Code. Part Three. Chapter One

First, she tried to go back. Back to that dark, derelict corner of the darknet where she had first discovered the Meihua library.

But it was gone. It wasn’t merely a dead link; the entire directory, the whole server, seemed to have been excised from the fabric of digital existence, leaving behind nothing but a smooth, seamless void. It was as if someone had edited not just the present, but the past as well.

Panic was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She began to search differently. Not for the code. Not for the library. She began to search for the word: Meihua.

And the world answered. Not with code. With reader responses.

On old, abandoned literary forums, in search engine caches, in the archives of decade-old blogs, she found mentions. “Meihua: The Triptych.” An astonishing, strange book. The author was a certain Vladimir Antipov, from Russia. But the text itself was nowhere to be found. Only its echo remained — the ghostly praise of readers who had long since vanished.

She dug deeper, plunging into the Russian-speaking segment of the web — a digital labyrinth constructed from memes, pirated software, and existential dread. And there, on an old hacker forum, she found him. Username: StDime79. In a thread dedicated to cryptography and esotericism, he claimed not only to have read the book but to have seen fragments of code associated with it.

Ayumi tracked down his contact info. The video call connected almost instantly. On the screen appeared the face of a man in his early fifties, covered in stubble, sitting against a wall plastered with posters of various metal bands. StDime79, or simply Dima, looked like a man who had stared into the abyss for far too long, and the abyss, in return, had shown him a couple of funny GIFs.

“Miyako Ikeda,” he said without preamble, his voice coming through the speakers like a scratched vinyl record. “I thought you were a myth. A legend.”

“Legends don’t make video calls,” Ayumi replied. “I need the book. Meihua: The Triptych.”

“Ah, Meihua…” he smirked. The image on the screen drained of color for a second, turning black and white. “The book… yeah. The author, Antipov — they say he lived in Balashikha. Worked at some NII, you know, one of those research institutes where geniuses and madmen are distilled into a single bottle. And the whole story — China, Japan, the Forbidden City… In it…” the audio cut out, replaced by hissing static, “…there are too many details. A glossary ten pages long. Symbols, rituals… it’s not just…”

The connection warped. Dima’s face fractured into pixels, his voice drowning in digital noise. Ayumi strained at the screen, trying to piece a whole together from these fragments, like an archaeologist gluing an ancient vase back together.

Right then, there was a loud, insistent knock at her hotel room door. She glanced at the screen, where Dima’s face had deteriorated into an abstract painting, and went to answer it.

Two police officers stood on the threshold. Their uniforms were immaculate, but their eyes were incredibly weary.

“Madame,” the senior officer said, his voice as washed-out as the world outside the window. “A curfew is being implemented in Constantinople — from 8 PM to 6 AM.”

Ayumi froze. Not Istanbul. Constantinople.

He said it so casually, so naturally, as if the name had never changed at all.

Have I lost my mind? Or did the city lose its mind first? Ayumi thought. A glitch? A malfunction in the historical memory of an entire city?

“We recommend that you do not leave the hotel unless absolutely necessary,” the second officer added. “And a word of advice… stock up on cash. The electronics… they’re acting up.”

They left, leaving her in the silence of the corridor. She shut the door and walked slowly back to her altar of motherboards.

Nothing remained on the screen. Only gray, hissing snow. Like an old television with its antenna ripped out. Like a world stripped of its signal source.

She tried to call back. The number does not exist. Forum not found. StDime79, Dima, her only lead, had dissolved into the void.

She sat down and opened a secure messenger. She found the contact for “Lyosha.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard, typing without a shred of emotion, with the cold precision of a surgeon pronouncing a time of death.

“The money doesn’t matter now. The world is on the brink of disappearing. It’s tied to our code. I need to get to Russia. I need to find the relatives of Vladimir Antipov in Balashikha, near Moscow. They might know something.”

She hit “Send.”

Now, all that was left to do was wait and see if the Russia she needed to fly to still existed. And if there were still Russians left to read her message.

Part Three. Chapter Two →
← Code\Coda
← A Road of a Thousand Years
← Paths
← The River
← The Observer Effect
← The Battle of Bun’ei