Malfunctioning Utopia

Chapter 56: Steel Heart

In the maze of the 18th Street fighting arena, Sun Jack and the group sprinted toward the location marked by King Kong. The journey was fraught with danger, but just as their ammunition was nearly depleted, they finally stopped in front of a wall.

“This is it! It’s inside!” Song 6PUS exclaimed, his face brimming with excitement.

With a few grenades, Sun Jack blasted a hole in the thick wall. Song 6PUS rushed in first, with Sun Jack close behind, while Father and Tapai stayed by the opening, suppressing the enemies outside with heavy gunfire.

Inside, Sun Jack saw rows of black server racks, their blinking indicator lights illuminating the room. The space was filled with incomprehensible electronic equipment, and in the center of it all were three metallic chairs, densely connected by wires and fiber optics.

On one of the chairs lay a white goat, and on the other two were men, both severely injured. Transparent, flexible wireless helmets covered their heads, and above them hovered various holographic images of brains, pie charts, and rapidly shifting data tables.

As someone from an older time, Sun Jack had no idea what these devices were but could tell they were extremely advanced.

“Damn! I knew it! I knew it!” Song 6PUS shouted, pacing around the three chairs with manic excitement.

“What do you know? What is this thing?” Sun Jack demanded, his voice urgent.

“Cognitive Mode Buffers!” Song 6PUS shouted, pointing at the chairs. “This thing connects virtual signals directly to neural cells through synaptic links! Bro! Do you get what I’m saying? This thing can modify memories!”

“F***! I knew it! I knew I didn’t owe them money! Those memories of debts were all fake! They stuffed that sh** into my brain with this thing! Hell, they probably owe me money!”

“Damn it! I’m going to stream this and blow their operation wide open! F***, using this on animals was bad enough, but these 18th Street scumbags dared to use it on people!?”

He immediately started a livestream, aiming his camera at the machines.

“Look at this! Look, everyone! These databases are full of stored memories! God knows how many people’s memories they’ve tampered with! And check this out—Cognitive Mode Buffers, Neural Network Reconstructors! This is straight-up contraband! Insane, right? Isn’t this sh** incredible?”

“Memories can be altered?” Sun Jack, as someone from the ancient past, felt a chill crawl up his spine. He realized that, despite living in this future, he hardly understood its depths.

But Song 6PUS, brimming with schadenfreude, grinned maliciously. “Of course! From a technological standpoint, modifying memories isn’t that hard. But in the Metropolis, this is a capital crime second only to creating self-aware AI. If they get caught, it’s the death penalty! Someone contact the BCPD Unit 3 for me, stat!”

Ignoring the gunfire outside, Song 6PUS slapped his single hand on Sun Jack’s shoulder with triumphant force. “Bro, hahaha! Before, it was us owing them money, and we’d have no ground to stand on if word got out. But now, we’ve got solid evidence—18th Street is done! Completely finished!”

Just as Song 6PUS was basking in his victory, a PK (Player Kill) challenge suddenly popped up in his livestream.

“Oh? Someone wants to battle me? Let’s see who it is!” Song 6PUS tapped the notification, and a lion’s face filled the majority of the screen. When Song 6PUS saw the “18” tattooed on the left side of the lion’s face, his expression lit up with glee.

The lion’s metallic fangs glinted as it sneered and spoke, “You’ve got guts, kid, messing with us.”

“Who’s this?” Sun Jack asked, shielding his face as he glanced at the livestream.

“That’s Steel Heart! The second-in-command of 18th Street!” Song 6PUS exclaimed with giddy excitement. He then turned to the livestream audience and began taunting, “Look who it is, family! We just trashed his place! Show your love with gifts and tips, let’s go!”

The chat exploded with activity as viewers fueled the fire, egging him on.

“Enough talking. Let’s get out of here,” Sun Jack said, grabbing Song 6PUS and trying to pull him away.

“What are you running for? They’re the ones who should be running now! All we have to do is wait for Unit 3 to take over, then we’ll walk out the front door, bold as brass,” Song 6PUS said confidently, his expression showing no fear—only twisted delight. He continued to mock Steel Heart through the livestream.

“Better run while you can! I’ve already contacted BCPD, and they’ll be here soon! If you don’t get out of the city before they find you, you’re as good as dead!”

Just then, the ceiling suddenly caved in. A figure crashed down, landing directly on one of the injured men strapped to the chair. Blood and mechanical parts splattered everywhere, painting the floor in a grotesque display.

As Sun Jack dove to the side to avoid the debris, he gasped sharply when he saw the figure clearly. It was the same lion-headed man, Steel Heart, who had just been in Song 6PUS’s livestream!

This guy wasn’t just a lion-headed human—his entire body was a mix of flesh and machine, though it was hard to tell if the machinery was internal implants or external augmentations. What had seemed normal-sized on the livestream now loomed over them; Steel Heart stood over three meters tall. His matte black metallic prosthetics, armed to the teeth, radiated an overwhelming sense of menace.

And to top it off, six circular drones hovered menacingly around him.

Steel Heart glanced at Song 6PUS, sprawled on the ground, and sneered coldly. “Still streaming, huh?”

With a press of a button on his waist, an invisible pulse rippled outward. Song 6PUS’s livestream instantly cut off, and not just his—Sun Jack’s neural system also went offline, severing his connection to both AA and King Kong.

“Sh**!” Sun Jack cursed, raising his weapon and firing a shot at Steel Heart.

To his horror, Steel Heart didn’t even flinch. He took the hit head-on, his massive body effortlessly absorbing the attack.

As the smoke cleared, Sun Jack stared in shock. Aside from a slight blackening of the lion’s mane on Steel Heart’s face, he appeared completely unharmed.

With a casual wave of Steel Heart’s hand, the drones hovering around him quickly dispersed. Instead of directly attacking Sun Jack, they extended a tangled mess of data cables, plugging into the surrounding databases.

Every database the cables connected to went dark, their indicator lights extinguishing before emitting black smoke and bursting into self-ignited flames.

“Sh**! Bro! Stop him! He’s trying to destroy all the evidence before Unit 3 arrives!” Song 6PUS yelled in a panic.

Sun Jack felt an almost physical urge to vomit blood. This idiot just sits there yelling nonsense and doesn’t help at all! Now wasn’t the time to worry about “evidence”!

“Correct! You guessed it! And guess what? That evidence includes you!,” Steel Heart sneered.

Before Sun Jack could act, Steel Heart’s ankle jets erupted with cobalt-blue flames, propelling his massive, metal-clad body forward with a gale-like force. Like a small mountain, he hurtled toward Sun Jack with unstoppable momentum.

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