The abandoned giant signal tower stood like a rusted steel giant at the edge of the Scrap Heaps, silent and pointing toward the gray sky.
Far from the noise, only the wind moaned through its metal framework like the whispers of the dead.
The air was thick with the smell of metal corrosion and an unusual, faint trace of ozone.
Silver Wolf stood at the tower’s ground-level entrance, looking up at the massive structure.
Her small figure looked especially solitary beneath the enormous shadow.
On her back was a modified tactical backpack that seemed heavier than she was, containing her essential equipment and one of her closest companions: the intelligent floating photon cannon, Prometheus.
// The internal electromagnetic environment is extremely chaotic, with strong artificial interference sources.
Baida’s voice came through the micro bone-conduction communicator implanted in Silver Wolf’s ear, carrying unprecedented gravity.
// My remote sensing is severely suppressed.
Quantum tunneling will also be heavily affected.
Silver Wolf, this feels…
very bad.
“I know.” Silver Wolf replied softly, her purple eyes sharply scanning the surroundings.
“But this is the only place to get the Genesis Dust data core.
And the only place to…
end all of this.” She meant both the massive reward that could change Marta’s fate and the endless entanglement with the Corporation and the bounty hunters.
She took a deep breath and stepped into the tower’s dark entrance.
The interior was dim, lit only by emergency lights casting sickly green patches on the dusty, cable-strewn floor.
Her footsteps echoed through the empty space, unusually clear.
Following the contract instructions, she needed to reach the core control room in the middle of the tower.
Every step was cautious.
Prometheus floated silently beside her, its barrel rotating slightly, scanning for potential threats.
// Multiple life signs detected…
well-hidden…
a lot of them!
Baida’s warning suddenly rang out, sharp and piercing.
Almost at the same moment.
Whoosh—Whoosh—Whoosh—!
Countless electromagnetic cluster rounds, trailing blue flames, shot out from all directions—from the shadows of the upper platforms, from beneath the floor grates—like striking vipers.
They didn’t directly target Silver Wolf but collided and exploded violently in the space above and around her.
Hum—!
A massive interference field of chaotic electromagnetic waves, visible to the naked eye, formed instantly like an inverted bowl, completely enveloping Silver Wolf and Baida.
“Ugh!” Silver Wolf grunted, feeling as if a hammer had struck her brain, dizziness washing over her.
Her connection with Prometheus became extremely unstable, the floating cannon wobbling violently.
// Warning!
External connection bandwidth dropping sharply!
Quantum channel blocked!
Network perception range compressed to under fifty meters!
Baida’s voice carried obvious distortion and pain.
// Designed for us…
a trap!
“Finally here, huh…” Silver Wolf gritted her teeth, forcing through the discomfort, a fierce glint in her eyes.
“Prometheus!
Activate full combat mode!”
“Command confirmed.” A synthesized electronic voice responded.
The floating photon cannon instantly deployed, its core energy emitting a low hum.
Four distinct virtual personality modules, each with its own emotional tone, were activated.
[Friend] Module Activated: “Targets locked.
Priority: eliminate threat units.
Silver Wolf, stay close.” The voice was calm and reliable.
Prometheus’s barrel was precisely aimed at a bounty hunter who had just poked a gun out from the shadows.
A thin but highly concentrated energy beam fired instantly, vaporizing both the weapon and the arm holding it.
[Demon Lord] Module Activated: “Scum!
Feel the roar of destruction!
Hahaha!” The voice was wild and destructive.
The photon cannon switched forms, sending a thick torrent of energy plowing forward, swallowing both cover and several hunters behind it, triggering a chain of explosions.
[Worker] Module Activated: “Tch, another one of these dirty jobs.
Ballistic calculations complete.
Obstacles marked.
Slave, go deal with the guy trying to flank on the right.” The voice was impatient but efficient, simultaneously providing Silver Wolf with tactical maps and threat markers.
[Slave] Module Activated: “Yes, yes…
going now.” The voice was listless, but the action was precise.
A small sub-turret detached, automatically tracking enemies and accurately picking off the poorly equipped grunts trying to approach from the flanks.
Silver Wolf herself didn’t pause for a moment.
Her hands flew across the virtual keyboard, her Aether Editing ability fully deployed.
The metal floor beneath her instantly liquefied and reshaped into a temporary shield, blocking incoming bullets.
The corridor ahead suddenly collapsed, trapping several charging hunters.
She even tampered with the still-operating, low-power lighting system, causing the lights to flicker wildly, disrupting enemy vision.
Bounty hunters poured out from every corridor like a tide.
They were well-equipped, wearing armor capable of resisting energy weapons to some degree, and armed with various firearms, electromagnetic weapons, and melee gear with energy suppressors.
They had clearly been trained for coordinated operations, their attacks coming in waves, relentless in their expenditure of ammunition and energy, their goal to exhaust every bit of Silver Wolf and Prometheus’s strength.
“Left!
Three of them!
Demon Lord!”
“Received!
Destruction descends!”
“Friend!
Upper right platform!
Sniper!”
“Eliminated.”
“Worker!
Report energy reserves!”
“67% remaining, but cooling system under extreme pressure!
Can’t sustain high load for much longer!”
“Slave!
Watch your feet!
Landmines!”
“Ah…
so troublesome…”
Prometheus’s four modules operated efficiently under Silver Wolf’s command, but the enemy numbers were overwhelming, the attacks too dense.
The cannon’s armor began showing dents and scorch marks, its energy shield flickering.
Silver Wolf’s breathing grew faster; the high-intensity Aether Editing was taking a heavy toll on her mind.
And beneath this physical battle, an even more dangerous, silent war raged in parallel.
On the data front, Baida endured unprecedented pressure.
The electromagnetic interference field severely limited her capabilities, but she still relied on the absolute resilience of her [Mental Barrier] to build layer after layer of invisible data walls around Silver Wolf.
// High-intensity data piercing attacks detected!
Sources…
three directions!
Corporate-hired top-tier hackers!
Baida’s messages flashed rapidly at the edge of Silver Wolf’s vision.
// Attempting to breach Prometheus control system…
intercepted!
// Attempting to parse Silver Wolf’s neural link protocol…
firewall active!
// Logic bombs…
deflected!
// Virus injection…
quarantined and removed!
The hunters clearly knew Silver Wolf’s weakness lay in her network connection.
They had spared no expense in hiring multiple hackers to launch continuous attacks, trying to cripple Prometheus or, worse, directly harm or even control Silver Wolf’s brain through the neural link.
Baida’s data stream was like a boiling ocean.
She not only had to maintain what little deflection of physical attacks she could manage—extremely difficult under current conditions—but also had to fully protect the “lifeline” connecting Silver Wolf to the outside world.
She compressed her barrier to its limit, making it denser, like the toughest silk thread, tightly wrapping and protecting Silver Wolf’s consciousness.
Every hacker attack that struck the barrier caused violent tremors in her data core, already in pain from the interference.
“Baida!
How are you holding up?” Silver Wolf asked urgently between dodging a rocket, feeling Baida’s voice growing fainter.
// Still…
holding on!
Baida responded, the characters fragmented.
// Focus on the enemy!
Don’t get distracted!
The battle continued.
Ten minutes.
Twenty minutes.
Prometheus’s overload alarm shrieked sharply.
“Warning!
Core temperature critical!
Weapon system efficiency down 30%!”
[Worker] module reported: “Energy remaining 41%!
Cooling system about to collapse!”
[Friend]’s precise shots began to miss.
[Demon Lord]’s roars grew weaker.
[Slave]’s sub-turrets: two had been destroyed.
Silver Wolf’s equipment was damaged in multiple places.
Her tactical backpack had been sliced open by a stray bullet.
She herself was battered, her arm grazed by shrapnel, blood staining her sleeve.
Her Aether Editing range was shrinking, precision dropping.
The hulking man called “Fortress” advanced step by step under [Demon Lord]’s suppressing fire, carrying a heavy weapon.
“Shadow” moved like a ghost through the shadows, searching for a killing blow.
“Jammer” kept adjusting the pulse disc, trying to find a frequency that could completely disable Prometheus.
// Silver Wolf…
my energy…
almost depleted…
Baida’s voice was barely audible.
// The barrier…
can’t hold much longer…
Despair coiled around Silver Wolf’s heart like a cold serpent.
She looked at the enemies still surging like the tide, at Prometheus on the verge of collapse, feeling Baida’s connection growing fainter in her mind.
Was this it?
No.
Just as a hunter broke through the fire line, an energy-suppressor blade about to pierce Silver Wolf’s back—
Suddenly, a change.
The spot on Silver Wolf’s neck where the seemingly ordinary USB drive hung—Baida’s physical body—suddenly erupted into an unprecedented, blinding brilliance.
It wasn’t light in the physical sense, but the manifestation of pure, surging data streams and quantum energy condensed to the extreme.
An indescribable pressure, vast as a sea of stars, exploded outward from Silver Wolf’s center.
All attacks—bullets, energy beams, data streams—collapsed like waves against a rock before this pressure, annihilated in an instant.
The charging bounty hunters, including “Fortress,” “Shadow,” and “Jammer,” froze as if held by an invisible giant hand, their faces filled with terror and disbelief.
The electromagnetic interference field shattered like fragile glass.
At the center of that dazzling light, a blurry, slender figure slowly condensed.
No longer the translucent, illusory quantum avatar, but something more solid, as if formed from pure starlight and data.
Its face remained unclear, but those eyes, as if formed from countless stars, swept across the scene with a calm that saw all life as straw dogs, radiating an aura that rivaled the terrifying presence of an Emanator of Erudition.
“Baida…?” Silver Wolf murmured at that figure, filled with shock and unease.
The solid figure turned slightly toward Silver Wolf.
The indifference in those star-like eyes melted instantly, replaced by the familiar gaze Silver Wolf knew so well—filled with endless tenderness and resolve.
A clear, calm voice sounded directly in Silver Wolf’s mind, no longer through the bone-conduction device, but communication on a soul level:
“Bronya, little Silver Wolf…”
That name made Silver Wolf tremble.
Bronya—her real name, almost forgotten.
“Now run forward,” Baida’s voice was gentle but carried an undeniable power, “don’t look back, as fast as you can.”
Silver Wolf instantly understood what Baida was about to do.
A wave of panic seized her: “No!
Baida!
I can’t leave you!
We’ll go together—”
“Be good…” Baida interrupted, her voice still gentle but carrying an unyielding firmness, like a final instruction from an elder to the younger, from an older sister to her little sister.
“Live on.
Take care of your mother.”
Before the words faded, Baida’s solid figure erupted into a final, brightest light.
She no longer maintained human form but transformed into a sweeping, pure quantum torrent.
This torrent bypassed Silver Wolf, wrapping around her in ways beyond understanding, then launched her like a projectile on an invisible high-speed track, crashing through the tower walls and racing toward “home” at speeds beyond physical limits.
“BAIDA—!!!”
Silver Wolf’s cry was left behind, fading into the wind.
She could only watch as the giant tower and the blinding sphere of light within it—like a miniature supernova—grew smaller in her vision.
The next moment, an earth-shattering explosion came from the tower’s center.
Not fire and shockwaves, but a storm of pure energy and data.
That light consumed everything, completely annihilating all the bounty hunters, all the ambushes, all the unwillingness and greed.
…
When Silver Wolf regained consciousness, she found herself standing beneath their familiar apartment building, as if the brutal battle had only been a nightmare.
But her damaged equipment, the wound on her arm, and the heart-wrenching pain in her chest all told her it was real.
She staggered back into the apartment.
Marta was still sleeping, seemingly undisturbed by the distant explosion.
With trembling hands, Silver Wolf opened her data editor.
The account interface popped up automatically.
Balance displayed: 10,000,000 credits.
A full ten million.
The deposit and full payment from that contract were already sitting quietly in her account.
Staring at that long string of life-changing numbers, Silver Wolf felt no joy.
She stared blankly at the screen.
Tears, without warning, poured out like broken beads, large drops splashing onto the cold keyboard.
She lost her voice, only able to sob silently, her shoulders shaking violently.
The glow of the account balance illuminated her tear-streaked, young but weathered face.
Outside the window, on the distant horizon, the afterglow of that explosion of data and quantum energy was slowly fading, like a shooting star that had burned itself out, just to bring her a moment of light and…
enough hope to carry on.
“Baida…”
She finally choked out the name.
In the air, it seemed a faint, familiar warmth of data fluctuations still lingered, like a silent farewell, and an eternal promise of protection.