The Waste Disposal Sector was a silent ocean of jagged steel, lit only by the flickering, dying embers of overhead mercury lamps. Mountains of discarded hulls and rusted hydraulic limbs rose toward the darkness of the ceiling like the ribs of a dead titan.
Seol-wol stood over the unconscious Junseo, the heavy industrial plasma-cutter humming in his grip. The blue blade hissed, casting long, dancing shadows across the scrap-metal valley.
[56:40:12]
Click-clack. Click-clack.
The sound wasn't coming from one direction anymore. It was everywhere. The Reapers were no longer skittering through vents; they were flanking them, moving through the piles of metal with the grace of spiders.
"Seol-wol, there's too many," Kyla whispered, her back against a rusted girder.
She held her tablet with trembling hands, the screen showing a swarm of red dots closing in. "They're not just drones. These are the Mark-IIs. They're linked directly to Borislav's neural command."
"Then let him watch," Seol-wol said, his voice dropping into a cold, lethal register.
Suddenly, the first Reaper lunged from behind a pile of crushed canisters. It was a blur of black chrome and red sensors. Seol-wol didn't move until it was inches away. He swung the plasma-cutter in a brutal arc, the blue blade shearing through the drone's forelimb like it was paper.
The machine shrieked—a sound of electronic agony—and tumbled into the dirt. But before Seol-wol could finish it, two more dropped from the shadows above.
Seol-wol felt a sudden, sharp pressure behind his eyes. The Sync wasn't dead.
Without Junseo's mind to anchor him, the signal from the facility's mesh-network was bleeding directly into Seol-wol's brain. He wasn't just seeing the drones; he was feeling their proximity sensors. He was hearing the data-packets they were sending back to Borislav.
He was the Master Key. The door was open.
"Kyla! Keep Junseo's head down!" Seol-wol roared.
He closed his eyes for a split second, reaching out with his mind the same way he had reached for the bolt in the white void. He didn't just want to fight the machines; he wanted to own them.
A Reaper leaped, its serrated blades aimed for Seol-wol's throat.
Seol-wol didn't dodge. He reached out his left hand, and for a heartbeat, his eyes flashed with that same eerie violet light that had possessed Junseo.
"Grounded," Seol-wol whispered.
The drone froze mid-air. Its optical sensors flickered from red to a dull, confused amber.
The internal gyroscope spun out of control, and the machine crashed into the scrap pile, its software screaming as Seol-wol's "glitch" consciousness invaded its processors.
"What did you do?" Kyla gasped, staring at the twitching drone.
"I didn't break it," Seol-wol panted, blood starting to leak from his nose again. "I told it that I wasn't there."
But the effort was immense. Five more Reapers emerged from the shadows, their sensors turning a deep, murderous crimson.
They had recognized the threat. They were no longer trying to capture the "assets"—they were moving in for a collective kill.
As the pack of drones crouched to spring, a new sound cut through the chaos. A slow, rhythmic clapping.
From the top of a mountain of rusted gears, a figure emerged. Miran stood there, silhouetted by the pale moonlight filtering through the exhaust vents. He looked down at the carnage with a dark, satisfied egoism.
"Impressive, Seol-wol," Miran called down, his voice carrying perfectly over the hum of the machines. "You've begun to speak the language of the Blueprint. You've realized that in this facility, reality is just a suggestion made by the person with the strongest will."
"Call them off, Miran!" Seol-wol shouted, his hand tightening on the plasma-cutter. "Or I'll glitch your brain next!"
Miran let out a short, melodic laugh. "I didn't send them. Borislav did. He's desperate now. He's realized that if he can't own the Master Key, he has to melt it down for parts."
Miran stepped off the ledge, falling thirty feet and landing with impossible grace on the scrap metal. He walked toward them, the Reapers parting like a red sea, their sensors bowing to his presence.
He stopped five feet from Seol-wol, his eyes lingering on the plasma-cutter and then moving to the unconscious Junseo.
"But there's a problem, little thief," Miran said, his face going stone-cold. "The 'Architect' spoke through your brother. He told me the throne is occupied. He thinks he can keep what belongs to me."
Miran reached out and grabbed the hot blue blade of the plasma-cutter with his bare hand. The blue energy hissed and crackled against his skin, but Miran didn't flinch. He didn't even bleed. The light simply bent around his fingers as if he were made of the same data as the vision.
"Your brother isn't just a boy anymore," Miran whispered, leaning in until his cold breath hit Seol-wol's ear. "He's a bomb. And the countdown is inside his heart."
Suddenly, Junseo's body lurched upright behind them. He didn't open his eyes, but his mouth opened wide, and a sound like a thousand grinding gears tore through the air.
The Reapers all at once turned away from Seol-wol. They turned toward the darkness of the disposal tube, their sensors flashing a terrified, frantic white.
"What is it?" Kyla shrieked. "What are they looking at?"
Seol-wol looked back at the tunnel.
Something was coming. Something that made even the Reapers afraid. It wasn't Borislav, and it wasn't a drone.
It was a silhouette—tall, thin, and draped in the same medical tunic Seol-wol was wearing. It walked with a jerky, unnatural rhythm, and in its hand, it carried a single, rusted object that made Seol-wol's heart stop.
It was holding his metallic bolt.
"Hyung..." the figure whispered. It was Junseo's voice, but it was coming from the darkness, even though Junseo was still lying at Seol-wol's feet.
Seol-wol looked at the boy in the tunnel, then down at the brother in his arms.
There were two of them.