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  To secure a strategic buffer, the Shenzhen Republic annexed all of Dongguan, merging it with Huizhou into the New District. The once-thriving manufacturing hub of foreign investment long since faded. In place of millions of migrant workers, refugees from the inland flooded in. Post-war drifters clashed with warlords and factions as the mainland fell into chaos. Civil war survivors, desperate for safety, tried to flee to coastal regions, but escape was brutal—most died on wreck-strewn roads. After its founding, the Shenzhen Republic faced invasions by cannibalistic bandit swarms, making its border defenses the tightest among coastal states.

  Amin’s truck growled through the New District’s wrecked highways, headlights slicing the dark. The Shenzhen Republic was a war-forged husk, born when the Sino-American War left the mainland in ruins a decade ago. U.S. sanctions had crushed the old economy, forcing the Republic to trade in dollars—a bitter leash for a nation claiming freedom. HuaCent had seized the reins, its factories fueling legit exports while its black-market empire thrived in shadows.

  Amin’s sweat-soaked grip tightened on the wheel, the humid air clinging to his chest. To save fuel, he skipped the AC. In ‘32, he paid $10,000 to be smuggled into Shenzhen, desperate to feed his family in Hunan’s ruins. Crazy loans and truck contract fees crushed Amin. For a temporary residence permit, Amin sold his consciousness to HuaCent three times, $50 each time, earning the nickname ‘Split Brain’ from the splitting headaches the procedure caused.

  Amin’s cracked phone buzzed in his pocket as the truck rumbled. He pulled over to a crumbling roadside, where the air hung thick with dust and diesel fumes. It was a video call from his mother in Hunan, her face gaunt and pixelated on the screen, lit by a flickering LED lamp. Behind her, his sister, Lili, stood close. The video stream was slow and unstable, hampered by HuaCent’s patchy intranet for the shattered post-war mainland.

  “Amin, send money, quick, loh.” Ma begged, her voice trembling. “Loan sharks came again—third time this month. They want $200 by next week, or they take Lili. They know you’re in Shenzhen, makin’ dollars. Save her, son.”

  Amin’s throat got tight. “I’m scraping by—rent, gas, depot bribes. I’ll try, loh!” He rubbed his head, thinking of Hunan’s mess—cities constantly plundered, factories gone, bandits everywhere, live worth nothing.

  Lili leaned into the frame, her voice low but fierce. “Brother, it’s hell here, loh. Raiders burned the market last week—three dead, no food left. The government taxes every scrap we scavenge. Some girls from nearby villages went to Shenzhen—they’re sending back stacks of cash to her family. I’m 20 now, Amin—I can work. Get me to Shenzhen. They say there are a lot of jobs for girls like me.” Her eyes gleamed with longing, picturing Shenzhen’s neon glow—a city of chance, however brutal.

  Amin faked a grin. Those girls work high-end clubs, escorting rich men—not jobs you’d want, he thought. “Shenzhen isn’t sweet, Lili. Bosses, thugs, cops, HuaCent—they own you here. Stay put. I’ll send cash soon, I swear.” The video froze. “Amin, you’re our only hope. Don’t forget us.” The call cut out, leaving Amin staring at the blank screen, his pulse pounding. He slammed his fist on the dashboard, the pain grounding him. Another $200 meant more side gigs and risks. He might even sell his consciousness again, Despite the headaches that clawed at his thoughts.

  He restarted the truck, the engine’s growl drowning his thoughts. The cargo depot, once a logistics hub, now crouched behind rusted barricades, armed guards scanning trucks with laser precision. Revised: “The engine hadn’t stopped before three dockworkers shoved past clunky HuaCent bots. They yanked open the doors to unload. Amin smirked—HuaCent’s bots were so shoddy they barely threatened human jobs. Self-driving tech was a joke without decent AI and Western chips, so drivers still had work. A reek of diesel, exhaust, and piss choked the air. Cheap plastic-shelled robots shuffled, stacking crates under 5 kilos to match their limited capacity. HuaCent preached patriotic purchases, mandating locally made bots through government quotas, with subsidies to sweeten the deal.

  HuaCent was more than a company—it was the dominant local supplier, making a wide range of technologies affordable. Its technology lagged roughly a decade behind, but the products could work. Most importantly, huge exports powered the economy of the young Republic under Western technology sanctions. Through Salt Port, HuaCent smuggled hacked Abais and pirated tech to overseas markets, cloaking deals as “electric and mechanical parts.” SouthSea Transport, the Western-aligned middleman, held exclusive rights to resell its own imported goods at inflated prices. LAPSS drones buzzed above, their red beams—so precise they were said to “catch even cockroaches,” enforcing HuaCent’s dominance over the Republic.

  As Amin stepped out, a yell broke the noise. “Thief!” A hooker, skirt ripped, lipstick smeared, pointed at a skinny kid bolting across the yard, clutching a fistful of dollars. Two dockworkers chased him down, and the kid tripped on a crate, his face hitting the dirt. They grabbed him, one punching his gut. “My $30!” the hooker screamed, snatching the bills. The kid moaned, “I needed it for food.” A worker kicked his side hard. The crowd watched, some laughing, some shrugging. A LAPSS drone’s red beam swept over, not caring. Guards stayed put—petty theft wasn’t their concern. The hooker stormed off, and the workers dragged the kid to a corner, his cries fading. Amin looked away, gut twisting. The kid was like Lili, hungry and desperate. Depot didn’t forgive mistakes.

  The hooker adjusted her skirt, her smeared lipstick glowing garishly under the flickering neon. She sipped a cheap e-cigarette, the kind spiked with synthetic nicotine, and exhaled a cloud that mixed with the diesel haze. Her name was Mei, or so she told the drivers, though names here were as disposable as the condoms littering the yard. She’d come from Chongqing’s ruins, chasing Shenzhen’s opportunities like Lili, only to find HuaCent’s shadow waiting. Now she worked the docks, $10 a trick, dodging LAPSS drones and bribing guards with crumpled dollars. Mei’s eyes flicked to Amin, sizing him up, then softened—she knew his type, broke and burdened, no threat to her hustle. “Split Brain, you got a sister, yeah?” she called, voice hoarse but teasing. “Tell her to stay away. This city eats girls whole.” Amin didn’t respond, his jaw tight, her warning echoing Lili’s desperate plea.

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  At the depot’s edge, drivers clustered around a barbecue stall, Budweiser cans glinting under neon. The stall’s ‘mutton’ and ‘beef’ skewers were soy sludge, flavored with chemicals and grease—before the war, duck had been commonly used to fake mutton, but now even duck was a luxury, though the taste was close enough. “Hey, Split Brain, grab some food and a drink!” drivers sneered, one waving a soy-skewer. Amin waved them off, avoiding conflict with the crew” or “steering clear of trouble with the crew, his pockets too empty to join.

  Amin ran routes from New District to Salt Port and Circuit North, hauling machines, toys, parts, food, and cybernetic limbs. Anything that paid, he took, including black-market side gigs. To evade checks, he hid small items in pockets and larger ones in crates, relying on luck. The more trips Amin made to new places, the more flexible his network became, and life eased a bit. He rented a cramped “coffin room,” a stacked capsule in a warehouse corner, shielded by a tin roof, with water and power for $800 a month—his only luxury.

  After unloading, he pocketed $50 in fees, parked, and hit Old Li’s Mutton Soup Stall for a bowl and two flatbreads—$5, not bad. “Split Brain, yo!” a young driver hollered. “They say HuaCent jammed a woman’s mind in your head—true?” Drivers who knew Amin roared with laughter.

  Amin stayed cool, slurping the steaming soup. No mutton, but it mimicked the flavor, packed with glass noodles and limp vegetables. All from chemical broth mixed with water—just edible enough to survive. Old Li, the stall owner, shoved two flatbreads into Amin’s hands, with a beaming smile, telling the crowd, “Drink the soup! Drink the soup! No more joking, lah.”

  The kid, egged on by the laughter, pressed: “Joking? They say you skip booze, smokes, and girls—what kinda man are ya, ah?” More laughs erupted. “Heard massage joints got $50 smart silicone dolls with Soul Ore—your brain in one?”

  HuaCent’s Soul Ore trade was the Republic’s dirty secret: migrants like Amin, desperate for cash, sold their consciousness for pennies—$50 for skilled, $10 for laborers. HuaCent called it “Human Ore,” harvesting minds to power shoddy bots, but the process left headaches that felt skull-splitting. Whispers claimed the real prize was Premium Soul Ore—engineers, coders, PhDs—fetching millions for lifelike Abais smuggled via Salt Port. Those Abai were so lifelike in touch, reaction, and movement—even sexually—you’d swear they were human. SouthSea Transport let these robots through, oblivious to HuaCent’s game—or paid to look away. Every deal tied Amin deeper to a machine that owned his mind and Shenzhen’s soul. A LAPSS drone buzzed overhead, its red beam sweeping the stall. Amin’s head throbbed, a ghost of his last sale.

  Amin swallowed a bite of flatbread and flashed a strained smile but stayed quiet, a thin sheen of sweat beading on his forehead and cheeks. Seeing him stay silent, the crowd lost interest in further mocking him and turned to talk about women, mentioning a new sauna in Phoenix Hill with five-star decor, tons of girls, and fancy tricks. Old Li slid a brick-sized plastic bag across the stall’s counter, his eyes scanning the shadows. “Salt Port drop, tomorrow, same guy,” he whispered. Amin sipped his soup, brow creasing. “Salt Port’s crawling with checks, yeah?” Old Li leaned in, voice barely audible. “HuaCent runs the show there—Soul Ore, Abais, you name it, they smuggle it under ‘export’ quotas. Someone’s sniffing the docks, though, and it had HuaCent edgy.” Amin tucked the bag under his thigh, pulse quickening. Smuggling was an open secret, but this drive felt heavier than the usual haul. Amin nodded, the soup souring in his gut.

  After paying, Amin was about to leave when Old Li stopped him, glanced around, and pulled him into the stall’s shadows. He whispered, “Be extra careful this time.” Amin nodded silently, clutching the bag tightly. Old Li swallowed hard, “This must be delivered to him in person—no one else. Know ThunderVolt?”

  Amin frowned. “ThunderVolt? What, some new bot, loh?” Old Li hushed him, voice low: “Shh! HuaCent’s security chief. Alloy cyberarms, runs a crew of cutthroats. Checks cargo tighter than customs!” Amin hesitated, “Sounds like trouble. Get someone else, yeah?” Old Li shoved the bag back. “Urgent job. You’re the steadiest. $200. In or out?” Amin gritted his teeth and took it.

  In a quiet corner, Amin snuck a peek at the plastic bag—a hard drive, likely a Soul Ore disk. On the black market, these pirated Soul Ore drives, swiped from HuaCent, were hot with robot factories, but dirt cheap, barely worth a few bucks. Itching to know more, he slipped into a repair shop, reeking of machine oil, solder, and chemicals. “Boss Amin!” Kim Eun-hee called, AR goggles on, not looking up. “Truck running smooth?” A North Korean defector who clawed her way to Shenzhen, she scraped by fixing black-market gear, picking up local slang and building dark web contacts, all to evade the North’s agents and the Republic’s immigration sweeps.

  Amin handed over the hard drive. “Check what’s inside, yeah? How much to copy it, loh?” Kim pulled out a data cable, jacked into the drive, and muttered, “HuaCent’s encryption layers—nobody else can crack this. I’ll need dark web rigs to crack the seal.”

  The screen flickered with data streams. She frowned. “Boss Amin, this Soul Ore scrap’s worth squat… but there’s an encrypted log…” She yanked off her VR goggles, voice heavy. “Mentions a Bastion lab—something about ‘consciousness split and reconstruction,’ ‘executive approval,’ and a project called Chest-Born. Boss Amin, this ain’t no small fry.”

  Kim’s screen flickered, data streams dancing under her AR goggles. “Chest-Born’s new,” she murmured, voice taut. “Bastion labs, AbyssNet’s core—everyone knows. This log’s got ‘SilverEye’ greenlighting an experiment.” Amin’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that, loh? Like my Soul Ore gigs?” Kim shook her head. “Bigger. Dark web’s buzzing about a big project.” A LAPSS drone whirred outside, its red beam grazing the shop’s grimy window. Amin’s pulse spiked. “ThunderVolt’s crew sniffing this?”

  Kim smirked, fixing her gaze on him. “I can sell it for 30 grand.”

  Amin’s pulse froze, mouth dry. “No way it’s that big! You pay for it, loh?”

  Kim hefted the drive, lips curling. “I don’t have that kind of money, dumbass. Know anyone who’d bite? I can dupe it—you take both the original and the copy, and I’ll fix up a buyer and split the take down the middle. In?” Amin chewed it over, then grunted. “Done!”

  Amin slipped into the depot’s neon-choked alley among containers with SouthSea Transport’s logo, the hard drive a leaden weight in his pocket. The fixer at Salt Port’s greased docks was waiting. The Republic’s lifeblood flowed there, in the grind of greed and grime. Amin’s boots crunched on shattered glass, his mind racing—$200 was survival, but this drive could be his way out or his end.