With nothing else to occupy his time, Luo Shu glanced at the clock in the atrium stairwell—past midnight. A new day.
He flipped open the Anomaly Catalog and reactivated Mechanical Animation via the Friend of the Anomalies milestone.
Though the ability had faltered at Site-17, here in Site-19's tech-dense environment, it was priceless.
From the atrium, a 100-meter radius covered most of the facility's core areas.
Luo Shu's first target: a surveillance camera above the stairs.
"You're now Eye-1," he whispered. "Monitor this floor for me."
The camera's status light blinked in Morse code:
"AFFIRMATIVE, MASTER."
The Range Problem
But Site-19 spanned hundreds of meters. Beyond 100 meters, animated devices would freeze.
Yet when Luo Shu returned from testing this limit at Sublevel -5, Eye-1 responded:
"FUNCTIONAL. RECORDING CONTINUES. 48-HOUR STORAGE BUFFER."
Perfect.
Over the next three days, Luo Shu expanded his network:
Eye-2: Epsilon-11 barracks.
Eye-3: Site Director's corridor.
Eye-4: Cafeteria entrance.
But manually decoding Morse from each camera ate 30+ minutes nightly.
He needed a hub.
The Gift
As if answering his prayers, Big Beard Jack arrived with a personal tactical terminal—a wrist-mounted device with a tiny screen and encrypted comms.
"For field ops. No team tracking, just basic GPS."
Luo Shu nearly kissed him.
That night, he animated the terminal.
Now linked to Site-19's network, it auto-translated the cameras' Morse into text:
[Eye-1]: Atrium clear.
[Eye-2]: Barracks quiet.
[Eye-3]: ALERT—Movement near Director's office!
Luo Shu's grin turned predatory.
The web was spun.