Other Side

“Moco, you don’t want to miss this message,” a voice urged.

It took her some effort to figure out what the voice was trying to tell her. The reversal of her work and rest patterns between day and night had her brain working at a slower pace. She picked up her phone and saw a missed message from Steffie.

The text was blank.

She and Steffie had fought earlier. If Steffie had decided to furiously threaten to break up their friendship, or had made some passionate speech outside Horizon headquarters to announce a declaration of war, she wouldn’t have been surprised. But a blank message?

“What could it mean?”

The voice didn’t reply, Moco only heard the familiar echo of an electric current through her headset. The screen in front of her suddenly moved on its own—a window popped up, and a series of code flashed on the terminal. A bird’s-eye view of the city loaded with two points flashing on its map. One showed an IP address where the information was sent from, the other indicated the phone’s real-time geographic location. The two points overlapped on the map.

The muscles in Moco’s back tensed up, “Where could she be now?”

“I don’t know,” the voice sounded a little sorry, “I can only be sure she is no longer in possession of her phone.”

It could be nothing but her gut was telling her it was a cry for help. Moco stared at the empty message.

She was not surprised. This kind of thing was bound to happen sooner or later—Steffie was the kind of person whose feelings ran intensely and in the extreme. In her heart it blazed a wild fire that threatened to burn her and everything around her to ashes.

“Leonard.”

“Yes?”

Moco opened her mouth but said nothing. She furrowed her eyebrows, thinking of the questions left unanswered in her mind. Why are you doing this? She asked herself. If you hadn’t deliberately sent that SOS message to Steffie to begin with, she would never have known and an argument would never have followed. What on earth do you want?

“Nothing, nevermind,” she said softly.

“Moco, I know you don’t trust me. But I think your roommate is in a very dangerous situation. If you want to see her again, you need to hurry up.”

The cold wind was whirling through the night, and icy rain was slamming against the dirty windows. An old black raincoat hung on the wall, picked out of a garbage collection station, still covered in a layer of dust. Moco stuffed her arms into the stiff fabric with some effort, pulled the zipper up to her chin, and flipped up the hood.

She opened the door only to be met by a violent gust of fierce winter wind that assailed her face. Moco wrapped her coat a little tighter and quickly walked across the high platform of the light rail station.

As a looping tram rumbled past, the darkness of night was shattered by its headlights, light and dark juxtaposed like in a photo from a past era lit up by a magnesium flash.

The city loomed like a giant castle from an old legend, drenched in the night rain. Below Moco’s feet was the old city, silent, dark, and empty, cast in shadow from Horizon’s illuminated building in the center, the castle’s tallest spire towering over the rest.

Moco skillfully dodged surveillance cameras as she made her way through the mostly silent streets and reached the destination Leonard had indicated in the outskirts of the city. Climbing over a mottled red brick wall, she rolled into the yard on the other side at the destination.

As a child, Moco had been quite familiar with the layout of the city. Most nights, she would sneak through the dirtier streets toward the richest and safest residential areas. She would climb a drainage pipe to the second floor of a clean and brightly decorated villa to a window that opened into a study room, squeeze through the gap, and land on an old but well-maintained wool carpet.

“Moco, you’re late. If we aren’t careful, we won’t be able to get in again.” The speaker was a boy about her age with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a few freckles on his nose and cheeks. He raised his chin slightly, frowning, and tightening his lips.

“Relax Leonard, you don’t need to be so harsh all the time,” the boy sitting on the sofa said as he put down the book in his hand and smiled at her, his purple eyes bent into two crescents.

Edmond Owens—during Moco’s turbulent youth, he was the one person in her life who had any hint of gentility. He was an outlier in the upper class, a deviation from high society values. His parents were both very high-ranking scientists at Horizon. He received a comprehensive education and was fond of collecting fairy tales—bursting with wishful thinking about the future of mankind. Leonard could never figure out how Edmond had ended up the way he was. “An untimely fool,” as Leonard liked to comment about him blankly.

Moco turned her head to meet the pair of gentle purple eyes, “Edmond, what are you reading?”

“Huh? You mean this?” Edmond showed her the book cover—Dragonlance Chronicle.

“It’s all boring stories invented by human beings. There’s no such thing as dragons.” Leonard sat on the floor by the fireplace, attentively typing on his laptop, pretending to ignore their conversation.

Edmond shook his head, “Fairy tales don’t tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”[1] Leonard’s doubts could never shake Edmund and his beliefs. He was also the first to call Moco “Little Witch,” praising her for her beautifully written programs that seemed as inexplicable as magical spells.

Moco leaned over to look at the screen in Leonard’s hands. With the increasing scarcity of supplies, computers that could operate with efficiency were scarce or extremely costly. This machine was the main reason Leonard came by every day.

“Leo, what is this?”

“Technology,” Leonard didn’t even look up.

“Technology is indistinguishable from magic within a specific time frame. It can be said that in human history, science and technology is the only creation that comes close to magic.” Edmond smiled.

“There was a time when people who could be linked to so-called magic were tied to the stake and burned.” Leonard was full of disdain.

Unlike Edmond, Leonard disliked stories that were incredulous or sugarcoated. When the two boys met for the first time, Edmond was walking alone in an alley. His head was lowered as he flipped through a very thick book. Leonard took his chances and punched the youthful stranger, stealing his bag as he fell. But before running even a few feet, he was caught by a nearby bodyguard.

“I fell on my own. He didn’t do anything,” Edmond said as he clutched his bleeding nose, his face still wrinkled in pain. He waved his hand, “Actually, that was a gift for him. We… uh, we have known each other for a long time.”

Moco didn’t have the honor of witnessing the two boys’ first-time meeting. At the time, she had been ill—comatose with a high fever. Her mother was stuck on the outside of a blockade. It had been Leonard who took care of her those two days. As their food, medicine and water reached dangerously low levels, Leonard decided he needed to do something drastic, only to find that the things in Edmond’s bag hadn’t been worth the risk.

When Moco recovered enough to sit up in bed, Leonard brought the boy with fair hair and purple eyes to meet her.

“Edmond Owens, at your service,” the boy said with a smile, bowing to her like a medieval cavalier striding out of an art piece.

The three of them were almost inseparable after that day. Records of history always used pessimistic, negative words to describe those years. “The end of civilization.” “Humanitarianism has vanished out of existence.” But for Moco, that period constituted one of the few warm places in her memory. Together they scavenged the empty streets, moving through the thick dawn mist and smoke. As night fell, cats emerged through the junk-lined street to join the ragged company. The whole sullen city whispered yearnings for a long-forgotten world that only existed in its inhabitants’ dreams.

Moco stared unblinkingly at the flashing code. Then the magic came into effect, many small windows started popping up on the screen, showing real-time footage of nearby rooms and areas.

“That’s... my house?” Edmond was stunned. “And that’s the camera on this street?”

“From now on, these are our eyes. No more worrying about anyone sneaking up on us.” Leonard shook his hair like an energetic warrior standing above the body of a slain dragon and its bountiful treasures.

Moco and Leonard had grown up together and had both lost precious things to the war. Leonard was like an older brother and mentor to her, having taught her a great many things. In addition to programming and some basic physics and engineering, she also learned a thing or two of petty theft. Although often duplicitous, he always protected Moco from harm in his own way. This was true when they were young, and it was true now.

Moco dropped down into a messy yard. Two startled crows broke her absent-minded recollecting of the past. She looked around—the weeds growing through the pavement reached calf height; it was obvious that this place hadn’t been taken care of for a long time. The small gray brick building in front was quiet, pitch black inside, and without a single sign of life. Large piles of dilapidated furniture and parts were thrown into one corner.

Moco raised her left hand, tapping a few times on the device on her wrist, and several holographic screens projected outwards. The GPS showed that she was very close to her target. Making the search range more precise, Moco started walking towards the flashing red dot on the screen. Going through a mass of weeds, she came across the phone that had sent the message with a broken screen. No mistaking it, a phone covered in patterns of spray-paint—it was Steffie’s. But where was Steffie? Moco had heard the rumors of people mysteriously disappearing from the boonies. She hoped they weren’t true. She raised her head and her eyes became fixed on the dark camera at the door of the apartment building on the other side of the street.

“Moco, are you okay?”

“Leonard, why are you so interested in Steffie’s affairs?”

Sensing the seriousness of her tone, Leonard sighed, “I know that we can’t talk truthfully on many issues, but you have to believe that no matter what, I would never hurt you.” He paused, “Your infamous friend is on Horizon’s level II warning list, the same level as brutal underground drug lords and arms dealers, and almost catching up to that of extremists with records of terrorist activity. She really pissed off the higherups. I just want to help you get her back.”

Whose side are you on?

The last time she and Leonard had met was ten years ago. After Edmond died, they had taken different paths. Leonard joined Horizon, where he probably had long risen to a position of power.

All these years, she hadn’t heard from him once.

The first snowflakes of winter fell. Moco raised her head to look at the countless silver-white shadows floating down from the sky, blanketing everything and impossible to escape. She sighed and exhaled a thin white mist. Every time she saw falling snow, it reminded her of Edmond, as if the whole world was consumed with inexplicable sadness for this name.

“Let’s go.” Moco took off her hood, tossed her hair, her head full of colorful braids scattering around her neck, then began trotting down the empty road.

Moco passed through the chaotic business sectors and neighborhoods of City Minor, then crossed several abandoned railways as she came back out into a different part of the boonies. On the way, she had hacked into the backstage of the Ministry of Transportation, surveillance videos of several banks, breaking at least ten laws—though no one cared about most of them anymore. She finally stopped at a highland.

Once an industrial zone and transportation center, it was now utterly polluted and ravaged by the war. The armistice had not included this area. As if trekking through an endless forest, the abandoned windows and doors stared out like pairs of dark animal eyes, hollowly following the uninvited visitors.

The heavy snow dampened all sounds. Future Company’s huge sign crouched in the darkness, like the undulating back of an evil dragon.

Moco looked down at the screen on her wrist for final confirmation. The truck that took Steffie stopped for a while in the business districts, then drove straight back here. Future Transportation Company was wholly-owned by Horizon Group—the world’s largest corporation and the same one which filled her with doubts and suspicions.

Moco scoped out the entire building, finding nothing at first. The place looked like an ordinary factory in every respect until she hacked into the database and found something fishy in the inbound and outbound records—every day, massive amounts of food were delivered without fail. It was too much food, far exceeding the amount that would correspond to the crew of skeletons on payroll.

There was inevitably some mischief behind this.

With Leonard’s help, she could do anything to the building’s security system that she wanted to—in fact, much too easily, she thought.

“Don’t internal terminals leave digital traces? Are you not afraid of being flagged?”

“That’s my problem, let me worry about that,” Leonard said carelessly, “When you’re ready, you can start sneaking in. I’ll hack their surveillance remotely. You’ll have one minute to pass by security’s infrared detection. Be careful Moco, the place we are looking for may not be marked on the map. The more valuable whatever it is they store here, the more dangerous the situation will be.”

Moco replied without hesitation, “Okay.”

She had never questioned Leonard’s capabilities.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be there with you.” He replied.

Half a year ago, in the bathroom of the Horizon headquarters, Moco had hacked into the central database and stolen top-secret documents with only an old laptop and a power cord. By doing so, she had committed herself to a life without an official identity, but neither Horizon nor she had forgotten the fact that the former owner of that identity was still alive. In the early days, no matter where she hid, she was quickly followed by an assassin. She fell into an endless state of escaping and fleeing from place to place. During that period, she had to be nocturnal, surviving on expired food discarded by small supermarkets, and was extremely careful not to have too much contact with anyone else for fear of implicating innocent people.

She lived like this until one day, on the computer she had built with discarded parts from the junkyard, after a flash of white noise, an encrypted window suddenly popped up with only a simple word, “Moco?”

At first, she thought it was another new trick Horizon had come up with. But since that time, this mysterious source of information had helped her out several times at crucial moments when she needed.

Moco was curious. The person on the other side of the screen was obviously a very intelligent operator, didn’t speak much, and would sometimes leave trackable traces, guiding her step by step towards himself.

The trail finally led to a camera feed, showing tiny colored pixels on the LCD screen that pieced together a familiar, but at the same time, unfamiliar face. The young man with blue eyes and blonde hair smiled at her, “Long time no see, Little Witch.”

She was stunned, thinking for a moment that she had passed through a long and far-reaching wormhole and run into a ghost from the past.

The doormen at the gate were dozing off.

Moco only glanced at them before quickly and silently slipping through the door like a deft black cat.

After the long loading bar finally indicated that it was finished decrypting, Moco snapped her fingers. On the holographic screen, the hidden space she was looking for finally revealed itself. Along with the slight tremor occurring from the mechanism’s activation, a section of stairs appeared before her eyes, the other end plunging into an unknown underground darkness.

Moco took a breath, then stepped down into the basement.

[1] Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The architectural style of the underground facility was completely different from that of the ground level, and reminded Moco of the space capsules she had seen in old science fiction movies. The security surveillance network down below was advanced and evidently operated independently of the factory. It was not ordinary bodyguards who patrolled back and forth, but drones and soldiers with live ammunition, all of which indicated that she had broken into a place where outsiders were extremely unwelcome.

Moco quickly figured out the patterns of how the guards patrolled. Wherever there was a fork in the path or intersection, there were cameras. The two guards would patrol back this way in a minute. She had to run as fast as she could to make it to the door of the central monitoring room.

Moco glided towards the door of the surveillance room like a ghost. She held the headset and tried to speak, “Leonard?”

A few seconds of long, empty silence passed before a familiar voice was heard, “Always here to serve you, miss. I thought you would never ask.”

Moco unconsciously let her guard down, hearing the soft voice that still carried its natural tone of hoarseness. “I need your help,” she whispered. “I have to sneak in.”

“Of course,” replied the voice in the headset, “I’m trying to take over the system’s permissions, give me two minutes.”

He didn’t say anything after that. A sudden exclamation came from behind the door, followed by the sound of bodies hitting the floor. Moco felt her heart missing a few beats, “Leo?”

The door silently opened in front of her and the guards left in the central monitoring room collapsed to the ground. Moco leaned over and felt one of their necks, breathing out a sigh of relief as she felt a regular pulse beating beneath her fingers.

“A special chip is embedded in Horizon uniforms that helps them transmit information faster, but it is also their biggest security hole. Once someone gains control of the circuit, it can quickly become the ideal material for conducting electricity. But that takes too much time—each chip is slightly different from the others, making it very tedious to crack. We won’t be able to always count on this trick to escape in tight situations.”

Moco stood up slowly, “I thought we were talking about sneaking in.”

“We are,” Leonard said. “If no one sees you, that’s sneaking in.”

Moco sighed, “I thought we would try to avoid…” At that moment, a figure’s movement caught her attention from the corner of her eye, a red-haired female communication officer was coming to, struggling to pull herself up onto the console and groping for the communicator to sound the alarm.

“There is... there is an intrusion...” The red-haired woman stretched out her arm strenuously.

Moco picked up the communicator just out of her reach.

“This is the surveillance room checking in.” Moco said, pointing the gun at the woman and staring into the eyes that reflected Moco’s outstretched arm,“All is A-Okay here.” Moco closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.

“Nice shot.” Leonard said admiringly in her ear. “You were just saying, you wanted to avoid something?”

“It’s a stun gun,” Moco countered softly, carefully pushing the unconscious woman aside. “A good hacker can always avoid direct conflict and violence—that’s what you taught me, right?”

“I’m here to help you, Moco.” The young man on the other side of the headset paused, seeming to let out a very soft sigh. “But yes, if possible, it’s better not to hurt anyone. Are you ready?”

Moco turned her head and looked around. Now, this entire console, the system in this base, and the entire network were hers. She took a deep breath, “Of course.”

As the full picture of the base unfolded before her eyes, Moco found that the structure was much more complicated than she had imagined. The chip life signal indicator showed that besides Horizon personnel, there were also a large number of ordinary people present of unknown identity.

“You don’t look that surprised.”

“I’ve dealt with Horizon before.” Moco’s head didn’t lift as her fingers flew across the holographic screen, beautiful and powerful code quietly forming beneath them.

“I hacked into their database and read some highly confidential information,” She spoke slowly, as if considering whether to tell him these things. “I know they have discretely initiated a multitude of experiments. Considering the rise of Horizon after the war, it’s not too surprising, but I didn’t expect...”

She hit the enter key. The program was complete and the codes sprang to life instantaneously, immediately running their mini-programs, drawing a bright green trail of light in front of her eyes.

All surveillance feeds of the base flashed in sequence on the big screen, cramped, dark rooms appearing in the background. They were filled with men and women of all ages—all looking like street dwellers with worn-out clothes and equally worn-out, scared expressions. If any of them were to suddenly disappear one day, she didn't expect that the others would make any commotion.

“They even prey on the people of this city,” Moco’s gaze swept across the feeds one by one, speaking in a tone that was deliberately aggravated, “Their city.” Finally, her gaze stopped at the top left. In this video feed, a girl with arctic-blue hair highlights was kicking angrily against the tempered glass wall that confined her in a cell.

“Found her.” Moco breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Congratulations,” Leonard said, “Let’s go.”

“Wait a minute,” Moco stopped him, “Leo, what will happen to the others?”

Leonard’s voice was calm and emotionless. “Don’t be stupid, Moco, the probability of rescuing everyone from here is less than 1%.”

Moco closed her eyes. Contradictory thoughts battled fiercely, and reason told her Leonard was right. In fact, it was going to be difficult just to get Steffie out of here. But there was another voice ringing in her ears, coming out from the depths of the fog of time, tickling her sensory perceptions.

“We can’t leave these people!”

“—We can’t leave these people!”

Edmond shook his head. When he spoke with this particular expression on his face, both Moco and Leonard knew that trying to stop him would be useless. A few months ago, a rebel group from the south had suddenly attacked their city. The group was backed by the world’s largest arms dealer, enabling them to capture swathes of territory.

The city defense forces sought to mediate with them for a long time. The enemy had chosen to besiege the city after launching repeated failed assaults.

Seeing supplies dry up bit by bit, people in the city began panicking and everyone foresaw a terrible outcome—the famine was about to come, and many people would die fighting each other in the bloody chaos that would ensue. Compared with this, the number of people who died in the war was minimal.

Just a few days ago, Leonard had accidentally intercepted a secret message from the enemy. The three worked hard on it for two days and nights and finally cracked the code. Edmond passed the information to his parents inadvertently, so that they could notify Horizon that the enemy was about to launch a blitz and stop a massacre.

They waited and waited. However, when the final decision made by Horizon’s top management was finally announced, it was terribly disheartening. To Horizon, it was simply a matter of taking care of business—in order to hide the fact that the enemy’s message had been decoded, Horizon would take no action against this planned attack, and would not take any action to inform the public of the need to evacuate. Not only that—they planned to implement aggressive new weapons only after the enemy thought they had won. This would put the entire area at risk of being exposed to severe radiation.

Moco finally realized that this is what those people wanted—the blood of a small number of innocent people in exchange for the hope of survival for the entire city.

This was an approved slaughter of the abandoned populace of the city.

“Bunch of lunatics.” Edmond’s lips were white and he was blind with anger.

Leonard and Moco looked at each other but couldn’t make up their minds. Where they were staying right now was at the far end of the battlefield, fortunately far enough away from immediate danger.

“Ed... give it up,” Leonard tried to persuade him at first, “We can’t compete against a whole army ourselves.”

Edmond was silent for a long time. Outside the window, a group of white birds flapped their wings and flew across the sky. Winter was coming—they were flying off to a warmer place to survive.

“Perhaps you’re right.” At last, he raised his head, his gaze firm, “But at least we can... tell them the truth.”

Of the three of them, Leonard was always the calmest. He often played the bad guy and felt responsible for dragging them back to reality when they were indulged in “untimely dreams.” But this time, he compromised without a fight. Moco knew that Leonard would never really oppose Edmond. It was because Edmond always did what Leonard wanted to do, even though he may never have admitted to it. Leonard was definitely not ignorant, but his unwillingness to go against Edmond had led them to an irreversible ending. Moco never asked Leonard if he had any regrets.

At first, no one believed what they said. They tried various methods—distributing leaflets, hacking into inboxes to leave warnings, and smearing conspicuous words in the square with paint, but the residents were not in the mood of paying attention to such farces. Everyone was stuck in the quagmire of their immediate reality, often too poor to get a bite to eat, indifferent to anything happening on a larger scale.

The judgement day finally came, the three stood their ground in the deserted ruins, watching the pale sun sinking slowly below the horizon.

“Let’s go, Edmond. It’s not your fault. There’s nothing else we can do.”

But Edmond simply shook his head and sat down where he was, “I won’t leave. They’ll understand in the end. Maybe not now, but just wait until the bombing begins. I’ll stay here and show them the way out.”

Leonard was silent for a long time, Moco thought he was so angry that he couldn’t speak. But, eventually he just let out a sigh.

“I think you’re a real lunatic,” he sat down cross-legged next to him. “Even if you stay, it won’t help—you can’t intercept those coded messages. Moco, go home.”

Moco shook her head slightly, “I run faster than Edmond,” she pointed out calmly. “If you make me leave, I’ll tell Mr. Owens the whole thing.”

The two boys simultaneously expressed shock and disbelief. Leonard frowned and murmured as if talking to himself, “Who taught her…”

Edmond couldn’t help laughing when he came back to his senses. “Leo, I warned you long ago—don’t underestimate her.” He raised his hand and gave Moco a high five. “Remember, she’s a little witch... Maybe we’ll have to rely on her to cover our butts in the future.”

Thanks to Edmond, most civilians survived that war. While monitoring the movements of enemy forces, Moco and Leonard hacked into the city’s power system to light up the way for panicked refugees to escape. Streetlights lit up in the dark one by one, and under the rain of bullets blearing the sky, they became the last beacon of hope for the countless people there searching for survival.

But unlike the ending of a fairy tale, the end of this path of lights was not a happy one.

“Hey you! I know you… you are with them!” After a salvo of bombing explosions, a girl suddenly came rushing to grab Edmond. “I saw you stepping off Horizon’s private jet! You’re one of them!”

The tear-stained, grief-stricken girl clutched his clothes, “Why! Why did you abandon us? You’re murderers just like the army outside, and I want my parents back.”

The hissing accusation was a spark, igniting hatred in the hearts of the people who had just escaped. The group’s senses had been overwhelmed, and in the face of such immense grief and anger, everything else became insignificant.

Leonard, who sensed that something was wrong, immediately took hold of Moco and Edmond and got them to flee. The people they tried their best to save had now turned on them. It didn’t matter what the truth was, they needed somewhere to vent their anger.

They tried their best to escape the crowd but were forced to hide in an abandoned supermarket, hoping their anger would pass. When dawn was about to break, Edmond made his decision. He locked the door from outside. The clink of the lock woke Moco and Leonard to the reality of the situation.

“Edmond, what are you doing?” He banged the door. “Open the door!”

Edmond stepped back and smiled in the faint morning light. “Leo, take care of Moco,” he whispered, then turned and rushed into the gray mist without looking back.

Moco slammed locked door with her body. Once. Twice... But Leonard’s hands stopped her. He held her firmly in his arms.

“Leo... let me go,” She struggled, refusing to give up, “Let’s go after him. It’s not too late!”

A teardrop trickled down from her face. Moco opened her eyes wide and looked up at Leonard’s expressionless face. His blue pupils were consumed in a terrible storm. Moco saw the pain inside.

As if the weather had chosen to mourn along with them, it began to snow.

That was the last time Moco saw Edmond. Horizon didn’t even investigate why he was there in the first place and hurriedly concluded that he was just another of the thousands of ordinary casualties that would rest in that winter forever.

Leonard had fallen seriously ill after Edmond’s funeral, and when he recovered, he became irritable and aggressive. The following spring, Leonard left her. He agreed to Horizon’s employment terms, accepted their training, and joined the organization. Moco had been filled with dread that Leonard was going to do something horrific, something she couldn’t stop him from doing.

Moco opened her eyes, having made up her mind, and started weaving another line of code.

It seemed Leonard had already guessed what she was going to do, despite his question, “Did you decide?”

“We can’t always rely on numbers and probabilities to get things done.” Moco lowered her head and glanced at the screen again. Steffie was still punching and kicking at the wall in defiance, the neighboring prisoners staring at her flailing, yet determined movements blankly, not understanding why she was still resisting. “You see, some people don’t give up.”

There was a voice in Moco’s heart reminding her not to repeat the same impulsive mistakes. Things in this world can’t be accomplished just with passion and kindness. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try. She ran forward, thinking of Edmond, thinking of those gentle purple eyes curling up in a smile. If she stopped here, then his death, everything they had fought for seemed meaningless.

Was sacrifice necessary for the greater good? To save some, must others be sent to death? She wasn’t sure, maybe no one had an answer, but she was pretty sure that no one should be indifferent to it.

“I can trust you, right, Leo?”

Leonard only smiled wryly. Moco stopped thinking about the meaning behind that, and turned on the communicator.

“Steffie?”

The short-haired girl was startled when she heard her name, searching for the source of the sound. Moco looked at the monitor, seeing Steffie’s lips opening and closing, seeming to ask a question, “Moco?”

“This is a one-way communication system.” Moco couldn’t help but smile even though they were clearly in danger now. “I will unlock all the locks that I can. Follow the green lights. You have five minutes. Can you guide everybody out?” Steffie watched the camera with intent eyes and gave a thumb-up.

Moco took a long breath and said decisively, “Now it begins.”

She quickly knocked out a series of codes on a holographic screen. A sharp alarm rang through the air. On the monitoring map, yellow dots indicating guards were gathering quickly and rushing together towards the bottom of the base, where a large area flashed red, indicating that a first-degree emergency situation had occurred.

“The sixth-floor underground was under attack. Urgent request for support.”

As Moco listened to the influx of guard communications, her fingers continued tapping on the screen several times, after which the doors of cells started to pop open.

The convicts had been locked up for too long and when faced with the sudden opportunity for freedom, they were frozen in fear. Moco watched Steffie stumble out first, shouting something in the corridor. Slowly more and more people exited their cells, looking left and right, emboldened at seeing no trace of guards around them. Steffie waved her hand, finally getting everyone to start following her and rush to the exit.

Moco watched them as they made their way up the complex toward the ground level, make sure that she was lighting up all the correct paths. Despite their different personalities, Steffie and her were kindred spirits. Steffie immediately recognized Moco’s signals and the prisoners were fast approaching the exit.

“Excellent judgment, you really have grown a lot over the years,” Leonard said casually. “Have you considered how you want to get out of here?”

Moco’s hands paused, “Not yet.” She lowered her eyes, “There’s always a way.”

Before the voices fell silent, a flash of red light suddenly filled the screen. Moco stared at the warning in front of her in astonishment. The last door couldn’t be opened—her program had been denied. More and more fugitives were gathering in front of the sturdy, concrete door. Steffie was on her knees panting, having exhausted her energy nearly to its limits. She raised her head to look at the nearby camera, feeling anxious, as if asking Moco what to do next.

Moco tried several other methods of cracking the door’s security, but no matter what code she used, her attempts ended in failure. By this time, the guards had noticed that they were being fooled and started rushing back. She finally plead for help, “Leo, what’s going on?”

“Horizon’s latest defense system,” Leonard replied, “This is the only way out. But it needs the highest security clearance.

“Can you crack it for me?”

“Yes,” he said, “But it will take a lot of time.”

The calm in his tone startled Moco. Earlier doubts surfaced in her mind, small details flashed before her eyes, and suddenly she understood something. “You knew from the beginning. You lied to me. Why?” She raised her head, and spoke into the ether. “You found me half a year ago, but never wanted to meet me. You just tried to lead me into attacking Horizon’s operations—you even put Steffie in danger to bait me into following this path. You wanted to bring me to this place, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Moco suddenly felt exhausted. She looked at the guards slowly getting closer to where the captives she was able to free were waiting. She was slowly realizing that those people were about to get hurt because of her impulsive heroism. “What do you want from me, Leo? You’re the one who works for Horizon, why did you bring me here?”

The voice in her headset was silent for a moment, then sighed. “Moco,” he said, “I’m sorry for choosing this way to tell you the truth.” After a flash of white noise, the LCD screen on the wall divided into two and a surveillance feed appeared on the left half, seeming to be a hospital ward. The footage zoomed in on someone lying in a hospital bed, then zoomed in on the nearby medical record card. The name read “Leonard Louisville”; the diagnosis was written clearly in black ink—“Brain Death”.

The central monitoring room was deathly silent.

“You’re not Leo.” Moco said, her voice trembling imperceptibly, “Leonard died five years ago. Who are you? What are you?”

As she turned around, the holographic image next to the console suddenly started to blink with the activity of complex operations. Tiny spots of light started to gather, and a virtual portrait gradually took shape.

The man was pale. His fair blonde hair was tied in a ponytail at the back of his head. He floated in mid-air with a calming power in his eyes, gentle and sad, which he fixed on Moco and smiled slightly.

“You are right, I am not Leonard.” The image said. “If the dissipation of consciousness is how we define death, then Leonard the human indeed died five years ago. As for me—what am I?” he opened his hands and looked at his illusory and translucent palm. “I am a part of his consciousness, a piece of his memory, part of his personality, a string of code—created for one sole purpose.”

Moco felt like she couldn’t catch her breath. On the other screen Leonard still had a heartbeat. His body was still alive, but his consciousness gone.

“Sorry, please forgive me for continuing to use ‘I’ to refer to myself, but I... I made a mistake once. When Edmond died, I lost my patience with the world and set my sights on revenge. I chose to join Horizon because at that time I believed that only an overwhelming force could change all of this—war, hunger, and the never-ending fight between men. But then...” He paused and winced slightly, his brow hinting he was remembering some bad memories, “Later, I experienced a lot of things at Horizon and was forced to make a lot of decisions that were contrary to my intentions... I gradually came to my senses that Horizon was not what I expected it to be. They shouted lofty ideals, but intended to accomplish their goals without regard to the loss of the blood of innocent people. If Edmond was still there, he would be ashamed of the path I took.”

“Moco, I was not created to live the rest of Leonard’s life. He made me for other reasons. He left something incredible, something I need to pass on. The Bio Cloud Code... that’s what I call it. It can synchronize your thoughts with data—you can also think of it as a key that allows human consciousness to be uploaded into the cloud. With it, you can directly connect your consciousness to the internet, traveling in the net world at the top speed. Wherever there is data, you can be there. Breaking Horizon’s firewall would be easy as pie. It’s also why Horizon did not hesitate to spend a fortune to preserve my body. They never gave up searching my brain, trying to figure out what I had secretly created. Fortunately, no one knows of my existence thus far, but it’s a race against time.”

Moco looked at him and suddenly realized something.

“You’re a self-destructing program.”

The alarm outside the door suddenly started blaring. The red light flickered wildly, the ground vibrated, and it seemed like the whole world was crumbling, doomsday on the doorstep.

Leonard sighed, but he did not deny it.

“To be honest, when I left this program, I didn’t have a lot of hope. It was just a means, a measure, to avoid the worst. It was not until half a year ago when you attacked Horizon’s database, forcing a bug into their system, that I finally ‘woke up.’ My responsibility is to end everything that should have ended long ago. At the same time, I will try to give the seeds of the future to the right people. ‘The ending of a story is the beginning of another one.’ Moco, you are the only one I trust.”

Moco stared at him for a moment, as if he would disappear the next second. “What will happen to you then?”

“Me?” Leonard seemed to be amused, “I’m already dead, Moco.”

“But it feels like you are here,” she said softly, reaching out to the holographic projection image in the air. She touched his hair but there was nothing, no tactile feeling, just air.

Leonard just looked at her with gentle eyes. “I will disappear. My memory unit will be recycled and reintegrated into Horizon’s database. It’s the best outcome I could have hoped for.”

“But...”

“Moco, look at these people outside, don’t you want to save them?” Leonard said softly. Moco raised her head and stared blankly at the dazzling fire on the surveillance screen. Many drones had rushed toward the fleeing crowd. Steffie threw herself and a young girl to the ground to duck them under a laser that passed over, leaving burn marks on the wall.

“Only by accepting the bio cloud code will you have the power to protect them,” Leonard said. “You have seen what Horizon is doing. If you let it fall into their hands, even more people will suffer.”

This thought made Moco tremble, but she shook her head vigorously. “I can’t, I can’t leave you here alone.”

“You won’t.” Leonard smiled and stretched out his hand to her, as they had done when they were children through countless long nights. “Save me from the endless darkness, like you will do for the world.”

Moco looked into his eyes. Those few seconds extended into an unknown amount of time as she finally reached out and touched the illusory image.

She felt a tiny electric pulse penetrate under her skin and quickly make its way across her body. After a short numbness, she felt a faint heat burning within her. Voices from the cloud came from all directions, near and far. She felt her body become extremely light, as if walking on the clouds. It felt like she could go anywhere in the world if she wished.

Moco opened her eyes. She stretched her hand out into thin air, and saw that the group of drones on the surveillance screen had suddenly stopped. Freezing for a few seconds, they turned and rushed towards the guards. The last security door slowly opened, and amidst the smoke and fire, the freed captives finally rushed out into the tunnel leading toward the outside world and freedom.

“This is a secret weapon exclusive to dragon-slaying warriors.” Leonard’s voice could be vaguely heard, “Be hope itself, Moco.”

Moco watched Steffie escaping together with the crowd, slowly retracting her hand.

“You used to say that dragons don’t exist. There were only warriors who traveled across mountains and rivers seeking for dragons, who finally turned into monsters themselves on the ruins of their own extinguished enthusiasm and beliefs.”

Leonard shook his head, “Fairy tales don’t tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” Moco tried to control her breathing, but it started to feel that her eye sockets were burning, as if some entity was trying to tear her heart apart. It was a pain that felt like it would split her in half.

“Go,” Finally, Leonard withdrew his hand, “I will delay the sequence until you are safely out of the complex.”

Moco looked at him one last time, “No matter where you go, I will find you.”

She could feel Leonard’s gaze watching her go. She walked towards the exit one step at a time, leaving him behind sealed by the flame and dust.

“Goodbye, Little Witch, I will always love you.” She heard a whisper behind her as soft as the sound of a snowflake kissing the ground.

Moco walked out into the snowy night and didn’t look back.

THE END