📖 Previous Chapter / 上一章： Neural Guillotine 第二十一章：神经断头台

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The biting cold of the blue fluid, mixed with shattered glass, washed over our ankles. Elias—or rather, the monster that had hijacked his shell—was already gone, vanishing into the pitch-black depths of the ventilation shaft. There was no pursuit. No gunfire. Only a deathly, suffocating silence remained in the ruined lab.

"Move! Move now!" Old Chen grabbed my tactical vest and hauled me up from the floor. Lu Yan bit her pale lip, casting one last, tear-filled glance in the direction Elias had disappeared. But she didn't hesitate to pull my other arm over her shoulder.

We fled downward. Blowing open a rusted maintenance hatch, we navigated the labyrinth of sewage pipes, leaving behind Pan-Asia's neon glory. We plunged straight through the absolute bottom of the slums and into the city's true "intestines"—the abandoned Old Sector, a forgotten relic from the Great Blackout era.

It felt like a massive, oppressive steel tomb. There was no light. The stagnant air was thick with the stench of decaying machine oil and damp rust. Old Chen cracked a red chem-light, its faint, bloody halo illuminating barely five meters around us. Petrified, thick cables wrapped around the overhead load-bearing pillars like dead, twisted vines in an ancient cave.

"What... what did the Captain turn into?" Lu Yan's voice echoed in the cavernous ruins, choked with suppressed sobs.

"That's not the Captain anymore," Chen growled, his revolver sweeping the suffocating darkness, his voice heavy with exhaustion. "Right now, we focus on staying alive. Feng, how's your eye?"

I clutched my left eye, panting heavily. Ever since I forcefully severed the connection with the "brain in a vat," a faint red static had lingered on my retina. It felt as if something lethal and quiet had been left behind, lurking in my neural pathways.

After nearly an hour of blindly navigating the pitch-black ruins, we stumbled upon a heavy airtight door hidden behind the wreckage of a massive exhaust fan. The metal bore Pan-Asia's original double-helix logo—a design that hadn't been used in at least half a century.

Chen forcefully pried open the dust-covered control panel, yanking out two rusted wires. "Feng, give me a hand. See if you can short-circuit this door with your port. We need a safe house to patch these wounds."

Fighting the agonizing, needle-like throbbing in the left hemisphere of my brain, I pulled the neural cable from the back of my neck and plugged it blindly into the archaic terminal.

The moment the data stream connected.

There was no sound of a mechanical lock disengaging. Instead, inside this underground tomb that had been dead for fifty years, eerie green emergency lights suddenly flickered to life.

With a heavy, grinding screech, the airtight door slid open. But it wasn't a supply depot inside.

In the center of the room sat an archaic medical stasis pod. The glass was covered in spiderweb cracks and thick dust, but inside... lay a completely desiccated corpse.

Before we could process the horrifying sight, the room's holographic projector spat out a harsh burst of static. A flickering projection of a figure in a white lab coat materialized in mid-air.

The figure stood with its back to us, its voice distorted by the scratchy, teeth-grating audio of old magnetic tape equipment:

"You're finally here, Yun Feng. I've been waiting for you... for exactly fifty years."

Chen and I gasped simultaneously, a cold dread paralyzing our spines. Fifty years ago? I wasn't even born yet! What kind of sick temporal trap had we just walked into?

At that exact moment, my left eye began to twitch violently out of control. The residual red code on my retina slowly rearranged itself into a blinding countdown:

[Abyss Protocol Activated: 71 Hours, 59 Minutes, 59 Seconds until Host Neural Dissolution]

[Author's Note / 作者的话]
The endless battles are finally over, but it seems Yun Feng has stumbled into something far more terrifying.
Question for my readers: If you were trapped in a dark, 50-year-old underground ruin with a 72-hour neural dissolution countdown ticking in your eye, what would be your very first move? Wait for death, or dive deeper into the abyss?

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刺骨的蓝色培养液夹杂着碎玻璃，淹过了我们的脚踝。伊莱亚斯，或者说那个占据了他躯壳的“怪物”，已经消失在通风井的深处。没有追杀，没有枪声，实验室里只有死一般的寂静。

“走！快走！”老程一把拽起瘫在地上的我。陆嫣咬着发白的嘴唇，回头死死盯了一眼伊莱亚斯离开的方向，眼泪在眼眶里打转，但她还是果断地架起我另一条胳膊。

我们顺着排污管道，炸开了一道生锈的维护舱门，一路向下狂奔。我们远离了泛亚集团高高在上的霓虹灯，穿透了贫民窟的最底层，进入了这座城市真正的“肠道”——大停电时代遗留下来的废弃旧城区。

这里像是一座巨大而压抑的钢铁古墓。没有一丝光亮，空气中弥漫着机油腐败和潮湿铁锈的味道。老程拧开了一根红色的冷光管，微弱的光晕只能照亮方圆五米。头顶的承重柱上，缠绕着石化般的粗大黑电缆，像极了古老洞穴里干枯的藤蔓。

“队长他……到底变成什么了？”陆嫣的声音在空荡的废墟里回响，带着难以掩饰的哭腔。

“他已经不是队长了。”老程一边持枪警戒黑暗深处，一边低吼，声音里透着疲惫，“现在最重要的是活下去。云锋，你的眼睛怎么样？”

我捂着左眼，大口喘着粗气。自从和那个“缸中之脑”强行断开连接后，我的左眼视网膜上就一直萦绕着一层淡淡的红色雪花屏，像是有什么致命的东西，悄无声息地残留在我的神经回廊里。

我们在无边的黑暗中摸索了近一个小时，终于在一个巨大的排风扇残骸后方，发现了一扇厚重的气密门。门上刻着泛亚集团极早期的双螺旋Logo，看工艺，至少有半个世纪的历史了。

老程用力撬开满是灰尘的控制面板，扯出两根生锈的线缆。“云锋，搭把手，看看能不能用你的接口短接这道门。我们需要一个安全屋包扎伤口。”

我强忍着左半边大脑针扎般的抽痛，拽出后颈的神经接口，盲插进了那台陈旧的终端。

就在数据接通的瞬间。

没有门锁解锁的机械声。相反，这间死寂了五十年的地下墓室里，突然亮起了幽绿色的备用电源。气密门伴随着沉闷的摩擦声缓缓滑开，映入眼帘的根本不是什么补给仓库。

房间中央，摆着一台老旧的休眠医疗舱。舱罩上布满了蛛网般的裂纹和厚厚的灰尘，但里面……赫然躺着一具早已干瘪的干尸。

更让人毛骨悚然的是，随着我的接入，房间里的全息投影仪突然发出一阵刺耳的电流声。半空中，闪烁出一个穿着白大褂的残破人影。

那个人影背对着我们，声音带着老式磁带设备那种令人牙酸的沙沙声：

“你终于来了，云锋。我等了你……整整五十年。”

我和老程瞬间倒吸了一口凉气，头皮发麻。五十年前？那时候我甚至还没出生！这到底是个什么时间陷阱？

就在这时，我的左眼不受控制地疯狂跳动起来。视网膜上那些残留的红色乱码，慢慢组合成了一个刺眼的倒计时：

[深渊协议已激活：距离宿主脑神经溶解，剩余 71小时59分59秒]

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Author's Note： ️ Author's Note / 原创声明

[EN] This chapter’s text is 100% human-authored. The original story was written in Chinese (my native language) and then manually translated and refined to break away from AI-generated stiffness. I am doing my best to preserve the authentic cyberpunk vibe and emotional tension in the English translation. (Note: The cover illustration was generated using AI tools strictly based on my original story prompts.) Thank you to the CCC community, the curators, and all my readers for supporting genuine human creators and following my journey!

[CN] 本文正文为本人 100% 全手工原创。原版故事使用我的母语中文创作，并经过人工翻译与精心润色，以摆脱 AI 翻译的生硬感，尽最大努力在英文版中保留原汁原味的赛博朋克氛围与情感张力。(注：本文封面配图为作者根据本人小说情节，使用 AI 工具生成的概念视觉图。) 感谢 CCC 社区、各位策展人以及所有读者对真实人类创作者的持续支持与鼓励，感谢大家一路以来的陪伴