The Mechanic [BL]

[130]

Chapter 130 – End Game (6)

It wasn't until a month later that Zhang Xun saw Eden again.

He and Natalie had been locked up in the cell that prevented them from committing suicide, with food and water brought to them daily by a service robot. When they wanted to use the toilet, they pressed the only button on the wall and two panels opened to reveal two washrooms, but even in the washrooms there were no sharp, lethal objects and an alarm would sound if they were locked for more than half an hour.

Every two days, a service robot arm would deliver them a clean change of clothes and the two of them could go to their respective bathrooms to change. The temperature of the room was also adjusted to the most comfortable level. At times the room would be filled with soothing music or soft, faint sounds. Zhang Xun suspected that hidden devices were monitoring their brainwave activity and would play music and sometimes soothing voices reciting poetry or classical literature when they detected activity related to low mood, anger or depression.

He and Natalie rarely interacted, speaking for no more than five minutes a day. In those five minutes, Natalie would tell him all the information she remembered about the virus. Although the information was fragmented and probably inaccurate, Zhang Xun had roughly pieced together a direction based on these disjointed pieces.

Once it was triggered, Eden would automatically enter permanent standby mode. Eden would not die and it would not be destroyed, but no human would be able to reawaken it.

Eden's core code would be locked by an extremely complex encryption algorithm, which would be generated by Eden itself. In other words, this core program would overwrite all of Eden's targets, cancel all of its ongoing processes and make it destroy itself.

Day and night, Zhang Xun kept building in his mind the doomsday for the proudest creation ever made by the lonely and pessimistic computer genius of two hundred years ago. He needed to find all the conditions that would trigger that function and he needed to decrypt the security locks. From what Natalie had leaked to him he would be able to bypass at least two thirds of the security locks, but not all of them after all.

He had only one chance and he couldn't afford to make any mistakes.

Zhang Xun knew that he was about to do something really crazy, something he would probably only do once in his life. He had to practise and practise again and again. His mind was running at high intensity around the clock, trying to piece together the original virus and remembering it over and over again.

He needed to find the most important thing in his life, the most unforgettable memory.

It wasn't difficult. The only colourful memories within his boring, dull, tedious life were those of living in the Lab with Adam. Standing together in front of the dining room panel choosing their weekend breakfast, sitting under the pergola while watching Adam sweat and wrestle with Diego, building simple rubbish sorting robots together using discarded rusty materials, arguing with Adam about whether something in the design wasn't user-friendly enough, the two of them lighting the fire in the fireplace and sitting on the old leather sofa talking late into the night while drinking hot milk......

Their first hasty kiss in the data room, their clasped hands in the underground caves, their tentative but mutual attraction, the desire to push away but to draw closer and closer....... He missed the days when he held suspicions but kept falling deeper and deeper in love, when his cheeks had warmed at the slightest gesture of affection from Adam. He missed Adam's touch and embrace that were full of fondness.

He had given Adam life and Adam had given him a life of colour. Within the eyes of that intelligent being who transcended humans, he saw the colours of the soul, painted by his own hand.