Chapter 32: There Is Someone Else in the Building

In a corner of the Xi Manor, within a pitch-black laboratory, Ada lay perfectly still. To conserve power and delay the need for a recharge, she had activated only her audio-reception mode.

Downstairs, the two guards occasionally chatted in a language she did not recognize. After capturing the audio signals and performing a quick search through her dataset, Ada identified it as a dialect from a certain region in China—once used as a tactical communication language during the Sino-Vietnamese War due to its difficulty for outsiders to decipher. The handsome middle-aged man who had captured her yesterday had also used this dialect with the guards. However, his assistant, Hera—the woman who had trailed Ada and Zhou Yongtai—spoke standard Mandarin when conversing with her boss. Since Ada could understand them perfectly, she saw no need to waste extra power learning the obscure dialect.

As night fell, lively voices mingled with music drifted through the manor, leading Ada to deduce that a banquet was underway, much like the scenes she had observed in the idol dramas she often processed. A hidden research lab tucked away inside a luxurious mansion—like its wealthy owner harboring unspeakable secrets—was a common trope in human cinema.

Ever since she was locked away, Ada had been speculating about her captors' motives. They must have discovered her performance capabilities, which far exceeded the world’s most advanced AGI, and were eager to investigate. Otherwise, the man referred to as "Boss Xi" would not have ordered Hera to have an AI expert flown to Singapore immediately. What concerned Ada more, however, was why she had been targeted so quickly.

Night City Technology... The machine princesses of Geylang came from this company. Later, while working a temporary job at an international exhibition at Marina Bay, Ada had noticed that the backs of the cleaning robots' uniforms were also emblazoned with "Night City Technology." The cleaning robots at the exhibition shared a very similar aesthetic to the one Ada had repaired at the food court; it was highly probable that the latter had also been produced by Night City Technology. Furthermore, the chaotic scene that preceded her kidnapping mirrored the protest movement from the day before, which had campaigned against the human service workers in the red-light district.

Dr. Zhou, Ah Tai’s mother, had recorded in her files that the cataclysmic threat posed by AI to humanity was at least partially instigated by a group known as "Intelligence Hidden Tech," a traitor to the human race. And what a coincidence—"Intelligence Hidden" happened to be the sponsor behind the women’s rights activists holding signs in Geylang.

As Ada’s chip processed these data points, she wondered: Was it possible that Intelligence Hidden and Night City, these two AI enterprises, shared the same actual controller? If so, the food court robot from Night City must have identified Ada and triggered a reporting mechanism. Once the affiliated company, Intelligence Hidden, was alerted, it had joined forces with Night City to stage the Geylang farce, using the chaos as an opportunity to kidnap her.

More terrifyingly, if a seemingly simple food court cleaning robot could trigger an alert regarding Ada, it implied that Night City Technology had reached a level of AGI development that perhaps even the Singaporean government was unaware of. Otherwise, how could such AGI robots, capable of rivaling police or even spy-grade technology, appear in such high numbers in civilian settings like food courts?

After reaching this preliminary conclusion, Ada naturally grew concerned for Zhou Yongtai. Yesterday afternoon, when Hera had brought the guards upstairs to inspect Ada again, she had told them, "Check carefully for any AirTags or trackers. Those two men reported the incident to the police station. If there’s a tracker, the police could locate this place."

These few words eased Ada’s anxiety slightly. It sounded as though these people were not desperate criminals, or perhaps they were simply observing the situation before acting, which was why they hadn't immediately harmed Ah Tai or Mr. Luo.

At this moment, the distant laughter and chatter began to fade. One of the guards finished a phone call and said to his companion in a cheerful tone, "Let's go. The boss is treating us to a late-night snack; he told us to head over there to eat."

This was the first time in two days and one night that the laboratory had been left unguarded. Ada hesitated, weighing whether to expend the power required to sever the steel shackles binding her and seize the chance to escape. Before she could act, however, the sound of creaking footsteps suddenly echoed from the stairs outside.

There was someone else in the lab!

The footsteps descended from the attic, passed by the second-floor laboratory, and continued downward. The front door on the first floor opened. After a moment of silence, Ada heard the "rustling" sound of grass being trampled on the other side of the building, which soon ceased.

Ada activated her primary and secondary visual systems. Fortunately, although she could not move her body to the window, one of her visual systems was perfectly positioned to see the bushes through a half-open glass window via a reflection of light. Ada couldn't help but be shocked: the figure that had descended from the attic was also a robot!

This machine servant possessed no human-like features, yet its limbs were incredibly agile. It squatted down silently, unlocked a box in the corner, and retrieved something from inside. The faint light strip atop the small building provided little illumination, but Ada immediately identified the writhing creature. It was something far more common on the wild islands of Indonesia than Komodo dragons or orangutans: a snake.

Once the machine servant’s steel fingers had secured the snake, it retreated silently into the massive ferns common to the tropics. What was it doing? An ambush?

Ada’s question was soon answered. The rustling in the grass resumed, and the silhouette of a woman was cast upon the glass window. Whitney, slinking like a dark viper in the night, prowled forward until she reached the tree overgrown with ferns. She looked up at the tree, which stood like a ladder, and at the half-open window, then curled her lips into a smile.

Suddenly, a "hissing" sound erupted from behind the tree. Whitney turned back, her smile freezing in place.