Chapter 297

The blue light was still flashing in the basement, as if it hadn't been cleared away completely. The air trembled slightly, the display on the wall flickered on and off, and the data stream broke off then reconnected.

Zhao Chen's hand still rested on the tablet, fingers unmoving, eyes fixed on the last line of readings.

The heart-rate curve flattened; all eighty-seven users had returned to normal rhythm. She exhaled, her shoulders slackening at once.

"Clearance complete." she said, her voice low, as if speaking to herself.

System popped up a prompt: 【Detected large-scale neural intervention terminated, threat neutralized. Resolved major crisis, reward issued: Emergency Treatment Specialist.】

She didn't look at that golden box, but first opened the patient monitoring page. On the screen, the blind man who used to be a music teacher sat at the bedside, his fingers lightly tapping his knee, humming a tune. The child beside him took off the equipment, suddenly laughed, turned to his mother and said, "I dreamed I was singing."

Then the second, third… more and more people began to speak—not shouting, not crying, but singing one line after another. The lyrics differed, the pitch was off, but nobody stopped.

Zhao Chen lowered the volume a bit and leaned back against the chair.

This situation wasn't in the contingency plan, but she didn't find it strange. It was like a string that had been wound tight for a long time suddenly loosening—people always make some sound.

She raised a hand to rub her temples, flipped her wrist, and pulled up the backend log. The source path of the firmware update package was already marked in red; the program disguised as a security patch was hidden deep, having gone through three layers of encapsulation before revealing its true form—a micron‑scale metal structure affixed to the signal relay module, like a parasite.

She should have thought of it earlier. When she last saw that abnormal fluctuation, the signal waveform already showed a slight distortion, as if someone had lightly scratched the tape with a fingernail.

"It's not a virus," she had said then, "it's hardware."

Now it has been broken down into fragments by nanorobots and flushed out with the simulated brain fluid into the waste tank. The screen shows the cleanup progress: 100%.

The door was pushed open a crack, and Sha Zhu poked half his body in. He didn't come in, standing at the doorway looking at his daughter's back for a moment, then glancing at the numbers on the screen.

"All taken care of?" he asked.

"Mm."

"Are the people okay?"

"Fine, they're all singing."

Sha Zhu gave a grin, walked in, holding a repaired piece of equipment. He set it on the desk, turned it so the light illuminated the small hole in the interface.

"My mom used to say I was clumsy—I could even solder a radio wrong." he said, "But this thing is harder to fix than anything I ever took apart back then."

Zhao Chen didn't turn around, "But the principle is the same. They both transmit sound—only this time we're pulling the sound out of the brain."

"What if we used it elsewhere?" Sha Zhu suddenly asked.

"Where?"

"At the tumor site," he said. "If we could use this to locate where cancer cells first appear and intercept them early, wouldn't that be better than waiting for them to grow and then cutting them out?"

Only then did Zhao Chen turn around. She looked at Sha Zhu and saw that his eyes held no joking, but an uncommon seriousness.

She didn't rush to answer, rose, walked to the desk, picked up the machine, and opened its casing. Scorch marks remained on the circuit board—left over from when the Crystal self‑destructed due to interference.

She touched a spot at the edge with her fingertip.

"This area was originally for stabilizing neural feedback; if we repurpose it for biological marker tracking, in theory we could lock onto abnormal metabolic signals." she said, "But we'd need to recompile the driver and run clinical trials."

"Don't you think this idea is pretty sound?" Sha Zhu asked.

"Pretty sound." she nodded, "When did you start understanding all this?"

"I don't understand," he said. "I just see you swamped like this and think, with such great ability, couldn't we save a few more people? Not just the deaf, mute, and blind, but also those lying in hospitals wasting away day by day."

Zhao Chen lowered his gaze to the device in his hands and said nothing more.

She knew Sha Zhu didn't understand code, nor what a nanocluster was, but he could read people's tears. He knew that when someone puts on this device and can speak, the first thing they say is "Mom, I miss you."

That's enough.

She put the machine back, sat back in the chair, opened a new window, and began drafting a technical migration feasibility report. The title was simple: 《Potential Application of Brain‑Machine Interfaces in Early Cancer Screening》.

The system fell silent for a few seconds, then another prompt popped up: 【Detected high‑value derivative proposal, logged as 'Cross‑Domain Medical Proposal', entered into growth trajectory】.

She ignored it and kept typing.

Ten minutes later, she saved the file, sent it to the internal shared directory, and added a note: "For research reference only, not yet verified."

Having finished those tasks, she finally lifted her head to check the time.

Seventeen minutes had passed since the jump was initiated. By rights they should have been gone by now.

Yet she could still feel the solidity of the floor under her feet and hear the wind blowing from the vent overhead.

The blue light hadn't faded completely; it had merely dimmed, like a lamp about to run out of power.

She reached out and touched the control console; the metal surface was slightly warm.

"We haven't left yet." she said.

Not a question.

She didn't know how the others were faring, nor whether Zhao Xing and Zhao Yang had made it into the passage safely. All she knew was that her consciousness remained in this body, that she could still operate the equipment and process data.

Perhaps it's because the mission isn't finished.

Perhaps it's because there's still work to be done.

She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again; her gaze fell on the last pending log entry.

【Should the 'suicide protocol' instruction template be permanently archived?】

She clicked 'Yes.'

【Execution successful. Such code has been added to the global blacklist.】

She released her grip and leaned back.

At that moment, the singing also stopped.

It didn't cut off all at once; instead, the voices faded one by one, like a crowd slowly dispersing. Finally only a child's voice remained, softly singing something in the empty monitoring channel, then it too fell silent.

Zhao Chen opened the patient status summary page.

Everyone's brainwaves were steady, emotional scores back in the normal range. Three children were asleep, breathing evenly; the veteran was writing, tracing each stroke of 'thank you'; the music teacher touched his own face, as if he couldn't believe what he'd just heard was real.

She closed the page.

The entire system entered sleep mode, with only the emergency lamp still glowing green.

She stood up, her legs a little numb, and steadied herself by holding the desk.

They looked up, and the blue light on the ceiling flickered again.

This time it was weaker than before, like a candle in the wind.

She opened her mouth, and her voice was very soft.

"Dad, I've done it."

After saying that, she didn't move again, nor did she sit down.

She just stood there, watching the data screen in front of her dim little by little.

The wind from the vent stopped.

The edge of her clothing slowly floated up, as if held by some invisible force.

The sensation under her feet was diminishing.

The next second, her finger lightly touched the edge of the tablet.

The screen suddenly lit up.

A new line of message popped up:

"Doctor Zhao, I can speak."