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墨書 Inktalez
Lin Xiaxia curled up in the corner of the bay window, her nails scratching fine lines on the glass. Outside, the light rain fell, but in her retina, it transformed into countless green codes cascading down. The smell of disinfectant suddenly became overwhelming, and she reflexively pushed away the pills offered by the nurse. The white tablets rolled onto the carpet, bizarrely arranging themselves into a maze pattern.
"Is it starting again?" her mother's voice came from outside the door, tinged with tears.
Lin Xiaxia remembered three days ago when she had used a fruit knife to slash the television screen; what oozed from the LCD display was not circuit boards but a thick black liquid as viscous as tar. At this moment, the Monet water lily print on the wall began to distort, and ripples of numbers surfaced in the pond depicted in the painting.
"Miss Lin, please look at this QR code," the psychologist said, holding a tablet close. Lin Xiaxia suddenly emitted a whimper like a young beast. The black-and-white squares morphed into snake scales in her eyes, and the central design of the QR code distinctly resembled three blood-red eyes.
When she grabbed a vase and smashed it against the display screen, she heard her own scream erupting from her throat, echoing exactly like three months ago in the Virtual Maze. The fluorescent lights buzzing between supermarket shelves made Chen Hao freeze in the snack aisle. The barcodes on the shelf labels writhed like countless black maggots connecting head to tail.
Trembling, he reached for his phone to scan for payment but threw it away as if electrocuted upon seeing the WeChat icon. The metallic clatter of his phone hitting the ground startled the security guard; people only saw that well-dressed investment banker curled up beside the cash register, futilely wiping nonexistent blood from his forehead with his tie.
At the press conference, bright lights cast shadows over Su Yao's deeply sunken eyes. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the microphone tightly; the spot where a chip was implanted at the back of her neck began to throb painfully again.
"They've installed voice-activated switches in our brains," her voice was hoarse like sandpaper. "When you say specific keywords, what appears before you will..."
Suddenly, static flickered across the large screen, and a hacker wearing a V for Vendetta mask appeared on live broadcast. "Take a look at what Xinghai Technology has released today: 'Safety Pod'," the electronically altered voice dripped with sarcasm.
"Do they dare to publicly disclose the shielding threshold of the neural connector?"
The scene shifts to the interior of a laboratory, where a white mouse frantically crashes against the walls of its transparent chamber, its pink nose oozing a blue-green fluorescent liquid.
Live Stream and Danmu suddenly explode with activity as someone recognizes that eerie fluorescence, identical to the color of a certain streamer’s pupils at the time of their sudden death six months ago.
On the last subway train at midnight, Li Zhiyuan's mother's frail fingers glide over her smartphone. Under the trending topic "Virtual Maze Victims' Class Action Lawsuit" on Douyin, the most liked comment is a cold joke: "I suggest developing an anti-addiction system that kicks you out after 40 hours online."
She fumbles through her canvas bag for a bottle of pills, a mix of antidepressants and sleeping pills, the plastic bottle polished to a shine from wear.
A hacker's warning video goes viral again at two in the morning. This time, it features a string of pulsating hexadecimal code, and someone on an IT forum deciphers hidden latitude and longitude coordinates within it.
When netizens follow the coordinates to an abandoned chemical factory on the outskirts of the city, they find only fragments of VR headsets scattered in glowing puddles, resembling scales shed by some unknown creature.
In front of the Chaoyang District Court, twenty-three families form a moving cloud under black umbrellas. Among the evidence seized by law enforcement is a modified gaming console, labeled "Evidence No. 07," with dark red liquid seeping from its ventilation holes, staining the evidence bag.
A passing janitor swears he heard a heartbeat coming from inside the machine, but no one believes this drunken old man.
At a convenience store during Thunderstorm Night, the night-shift cashier stares at the surveillance screen while yawning. Suddenly, all displays flicker with static noise as a hooded man spills out from the camera in a stream of data.
When his early shift colleague discovers the unconscious cashier, they find fresh barcode-shaped abrasions on the young man's neck, while neatly arranged blood-printed QR codes lie in the cash register.
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