Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 22 Little Trouble

Xu Yan's voice was as cold as ice: "The thing is broken."

There was a two-second silence on the other end, followed by A-Zhe's clearly excited voice:
"It's broken? How did it break? Describe the specific symptoms! Is there any sign of charring in the internal chip?"

"It almost crushed my shoulder just now, and it was talking in my head." Xu Yan ignored his technical questions, his tone flat but full of pressure, "Is it a design flaw in your equipment, or were you never telling the truth to begin with?"

"Crush it? Physical-level interference?! And it can even perform targeted consciousness infusion?!" Ah Zhe's voice rose eight octaves, filled with the ecstatic joy of discovering a new continent. "Boss! This isn't 'background noise,' you've clearly strapped an 'ancient nuclear bomb' to your body! This thing is absolutely..."

“Answer my question,” Xu Yan interrupted him coldly.

Ah Zhe choked for a moment, then his tone became slightly more serious:

"OK, OK. Flaw? Impossible. My thing can theoretically withstand three full-force attacks from a medium-sized 'emotional' ghost. There's only one explanation—the thing inside you has begun to awaken, and it will only get stronger."

He paused, then abruptly changed the subject, quickly presenting a new plan:

"The old model can't hold up anymore. I'll make you an upgraded version with bidirectional data streams. It will not only suppress the virus more effectively, but also analyze its energy characteristics in real time, and try to trace the source in reverse!"

"Of course, as a small price to pay, next time you go on a mission, you'll have to wear one of my full-spectrum sensors so I can see the working data from your precious camera..."

"No way." Xu Yan refused decisively.

To completely expose oneself to this tech madman?
Impossible.

He changed the subject, "Help me figure out what would 'excite' this level of antique the most. In exchange, I can give you some camera data for the next mission."

There was a brief silence on the other end of the channel.

Clearly, Xu Yan's counter-pressure and precise offer of a quid pro quo forced A Zhe to reconsider.

A few seconds later, Ah Zhe's voice rang out again, but unexpectedly, it veered away from the topic:
"Data analysis is negotiable. But before that, do me a favor. I have a 'small problem' I can't handle. I need help, from a professional."

Xu Yan remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

“It’s not an ordinary ‘ghost’,” A-Zhe said quickly, “it’s…something else. It’s related to data, and to…echoes. It’s got me hooked.”

He took a deep breath, seemingly weighing the costs, before finally making up his mind: "The reward. I know what you're looking for. I have a rough prototype of... an early 'Soul Archive and Stripping' project from the 'Center'. I can't say the source, but it will definitely be useful to you."

Xu Yan's heart skipped a beat.

The phrase "soul archiving and stripping" precisely hits his core need.

This time, Ah Zhe's bait was surprisingly heavy.

"Location." Xu Yan's voice was devoid of emotion.

"I'll send you the location coordinates to your encrypted terminal."

A Zhe sent me the coordinates of a medium-sized data center that was still in operation. "It's hidden deep beneath its redundant architecture, with excellent physical and logical isolation. But I can't get in now... or rather, I don't dare to go in alone."

"The noise there... is too loud. So loud that I'm afraid I'll become part of the 'echo' myself."

"I'll be there in an hour." Xu Yan ended the call.

An hour later, Xu Yan and Chen Zhiwei stood in the back alley of that ordinary-looking data center.

Ah Zhe was already waiting there, wrapped in an inappropriate black coat, which made him look even thinner and more uneasy.

He didn't say much, but simply gestured for them to follow.

Passing through the busy server room and avoiding the staff's sight, A Zhe used a complex and dazzling string of physical keys and dynamic passwords to open a heavy metal door in the corner that was inconspicuous and marked "High Voltage Danger".

Behind the door was not an equipment room, but a narrow, downward-facing staircase with stark white lighting. The air instantly changed, filled with a faint smell of ozone and... a cold, mechanical silence.

"Welcome to the ruins of the 'Tower of Babel'." A Zhe forced an ugly smile and stepped down first.

At the end of the stairs, there was another door.

The door was made of some kind of matte metal, with no markings on its surface, except for a complex biometric lock.

Ah Zhe placed his palm on it, scanned it with his pupils, and whispered a string of syllables that sounded like a command or a spell.

"Click." The door slid open silently.

A stronger smell, a mixture of dust, insulation material, and the heat of old servers, wafted over.

At the same time, the compass needle in Chen Zhiwei's hand jumped suddenly and then began to tremble slightly and irregularly.

The space inside the door was larger than I had imagined, with rows of black server racks, but their style was clearly a generation older than the mainstream equipment on them.

A few emergency lights provided a pale green light, casting shadows that were sometimes long, sometimes short, distorted and deformed.

There was no biting cold wind, but countless fine, seemingly all-encompassing whispers of numbers entered my ears. They were not sentences, but only broken bytes, desperate gasps, and distorted sobs, mixed with the humming of the server hard drive, which had long since stopped but seemed to still be mourning.

Immediately afterwards, the video appeared.

It wasn't a complete ghost image, but rather fragmented holographic afterimages flashing, overlapping, and then dissipating wildly between the server racks:

A young face, full of fanaticism yet twisted with extreme fear, with a waterfall of frantically rolling code reflected in its pupils;

A pair of fingers twitching as they typed on the virtual keyboard, their nails cracked and bleeding, staining the transparent keycaps red.
A burst of blood-red ERROR warnings, symbolizing the complete system crash, appeared on the screen, like splattered blood.

Finally, all the displays instantly turned to static, accompanied by a drawn-out, distorted, piercing scream, before abruptly ending!

Then, the cycle begins again.

Madness, fear, collapse, destruction... it never ends.

It is not a demon; it is a fragment of a soul stuck at the moment of death, eternally enduring the extreme pain of that moment.

Its very existence is a continuous form of torture.

Chen Zhiwei's voice trembled slightly, and the compass needle in her hand spun wildly, as if unable to bear the vortex of numbers made purely of pain. "He was... torn apart. Only the most painful part remains, and it keeps repeating."

Xu Yan raised his camera, and through the viewfinder, he no longer saw a concrete form, but a massive, chaotic, and shrill storm of painful data.

The camera was slightly warm, emanating an emotion that was almost "disgust" and "rejection." It instinctively resisted this existence that was neither soul nor ghost, distorted by technology.

"Ah Zhe!" Xu Yan roared at the empty hall, "What the hell is this?!"

On the communicator, Ah Zhe was silent for a few seconds. When he spoke again, his usual nonchalance had vanished without a trace, leaving only a hoarse and weary voice, as if it had been sanded by sandpaper.

“...Xiao Zhou. His name was Xiao Zhou. We...we wanted to make something great, a bridge that could capture ‘flashes of consciousness’...cross the river of death.”

There was no obvious regret or self-blame in his voice, only a bottomless, cold weariness, as if all his emotions had been exhausted in the long torment.

“The bridge is broken,” he said softly, as if stating a fact unrelated to himself, but the last syllable of the word “broken” was drawn out very slightly, revealing a faint tremor that he had not been able to completely suppress.

“He fell. Most of it… is gone. Only this little bit… ‘echo’ remains, probably because I was with him the longest, so it’s been following me.”

(End of this chapter)