Lu exhaled so deeply that he almost toppled off the hoverboard. Mei caught him by the collar, while the threatening buzzing of Madame Sheng’s vibrating rolling pin finally ceased. The bodyguards holstered their cyber blasters again, but the tension on the terrace of the “Golden Dumplings” remained palpable.
“A franchise then,” Lu murmured, rubbing his aching temples. “You want us to legalize your empire, while half the city is hunting for that little blue chaos reactor?”
“Not just legalize, boy. We will expand,” replied the grandmother with a mysterious sparkle in her bionic eyes. “But for that, I need your skills. You will reprogram this robot so that it only streams the recipes to kitchen terminals authorized by me. If this open-source chaos continues, the sector will burn down tomorrow.”
Lu approached Bao, who hummed contentedly and was already folding the next batch of dumplings precisely. But as Lu tried to plug his data cable into Bao’s maintenance port, the sensor display on his wrist suddenly switched to an alarming, pulsating red.
“Damn...,” Lu whispered. “This is no longer a normal system error. Someone is blocking my access from outside.”
At the same moment, the neon signs of the surrounding skyscrapers went dark. The familiar, colorful glow of Sector 42 gave way to a threatening, icy darkness. From the shadows of the upper cooling elements, three heavy, militarily modified drones silently descended. They bore the neon green emblem of the “Iron Duck” – the most ruthless rival syndicate of the undercity.
A distorted, synthetic voice boomed from the speakers of the lead drone: “Madame Sheng. Your culinary monopoly ends here. Surrender the optimization robot, or we will erase this district from the digital map.”