Episode 036| The First Note

Kaiyuan Year 1010, January 1 · 5:46 p.m. · CV-1A on Approach · Saint Tranya Outer-Ring Airspace

Just as Lika was drifting off, that fragment flickered again.

Under the ice, a row of backs bent low. A mark turned half a circle, facing the wrong way. A woman's voice, sounding out syllables he couldn't read.

Same as every time before, the moment he tried to focus, his temple twinged deep and the image blurred along with it. He let go. He'd already learned not to force a look at this thing — forcing it only hurt, and showed nothing. He set it back in that spot at his temple and let it flicker on its own, fade on its own.

He opened his eyes.

Beyond the porthole, Saint Tranya's sea of lights had already spread to the horizon. From this altitude the whole city looked like a glowing circuit board, the maglev lines lit copper rails, the main tower clusters components soldered onto it. The CV-1A began its descent, shortcut mode lining up an approach slot with air traffic control — under another identity that didn't exist, of course.

6-odd hours, and he'd flown back.

That fight in the tundra, that Instance that had run its own procedure to the end, that person who'd read the record 10 minutes ahead of him — a whole pile of things he couldn't see through, all of it pressed down in his head, not one of them untangled yet. The state he hated most was exactly this: every single thing in his hands one layer deeper than he'd reckoned.

He shut his eyes, meaning to grab a few minutes before touchdown.

---

The brain-chip interface lit up.

Lika's first reaction wasn't to look. It was to go on guard.

This brain-chip of his he'd built himself. A prototype, never on the market, never wired to any external net. It did one thing: run signals passively — he gave a command, it executed; something came in from outside, it displayed. It never acted on its own. A thing that never acts on its own suddenly acting is the same kind of chill as a room that's been quiet all along suddenly having someone speak in it.

He opened his eyes and looked at the interface.

[Note · 01]
[Source: Unmarked]
[Trigger: the question you asked today]

Lika's breath stalled.

He hadn't "asked" any question today. Not to the brain-chip, at least. In the moment he overwrote the record on the flight back, a thought had crossed his mind — when that script finished running its own seven sites, he'd thought one line: this thing doesn't behave like a tool. But that was a thought. He hadn't said it aloud, hadn't typed it, hadn't issued any command.

How could it know he'd "asked"?

---

He stared at that line, fingers stopped on his knee, not reaching for the interface.

Rationally he knew he should shut it off. A thing that reads his thoughts — whether it meant well or otherwise — deserved shutting off more than a gun pointed at him. But the other half of him, the half that couldn't stop once a thing was half-traced, reached over and opened that note.

[L.K.S._Core is more than just a code name]

Just that one line.

Lika read it 3 times.

L.K.S._Core. He'd worked the dark net for over a decade, but this signature he'd set down himself only recently, offhand — or so he'd always thought. A code name. A tool. A thing that opened back doors for him, ran shortcuts, wiped records.

More than a code name.

Then what was it?

He searched downward. There was more content below the note — he could tell something was there, a whole stretch of it, but he couldn't read it. Not garbled text; the kind of "can't-read" he'd seen in the Instance fragments: every symbol he recognized on its own, but strung together they smeared into a blur, as if something wouldn't let him look. The harder he tried to focus, the deeper that twinge bored into his temple — the same pain as the woman's-voice fragment, the same spot.

He let go. The pain receded. That content sank back into the can't-read gray along with it.

---

Lika leaned back into the seat.

The only thing he could be sure of now was this: the note just now, he hadn't written it.

Same as that cleanup that had run itself to the end, same as that relational index the NULL rule had blocked on its own — once again, something under his name that he hadn't put there with his own hands, surfacing on its own, laid open in front of him, waiting for him to come look.

This signature had thought of places he hadn't thought of, knew the thought he'd never spoken aloud, and now turned around and told him — it was more than a code name.

Some version of him, a long time ago — what exactly had he hidden inside this string?

---

The CV-1A dropped another notch. The city's sea of lights rose up, filling the whole porthole.

Lika gathered that note, together with the content he couldn't read, into the innermost cell of the brain-chip, the one only he could enter. He'd taken in more clues than he could count; his habit was — whatever he couldn't make sense of, store it first, tag it well, wait until he had enough to piece it back together.

He pressed a tag onto that note.

As he tagged it, he noticed one thing: the note's number was 01.

The first one.

Numbered starting from 01, just like that shadow's sequence — the long string of slots after it, empty. Meaning there'd be a second note, a third. Meaning the version of him that hid things had prepared more than one note, to feed to the present him one piece at a time.

Like someone had laid out a road for him, and set a marker down at every interval. And he'd only just reached the first one.

---

The landing alert came on. The CV-1A had lined up on that private hangar in Magnetar Transport's west district.

Lika unfastened the safety harness. Half a step behind his left, that knot of cold 1 degree lower than the cabin stood up along with him — Shadow_001 was disembarking too.

He took one last look at the note he'd stored away; on the interface only a faint marker was left blinking.

He said one thing to himself, softly, that no one heard, not even Shadow_001.

"Who in the world wrote you?"

【Ch. 036 End · CV-1A on Approach → Saint Tranya, Magnetar Transport West-District Hangar】