They Smell You

She counted every beat of his heart. From the first sound to this moment. Five hundred million times. Nothing was missed. She knew who he had glanced at today. She knew who had messaged him late at night. She knew there was a number in his genetic data that shouldn't exist. He knows nothing. Shen Ming is just an ordinary technician in Tianti City. I test the anchor point stress data every day, go home and drink a hot drink made by Lu Yuan, and watch the dusk on the rooftop that I can never get enough of. For twenty-three years, he lived in the most stable corner of the city. Until a girl without an identity number broke into his room. "You can chase me away. But I'm here because I choose to be here." Until he discovered that those mechanical bodies emerged from the ground, passed through the wasteland, crossed the defense line, and ignored 700,000 people—— Just come towards him. "They smell you." What is he? Creation? Echo? Or - a real human being? The five layers of truth collapsed layer by layer. Each level is more impossible than the last. And the 500 million heartbeats she had counted were his only anchor.