The morning was born beneath a gray sky. As usual, the backstreets of Shanghai were sleepy and rusted; shop awnings sagged, sidewalks cracked, and the building walls looked like they hadn't seen sunlight in years. Time didn't pass in these streets — it simply piled up, crushed under the weight of the past, with no hope for the future.
Zhang Qiming walked quietly through that weight. The shirt he wore was thin; its fabric worn out like a letter left in the sun, its color faded. He had no shoes — but this wasn't a shameful absence. It was a silence that belonged to him. When his bare feet touched the ground, it felt as if they carried all the unsaid sentences of that morning.
He was eleven. But that age had become a number no one celebrated, no one acknowledged. Children usually played, shouted, fell down, cried, then ran again. But he lived outside the noisy worlds they built; his childhood was made of silence.
His mother existed. Or at least, she once did. These days, she left early in the morning and returned at night — sometimes, she didn't return at all. Neighbors averted their eyes when they spoke of her, quickly changing the subject. Zhang Qiming never asked questions. He had learned that some answers hurt, even before they're spoken.
He had woken up hungry again. The emptiness in his stomach had remained from the night before. But hunger had become a habit. What was truly difficult wasn't suppressing hunger — it was acting human when others still expected something from you, despite that hunger.
So he set off early, as usual, toward the garbage piles. He searched for leftover food, a piece of useful metal, or a cardboard box that might still hold its shape. When he carefully reached into the plastic bags, he didn't fear getting cut — what he feared more was not knowing what he might find.
But that day, something else caught his attention in the trash. A slightly shifted iron lid, nearly invisible under layers of dirt. Its surface was rusted, its edges caked with mud from countless rains. It looked as if it had been there for years — yet somehow, it felt new.
He bent down. Brushed off the filth. It was cold and damp. Not exactly locked, but not entirely open either. His curiosity outweighed his fear. He pushed it gently. The lid creaked open. A cool, heavy air rose from within.
Zhang Qiming, without a second thought, climbed down.
The narrow stone stairs were damp, the edges slippery with a moss-like film. With every step, the silence thickened, and the darkness seemed to breathe. Below, there was a room. Dimly lit.
Abandoned, yet not quite.
If one looked closely, it was clear someone had been here recently.
Rusty tables, broken monitors, glass tubes filled with faintly glowing fluids… And in the center, a small, orb-shaped device. It pulsed with a soft light, beating like a slow, steady heart, spreading a faint blue aura with each blink.
He didn't know what it was. But he had no choice but to move closer.
He reached out.
And touched it.
There was no shock. No explosion. No blinding light.
But something… shifted in the way he felt.
It was like a small door inside his mind had quietly creaked open.
When he stood back up, he felt dizzy. Struggled not to fall. His heart wasn't racing — but it was beating to a differentrhythm.
When he looked around again, everything was clearer:
The scratches on the table. The mold patterns around the ceiling stains. Even a partially erased note on the wall.
"试验003:认知增强未稳定""
Chinese characters…
He couldn't translate all the words, but he recognized "experiment" and "mind."
And in that moment, a thought echoed inside him — not like an external voice, but in his own tone, only deeper and slower:
"The world runs on a certain order. But who wrote that order? And why wasn't it me?"