A Pulse Beneath the Circuit

Mei's Pov

Two things weighed on my mind.

One: I hadn’t heard from my brother in three weeks. Not a message. Not even a ping through the scrambled network we used to keep off-grid.

And two: that wasn’t the part that scared me.

I’d learned long ago that silence in this city was never empty; it meant someone somewhere had pressed mute on a scream. Shanghai itself had been carved into artificial climate zones — summer on one block, acid rain on the next.

I stopped short behind the door to the Headmistress’s office.

The desk was an imposing slab of ivory-white that gleamed like polished bone under a sterile strip of blue light. Behind it, rigid as a steel rail, sat Ms. Shen, Headmistress of Jinshi Academy.

“This is not your workshop, Ms. Mei.” She rolled a glowing stylus between two fingers with a syncing pulsing light.

“This is not your robotics club, nor is it your bedroom playpen. This is an all-girls dormitory. You do not get to reprogram my surveillance drones into rave DJs.”

She flicked the stylus at the bot hovering beside me. “And this one? Another of my security units hijacked for your experiments? Are you planning a mechanical coup?”

“Never, ma’am.”

Ms. Shen wasn’t cruel. She was worse: cold, calculating, to put it straight, she could dismantle you with logic and still straighten your collar before sending you out into the storm. Sometimes, though, I caught the faintest shadow of something like care in her eyes.

The drone gave a cheerful little chirp. “It’s DJ Dro-16 on the b-b-b-b-b-beat—!”

The bass-drop warble made me jump.

Ms. Shen’s eyes narrowed.

Then—ZAP!

Her stylus snapped up, sending a bolt of blue plasma through the air, causing a burst of sparks. The drone spasmed mid-air, spinning helplessly before slamming to the floor with a sizzling wheeze.

I winced. “…I tried everything to fix the vocal dampener, ma'am. It just… kept rebooting to disco mode.”

Ms. Shen stood, stretching her shadow long over the polished floor.

“You waste your brilliance,” she stepped forward. “You could build quantum bridges. Rewire molecular shields. Instead, you choose… music bots. And disco.”

Her voice dropped to a low, surgical growl. “This is your seventh infraction, Mei. Seventh. In four weeks.”

She held up a finger. “One more — and I’ll kick your ass out of this dorm with a mop. Clear?”

“Yes. I understand.”

“Good. No dinner for you tonight. Go. Back to your room. Tinker with your toys — just keep them the hell out of my hallway.”

She turned back to her desk. “You may leave.”

Between circuits and consequences, that was my life. I felt more at home elbow-deep in bot wiring than I did with my own roommates. And my part-time gig in the Blue Zone, wrangling feral tech hounds for cash, only fed the obsession.

But maybe… just maybe… It was starting to cost too much.

I was halfway down the hall when a scream suddenly cut through the dorm.

I froze. Blinked. Rolled my eyes.

“They’re pranking each other again.”

Then a crash. The sharp shattering of glass.

Another scream — this one was raw, jagged, and did not sound playful at all.

Red emergency strobes flared along the walls, carving the hall into stuttering light and shadow. A holographic warning scrawled itself across the air in front of me:

<INTRUDER ALERT> My pulse spiked.

The intercom hissed, then a cold and commanding masculine voice crackled through the speakers:

> “Everyone, stay calm! There is an armed fugitive inside these premises. Cooperate, and you will not be harmed!”

My blood went ice-cold.

Then Ms. Shen’s voice cut in:

> “Girls—to your rooms. Lock your doors. Do not engage, and do not allow anyone in. Noncompliance means immediate expulsion.”

I spun on my heel, bolting for my room.

Half a step from the door — I heard a loud thud.

From inside.

I froze, held my breath, and every one of my instincts kept on screaming.

My hand hovered over the access pad.

Slowly, carefully, I opened the door.

The room looked normal — too normal — except…

The flowerpots by the open window were shattered. Soil streaked the floor in smears that looked unsettling.

My throat tightened.

Cautiously, I stepped inside and left the door open just in case I needed to make an emergency reverse, skirting the center table, then again, it was a self automated door that would close itself.

That was when I saw it.

Blood.

Fresh. Bright and real.

Pooling just past the table leg.

I gasped, staggered back, clapping my hands over my mouth, searching the space with my wild, darting eyes—

And then I saw him.

Lying on the floor, near the window.

A guy.

Barely conscious. Bleeding over shredded clothes. His skin looked bruised and torn mercilessly.

I took one hesitant step toward him — then froze again.

Because carved into his bare forearm, burned into his skin in jagged black ink, was a number.

A code.

My brother’s identification number.

I dropped to my knees beside him, trying my very best to steady my shaky breath, gently turning him over as his blood smeared warm and slick across my palm.

The moment I saw his face, my pulse went ballistic. I didn’t recognize him—not fully—but something in me did and a name came to my mind. Rui. A ghost of familiarity coiled tight around my ribs. Sharp jawline. Long lashes. Dirt-caked, blood-streaked, and bruised in ways that spoke of running, fighting, and surviving.

“Can you… hear me?” I brushed a streak of metal shrapnel from his cheek with trembling fingers.

Slowly, his eyes cracked open, burning out a flicker of something electric.

And then—click.

The access panel of the door behind me lit up, soft blue bleeding into red as an uncoiling lock sound cut through the silence.

More than one pair of heavy footsteps from boots came in.

The door slid open in a clean hydraulic hiss, spilling light across the blood-streaked floor.

I turned around quickly, widening my eyes and slightly parting my lips as my heart rate increased even further.

The guy's fingers twitched, coiled feebly around my wrist, gripping purposefully.