Cyberpunk Chronicles : 004 - DEADWARE
The dead speak in data streams and vengeance comes in bytes.
The dead were supposed to stay dead in Neo-Shanghai. That was the natural order of things. But in a city where everything had a price, even death had become negotiable—at least for those with enough credits or connections.
Shuai was what locals called a "grief tech." Some called her a digital medium, others a memory sculptor. The corporations branded her kind as data thieves and neural parasites. The religious zealots who still clung to old ideas called her an abomination. But to the desperate people who found their way to her hidden studio in the Forgotten District, she was simply the woman who could bring back fragments of those they'd lost.
Not physically, of course. Science hadn't progressed that far, though the megacorps promised it was just around the corner—for the right price. What Shuai offered was different: digital echoes constructed from neural backups, cloud data, social feeds, surveillance snippets, and the thousand invisible trails everyone left behind in the world's vast networks. She built ghosts that could speak, remember, and sometimes even grow.
It wasn't resurrection. It was reconstruction. The distinction mattered to Shuai, even if her clients often blurred the line.
Her studio occupied the hollowed-out space between a knockoff augmentation clinic and a synthetic food dispensary. The location provided both cover and convenience as her clients could pretend they were there for a new set of optical enhancements or vat-grown dinner. The narrow entrance led to a space that belied its exterior: clean white surfaces, soft ambient lighting that adjusted to visitors' pupil dilation, and a complete absence of the neon glow that infected every other corner of Neo-Shanghai.
"The dead deserve quiet," Shuai had once explained to a client who asked about the decor. "Their voices are already faint enough."
She was finishing her morning calibrations when the door chimed—an actual physical bell, not a digital alert. Another deliberate choice. The small camera next to the entrance sending data on virtual screen on her heads-up display. The camera zoomed in on the visitor.
The man in her waiting area stood out like a quantum computer at a abacus convention. Charcoal suit, actual real cotton from the look of it. Polished shoes, not the synthetic leather everyone else wore. But it was his posture that truly marked him: straight-backed, hands clasped behind him, head tilted slightly upward as if perpetually looking down on the world.
Judge Kaito Zhang. Anyone who'd ever had a brush with Neo-Shanghai's Unified Court System knew that face ; the sharp cheekbones, the calculated neutrality of his expression, and the cold augmented eyes that glowed a faint blue when he accessed case files directly through his neural interface.
Shuai felt her pulse quicken. The Red Lotus Syndicate had warned her last week about her outstanding debt for the illegal neural interface equipment they'd provided. But they wouldn't send a judge for collection. They'd send broken bones, not legal threats.
She extended a mental command to unlock the inner door. The judge's eyes flickered momentarily—scanning for surveillance or weapons, no doubt. Finding seven of the former and none of the latter, he stepped inside.
"Ms. Wei." His voice was exactly as it sounded in court broadcasts: precise, modulated, with the slightest hint of an accent from Upper New-Singapore. "I believe you provide services for the recently departed."
No preamble. No explanation of how he found her. Just straight to business.
"I'm a memory artist," Shuai replied, using the legal term rather than the street one. "I help people preserve and interact with digital legacies within regulatory parameters."
A thin smile crossed the judge's face. They both knew the regulations she mentioned had more holes than Neo-Shanghai's ozone layer.
"I require your services," he said, reaching into his pocket.
Shuai tensed, but he withdrew only a small metallic cube; a secure storage device, military-grade by the look of the encryption markers scrolling across its surface.
"My daughter, Lin Zhang. Twenty-six years old. Murdered three weeks ago."
The word landed like a stone in still water. Murder was common enough in the lower districts, but among the elite? It was a big story, it made headlines, even in a city numb to violence, and Shuai remembered it well.
"I'm sorry for your loss," Shuai said automatically, her mind already calculating. A judge could afford corporate resurrection services, the legitimate kind, with proper licensing and clean neural harvesting. Why come to her underground operation?
"I've brought what remains of her," Zhang continued, placing the cube on Shuai's workspace. "Neural backup from her last scheduled upload, social archive, communication logs. Her apartment's home system was... compromised during the investigation."
Shuai raised an eyebrow. "Compromised?"
"A power surge. Most unfortunate timing."
She didn't believe that for a second. In her experience, digital evidence didn't accidentally fry itself, especially when connected to someone wealthy enough to afford surge protection that could weather a small nuclear blast.
"Judge Zhang, with respect, there are corporate services better equipped—"
"I'm aware of the alternatives," he cut her off. "I've explored them. They've proven... unsuitable for my needs."
Interesting. The corporations had turned him away? Or he didn't trust them? Either possibility raised red flags.
"The corporate reconstruction facilities are monitored by the Regulatory Intelligence Division," Zhang continued, as if reading her thoughts. "Everything they process is logged, analyzed, and stored. Even for someone of my position, certain... privacies cannot be guaranteed."
Shuai understood immediately. Government oversight. The judge wanted to avoid official channels because whatever he was looking for in his daughter's reconstruction, he didn't want any record of it. Black market grief techs like her existed in digital blind spots, in deliberate shadows of Neo-Shanghai's surveillance web.
"And," Zhang added, almost casually, "your particular operation has the advantage of being... contained. Self-sufficient. If complications arise, they're easily managed."
The threat wasn't even veiled. Shuai understood it right away. If she discovered something he didn't want found, she'd be easier to silence than a corporate facility with hundreds of employees and government oversight. She felt a chill run down her augmented spine.
"My daughter was more than what the official systems captured," he continued, his tone shifting back to practiced neutrality. "I understand your methods are more... comprehensive."
That was one way of putting it. Her methods teetered on the edge of legality because they involved scraping restricted data sources—personal feeds, secure networks, even broken fragments of memory from neural implants. The corporations kept a tight grip on their data highways; Shuai specialized in the back alleys and sewers.
"My services aren't cheap," she said, watching his reaction.
"Money is not my concern." He raised his wrist, and a payment terminal materialized in the air between them—a high-end holographic interface, the kind only government officials and corporate executives could access. "Shall we discuss your fee?"
The figure that appeared made Shuai's eyes widen before she could control her reaction and the judge acknowledged it with rapid tight smile. It was enough to clear her debt with the Red Lotus Syndicate three times over. Enough to upgrade her equipment, maybe even move to a better location.
Enough to feel like a trap.
"Half now, half upon completion," she said, recovering her composure. "And I work alone. No monitoring, no progress reports beyond what I choose to share."
The judge's expression didn't change, but something flickered in those augmented eyes. Displeasure? Amusement? It was gone before she could identify it.
"I'll require daily updates," he countered. "And access to preliminary reconstructions as they become available."
Shuai shook her head. "Weekly updates. No access until I reach at least 75% integration. The process is delicate—external interference can corrupt the outcome."
That wasn't entirely true, but she needed space to work without him looking over her shoulder. Something about this job felt wrong, even beyond the obvious unusualness of a high-ranking judge seeking out black market services.
"Very well." He waved his hand, and the payment terminal adjusted to show a transfer of half the agreed amount. "One week. I'll expect your first report then."
Without another word or waiting an answer, he turned around and walked out of her shop.
After he left, Shuai sat in silence, staring at the metallic cube on her workspace. The payment had already cleared—more credits than she'd seen in months. She should have felt relief, even excitement. Instead, all she felt was unease.
She placed the cube in her analysis chamber—a modified medical scanner repurposed for data extraction—and initiated the security protocols. If there was malware or tracking software embedded in the device, her systems would detect it.
Three hours later, she had her answer: the cube was clean of obvious threats, but the data itself was another story. Lin Zhang's neural backup showed signs of targeted corruption: specific memory clusters degraded in a pattern too precise to be accidental damage.
Someone had deliberately edited this woman's digital remains before handing them over. The question was: who? And what were they trying to hide?
Shuai's reconstruction chamber resembled a sensory deprivation tank—if such tanks glowed with fiber optic veins and hummed with quantum processors. For twelve hours each day, she suspended herself in the amniotic-like nanogel, her body temperature regulated by medical-grade cooling systems salvaged from an abandoned hospital in the Forgotten District. Her custom neural interface—the one she still owed the Red Lotus Syndicate for—extended hair-thin filaments from the base of her skull, connecting her directly to the processing core.
The first three days of reconstruction proceeded in a symphony of light and data. Shuai didn't just analyze Lin Zhang's neural pathways; she experienced them, swimming through the woman's digital remains like a deep-sea diver exploring a sunken city. The holographic rendering suite transformed abstract data into navigable architecture: memories became corridors, personality traits manifested as chambers with distinct atmospheric qualities, thought patterns appeared as pulsing light conduits connecting disparate elements.
"Integration protocol 7-Delta initiated," Shuai subvocalized, triggering her system to absorb another layer of Lin's fragmented consciousness.
The effect was immediate and disorienting. For seventeen seconds, Shuai wasn't herself, instead she was Lin Zhang walking through the judicial quarter, feeling the weight of her discovery pressing down on her mind, glancing over her shoulder for the surveillance she knew was there. The memory fractured before reaching its destination, corrupted data manifesting as jagged crystalline barriers that cut Shuai's virtual body when she tried to push through them.
"Perceptual overlay disengaging," her system announced as it pulled her back from the immersive dive. Shuai gasped, phantom pain lingering from where the corrupted data had sliced her digital projection.
This was the true art of grief tech work, it was not just reconstruction but comprehension. Understanding a person from the inside out, building connective tissue between fragments of what once was a complete consciousness. The corporate services created shallow facsimiles; Shuai created continuations.
By the third day, Lin Zhang had emerged as a complex individual that was brilliant, methodical, with a streak of defiance that seemed at odds with being a judge's daughter. Shuai could feel the shape of her mind now, could predict how certain thoughts would flow, which emotional responses would trigger from specific stimuli. Lin's academic records showed top marks in law and information systems at East China Digital University. Her employment history listed a prestigious position at the Unified Court System's digital forensics division.
Everything pointed to a model citizen following in her father's footsteps. Yet as Shuai navigated the three-dimensional neural hologram hovering above her workstation, she kept encountering the same corrupted regions—memory clusters that had been precisely excised with digital scalpels far more sophisticated than standard editing tools. Someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to remove specific portions of Lin Zhang's digital consciousness.
"What were you hiding?" Shuai whispered to the rotating neural construct, its damaged sections glowing an angry red against the cool blue of intact data structures. "Or what was someone hiding from you?"
On the fourth day, Shuai found her first real clue. While reconstructing a memory fragment from six months before Lin's death, she uncovered an encrypted data packet that had been cleverly disguised as corruption. Once isolated and decoded, it revealed a partial surveillance feed showing Judge Zhang meeting with executives from MiyaTech Corporation, one of Neo-Shanghai's rising tech conglomerates that specialized in autonomous security systems.
The audio was missing, but the body language was clear enough: this wasn't a formal meeting. Money changed hands as physical currency, not digital transfers. Old-fashioned bribes for those who didn't want transaction records.
Shuai leaned back in her chair, a chill running down her spine. She'd just uncovered evidence of judicial corruption in the memories of a judge's daughter. If Lin had discovered her father taking bribes...
A notification pulsed in Shuai's peripheral vision: 37% reconstruction complete. The official cause of Lin's death, according to public records, had been a random mugging in the Mid-Level District—unusual for someone of her status, who would typically have security escorts.
Not so random after all, perhaps.
Shuai hesitated. The ethical choice would be to report this to authorities. The survival choice would be to ignore it, complete the job as requested, and take her payment. But there was a third option: dig deeper, but carefully. If Lin Zhang had been investigating her father's corruption, there might be more evidence hidden in her data.
By the sixth day, Shuai had reached 64% reconstruction and uncovered a disturbing pattern. Lin had been systematically documenting judicial corruption across the Unified Court System, with a particular focus on cases involving MiyaTech. Judges imposing maximum sentences, overruling jury recommendations, expediting death row transfers... all funneling specific types of violent offenders into MiyaTech's custody. Judge Zhang appeared in multiple instances.
But the most damning discovery came when Shuai bypassed the standard reconstruction protocols and directly accessed a heavily corrupted memory fragment using experimental algorithms she'd developed for severely damaged data.
The memory was fragmented, more impression than detail: Lin confronting her father in his private study. His rage. His warning: "You have no idea what you're interfering with." And Lin's defiance: "I know exactly what I'm doing. This ends now."
Three days later, Lin Zhang was dead.
As the seventh day dawned—the day she was due to report to Judge Zhang—Shuai made a decision. She needed more data to complete the reconstruction properlyy. The official neural backup wasn't enough; too much had been deliberately damaged or removed.
She initiated a deep scan of Neo-Shanghai's surveillance network, using access codes she'd purchased from a Red Lotus data broker. It was risky but she needed to fill the gaps in Lin's final days.
The search returned scattered fragments: Lin entering secure areas of the courthouse after hours. Lin meeting with a known whistleblower blogger in a tiny noodle shop in the Lower District. Lin arguing with her father outside MiyaTech headquarters.
And finally, Lin Zhang's last recorded movements: entering her apartment building the night of her death. The lobby camera showed her looking nervously over her shoulder. The elevator camera caught her rapid breathing, her hand clutching a small data device. But the corridor camera outside her apartment showed only static—conveniently malfunctioning for exactly seventeen minutes around her estimated time of death.
Shuai compiled these fragments into the reconstruction matrix. As the new data integrated with the existing framework, Lin's digital consciousness gained clarity. By midnight, the reconstruction had reached 87% completion. It was enough for a limited interaction.
Shuai hesitated, then initiated communication.
The holographic projection that materialized above her workspace wasn't meant to be a perfect visual replica as Shuai didn't deal in that kind of deception. Instead, it was a luminous geometric approximation of a human form, pulsing with the rhythms of the reconstructed consciousness. When it spoke, the voice was synthesized from audio samples but carried the cadence and patterns of the original.
"You're not from the Court System," the Lin-construct said immediately, analyzing Shuai through the studio's sensors.
"No. My name is Shuai Wei. Your father hired me to reconstruct you."
The geometric form pulsed more rapidly—the equivalent of alarm in Shuai's visualization system.
"My father? Then you're in danger. We both are."
"Why would your father want to harm me?" Shuai asked, though she already suspected the answer.
"Because if he hired you to bring me back, it's to find out what I knew. What I hid from him." The Lin-construct's voice grew more urgent. "He's the one who had me killed."
Even expecting it, the confirmation hit Shuai hard. "I need you to show me everything," she said. "From the beginning."
The geometric form shifted, expanding to fill the small studio with fragmented images: memories and data flowing together into a coherent narrative.
Lin had discovered irregularities in sentencing patterns for cases involving MiyaTech defendants. Deeper investigation revealed that MiyaTech was harvesting neural tissue from death row inmates, mainly the convicts who had been sentenced by judges on their payroll, including her father.
"They're building something," the Lin-construct explained. "A new kind of autonomous security system that uses human consciousness fragments for predictive crime analysis. They needed subjects with violent tendencies, with criminal patterns already established."
"And your father was ensuring a steady supply," Shuai concluded, sickened. "By sending specific defendants to death row."
"Yes. But that's only part of it." The geometric form pulsed red. "The system they're building—it's not just for prediction. It's for control. Integration with the city's infrastructure, with personal neural implants. They're calling it 'Preventative Pacification.'"
Mind control, in other words. The ultimate security system—one that could identify potential dissent and suppress it before it manifested.
"I gathered evidence," the Lin-construct continued. "Encrypted it, scattered the keys throughout the city's network. I was going to release everything the morning after I—" The geometric form flickered. "The morning after I died."
"Why didn't it release automatically?" Shuai asked.
"Final authentication required my neural signature within a 24-hour window. They killed me before I could provide it."
Shuai's mind raced. If what the Lin-construct was saying was true, she was sitting on evidence that could bring down not just Judge Zhang, but potentially the entire Unified Court System and one of Neo-Shanghai's fastest-growing corporations.
"I need to report to your father tomorrow," she said. "He's expecting progress."
"He won't just want a report. He'll want access. To question me, to find out where I hid the evidence." The geometric form condensed, grew more focused. "You need to get out of the city. Now."
As if summoned by the warning, Shuai's security system chimed a proximity alert. Someone was approaching her studio—multiple someones, moving with the coordinated precision of trained professionals.
"Too late for that," Shuai muttered, switching to her surveillance feed.
Four Judiciary Enforcement officers in full tactical gear were positioned outside her building. Not a raid, not yet, but they were establishing a perimeter. Probably waiting for Judge Zhang himself to arrive.
"There's another option," the Lin-construct said. "Complete me. Finish the reconstruction. I can authenticate the evidence release if my neural pattern is sufficiently intact."
Shuai checked the completion status: 87.3%. Close, but not enough for the kind of complex authentication sequence the Lin-construct was describing.
"I need more time," she said. "And they're already here."
"Upload me to the city network. I can gather the missing fragments myself, integrate faster without the hardware limitations of your system."
Shuai hesitated. Uploading an incomplete construct to the city's network was incredibly risky—for both of them. Incomplete digital consciousnesses often degraded rapidly in uncontrolled environments, fragmenting into digital psychosis. And the network's security systems were designed to detect and quarantine unauthorized AI constructs.
"You won't survive long enough to complete yourself," she argued.
"I don't need to survive. I just need to exist long enough to release the evidence." The geometric form pulsed with determination. "It's the only way."
A second alert chimed: her outer door had been breached. Judge Zhang himself was entering, flanked by two officers.
Shuai made her decision. She initialized the transfer protocol, simultaneously creating a decoy—a simplified version of the Lin-construct with just enough responsiveness to seem legitimate under cursory examination. As the original uploaded to a dormant advertising network Shuai had compromised months ago, she positioned the decoy prominently on her workspace.
The inner door slid open. Judge Zhang entered, his augmented eyes scanning the room before fixing on the geometric representation of his daughter.
"Ms. Wei," he acknowledged with a cold nod. "I see you've made progress."
"70% reconstruction," Shuai lied, gesturing to the decoy. "As promised. The memory corruption was more extensive than anticipated, but I've managed to recover significant portions of her personality matrix and memory core."
Zhang approached the holographic representation slowly, almost reverently. If Shuai hadn't seen the evidence herself, she might have believed his grief was genuine.
"Can it speak?" he asked.
"Limited communication is possible," Shuai said, initiating the decoy's basic interaction protocols. "But complex reasoning and memory recall are still fragmentary."
The decoy pulsed gently. "Father," it said in Lin's synthesized voice. "You've found me."
Something flickered across Zhang's face—relief? Or calculation? He turned to Shuai.
"I'd like a private moment with my daughter."
"Of course," Shuai said, stepping back to the far side of the studio. She pretended to busy herself with equipment while watching Zhang carefully from her peripheral vision.
He leaned close to the decoy, his voice low but still audible to Shuai's enhanced hearing.
"Lin, I need to know what you did with the files. Where did you hide them?"
The decoy pulsed in a pattern designed to suggest confusion. "Files? I don't... remember clearly."
Zhang's carefully modulated voice took on an edge. "The MiyaTech evidence. Your encryption keys. Where are they?"
"I don't... remember clearly," the decoy responded, its geometric form pulsing with simulated confusion. "The files... something about encryption? It's all fragmented."
Zhang straightened, his face hardening. He turned to Shuai. "This reconstruction is inadequate. The personality matrix is incomplete!"
"As I explained, the corruption was extensive," Shuai said, keeping her voice neutral. "Another few days of work should—"
"No," Zhang cut her off. "I'll be taking the construct with me now. My team has facilities better suited to complete the work."
Translation: he wanted to get the digital remains of his daughter somewhere private where he could tear apart her consciousness looking for the information she'd hidden.
"That's not possible," Shuai said firmly. "The reconstruction is tied to my proprietary systems. Removing it now would cause complete degradation."
Zhang's augmented eyes flashed bright blue—accessing something through his neural interface. When they returned to normal, his expression had changed. The pretense of grief was gone, replaced by cold calculation.
"Ms. Wei, I've just received a troubling report about your activities. It seems you've been accessing restricted surveillance networks without authorization. A serious crime, as I'm sure you're aware."
So that was his play—legal threats. Shuai had expected as much.
"I've also been informed," he continued, "that you have considerable debt to certain criminal elements in the Lower District. The Red Lotus Syndicate, I believe? I could, of course, ensure those debts are forgiven. Just as I could ensure the surveillance breaches are overlooked."
"In exchange for what?" Shuai asked, though she knew the answer.
"Complete access to my daughter's reconstruction. And the deletion of any... extraneous data you may have uncovered during the process."
Before Shuai could respond, her security system chimed again—a different alert this time. A massive data transfer was occurring across the city's network. Information flooding every public channel, bypassing firewalls, overriding content filters.
Zhang's augmented eyes flashed rapidly as alerts poured in through his neural interface. His face contorted with rage and disbelief.
"What have you done?" he demanded.
Shuai smiled grimly. "Nothing. Your daughter did it all herself."
On every screen in the studio—and presumably across the city—evidence began to appear. Court records. Financial transactions. Communications between judges and MiyaTech executives. The full scope of the conspiracy, laid bare for all of Neo-Shanghai to see.
The Lin-construct had succeeded. She'd found her remaining fragments, completed herself enough to authenticate the evidence release. Her final act of justice, from beyond the grave.
Judge Zhang's face went ashen as he realized the implications. His career, his freedom—gone in an instant. The officers who had accompanied him stood frozen, uncertain how to proceed as their own superiors were implicated in the unfolding revelations.
"Arrest her," Zhang finally ordered, pointing at Shuai. "For data theft, identity fraud, illegal AI generation—"
"I don't think that would be wise, Judge," Shuai interrupted, nodding toward the screens. "Your daughter included a dead man's switch in her evidence release. If I'm arrested or harmed, another data packet releases: one containing your private communications about removing her as a threat. I believe the term 'permanent solution' was used?"
She was bluffing, but Zhang's reaction told her she'd hit close to the truth. He took an involuntary step back.
"This isn't over," he said quietly, his voice tight with suppressed fury.
"It is for you," Shuai replied.
The judicial officers exchanged glances, uncertainty flickering across their faces as the evidence against their superior continued to flood every screen in the studio. One of them reached for his neural comm, likely calling for backup or further instructions.
Zhang's expression shifted from fury to something colder, more calculated. His augmented eyes flashed brilliant cobalt as military-grade combat protocols—illegal for civilians, even judges—came online. Before anyone could react, his right arm transformed, flesh peeling back to reveal a gleaming chrome weapon system that had been concealed beneath synthetic skin.
The first officer died before he could draw his weapon, a precise beam of concentrated energy burning through his throat. The second barely had time to look surprised before Zhang put a hole through his chest.
"System failures," Zhang said calmly, as if noting the weather. "You'll be joining them."
Shuai dove behind her reinforced console, simultaneously triggering her emergency protocol with a neural command. "Rabbit Hole activated!" she shouted.
The studio's environmental systems responded instantly. Superheated fog erupted from hidden vents, rapidly filling the room with dense vapor that masked both visual and thermal signatures. The temperature spiked, confusing targeting systems and causing Zhang's augmented vision to glitch as it attempted to compensate.
Three heartbeats later, the floor beneath Shuai's workstation slid open, revealing a narrow maintenance shaft. She dropped into it as Zhang fired blindly, energy beams cutting through the fog above her head. The passage sealed behind her as she slid through the emergency evacuation tube, emerging two floors below in a service corridor.
Shuai ran. Her enhanced legs ate up the distance as she navigated the labyrinthine back passages of the building, following the evacuation route she'd mapped years ago but never expected to use. Behind her, alarms blared as Zhang triggered a building-wide lockdown, trying to trap her inside.
She burst through an emergency exit into a rain-slicked alley, the neon glow of the main street bleeding into the darkness ahead. Freedom was just thirty meters away, into the anonymous crush of Neo-Shanghai's evening crowds.
She made it halfway.
The impact came from above, Zhang landing on the alley floor with enough force to crack the synthetic concrete. The cybernetic enhancements in his legs must have allowed him to jump from an upper window, cutting off her escape route.
"You think you're the first to try running?" he asked, straightening slowly, the weapon system in his arm retracting just enough to free his hand. "I've hunted better prey than you."
Shuai didn't waste breath answering. She launched herself forward, feinting left before pivoting right, using the wet ground to slide beneath his grasp. Her enhanced reflexes gave her speed, but Zhang's military-grade augments gave him precision.
His hand caught her ankle, yanking her back with mechanical strength. Shuai twisted, the specialized implant in her palm connecting with his forearm, sending an electromagnetic pulse through his systems. The arm spasmed, releasing her.
She rolled to her feet, raining quick strikes against his torso, targeting neural connection points where augmentation interfaces met flesh. Zhang absorbed the impacts, his expression unchanging. The rain intensified, streaming down their faces as they circled each other in the narrow alley.
Suddenly, Zhang moved with blinding speed, sidestepping her attack and grabbing her midsection. With augmented strength, he lifted Shuai completely off the ground and hurled her out of the alley. She crashed through a street vendor's noodle cart and slammed against the side of a parked hover-car, the impact setting off the vehicle's security alarms.
Pedestrians scattered with shouts of alarm, but didn't flee completely. In Neo-Shanghai, street violence was as common as rain—and just as likely to draw spectators. They formed a wary circle, recording with ocular implants, murmuring as they recognized the judicial uniform on the man stalking toward the dazed woman.
Shuai tried to push herself up from the dented side of the hover-car, synthetic glass from its window raining down around her. Blood trickled from a cut above her eye, momentarily interfering with her optical display. Before she could regain her footing, Zhang was on her.
"You couldn't just do your stupid job," Zhang said, closing the distance between them in two long strides. The crowd parted for him, some recognizing the infamous judge, others simply sensing the lethal intent radiating from him.
His hand shot forward with inhuman speed, closing around her throat. He lifted her off the ground, her feet dangling as his augmented grip tightened, pinning her against the damaged hover-car.
"Just get the stupid money," he demanded, his face inches from hers. "Just do what you are told."
The crowd grew larger now, a ring of fascinated onlookers recording every moment with their implants, the footage instantly streaming across personal networks.
Shuai couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. Darkness began creeping into the edges of her vision as she clawed uselessly at his arm.
Then the massive advertisement screen overlooking the alley flickered, its usual garish commercial replaced by a geometric pattern that Shuai recognized instantly.
"Father."
The voice—Lin's voice—echoed through the alley. Zhang's head snapped up, his grip on Shuai's throat loosening just enough for her to draw a ragged breath.
"That's impossible," he whispered.
The geometric pattern on the screen pulsed, reshaping itself into a rough approximation of Lin's face, composed of light and digital fragments.
"Did you think I wouldn't plan for my own death?" the Lin-construct asked. "Did you think I wouldn't leave something behind to finish what I started?"
Zhang's augmented eyes locked onto the screen, his neural interface lighting up as he tried to shut down the broadcast. "You're just code. A shadow. You're not my daughter."
"I'm what's left of her. And that's enough."
The geometric face on the screen seemed to smile, and in that moment, Shuai felt Zhang's grip spasm. His augmented eyes widened in shock, then pain.
"What are you—" he began, before his words dissolved into an agonized cry.
The Lin-construct was flowing into his neural interface, bypassing his security protocols using administrator access only a daughter would know—private codes, personal references, intimate details. His extensive augmentations, meant for combat and control, now became his vulnerability as the construct invaded his systems.
Zhang released Shuai completely, staggering back, hands clutching his head. His augmented eyes flickered rapidly between blue and red, internal systems fighting the intrusion. He fell to his knees in the rain-soaked alley, face contorted in horror.
"No," he gasped. "Not that. Not there. GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
Shuai backed away, watching as the judge convulsed on the ground, trapped in whatever nightmare the Lin-construct was feeding directly into his neural pathways. The screen above them flickered once more, the geometric face dissolving into fragments.
"Thank you," Lin's voice said softly, directed at Shuai. Then the screen returned to its regular advertisement, as if nothing had happened.
Police sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer. The evidence released across the city had triggered automated alerts throughout the judicial system, protocols designed for corruption cases overriding the usual command chains.
Rain fell harder now, washing blood and oil from the alley into gurgling drains. Blue and red emergency lights painted the wet surfaces as police skimmers approached.
Shuai looked at Zhang, still on his knees, eyes vacant, mouth working silently. Whatever the Lin-construct had done to him, it went beyond temporary incapacitation. He was there physically, but his mind was clearly elsewhere, trapped in some digital hell of his daughter's design.
Understanding dawned on Shuai. This had been Lin's final contingency—not just exposing the corruption, but making her father experience something only his daughter would know how to create. Personal justice delivered through neural pathways.
Rain began to fall harder, neon reflections dancing in puddles forming at her feet. A message pinged on her emergency channel—the only connection still functioning after her confrontation with Zhang. The sender ID showed only a geometric pattern she recognized instantly: the Lin-construct, or what remained of it, rapidly degrading as it fought the network's security protocols.
"Thank you," the message read simply. Then, a set of coordinates and an access code.
"You're welcome," Shuai said softly staring at the sky, exhausted.
Three days later, Shuai stood in an automated storage facility on the outskirts of Neo-Shanghai. The unit unlocked with Lin's access code revealed a comprehensive go-bag: new identity chips, credit tokens untraceable to her former life, and a one-way transport voucher to Singapore-Two. Lin had prepared for all contingencies—including helping the person who might help her find justice.
As Shuai prepared to leave the city that had been her home, public screens still displayed the aftershocks of Lin Zhang's posthumous revenge. The MiyaTech consciousness harvesting program was being dismantled. Half the judicial bench was under investigation.
Zhang himself had been committed to the Psychiatric Neurology Wing of Central Hospital, unresponsive to treatment. According to the news feeds, his neural pathways were locked in some kind of recursive loop, forcing him to experience the same sequence over and over. The best neural surgeons in Neo-Shanghai had failed to break the pattern. Whatever Lin had uploaded into his systems had been designed to be permanent—a prison built of memory and code.
The dead were supposed to stay dead in this city of endless neon and shadow. But Lin Zhang had refused. And in her digital afterlife, she'd given Shuai a second chance at a real one.
"The dead don't rest here," Shuai murmured, thinking of Lin's final acts of defiance as she stepped onto the transport platform. "But they can still find justice."
The scanner read her new identity chip. Accepted. As the transport prepared for departure, Shuai watched the Neo-Shanghai skyline recede—its familiar jagged silhouette dotted with the vertical farms and drone hives that kept its population alive. Somewhere in its digital underbelly, fragments of Lin Zhang were still spreading like seeds, taking root in systems that had never been designed to harbor the unquiet dead.
Justice from beyond the grave. Fitting for a city where even death came with a price tag.