Memory Fragments

Sun Hang picked up the pair of jeans left on the ground and pulled an old-fashioned smartphone from one of the pockets.

The girl's smartphone had a fingerprint lock, but when Sun Hang pressed his own finger against it, the unlocking chime immediately sounded.

He merely imagined "turning" his fingerprint into the girl's, and everything happened as it should—although he had never closely examined the shape of her fingerprints, the small portion of Taishui he had just absorbed contained a great deal of information, including the former host's physical data.

Not only that, after devouring that small portion of Taishui, Sun Hang could clearly feel his "ability" had grown stronger. Previously, changing the material of the Metal Nameplate would leave him unconscious for hours, but now, altering a fingerprint caused nothing more than a slight wave of dizziness, almost negligible.

Besides that, Sun Hang also felt as though some memory fragments that did not belong to him had appeared in his mind.

Those fragments haphazardly filled the blanks in his memories. For one brief instant, Sun Hang had the illusion that he was the girl parasitized by Taishui. Though those scenes were blurry, they felt incredibly real, as if he had experienced them himself.

It was like certain strange dreams. When you woke up, it was already difficult to remember their details, yet when you tried to recall them, you found that the details you could not remember still felt strangely familiar.

As though they had all happened in the real world.

A certain sound, a certain person or object, perhaps even a combination of colors, the brightness of light, or its angle... there would always be a scene in your memories that perfectly matched the dream, like two transparent photographs laid on top of each other.

Sun Hang saw a strangely familiar blaze. Wild flames filled his entire field of vision, and aside from the noise of air being heated and compressed, every other sound seemed to recede farther and farther away from him...

In the next scene, seen through a hazy filter, countless figures surrounded him. They wore armor, their expressions completely concealed by black faceguards.

The scene shifted again, and Sun Hang found himself in an empty basement. The corners were piled with bones, whether human or animal he could not tell. Many people whose features he could not make out moved back and forth through the basement, their movements stiff and numb.

Were these the girl's memories, or Taishui's memories?

Sun Hang vigorously shook his head, forcibly "sealing away" the memory fragments that kept flashing before his eyes through sheer willpower.

He refocused his attention on the phone he had just unlocked.

There were three unread text messages and two missed calls on the girl's phone. The most recent missed call had come a minute and a half ago.

Sun Hang opened the three messages first. The first was short, only six characters: "Did you buy the stuff?"

The second was even shorter: "Where are you?"

There had been a full five-minute gap between the third message and the second. Its tone had already changed from urging to questioning: "Why haven't you come back yet? What are you doing?"

Then came the two missed calls, less than ten seconds apart.

The first missed call had rung for thirty seconds, only ending when the automated message, "The number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable," played. The second had rung for only two brief seconds.

All three messages and both missed calls came from the same number—a Tianfu City local mobile number, and the only number saved in the girl's contacts. But although she had saved it, she had not added any note to it.

Without hesitation, Sun Hang called the number back.

"Beep... beep... Sorry, the number you have dialed does not exist."

"It's already been canceled? That was fast." Sun Hang frowned slightly.

Perhaps he should have reported this directly to the Anomaly Research Institute or the Anomaly Investigation Bureau, but deep down, he felt an intense resistance to doing so.

He did not know why he felt that way, but according to his instincts, that was the "right" thing to do.

He began to doubt who he had been before losing his memory. He tried recalling it again, but the memory fragments that surfaced were utterly chaotic. A huge number of memories that "should not" have belonged to him intertwined with one another, forming scene after bizarre scene and absurd, utterly illogical plots.

Those memories from the girl—or rather, from Taishui—had not yet been fully processed by Sun Hang. They were like a pile of disorganized files; the moment he opened the folder labeled "memories," they all came spilling out in a mess.

"Fuck." Sun Hang cursed under his breath and gave up trying to remember.

He could deal with recovering his memories later. The urgent priority was to find Taishui first.

Those cult members had definitely become wary by now. Judging by how quickly they had canceled the phone number, if he delayed any longer, even if Sun Hang found their hideout, it would likely already be empty.

There was no time to lose.

Sun Hang closed his eyes, and a blurry yet familiar route surfaced in his mind.

It was a route he had taken almost every morning—or, more accurately, one the girl had taken almost every morning.

The end of that route was not far away. It was within this old residential complex.

Carrying the bag of fried dough sticks and steamed buns the girl had bought, Sun Hang returned to the first floor. Then, with his eyes closed, he let the familiarity within those memory fragments guide him toward his "destination."

This residential complex seemed to have been forced to halt construction halfway through. Nearly a third of its buildings were unfinished shells with nothing but concrete frames.

Hardened clumps of sand and dirt, rusted steel rebar, and yellowed, aging plastic pipes could be seen everywhere in the corners of the complex. Tangled, illegally strung electrical wires cut the sky into irregular polygons of various sizes. A poorly made Ultraman doll had been abandoned beside a weed-choked flowerbed. Farther away, a group of ants was attacking a slug. The slug struggled desperately, dragging a long trail of slime across the dry ground.

Sun Hang had his eyes closed, but these scenes kept appearing in his mind... In reality, the Ultraman doll had long since been picked up by someone, and the ants and slug had vanished without a trace. The only things unchanged were that familiar path and the familiar buildings around it.

"Building Thirteen, Unit Two."

Sun Hang stopped and opened his eyes.