The temperature inside the cargo hold dropped to negative ten.
Yoo-jin could see his breath clouding in the red emergency light. He pulled the scratchy wool blanket tighter around his shoulders, but the cold was bone-deep. It smelled of hydraulic fluid and ozone.
"I can't feel my toes," Luna chattered, her teeth clicking together like castanets.
"Wiggle them," Sol ordered, rubbing Luna's back vigorously. "Do not stop moving."
They were wedged between two massive crates labeled SERVER COOLING UNITS. There were no seats, just cargo netting and the deafening roar of the engines.
Yoo-jin looked at his team. They were a mess.
David Kim was asleep on a pile of parachutes, snoring. Min-ji was sharpening a guitar pick against the metal floor, her eyes dark and focused. Eden was staring at a rivet in the wall, unblinking.
"Eden," Yoo-jin said loudly to be heard over the turbines. "Status?"
Eden didn't look away from the rivet. "We are crossing the International Date Line. We just lost a day."
"We didn't lose it," Yoo-jin said. "We invested it."
The plane banked sharply. Gravity shoved them against the crates.
"Final approach," the pilot's voice crackled over the intercom. "Incheon Cargo Terminal. We're coming in hot. Don't vomit on the merchandise."
Yoo-jin felt the landing gear deploy with a mechanical thud.
His heart hammered. Not from the turbulence, but from the destination. Seoul.
He had left as a CEO. He was returning as a ghost.
The tires screeched against the tarmac. The plane shook violently, crates straining against their straps, before shuddering to a halt.
The cargo ramp groaned open.
Humid, heavy air rushed in. It smelled of rain and jet fuel. It smelled like home.
"Move," Yoo-jin stood up, ignoring the pins and needles in his legs. "Grab the gear. We have five minutes before the ground crew realizes we aren't server parts."
They scrambled down the ramp into the foggy pre-dawn darkness.
A white box truck was waiting on the wet tarmac. A man in a high-vis vest leaned against it, smoking a cigarette.
"Mr. Han?" the man flicked the cigarette away. "Claire sent me. I'm Mr. Oh."
"Is the route clear?" Yoo-jin asked, hoisting a heavy equipment case.
"Clear-ish," Mr. Oh spat. "Customs is automated now. Zenith scanners everywhere. Facial recognition is aggressive."
"We have masks," Sae-ri pulled a black medical mask from her pocket.
"Masks don't work on the new scanners," Mr. Oh opened the back of the truck. "They map your gait. Your walk. If you walk like an idol, it pings the database."
"Walk like an idol?" Sol frowned.
"Perfect posture. glutes engaged. Chin up," Mr. Oh mimicked a runway strut. "You people move too smoothly. You need to walk like... us."
Yoo-jin looked at his team. They were trained machines of performance. Even tired, they stood with an unconscious elegance.
"Slouch," Yoo-jin ordered. "Round your shoulders. Drag your feet. Look at the ground."
"I don't know how," Luna admitted. "My back hurts if I slump."
"Pretend you gave up on your dreams ten years ago," Min-ji said, dropping her shoulders and shuffling forward. "Like this."
It was a depressing transformation. The glamour vanished. They just looked like tired night-shift workers.
"Good," Yoo-jin nodded. "Get in."
They piled into the back of the truck among crates of cabbages. Mr. Oh slammed the door, plunging them into darkness again.
The truck rumbled forward.
"Where is the base?" David Kim whispered, shifting a crate of cabbage to make room for his legs.
"Mullae-dong," Yoo-jin said. "Old steel district. Lots of noise. Lots of metal interference. Hard for wireless signals to penetrate."
"A steel bunker," Eden murmured in the dark. "Like the Incubator."
"No," Yoo-jin reached out and squeezed the boy's shoulder. "Like a fortress."
The truck slowed down. Voices outside.
"Checkpoint," David hissed.
Yoo-jin pressed his ear to the metal wall.
"Manifest?" A voice demanded. It was crisp. Professional.
"Vegetables for the market," Mr. Oh sounded bored.
"Step out of the vehicle. We need to scan the cargo bay."
Yoo-jin's blood ran cold.
"Scan?" Mr. Oh's voice pitched up. "It's just cabbage. The radiation from the scanner wilts the leaves."
"Zenith Protocol 4," the guard said. "Bio-scan required for all vehicles entering the Special City Zone."
Beep.
The electronic lock on the back door clicked.
Yoo-jin looked at the team. Min-ji reached for the wrench in her pocket.
"No violence," Yoo-jin mouthed. "Not yet."
He grabbed a handful of cabbage leaves from a crate. He crushed them, smearing the vegetable juice on his face and mechanic coveralls. He signaled the others to do the same.
The door rolled up.
A flashlight beam cut through the gloom. A guard in a sharp blue uniform stood there. He held a scanner that looked like a gun.
"Out," the guard ordered.
Yoo-jin stepped out first, shielding his eyes. He let his mouth hang open slightly. He slumped.
The guard scanned him. A red light washed over Yoo-jin's face.
Error. Subject Unidentified.
The guard frowned. He looked at the scanner, then at Yoo-jin.
Without the System, Yoo-jin couldn't see the guard's 'Suspicion' stat. But he could see the man's eyes. They were dilated. Tired. He was one of the optimized low-level workers. He relied on the machine to tell him what to think.
"System error," the guard tapped the device. "Identify yourself."
Yoo-jin didn't panic. He leaned in, exhaling the smell of stale airplane air and cabbage.
"We're the compost crew," Yoo-jin mumbled, scratching his neck. "Boss said to haul the rotten batch to the dump. You want to check the bottom crates? There's a lot of slime."
He gestured to the truck. The smell of the crushed cabbage was pungent.
The guard wrinkled his perfect nose. His programming prioritized hygiene and efficiency. Slime was inefficient.
"Dirt is a violation of Zone standards," the guard said robotically.
"Yeah, well, cabbage rots," Yoo-jin shrugged. "You want me to unload it here? It's gonna leak on your boots."
The guard looked at his polished boots. He looked at the grimy, slouching group of people behind Yoo-jin.
The scanner couldn't match them to 'Starforce Idols' because the data profile for an idol didn't include 'smells like garbage' or 'stands like a zombie.'
"Proceed," the guard waved them through, stepping back to avoid the smell. "Clean your vehicle before next entry."
"Yes, sir," Yoo-jin mumbled.
He climbed back in. He pulled the door down.
"Holy crap," David Kim exhaled. "You out-acted the algorithm."
"It's not acting," Yoo-jin wiped the cabbage juice from his cheek. "It's exploitation. Zenith craves perfection. They have a blind spot for the messy stuff."
The truck lurched forward, entering the city proper.
Through the cracks in the back door, Yoo-jin caught glimpses of Seoul.
It had changed in the weeks they were gone.
The chaotic neon signs of karaoke bars and fried chicken shops were gone. Replaced by uniform, high-definition LED panels. Every screen played the same loop: A soothing, violet abstract pattern.
There was no trash on the streets. No jaywalkers. No noise.
"It's quiet," Sol whispered, peering through a crack. "It's too quiet."
"It's a graveyard," Min-ji said, gripping her guitar case.
The truck rattled for another hour, moving from the gleaming Gangnam district to the grittier, industrial streets of Mullae-dong. Here, the optimization was slower. Rust still existed.
The truck stopped in a narrow alleyway filled with scrap metal piles.
"End of the line," Mr. Oh called out.
They unloaded quickly. Yoo-jin led them to a rusted iron door sandwiched between a welding shop and a noodle factory.
He punched a code into the keypad. David Kim's money had bought them the passcode, but the lock was old.
Click.
The door groaned open.
They descended a steep concrete staircase. The air grew cool and damp.
Yoo-jin hit the light switch.
Fluorescent tubes flickered on, buzzing angrily.
It was a basement. It used to be a pirate radio station in the 80s, then a storage locker, then nothing. Dust coated everything. Old soundproofing foam hung from the ceiling in strips.
But in the center of the room, there was a glimmer of hope.
Claire had delivered.
A sleek, silver server rack sat on a wooden pallet. Next to it, high-end broadcasting equipment, microphones, and a satellite uplink dish.
"Welcome to Starforce HQ," Yoo-jin said.
"It's a dungeon," Luna coughed, waving away dust.
"It's perfect," So-young said. She immediately dropped her bag and ran to the server rack. "This connection... it's wired directly into the dark fiber grid. I can broadcast anywhere in the city without triangulation."
"Get it online," Yoo-jin ordered. "We don't have time to sweep."
Min-ji opened her guitar case. She pulled out her instrument, then paused. She pulled out something else from the bottom of the case.
A crumpled poster she had ripped off a wall in Incheon.
She smoothed it out on a dusty table.
It was an advertisement for Zenith's new survival show.
The image showed the silhouettes of the new idols. There were twelve of them. They looked identical.
"Tomorrow," Min-ji pointed. "He's launching the fleet tomorrow."
"He's rushing," David Kim analyzed. "The stock crash spooked him. He needs a win to stabilize the investors. He's pushing the debut forward."
"That's our opening," Yoo-jin stared at the poster.
"Opening for what?" Sae-ri asked. "We can't get to the ship in twenty-four hours."
"No," Yoo-jin said. "But we can crash the party."
He turned to So-young.
"Can you hijack the audio feed of a national broadcast?"
So-young cracked her knuckles. "If I have a backdoor? Maybe. But Zenith patched the loophole we used at the Grammys."
"We don't need a loophole," Yoo-jin pulled the USB drive—the one with the source code—from his pocket. "We have the admin password."
He plugged the drive into the new server.
"So-young, find the audio schematics for the Leviathan debut," Yoo-jin ordered. "Eden, I need you to synthesize a counter-frequency. Something that disrupts the Violet Signal's hold on the audience."
"A wake-up call?" Eden asked.
"A scream," Yoo-jin corrected.
He looked at Sol and Luna. They were dirty, tired, and smelling of cabbage. But their eyes were burning.
"You're not debuting a song tomorrow," Yoo-jin said. "You're declaring a revolution."
"What's the track?" Sol asked, stepping up to the microphone stand.
Yoo-jin looked at the dusty walls of the basement.
"We don't have a track," Yoo-jin said. "We're going to do an Open Mic."
Suddenly, the heavy iron door at the top of the stairs banged.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Everyone froze.
"Did we trigger an alarm?" David whispered.
"No," So-young checked her screen. "No electronic signal."
THUD.
"Open up!" a muffled voice yelled. It wasn't a guard. It sounded young. Angry.
Yoo-jin signaled Min-ji. She grabbed the wrench.
Yoo-jin walked up the stairs. He unlocked the bolt and threw the door open.
Standing there wasn't a Zenith hit squad.
It was three teenagers. They wore torn hoodies and masks. One of them held a spray paint can.
They looked at Yoo-jin. Then they looked past him, down into the basement where Sol and Luna were standing under the light.
The lead kid dropped his spray can. It clattered loudly on the concrete.
"No way," the kid whispered. "The ghost stream was real."
He pulled down his mask. His face was bruised. He looked like he hadn't slept in days.
"You're Starforce," the kid said. His eyes welled up. "You're the ones who broke the Grammys."
"Who are you?" Yoo-jin asked.
"We're Trainees," the kid said. "From Titan. From Dragon. Zenith bought our contracts and... they deleted us."
"Deleted?"
"They said we couldn't be optimized," the kid showed a scar on his neck—an implant removal scar. "They threw us out. They said we were 'legacy waste'."
Behind the kid, more shadows appeared in the alley. Five. Ten. Twenty.
Discarded trainees. Failed idols. The imperfections that Zenith had tried to erase.
They weren't here to fight. They were here because they had heard the noise. They had followed the glitch.
Yoo-jin looked at the army of rejects gathering in the rain.
He smiled. A real, dangerous smile.
"Come in," Yoo-jin stepped aside. "We're holding auditions."