The "Safe House" wasn't a room; it was an abandoned monitoring station suspended over the waste-vats, reachable only by a narrow, treacherous catwalk. Inside, the air was marginally cleaner, filtered by an ancient, wheezing ventilation unit.
Miran dropped Junseo onto a padded equipment bench. The younger brother was still out, his breathing shallow, his skin flickering with a faint, ghostly luminescence.
[47:15:33]
Seol-wol slumped against the reinforced glass wall, watching the toxic fog swirl below.
His head felt like it had been split open with a rusted axe. The "Noise" was a dull thrum now, but the neural burns behind his ears were weeping a clear, stinging fluid.
"Sit," Miran commanded. He had found a medical kit—a high-end, elite version, not the scrap Kyla had used.
"I'm fine," Seol-wol rasped, not moving.
Miran was across the room in a heartbeat.
He didn't argue. He simply grabbed Seol-wol by the shoulder and forced him down into a chair. The strength in Miran's hands was absolute, a reminder that for all his aristocratic grace, he was built for violence.
"You're leaking neural fluid, Seol-wol. If the pressure doesn't drop, your brain will turn to gray slush before we even reach the Vault,"
Miran said, his voice cold but his movements surprisingly precise. He pulled out a sterile applicator and a vial of shimmering blue gel.
Miran knelt between Seol-wol's knees. The proximity was suffocating. Seol-wol could see the flecks of gold in Miran's dark irises, the slight curl of his hair, and the way his jaw tightened as he worked.
As the cooling gel touched the burns behind Seol-wol's ears, he let out a sharp, involuntary hiss of pain. His hands flew up, instinctively grabbing Miran's wrists to stop him.
"Steady," Miran whispered. He didn't pull away. Instead, he leaned in, his chest brushing against Seol-wol's knees. "The pain is a sign that you're still human. Most people would have gone catatonic at 90 percent. You're fighting the 95 at a cellular level."
"Why do you care?" Seol-wol asked, his voice trembling. "I'm just a key. You said it yourself."
Miran stopped. He looked up at Seol-wol, his thumb slowly tracing the line of Seol-wol's jaw, leaving a trail of cold blue gel. "A key is a tool. But a tool doesn't look at me with hate and desire at the same time. A tool doesn't have a soul that screams every time I touch it."
Miran's hand moved from the jaw to the back of Seol-wol's neck, his fingers tangling in the messy, dark hair. He pulled Seol-wol's head forward until their foreheads touched.
"Borislav wants the power inside the Box,"
Miran breathed, his dark eyes searching Seol-wol's. "But I... I want the thing that can survive the Box. I want you, Seol-wol. Not because you're a thief, and not because you're a twin. But because you are the only person who hasn't bowed to the Heir."
The tension in the room snapped. Seol-wol's grip on Miran's wrists tightened, his knuckles white. He should push him away.
He should kill him. But the warmth of Miran's body was the only thing keeping the cold "Architect" out of his head.
"You're a monster," Seol-wol whispered.
"And you're a thief," Miran countered, his lips inches from Seol-wol's. "So steal my breath. See if it tastes any different from yours."
The moment was shattered by a sudden, violent convulsion from the bench.
Junseo sat bolt upright, his eyes snapping open. But they weren't violet. They were a hollow, flat black. He didn't look at the brothers; he looked at the door.
"He's here," Junseo said, his voice a perfect, terrifying mimicry of Miran's grandfather.
"The shadow is at the door. And he has brought a gift."
A heavy, rhythmic thumping began on the steel door of the monitoring station. Thump.
Thump. Thump.
It wasn't the skittering of a Reaper. It was the sound of someone knocking with a heavy, metallic object.
Seol-wol looked at the small monitor near the door. His heart stopped.
Standing on the catwalk was the "Second Junseo." It was smiling—a wide, horrific grin that split its face too far. In its hand, it held the metallic bolt, but it wasn't rusted anymore. It was glowing with a blinding, white-hot light.
"Let me in, Hyung," the Double's voice projected directly into Seol-wol's brain. "I found a way to make us whole. I found the soul that Kyla left behind."
Beside the Double, a digital projection of Kyla appeared. She was screaming, her form flickering and distorted, her consciousness trapped in a loop of the moment she died.
"She's part of the mesh now," the Double laughed. "Don't you want to play with your friend?"
Seol-wol stood up, his vision swimming. The romance, the tension, the safety—it all vanished under a wave of pure, unadulterated horror.
"I'm going to destroy it," Seol-wol said, reaching for the plasma-cutter.
Miran stood up beside him, his hand finding the small of Seol-wol's back, a possessive, grounding weight. "Not yet. If you open that door, the Architect wins. We have to go deeper. Into the ventilation core. We're going to the Vault tonight."
"And Junseo?" Seol-wol asked, looking at his possessed brother.
"He's the bait," Miran said, his eyes cold and calculating once more. "And you... you're the hunter."