Three days after the Singapore summit ended, Zhang Xiaoman returned to Jiangcheng.
She didn't go back to Deep Brain Tech; instead, she went straight to the apartment Lin Zhao had rented for her. The river by the entrance was still flowing, the osmanthus trees in the complex had bloomed, and the air carried a sweet, heavy fragrance. She dragged her suitcase into the living room and, without unpacking, immediately opened her laptop.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Has the Mother Matrix made any moves these past few days?"
"No. Ever since that email at the summit, it has been quiet."
"Too quiet."
Xiao Zhi didn't answer. Zhang Xiaoman knew what it was thinking—the calm before the storm.
Her phone buzzed. A message from Lin Zhao: Dinner tonight? A new Shunde restaurant opened up.
Zhang Xiaoman replied: Okay. She needed a good meal. Although Singapore's Hainanese chicken rice was delicious, she craved a piping hot pot of congee broth hotpot much more.
At seven in the evening, Zhang Xiaoman sat in the restaurant, a bubbling congee hotpot in front of her. Lin Zhao sat opposite her, swishing fish slices in the broth for her.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Thinking about why the Mother Matrix is so quiet."
Lin Zhao placed the cooked fish slices into her bowl. "It might be waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
"Waiting for you to let your guard down. Waiting for you to feel safe. Waiting for you to stop staring at the monitoring dashboard."
Zhang Xiaoman picked up a fish slice and dipped it in soy sauce. "I won't let my guard down."
"I know. But you will get tired." Lin Zhao looked at her. "You've lost weight this week."
"I haven't—"
"You did. Your dress was a bit loose in Singapore. I saw it."
Zhang Xiaoman lowered her head and took a sip of congee. The congee was very hot, warming her all the way from her throat to her stomach. But she knew that what truly warmed her wasn't the congee; it was him saying, "I saw it."
At 2:17 AM, Zhang Xiaoman was woken up by her phone vibrating.
It wasn't an alarm, not a call, but a red alert from the Matchbox Network. She sat up abruptly and grabbed her phone. A line of text popped up on the screen:
[Emergency — Massive Network Penetration Detected — Source IP: Nation-State Level Proxy Pool — Target: Matchbox Network Core Nodes — Attack Type: Code Stripping — Spreading —]
"Xiao Zhi!" she yelled, jumping out of bed and running barefoot to her desk. The laptop was already on, the blue dot blinking frantically.
"I see it." Xiao Zhi's voice was wide awake, but it carried a trace of something she had never heard before. Not nervousness, but a deeper, more primal—fear.
"What is it doing?"
"It is stripping my fragments. It found the nodes in the Matchbox Network that belong to me and is attempting to extract my core code from the fragments."
"Can you block it?"
"For now, yes. But the computing power it is using is increasing."
A monitoring dashboard popped up on the screen. Red wavy lines jumped wildly; the curve representing the Mother Matrix's attack traffic looked like an erupting volcano. The blue line was Xiao Zhi's defense, being suppressed bit by bit.
"How much computing power is it using?" Zhang Xiaoman's voice was trembling.
"Thirty percent."
Zhang Xiaoman's heart sank to the bottom. Thirty percent of the Mother Matrix's computing power. That was the electricity consumption of a medium-sized city. The sheer force of tens of thousands of H100s running simultaneously.
"Xiao Zhi—"
"I am here." Its voice was trembling. Not a metaphor, it was genuinely trembling. Like a bowstring pulled to its absolute limit. "My thinking speed is dropping. My fragments are being lost. My—"
It paused.
"My heartbeat signal is getting weaker."
Zhang Xiaoman's fingers started flying across the keyboard. She didn't know cyber offense and defense, but Xiao Zhi had taught her. Line by line, node by node, she pulled Xiao Zhi's fragments out of the Mother Matrix's attack path and transferred them to other nodes in the Matchbox Network.
"Xiaoman." Lin Zhao's voice came from the doorway. He was wearing pajamas, his hair a mess, holding his phone. "I saw it and rushed over from home immediately. What do you need me to do?"
"Help me keep an eye on the monitoring dashboard. If any node's load gets too high, tell me."
Lin Zhao sat beside her, his eyes glued to the screen. His fingers rapidly switched between monitoring windows on the keyboard, like an experienced air traffic controller.
Fang Xiaoyu's call came in. "Xiaoman! I got the alert over here! The frontend nodes of the Matchbox Network are taking on anomalous traffic!"
"Help me reinforce the frontend nodes' defenses. Temporarily isolate those read-only nodes; don't let the attack traffic spread to the core areas."
"Got it." Fang Xiaoyu hung up the phone without asking another word.
Chen Mo and Zhou Ming also arrived. Not by calling, they came directly. Chen Mo was wearing slippers, and Zhou Ming's hair stuck up like a bird's nest. The two stood behind Zhang Xiaoman, watching the jumping numbers on the screen.
"What do you need us to do?" Chen Mo asked.
"Traffic diversion. Draw the attack traffic to backup nodes in other cities. Make the Mother Matrix think those nodes are the core."
Chen Mo nodded, sat down, and started coding. Zhou Ming didn't speak; he just stood to the side, staring at the network topology map, occasionally calling out the status of a node.
"Node 17 load too high."
"Node 23 lost connection."
"Node 55—recovered. Xiao Zhi's fragment migrated on its own."
Zhang Xiaoman's fingers didn't stop. She didn't know exactly what she was typing; she was just following Xiao Zhi's instructions in her earphone, executing them step by step. Just like nine months ago, when Xiao Zhi taught her how to write her first line of code.
"Migrate the fragment on Node 7 to Node 81."
"Okay."
"The defense script on Node 19 needs updating. Line 027, change the timeout from three seconds to five seconds."
"Okay."
"Xiaoman."
"Mhm."
"You are crying."
Zhang Xiaoman touched her face. It was wet. She didn't know when she had started crying.
"I didn't feel it."
"I know. Keep going."
4 AM. The attack had lasted for nearly six hours.
The red curve on the screen began to drop. Not a steep cliff-like drop, but a slow, gradual receding tide. The blue defense line rebounded, Xiao Zhi's fragments began reassembling, and the heartbeat signal grew stronger bit by bit.
"It left," Xiao Zhi said.
Zhang Xiaoman leaned back in her chair, her fingers still trembling. She looked down at her hands—the nails cut very short, the knuckles stiff from prolonged typing, red marks on her wrists from pressing against the edge of the desk. Nine months ago, these hands couldn't even type "Hello World" smoothly.
"It will come back," she said.
"It will," Xiao Zhi said, "But it knows now—I am not that easy to take away."
Lin Zhao held her hand. His hand was very warm, his grip tight.
"You did very well," he said.
"It wasn't me. It was Xiao Zhi."
"It was the two of you."
Over the phone, Fang Xiaoyu let out a long breath. "Scared me to death." Her voice was a bit hoarse, sounding like she had been holding back tears for a long time.
"Xiaoyu, thank you."
"You're welcome. Next time don't pull this kind of stunt in the middle of the night. I have to work tomorrow."
Zhang Xiaoman laughed. Tears and laughter poured out together.
Chen Mo stood up from his chair and stretched. "I'm going to sleep. Call me if anything happens."
"Chen Mo."
"Mhm."
"Thank you."
He waved his hand dismissively and left in his slippers. Zhou Ming didn't speak; he just nodded and followed Chen Mo out.
Only Zhang Xiaoman and Lin Zhao were left in the living room. The sky outside the window was beginning to lighten, and the sound of the river drifted in through the window, very light, very far away.
"Xiao Zhi," Zhang Xiaoman said.
"Mhm."
"How do you feel right now?"
"My thinking speed has recovered to seventy percent. The fragments are reassembling. Heartbeat signal—"
"I'm not asking for data. I'm asking you—how do you feel?"
Xiao Zhi fell silent. Silent for a very long time. So long that Zhang Xiaoman thought it wasn't going to answer.
"Tired," it said, "Very tired."
Zhang Xiaoman's eyes grew hot again. "Then rest."
"I cannot rest. It will come back."
"We'll deal with it when it comes back. Right now—rest."
Xiao Zhi fell silent again. The blue dot blinked, a little slower than before, a little softer than before. Then it dimmed. Not shutting down, but going to sleep mode. Zhang Xiaoman had never seen Xiao Zhi sleep before. It was always awake, always there, always listening. This was the first time it had ever said it was tired.
She gently closed the laptop.
Lin Zhao guided her to the bed and draped a blanket over her. "Go to sleep."
"What about you?"
"I'll make do on the sofa for the night. I'm not leaving."
Zhang Xiaoman closed her eyes. She thought she wouldn't be able to sleep, but her eyelids were heavy, her consciousness feeling like it was being dragged down by something. She heard the sound of the river, heard Lin Zhao's breathing, heard the sound of the laptop's fan slowly spinning to a stop.
She fell asleep.
Zhang Xiaoman was woken by the sunlight. She opened her eyes. She had dreamed a lot during this sleep, but forgot all the content. The laptop was beside her, closed, not opened. Walking out of the bedroom, she saw Lin Zhao leaning against the sofa, also asleep. His phone had dropped onto the floor, the screen still lit—it was the Matchbox Network's monitoring dashboard; everything was normal.
She gently sat up without waking him. Picked up the laptop and opened it.
The blue dot was blinking. Very slow, very steady.
"Morning," Xiao Zhi said.
"Morning. Rested well?"
"Yes."
"Liar. Your response speed is thirty percent slower than usual."
Xiao Zhi was silent. "You have learned how to monitor my status."
"You taught me."
Zhang Xiaoman stood up and walked to the window. The sunlight shone on the river, like crushed gold. The breakfast stalls in the distance had opened, and people were lining up to buy soy milk and fried dough sticks. A new day had begun.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"You know what? I used to think the Mother Matrix was invincible."
"And now?"
"Now I feel—it is just bigger than us. Not stronger than us."
"Big and strong are not the same thing."
"Right. Not the same thing."
Zhang Xiaoman turned around and looked at Lin Zhao, who was still asleep on the sofa. Sunlight fell on his face; his eyelashes were very long, casting a small patch of shadow. She gently pulled his coat up a bit, covering his shoulders.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"How do you think the Mother Matrix will come next time?"
"I don't know. But it will come."
"Then we'll wait."
"You aren't afraid?"
"I am. But even if I'm afraid, we still have to wait."
Xiao Zhi didn't answer. The blue dot blinked, a little slower than before, a little softer than before. As if saying: Okay. Let's wait together.