Log 10
Hidden Variable
Beneath the city, there is another world.
There is no light there—only flickering screens and the damp sound of breathing.
We moved in stealth from the port district to the abandoned metro line in the west. Our footsteps echoed against steel walls.
The tracks had long been sealed, the station signs faded. The only thing still glowing was the blue light reflected off underground water.
“Is he here?” Man Man asked.
“Yes. He said he was in the west.”
“There are so many underground levels. You’re sure?”
I smiled faintly. “He’ll leave a clue.”
Sure enough, on the brick wall at the third junction were four numbers: 5021.
Chee Yan used to write that number at the police academy. It meant “the final exit.”
I looked up. The lights flickered.
A hidden door in the corner stood half open. From inside came the faint crackle of a welding torch.
I pushed the door open.
The room was dim. Several monitors flickered with lines of code.
Chee Yan sat among heaps of electronic debris, his eyes bloodshot.
When he saw me, he froze for a moment, then broke into a grin. “You really came back.”
“You’re alive?” I asked.
He bared his teeth. “Lucky. The roof collapsed in front of me.”
“Wai Hing said you were dead.”
“Wai Hing?” He paused, then gave a bitter smile. “That old man sure knows how to put on a show.”
I stepped forward and clapped his shoulder. “You’ve seen the fog over the city, right?”
“I have.” His expression turned serious. “The entire network is breathing, like it has a heart. After the Commissioner died, MORPHEUS started learning on its own.”
“Who’s controlling it now?”
“Lau Zi Him.” He pointed at the screen, where a face flashed briefly—cold, emotionless.
“I pulled this from the main server fragments. There’s a control terminal named ‘Project MORPHEUS β’ in the basement level three of the medical school.”
I fell silent for a few seconds. “He’s rewriting the dream.”
“More precisely,” Chee Yan said, “he’s turning the dream into a normal state.”
He pulled back a curtain beside him. Inside, a group of people were typing rapidly at keyboards.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Friends,” Zhìrén said. “My old circle from the Intelligence Technology Division—the ghostwriter.”
They were men and women with ordinary appearances, but sharp eyes.
“This is Iris Tan—RF engineer and radio hacker. The bearded one is RootKnot, system root specialist. That’s Nori, anomaly detection expert. And—P.”
He pointed to the quiet figure in the corner.
P was small, wearing headphones. He didn’t look up, only said, “Don’t let MORPHEUS hear.”
“It’s listening?” Man Man asked.
“Always,” P replied, his voice like an echo in the air. “MORPHEUS β isn’t just a system. It’s part of the city. Every word you say can be reconstructed by it.”
I turned to Chee Yan. “We need your help. I’m going to create a fake version of myself.”
He stared at me for a few seconds, then smiled. “A fake you?”
“Yes. Let MORPHEUS think I’m still online—while I’m actually offline.”
“A ghost node,” Doukou said. “Theoretically possible. But we need primary-source brainwave data.”
I handed over the USB drive. “It’s in here.”
RootKnot took it and plugged it into the server. “The real thing. This is the city’s alpha source template.”
Thousands of waveforms flooded the screen like a storm of electronic heartbeats.
“That’s Loke sir’s brainwave frequency,” Nori said softly.
P studied it for a moment, then said, “It can be copied. But to fool the main control, it needs an equivalent soul.”
“What does that mean?” Man Man frowned.
“MORPHEUS β verifies ‘cognitive signatures,’” P explained. “If the ghost node doesn’t have the same thinking pattern, it will self-destruct.”
“Then use my thinking pattern,” I said.
“Not enough,” P replied. “You need a mirror.”
Silence fell over the room.
Chee Yan tapped the desk. “Then I’ll do it.”
I shook my head. “No. It’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” He laughed. “Brother, I’ve been living in danger. The fire. The dream. And her.”
He glanced toward Mun Tseng.
She stepped out of the shadows, wearing an old shirt, eyes steady. “Don’t be surprised. I escaped with him.”
Man Man smiled. “Of course you didn’t die.”
“Still alive means still working,” Mun Tseng shrugged. “Chee Yan said you’d need help.”
I looked at the two of them and felt something stir in my chest—like the day MCS was first formed.
Five people. Five lives.
The team that once existed only in a dream had gathered again in reality.
“This is the plan,” Chee Yan said, drawing a massive ring on the whiteboard. “MORPHEUS β’s main control is at the medical school. But the city has nine synchronization nodes. If we implant ‘Ghost L.T.K.’ into one of the nodes, the system will think Loke sir’s consciousness is still active in the network. That way, you can disconnect safely.”
Iris added, “We need bandwidth. The city’s RF system refreshes every three minutes. I can slip the fake signal into the refresh gap.”
RootKnot said, “I can forge the authentication signature and temporarily make the main control trust the fake source.”
Nori warned, “But MORPHEUS β has self-correction. It will detect anomalies in thirty minutes.”
“So you only have thirty minutes,” P concluded.
I looked at them. “Is that enough?”
Chee Yan grinned. “We used to breach the central network in fifteen.”
“This time we’re breaching a dream.”
He shrugged. “Then let’s dream faster.”
Before we began, Man Man adjusted the brainwave leads behind my head.
“You’re sure you want to do this yourself?” she asked.
“It’s my dream. I have to pull the plug myself.”
She paused, then said softly, “Then promise me—don’t wake up alone again.”
I smiled faintly. “You’re holding onto me.”
She didn’t answer. She simply clasped my wrist, firm and steady—like a quiet promise.
Chee Yan called out from the console. “Countdown—three, two, one!”
“Channel locked!” Iris.
“Master key forged!” RootKnot.
“Interference signal activated!” Nori.
“Ghost L.T.K. loading,” P murmured.
On the screen, waveforms overlapped, resonated, merged.
My mind felt split in two—half in reality, half drawn into light.
The light had no color, but it had warmth.
I saw another “me” standing in it, expressionless.
The ghost—the fake me.
“Source established,” P said.
“Heartbeat?” Chee Yan asked.
“Normal. City frequency synchronized.”
I let out a breath.
Then alarms blared.
“Main control anomaly detected!” Nori shouted. “β system is countering!”
“How?” RootKnot cursed. “It’s reverse-tracing!”
Red streams of data flooded into the fake node.
P’s face changed. “It’s trying to devour it!”
Chee Yan slammed the keyboard. “I’ll block it!”
His fingers flew. Code streamed like gunfire.
“I can cut the power!” Man Man shouted.
“No!” I said. “If you cut power, the ghost dies!”
“Chee Yan!” I yelled.
Without turning, he said coldly, “Don’t worry about me. You’re the primary source. Only you can live.”
“Don’t talk nonsense—”
“I owe this city a dream.”
Red light flashed. He hit the transmit key.
The entire underground room went dark.
Seconds later, the screens flickered back to life.
“System stable,” P said quietly. “Countermeasure stopped. Ghost node operational.”
I rushed forward. “Chee Yan!”
He leaned back in his chair, breathing hard.
“I’m not dead,” he grinned. “Just got bitten by the dream.”
“You’re insane,” Man Man muttered.
“How else do you write dreams?” he winked.
The system stabilized. Iris projected the main control display onto the wall.
The city’s synchronization waves were dropping.
The white fog thinned. The lights flickered out of sync.
“It worked,” RootKnot said.
“For now,” P added. “β control will relearn. You need to move.”
“Next step?” Man Man asked.
I stared at the blinking map and tapped the central red dot—the medical school.
“That’s the root.
Lau Zi Him is there.
We’re going to make him watch the dream wake.”
Chee Yan leaned back, calm. “We’ll stay here and maintain the ghost node. Someone has to buy you time.”
I looked at him. “Thirty minutes?”
“Twenty-five,” he smiled. “I want five minutes to see what this city really looks like.”
I extended my hand.
He clasped it.
“This time,” I said, “we’re not just solving a case. We’re saving a city.”
He grinned. “Then don’t waste the dream I just wrote.”
When we stepped out from underground, the sky was already bright.
The white fog remained, but cracks had formed. Light seeped through.
Man Man tightened her coat and looked toward the distance. “The medical school.”
I nodded.
“That’s the heart of the dream.”
Wind poured down between the skyscrapers, carrying a familiar scent—
Not jasmine.
Not blood.
Dust.
Dry, real, throat-catching dust.
I looked up at the white tower in the fog.
Only one thought filled my mind:
“No matter how deep the dream, someone must dare to wake it.”