The wind on the rooftop was a hostile entity, a thousand icy hands tearing at Leo's clothes, trying to peel the very skin from his bones. He stared at the black-clad figures disguised as utility workers assembling below, feeling like a rabbit cornered at the precipice of a cliff. The heavy, rhythmic footsteps ascending the stairwell were a slow, deliberate drumbeat, hammering away at his last vestiges of hope, each thud a nail in his coffin.
"Shit!" Ah Zhe cursed, his face a grim mask in the ghastly glow of his device's screen, where red dots pulsed like angry wounds. "They've sealed all the exits! We're trapped rats in a barrel!" He frantically typed on his tablet, his voice a ragged, urgent whisper. "I'll create a diversion! I'll hack the fire alarm in the adjacent block, cause some chaos. You take the back staircase and run!"
"No!" Leo roared, the word erupting from a place deep within him he didn't know existed, raw and primal. The force of his own voice startled him. In that instant of pure, unadulterated terror, an entirely new part of his brain seemed to switch on. His senses, honed by a lifetime of rigid, obsessive routine into a state of hyper-awareness, went into overdrive. In his mind's eye, the building's floor plan, which he had only glanced at in the lobby, materialized not as a flat drawing, but as a translucent, three-dimensional blueprint overlaid on his vision. It was a tactical map. A Go board.
He could see it. The flow of enemy personnel, their density, their probable paths of movement. They weren't men anymore; in this new, terrifyingly lucid perception, they were pieces on the board. Each black-clad figure was a single, malevolent black stone, radiating a threat-level indicator in a pulsing red light. He and Ah Zhe were two fragile, encircled white stones. He saw Ah Zhe's plan—a desperate, conventional move—and in the space of a single, frantic heartbeat, his mind ran a dozen simulations of it, each ending in atari, the prelude to their capture. The back staircase, he saw with a sickening clarity that stole his breath, was a perfect dead end, a classic "pocket" formation in Go, a trap designed to look like an escape.
"The back staircase is a death trap!" he looked at Ah Zhe, his eyes, usually so hesitant and downcast, now blazing with a sharp, cold logic that cut through the chaos. He was no longer suggesting; he was issuing a command. "Don't create a diversion. That's what they expect. Instead, we run towards their densest encirclement. According to the Go principle of 'counter-encirclement,' the most dangerous point on the board is often the only 'eye' of liberty, the only path to survival! Their manpower is focused on the stairs and elevators, but the open-air corridor connecting to Blocks C and D… that's their weak point. It has to be!"
Ah Zhe was utterly stunned. He stared at this pale, panting office clerk, and for a moment, he wasn't seeing a frightened civilian. He was seeing the ghost of a legend his father used to speak of in hushed, reverent tones. The man who could see the market as a Go board, his father had said, describing the mythical Mr. Li. A mad genius who saw the patterns no one else could. And now, that same insane, brilliant light was shining from his son's eyes. Ah Zhe felt a primal awe, a respect for this unknown, terrifying power that suddenly overshadowed his own considerable technical prowess. This wasn't just a kid who had stumbled into trouble. This was something else entirely.
"Alright! I'm trusting you on this one, Go-board boy!" Ah Zhe didn't hesitate any longer. The decision was a gamble, a leap of faith, but it was a better bet than his own certain failure. He quickly packed his gear. "Follow me!"
They didn't go down. They ran to the other side of the rooftop and burst through the fire door to the floor below. They sprinted through the labyrinthine corridors of Kwun Lung Lau. The sounds of pursuit were everywhere—shouts, the crackle of walkie-talkies, the thud of heavy boots. They passed an open doorway where a family was gathered around a television, the canned laughter of a sitcom spilling out into the hallway, a sound from another universe. They hid in a cluttered, foul-smelling trash room, listening to the footsteps of their pursuers passing just inches away. At a corner, they nearly collided with a search team, pressing themselves into a darkened alcove, their hearts pounding a deafening rhythm in their ears.
Finally, they reached the open-air corridor connecting Block B to Block C. Just as Leo had predicted, it was guarded by only two men.
"I'll take the one on the left, you take the right!" Ah Zhe growled, lunging forward like a panther.
Leo's mind went blank. He had never been in a fight in his life. But driven by a primal survival instinct, he clutched the heavy Go board like a shield and, with all his might, charged at the man on the right.
Chaos erupted. Ah Zhe, though agile, was no match for a trained professional. After taking down one man, he was quickly locked in a struggle with another. Leo, after knocking his target off balance, was immediately kicked to the ground by his opponent's partner. He was shoved towards the stairwell, and as he tumbled down the steps, his right arm was sliced open by a sharp, rusty edge on the handrail.
Blood gushed out, hot and red.
In a wave of pain and dizziness, he subconsciously used his last ounce of strength to clutch the heavy old Go board to his chest.
His blood, warm and carrying the same genetic code as his father's, streamed down his arm and seeped into the imperceptible hairline crack on the bottom of the board.
In that instant, time, space, and sound seemed to stop.
An intensely brilliant white light, visible only to Leo, erupted from the Go board in his arms. The 361 intersections on the board lit up like nascent stars at the dawn of the universe, a silent, beautiful big bang held in his arms. In the next second, all the points of light streaked towards the "Tengen" point at the board's center, coalescing into a single, incandescent, violently pulsating ball of energy.
Before Leo could even react, that energy ball, that tiny point of light that seemed to contain an entire galaxy, detached from the board, defied all physical laws, and shot directly into the space between his eyebrows.
An indescribable, annihilating heat exploded in his brain. This was not a "formatting." It was a "fusion." He wasn't being overwritten; he was being completed. The eighteen years of his own quiet, fearful, monotonous memories were not erased. Instead, they became the vessel, the empty riverbed into which a torrent of another man's life—his father's—was now violently pouring. He was still himself, but he was also now infinitely more.
He was his father, for a fleeting, eternal moment. He was on a sun-drenched rooftop, not unlike this one, years ago, surrounded by other young, idealistic faces of the "Pigeon Society." He felt the warmth of the sun on his skin, the palpable excitement in his chest as he and his friends used a Go board to sketch out the architecture of "Odin," an idealized financial model designed to counter the predatory algorithms of the powerful. He felt his father's hope, his fierce, brilliant belief in a fairer world.
Then, the scene shattered. He was in the dim light of their old living room, the Go board cold on his lap. He felt his father's despair as he watched "Odin's" nascent code being devoured by a monstrous, shadowy data-stream on his computer screen—the "Leviathan," a great beast made of cold, blue, flowing binary code, swimming in the dark abyss of a virtual sea. The pain of a lifetime of ideals being crushed in a single night was so real, so visceral, it felt like his own heart was breaking.
These two polar-opposite memories, his father's passionate hope and his crushing despair, now fused with his own. He saw his own obsessive habit of eating the Set B breakfast, and overlaid upon it was his father's voice, teaching him to "save the best for last." He saw the number "1028" on a shipping manifest, and overlaid upon it was the calendar page of the day his father died. His trauma was not erased; it was finally, terrifyingly, given context. All the fragmented pieces of his life were being forged together by the searing heat of his father's legacy.
At the apex of this psychic storm, a cold, dispassionate, synthetic voice echoed in the core of his mind.
`Bloodline verification complete...`
`Genetic lock disengaged...`
`Memory fragments... fused.`
`'Odin' Basic Protocol... re-activated.`
An immeasurable torrent of information—his father's research data, the basic architecture of Leviathan, the fragmented history of the Pigeon Society—crashed through his newly expanded consciousness. His body, this fragile, mortal shell, could not handle the god-like infusion of data. His eyes rolled back, his body convulsed violently, and he fell into a deep, absolute unconsciousness.
Ah Zhe finally managed to knock out the two men, but he was injured himself. He turned to see more enemies swarming up and down the stairs. He looked at the unconscious Leo, at the old Go board that now looked completely ordinary again, and a wave of despair washed over him. They were cornered at the end of the corridor, right in front of a smoky, 24-hour internet cafe. There was nowhere left to run.
Just as the black-clad men were about to grab them, the glass door of the internet cafe was kicked open from the inside.
A girl who looked like an ordinary university student pulling an all-nighter, emerged, holding a red fire extinguisher. She was dressed in a simple t-shirt and jeans, but her eyes were as cold and sharp as a Siberian winter's night. Before Ah Zhe could even process her appearance, she moved with practiced, brutal efficiency.
Hiss!
She didn't just spray wildly. She aimed a precise, targeted burst at the faces of the closest pursuers, then swept the nozzle low across the grimy floor, creating a treacherous, slippery surface. The maneuver was professional, strategic. A massive cloud of white powder instantly blanketed the narrow corridor in a sudden blizzard. The men choked and fell back, their vision and footing gone.
Through the acrid white smoke, the girl grabbed Ah Zhe's arm. Her eyes darted from his injuries to the unconscious Leo, and finally, to the old Go board Leo was still clutching. A flicker of something complex—shock, recognition, and then grim determination—passed across her face. In a cool, commanding voice, she said, "Follow me, if you don't want him to die here."
As she turned, Ah Zhe noticed, hanging from her otherwise ordinary computer backpack, a tiny, almost unnoticeable charm made of polished white seashell.
The charm was shaped like a dove, carrying an olive branch in its beak.
He didn't hesitate. He hoisted the unconscious Leo over his shoulder and followed the mysterious girl, disappearing into the chaotic night of Sham Shui Po.
In the endless darkness of his coma, Leo's eyelids fluttered.
On his retina, or rather, in the deepest part of his consciousness, a translucent, futuristic blue progress bar was slowly loading.
Above the bar, a single line of text glowed softly:
`Odin OS - Initializing... 2%`