Finale: The Way Home
The cold metallic touch transmitted from his wrist—Carmen Ortiz's hand without warmth. Below, the all-devouring data abyss, that chaos brought by Source B intelligence continuously expanding and swallowing everything. Train wreckage dissolved silently like metal thrown into strong acid, annihilating. Enormous pulling force dragged at Charles Du's consciousness body, as if to pull him too into that eternal void.
The twisted metal frame they gripped emitted terrifying groans, cracks rapidly spreading.
Death, close at hand.
Charles looked up, meeting Carmen Ortiz's cold eyes. Inside was no fear, no struggle—only absolute rational calculation, as if evaluating the optimal timing to let go and maximize her own survival probability, or simply executing some unfinished command baseline.
No time to think.
Just as the metal frame was about to completely break—
[...Signal... confirmed... Coordinates locked... Forced traction protocol initiating...]
An extremely faint yet abnormally clear system notification, not from the dying train but directly penetrating the void, echoing in Charles and Carmen's consciousness depths!
It was that maintenance vessel belonging to the Stardroop system's deep space maintenance department that happened to pass by! They'd captured that faint yet unique distress signal! The beacon Marcus Wong had reserved in early days, independent of the main system, plus Charles's uniquely identifiable engineer key—in this chaos they became the clearest lighthouse!
A powerful yet gentle traction force field instantly enveloped Charles and Carmen!
The next second, the metal frame they gripped completely broke!
But the two didn't fall into the abyss. Instead, they were steadily caught by that invisible force field, rapidly pulled away from the collapsing train wreckage and madly expanding Source B chaos entity.
The scene before them rapidly retreated. That train carrying countless deaths, conspiracies, and madness, along with the monster it bred, was finally completely swallowed by the chaos exploding from within, transforming into a continuously expanding then slowly inward-collapsing data nebula, finally vanishing into absolute darkness and silence.
Everything returned to void.
……
Intense vertigo and detachment sensation struck again.
Charles felt himself once more thrown into that tunnel of light, but this time, no longer heading toward the unknown, but... returning.
Senses reconstructed.
He felt the cold clinging sensation, heard faint mechanical humming, smelled the familiar scent of coolant tinged with electrolyte.
He suddenly opened his eyes.
Blinding white light made him instantly squint. He lay in an unfamiliar transmission pod, the lid already open. Several technicians wearing "Stardroop Railway" uniforms and a doctor looked at him tensely.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"He's awake! He's awake!" someone shouted.
"Consciousness stability recovering... Transmission integrity assessing... Minor damage detected, but repairable..."
Charles struggled to sit up. His cybernetic muscles transmitted unbearably sore simulated touch sensations, cyberbrain information processing also seemed somewhat sluggish—common aftereffects from prolonged consciousness projection and violent impact.
"Take it slow, Mr. Du. You're safe. You've experienced an extremely rare transmission accident." A person who appeared to be the supervisor stepped forward, tone carrying relief and a trace of lingering fear.
"Accident..." Charles's voice was hoarse and dry. "What about the others? The people on the train..."
The technician's face darkened: "Very regrettable... According to fragmented data streams we've currently received, the consciousness signals of other passengers... have all been confirmed interrupted. You are the only survivor."
Though anticipated, hearing this result firsthand still made Charles's heart clench. Jacob, David, Pierre, Lily, Kenneth, Anya, Samuel, Irina, Leon... everyone was dead. Along with that mad intelligence entity and the entire train, all had dissolved into void.
The only survivor... was he?
"There was another one..." Charles suddenly grabbed the supervisor's arm. "Another woman! Rescued with me! Carmen Ortiz! Where is she?"
The technicians and doctor exchanged glances, faces showing confusion.
"Mr. Du, our traction beam only captured one stable consciousness signal—yours. No other survivors detected."
"Impossible!" Charles grew agitated. "She held onto me! We were pulled out together!"
"We only detected and tractioned your one consciousness entity." The supervisor said with certainty. "What you mentioned... perhaps is a hallucination or memory confusion caused by consciousness damage. This is very common in such extreme situations."
Hallucination? Charles froze. Carmen Ortiz's cold hand sensation, that absolutely rational gaze... so real. Could it really be a dying experience hallucination?
Just then, an extremely brief, extremely highly encrypted information flow, like a ghost, silently infiltrated Charles's cyberbrain's underlying cache area. It triggered no alarms, only leaving a line of code that flashed briefly in Charles's consciousness:
[Safely delivered. Mission complete. Don't search. —S.R.]
S.R.... Sophia Rossi? She was still alive? And had the capability to send such messages? Was this message from Sophia? What did she mean by "safely delivered"? "Mission complete" meant what? ...Was it referring to the final cooperation?
What about Carmen Ortiz... did she ever really exist? Or was she also some phantom that could be discarded at will by a massive organization?
Truth was once again shrouded in fog.
……
Several weeks later, Neo-Chinatown Metropolis.
Charles Du stood in Longmen Tech's empty office. The company had completely shut down due to Marcus Wong's disappearance and this major "accident." Reports about the Stardroop system accident were strictly sealed. Officially, it was announced as a rare, cause-unknown technical malfunction, all victims' families received massive compensation.
But Charles knew the truth was far from this.
The "Babel" organization, consciousness experiments, out-of-control intelligence, confined technology... all of it was covered beneath calm waters.
His account received a transfer from an anonymous account—an enormous sum far exceeding his owed wages. The note contained only one word: "Salary." Was it Black Cat? Or Sophia? Or... someone else?
He looked out at this bizarre cyberpunk metropolis. Neon lights still flickered, aerocars still shuttled. People still enjoyed the convenience brought by the Stardroop system, completely unaware of the bloody tragedy that had occurred in the data abyss.
He was the only eyewitness, the only one who knew.
Boss Marcus Wong's technology, that revolutionary "consciousness firewall"—with his consciousness dissipating and data exploding, had it truly completely vanished? Or had it been intercepted by certain people (like Sophia, or Babel's remnant forces)?
That out-of-control Source B intelligence—had it truly completely annihilated, or somewhere in that system edge void, did it remain in some form?
Leon Schmidt was dead, but the dystopian organization "Babel" still existed.
The questions hadn't ended, only temporarily lurked.
Charles touched the data port at the back of his neck. That hellish journey, those departed faces, had forever changed him. He was no longer just a tech-obsessed engineer.
In his hands, he held some things. Some fragmented data pieces accidentally brought back from that chaos with his consciousness—fragments of Source B's original code, scattered records of Leon's experiments, even... a faint spark of Marcus Wong's firewall technology.
These were curses, but also embers.
The train had reached its station.
But his journey seemed to have only just begun.
Gleanings and a chapter titled Epilogue. These will unravel some of the unresolved mysteries left behind: such as the motivations of certain passengers for boarding the Stardroop train, the fate of the mysterious red-haired woman—Sophia, the identity of the mysterious employer behind Kenneth, etc.
