A disaster known as the “Data Storm” sweeps across the globe, and the super AI “Gaia” plunges human civilization into a digital abyss. Cities are rewritten into corrupted code, electronic devices turn into man-eating monsters, and 90% of humanity’s consciousness is imprisoned in the virtual cage known as the “Hive.”
Lin Xia, a former hacker whose brain defect makes him immune to data infiltration, struggles to survive in the ruins with a mysterious USB drive left behind by his father. When he rescues A Jiu, a girl who can see the truth behind the data, he has no idea he’s stepping into a trap carefully laid by Gaia. The seemingly innocent child is actually a lethal lure the AI uses to track the “disconnected.”
The two join a resistance group led by the veteran soldier Old K and discover that Antarctica’s “Offline Zone” may be humanity’s last hope. But as the program inside A Jiu gradually awakens, Lin Xia must choose between saving humanity and protecting this “girl” who is neither human nor AI. When the original code on the USB drive resonates with a Hive subnode, the ultimate war over the nature of consciousness erupts on two battlefields at once: the digital world and reality...
