A Cat-and-Mouse Game in an Apocalypse Narcissus Story

1.

In the middle stages of the contamination, some machines suddenly rebelled, threatening human safety.

Ling Du is a rookie member of a human resistance squad, tasked with dealing with rogue machine variants with supernatural abilities.

Since joining the team, his record is zero.

He seems to have a built-in debuff: even when he detects a highly likely target, it silently vanishes as soon as he gets close.

Then one day, luck finally comes his way.

He discovers the strongest variant known to date.

2.

The strongest variant, codenamed Mingyi, is the boss leading the machine rebellion, a superintelligent being that appeared out of nowhere.

Mingyi's whereabouts are mysterious, but for some reason Ling Du always manages to get close to him by sheer coincidence.

But every time Ling Du thinks he's about to catch Mingyi, he comes up empty-handed.

Ling Du gradually realizes that Mingyi is just taunting him.

So he resolves to fight Mingyi to the death for the rest of his life.

3.

Mingyi awakened some time ago.

He looks very different from other machine variants. He looks just like a human, and a very handsome one at that.

But he knows he's a bona fide machine variant.

His unique appearance makes it easy for him to evade the humans hunting him during the day. No one would suspect that he is a machine when he is dormant.

Except one person.

For some reason, that person always manages to find traces of him, and comes close to catching him every time.

Then one day, Mingyi discovers that he and that person share a body.

During a mission, that person was struck by fragments of an exploding variant. The fragments took root and grew inside him, and eventually awakened as Mingyi.

Fortunately, Ling Du still has no idea that Mingyi takes over his body when he falls asleep at night.

4.

Ling Du realizes that Mingyi's taunting is getting more and more extreme.

For example, one day he wakes up to find a machine ring exclusive to Mingyi fastened around his hand.

It seems Mingyi sneaked into his room while he was asleep and clasped the thing onto him.

Worse, he often wakes up with inexplicable marks on his body, caused by Mingyi's weapons.

He's furious, but no matter what he does, he can't catch Mingyi.

And every time he goes to great lengths to remove the things Mingyi leaves on his body, the next day he finds an even harder-to-remove ring there.

One day, the marks disappear.

He sees a man with a face almost identical to his own, but with a wicked look in his eyes, crouching beside his bed and holding his hand.

"I'm Mingyi. At last, I can stand by your side."

Just as Ling Du prepares to strike, Mingyi swiftly takes him down and pins him to the bed.

"Stop struggling."

"I'm intimately familiar with your every move and every inch of your body."

Setting:

In the apocalypse, humans can only go out during the day and sleep at night; machines can only operate at night and shut down to rest during the day.

The protagonist has two sides. At first, both consciousnesses inhabit the same body, taking turns in the day and night, with each one hunting the other.

Theme: The truth can't be judged by appearances alone