaner brushed past his hair and burned a charred hole in the iron wall. The smell of burning cloth mixed with the smell of mint candy in his work clothes pocket. He bent his elbow to protect Kailan's neck, and used the "narrow alley dodging skills" he learned while running orders to move in a serpentine manner among the piles of electric vehicle wreckage - these old parts that he had helped Brother Zhang move now made crackling sounds due to electromagnetic interference, becoming a natural signal maze.
The CRT TV lit up with snowflakes in the blast wave. The seven-year-old self was waving a metal stick to repel the black-clad man. Kailan's father's voice seeped out from the noise: "The last four digits of Xiaoming's work card are the day he started running orders to record his heartbeat." Kailan's fingertips just touched the glass cabinet, and the ground suddenly cracked. The sound of the tactical boots of the cleaners crushing metal parts approached within two meters. She pulled off the broken silver bracelet chain around her neck and drew sparks on the work card graffiti on the back of the note - each digit of the number "1378" was vibrating, and it buzzed with Li Xiaoming's work card. It was a symbiotic code woven by her father using her birthday (0927) and the day Li Xiaoming started running orders (137 days).
Susan Li's high heels beat out a dangerous rhythm in the corridor. The powder box in her palm turned out a cold metallic light, but her pupils shrank suddenly when she saw the burn on Kailan's wrist. "Not bad, you can make it this far." Her headset suddenly beeped, and Chen Ge's distorted face flashed across her lens: "How dare you hide the first generation splitter!" When Susan pulled off the headset, the burn below her collarbone glowed pink under the emergency light - that was the first burn mark of the brain-computer interface when she took the overload of the metal stick for Kailan in the winter of 2012.
"You have buried 72 firewalls in the clearing program." Kai Lan called up the system log of 2017, her fingertips hovering over the history record of "Confirm Deletion", and the green sub-code was automatically parsed into a protection program. "Each firewall will burn your hippocampus, right?"
SUSAN's powder box lid "clicked" to the ground, revealing the same burns on her palm as Li Xiaoming: "The brain-computer interface that Brother Chen implanted in me is now his surveillance camera." She pulled off her left earring, and the micro-electrode brought out blood. The water flow gathered at her feet, reflecting the abnormal beating iris behind the lens - the visual nerve disorder caused by long-term tampering with the system made her always see double images when she looked at the data stream. "At the 2018 welcome party, every time I deleted a memory of yours, I had to spit blood on the console."
Kai Lan suddenly noticed SUSAN The edge of the work card was charred, and the employee status was clearly displayed: [High-risk experimental subject, countdown to removal: 04:57:12], and the health report automatically popped up in the data stream: [Neuron necrosis rate in the brain area 37%, memory storage capacity of the hippocampus remaining 22%]. "So you deliberately left a fold on page 37 of "Love in the Time of Cholera" and used "grilled sausage" as a memory anchor..."
"Because you said when you were seven years old," SUSAN bent down to pick up the powder, her fingertips drew a golden matrix in the air, and the projection of the "Eye of Eros" on the ceiling of the laboratory cracked, "The grilled sausage sent by Xiao Ming is sweeter than the system data. These scars are the price of retaining memory fragments." She tore off her suit jacket, and her entire shoulder was covered with scars burned by electrodes, like a distorted code map.
When the red light of the electromagnetic gun enveloped the laboratory, Li Xiaoming suddenly remembered the "dark zone survival rules" circulated in the delivery group: humid environments can interfere with electromagnetic pulses. He picked up the incubator and smashed it against the fire sprinkler valve. The water poured down like a waterfall, forming a shimmering mirror on the ground. The footsteps of the cleaner echoed in the water curtain. He accurately calculated the other party's position - this was the effect of the 37 office building fire escape structures he had memorized when running orders. The distance of each corner was engraved in the calluses on his palms.
"Kai Lan! Hit this frequency with the silver bracelet fragments!" SUSAN's fingertips drew out the hexadecimal code, which was synchronized with the vibration frequency of Kai Lan's silver bracelet fragments. The golden matrix projected a virtual keyboard in the water flow. "Remember the 'XM' password I taught you when you were twelve years old? That's not a random code, it's the pinyin initials of 'Xiao Ming'."
Kai Lan's tears dripped on the distributor, activating the hidden holographic image: On March 15, 2023, SUSAN vomited blood in front of the console, and the screen showed Li Xiaoming's delivery routes - each route was marked in red as a "key protection target." "Why are you doing this?"
"Because your father said so," SUSAN's voice became softer and softer, but the cracks on her lens became more and more. The "Xinyuan Technology" logo on her work badge began to melt, revealing the "Anti-System Alliance" badge underneath. "A real system should be like the hot rice balls Xiao Ming sent, which can warm people's hearts instead of monitoring them."
The surveillance in the corner of the laboratory suddenly switched scenes, and the scream of pregnant woman Wang Mengmeng pierced the screen. She was holding the railing of the delivery bed with the same silver bracelet and broken chain as Kailan - those were the parts that fell from the carton when Li Xiaoming helped her move the express three weeks ago, and they were resonating with the golden light on the baby's palm. "Don't touch my child!" She gritted her teeth and pushed away the nurse who tried to take the baby away, revealing the work badge left by her husband - the former chief researcher of Xinyuan Technology, number 03. In the photo on the back, Li Xiaoming was teaching her how to use the delivery APP at a convenience store, and the bottom of the box was written in marker: "To the unborn little readers, may you always have hot rice balls in winter."
[A new controller was detected! It is recommended to execute the clearing procedure immediately.
The system bullet screen flashed wildly on the nurses' retinas, and Wang Mengmeng took the opportunity to take out the metal stick fragment hidden at the bottom of the incubator: "You can change the data, but you can't change people's hearts." She pressed the fragment on the baby's wrist, where the same burn as Li Xiaoming was emerging, and the heartbeat ripples on the monitor suddenly became abnormally stable, like a piece of system code without noise.
The elevator finally stopped at the -B floor. Hundreds of "Eros Eye" projections floated on the dome of the circular laboratory, and every picture was collapsing - except for SUSAN's memory fragments: twelve-year-old Kailan was lying on the laboratory floor, drawing a little sun on her code draft with crayons; seven-year-old Li Xiaoming stood in the snow holding a metal stick, protecting the little girl with a silver bracelet behind him.
"Let's choose the third option." Li Xiaoming inserted the metal stick into the altar, and his voice was as firm as that of a runner who was running through the snow and wind, "Let the system see what kind of resonance will burst out when people's hearts are no longer controlled by data."
The altar roared, and all the projections shattered at the same time. SUSAN caught the falling powder dispenser, and the words on the inside were clearly visible in the morning light: "To my daughters: Kailan's courage is the start button, and SUSAN's sobriety is the firewall. —— Father, 2012.12.15" Her body began to become transparent, but she still tried to force a smile: "Go to the negative third floor, where there is the core server of the first generation system... and the real system code that your father left for you."
Kailan held her gradually disappearing hand, and finally remembered that snowy night, when sister SUSAN held her hand and typed "XM" on the keyboard and said: "Remember this password, it can open all locked doors." It turns out that not all codes are cold, some codes are written with body temperature and heartbeat.
Morning light poured in from the skylight of the laboratory. Li Xiaoming's phone vibrated. The note of the new order flashed with Kai Lan's handwriting: "Need to be delivered - the truth of thirteen years, and the honesty every day in the future." He touched the sticky note on the back of his work card. It was the little sun that Kai Lan drew when she said "thank you" for the first time. Now it was slightly hot in the morning light.
Kai Lan looked at the place where SUSAN disappeared. The broken silver bracelet suddenly glowed, and the fragments spelled out the word "XM" in the air - that was their first generation system, which was warmer than any code, and the password of the human heart.