Location: Longhai – Subterranean Vault Archive Zeta
Codename: THREAD-01: "Origin's Fall"
THREAD-01 wasn't above ground.
It wasn't a city, not anymore.
It was what came before—a testbed buried under Longhai before the Orchid Protocol had a name. And it still pulsed, silent and unseen, beneath the financial towers and neon tech plazas Lin Feng had walked for years.
The Crimson Circle had always wondered why Orchid let them build here. Why Longhai, the capital of counter-movement, remained untouched.
Now they knew.
"Because she already won here," Lan Ke whispered, staring at the satellite heat map.
Beneath their feet, a city older than memory was still awake.
Entrance to Archive Zeta
Lin Feng stood before a concrete vault sealed with triple-encrypted iris scans.
Mouse's voice crackled through his earpiece.
"We only got in because Ma Xiuyun's collapse broke the final relay. This place… wasn't meant to be opened."
Su Qingyue's hand hovered over her sidearm. Her breath misted.
"Temperature's dropping. She's venting cryo."
Lan Ke stayed behind. This was personal for her. Too personal.
Lin nodded once.
And stepped in.
Inside Archive Zeta
The corridor lights came on one by one, triggered by his steps.
Each flicker revealed fragments.
A crib, lined with sensor arrays.
A room of drawings—hundreds of children's sketches filed like case reports.
A mirror, cracked at eye level.
A wall, scrawled in chalk: "We were never meant to forget."
Then the chamber opened.
And she was there.
Not Orchid Root—but a woman identical in face, not age.
Young. Pale.
Plugged into a neural cradle.
And behind her, floating like silent judges: three others.
Clones?
Or prototypes?
The woman's eyes opened as Lin Feng stepped forward.
And she smiled.
"You look just like him."
"…Like who?" Lin asked quietly.
She blinked slowly, dreamily.
"The original Lin Feng. The first failed one."
Flashback Fragment – Project: SPIRAL
[Redacted. Year Unknown.]
The Orchid Protocol hadn't begun with domination.
It began with memory transference. The dream of preserving genius beyond death.
Lin Feng was patient zero.
A mind so adaptable, it survived multiple iterations across host bodies.
He wasn't born in a street war.
He was engineered for survival.
And they—these four—were early models.
Discarded.
Unstable.
But conscious.
Still here.
Back in Zeta
The young woman—Prototype IV—touched the edge of her neural cradle.
"She wanted you to come here. So you'd know."
Lin Feng stared.
"You're not going to fight?"
She smiled faintly.
"No. You were the only one who made it out. You're the only one she feared."
Then her tone shifted.
"She's going to awaken us. All of us. If you destroy THREAD-01, she'll lose control. And so will we."
"And if I don't?"
"Then we become her next army."
Outside – Orchid Root's Command Deck
"Zeta is compromised," one analyst reported.
Orchid didn't respond. She stared at the flickering heartbeat indicators of the prototypes below.
Then she said one word:
"Awaken."
And every screen turned red.