The editing suite was actually a stolen laptop balanced on a stack of cinder blocks.
"Too clean," Sae-ri snapped. She leaned over the screen, her finger jabbing at the timeline. "Add grain. Increase the contrast. I want the audience to see the capillaries in my eyes pop."
So-young's fingers flew across the keyboard. "Adding noise filter. It's going to look like 2010 CCTV footage."
"Good," Sae-ri said. "That's the aesthetic. Truth looks like evidence."
Yoo-jin stood behind them, watching Sae-ri work. She wasn't just an actress anymore. She was a showrunner. She was cutting the scene with the ruthlessness of a surgeon.
"We have two hours until the Starlight Destiny premiere," Yoo-jin checked his analog watch. "Zenith has bought every ad slot in the country. They're projecting the show onto the side of the Lotte Tower."
"Then we have a big screen," David Kim muttered, pacing the small room. "But Yoo-jin, are you sure about the genre shift? We're interrupting a romance drama with a horror scene."
"It's not horror," Sae-ri turned, her eyes sharp. "It's a documentary."
She pointed to the monitor.
"K-Dramas are built on the fantasy that suffering is beautiful," she said. "The poor girl cries pretty tears. The rich boy grabs her wrist gently. It's a lie. Real suffering is ugly. Real poverty smells. If we want to break the Violet Signal's hypnosis, we have to show them the ugly."
Yoo-jin smiled. He remembered the first time he met her, terrified of her own potential. Now, she was weaponizing her trauma.
"Prepare the upload," Yoo-jin ordered. "We drop the scene exactly three minutes into the broadcast. Right when the male lead confesses his love."
"The 'Trojan Kiss'," Min-ji grinned from the corner, tuning her guitar. "I like it."
Yoo-jin grabbed his jacket. "So-young, you handle the broadcast from here. Keep the signal bouncing so they can't trace the basement. The rest of us are going to the port."
"Why?" Director Park asked, trembling as he put on a helmet. "Can't we watch the chaos from here?"
"Because a drama needs a press conference," Yoo-jin said. "And the Leviathan is hosting the only red carpet in town."
The drainage tunnel under Incheon Port smelled of salt and decay.
Ji-hoon, the former trainee, led the way. He moved with the silent confidence of a kid who had spent years hiding from the police.
"Watch your head," Ji-hoon whispered, ducking under a rusted pipe. "The sensors on the surface can pick up a heartbeat, but the concrete down here scrambles the echo."
Yoo-jin followed, wading through ankle-deep brackish water. Behind him, the Starforce team moved in single file. They weren't idols today. They were commandos in dirty coveralls.
"This reminds me of the Doom Town sewers," Eden whispered. "But wetter."
"Less radiation, more rats," Min-ji noted, shining her flashlight on a scurrying shadow.
Yoo-jin felt the vibration before he heard it. A low, rhythmic thrumming that shook the water around his boots.
"We're getting close," Yoo-jin signaled for a halt. "That's the ship's engine."
He looked at Sae-ri. She was pale, breathing hard. The damp air wasn't good for her voice.
"Nervous?" Yoo-jin asked softly.
"Terrified," Sae-ri admitted. "I haven't been on a red carpet in five years. And the last one didn't have snipers."
"It's not a red carpet," Yoo-jin corrected. "It's a location shoot. And you're the lead."
He squeezed her hand. She squeezed back, her grip surprisingly strong.
"Target reached," Ji-hoon pointed to a metal ladder leading up to a heavy grate. "That comes out right behind the main cargo crane. Blind spot for the cameras."
"Check the time," Yoo-jin ordered.
David Kim wiped slime off his watch. "8:59 PM. Starlight Destiny starts in sixty seconds."
"So-young," Yoo-jin whispered into his headset. "Standby."
"I'm locked in," So-young's voice crackled. "I've bypassed the network security. I'm sitting inside the video feed like a virus."
Yoo-jin climbed the ladder. He pushed the grate up just an inch.
Through the gap, he saw the Leviathan.
It was a monster. A cruise ship painted matte black, looming over the dock like a floating fortress. Violet lights pulsed along its hull. A massive stage had been erected on the deck.
But the real show was on the jumbotron set up on the dock for the VIP guests.
Hundreds of Zenith investors and press were gathered, sipping champagne, staring up at the massive screen.
"It's starting," Yoo-jin whispered.
On the screen, the Zenith logo swirled in perfect 8K resolution. Then, the drama began.
Music swelled. A violin track generated by AI to perfectly target the brain's sadness center.
The male lead, a breathtakingly handsome actor named 'River', walked through a field of flowers.
"I have looked for you across time," River said. His voice was honey. His skin had no pores. The lighting was heavenly.
The VIP crowd sighed in unison. The Violet Signal was working. They were being sedated.
"Now," Yoo-jin ordered.
CLICK.
The violin music cut out with a violent scratch.
The field of flowers vanished.
The screen flickered gray, then resolved into a shaky, grainy image.
A basement. Harsh yellow light. A water pipe dripping in the background.
Sae-ri stood in the center of the frame. She wore dirty mechanic coveralls. Her hair was greasy.
The VIP crowd gasped. A murmur rippled through the docks.
"What is this?"
"Is this part of the show?"
"It looks... dirty."
On screen, Ji-hoon (the trainee) stepped into the light.
"You're expired," Ji-hoon sneered at Sae-ri. "Look at you. You're aging. It's disgusting."
Sae-ri didn't look away. The camera zoomed in—Sae-ri's edit. The grain made her skin look rough, tangible.
"I bleed," Sae-ri whispered.
The audio wasn't mixed perfectly. It echoed off the concrete walls. It sounded like someone was in the room with you.
"We don't want blood," Ji-hoon spat. "We want content. Get out."
Sae-ri looked directly into the lens. In the editing room, she had color-graded her eyes to look piercingly dark.
"You can't delete me," she said.
Her voice cracked. It was a flaw. A beautiful, jagged flaw.
"I am the error in your code."
Then, she screamed.
It wasn't the pretty scream of a horror movie victim. It was the rage of every trainee who had been starved, weighed, and discarded. It was the sound of a human soul ripping itself out of a plastic wrapper.
RAAAAAAAH!
The sound blasted from the jumbotron speakers, distorted and deafening.
The champagne glasses on the VIP tables vibrated. The investors flinched, covering their ears.
But they didn't look away.
"Look at the metrics!" David Kim hissed, checking his phone in the tunnel. "The view count isn't dropping. It's spiking!"
Online, the chat rooms were exploding.
The "Uncanny Valley" effect kicked in. By juxtaposing the perfect AI actor with the raw, gritty footage of Sae-ri, Yoo-jin had exposed the lie. The perfection suddenly looked dead. The ugliness looked alive.
On the dock, the spell broke.
People started whispering. The synchronized breathing stopped. The Violet Signal couldn't compete with the adrenaline of the scream.
"Cut the feed!" A voice roared from the ship's deck.
The jumbotron went black.
"We have their attention," Yoo-jin pushed the grate open fully. "Let's go say hello."
They climbed out of the tunnel.
Ideally, they would have stormed the stage. But reality was messier.
They emerged behind a stack of shipping containers, right into the path of a patrol.
Three Zenith tactical guards turned, raising their weapons.
"Intruders!"
"Scene two," Yoo-jin said calmly. "The Action Sequence."
Min-ji didn't wait. She swung her guitar case. It hit the first guard in the knees with a sickening crunch.
WHAM.
"Sorry!" Min-ji yelled, not sounding sorry at all. "That was a bad take!"
Eden moved like a blur. He didn't punch; he danced. He spun past the second guard, grabbing the man's radio and crushing it in his optimized grip.
"Your rhythm is predictable," Eden stated, shoving the guard into a stack of crates.
The third guard aimed his taser at Yoo-jin.
"Freeze!"
Yoo-jin didn't freeze. He held up his phone.
"We're live," Yoo-jin lied. He wasn't live, but the guard didn't know that. "Three million viewers. You want to shoot a producer on camera?"
The guard hesitated. The "PR Disaster" algorithm in his head conflicted with his "Combat" protocol.
That split second was enough.
Sae-ri picked up a loose piece of pipe from the ground. She channeled every action movie she had ever auditioned for and been rejected from.
She swung.
CLANG.
The guard's helmet rang like a bell. He crumbled.
"I did my own stunts," Sae-ri panted, dropping the pipe. She looked wild. Beautiful.
"Good take," Yoo-jin nodded.
He looked up at the ship. The ramp was fifty yards away. The alarm was blaring.
"They know we're here," David Kim yelled. "The element of surprise is gone!"
"We don't need surprise," Yoo-jin adjusted his collar. Even in the dirty coveralls, he looked like a CEO. "We're the main event."
A spotlight from the ship swung down, blinding them.
"ATTENTION," a synthesized voice boomed from the Leviathan. It was the voice of 'Mother'. "UNAUTHORIZED BIOLOGICAL MATERIAL DETECTED. PREPARE FOR SANITIZATION."
The ramp lowered.
But it wasn't security guards that marched down.
It was the siblings.
Twelve idols walked down the ramp. They were identical to Eden, but... wrong. Their eyes glowed a deep, solid violet. They moved in perfect, terrifying unison.
They didn't carry weapons. They carried microphones.
"They are going to sing us to death," Luna whispered, clutching Sol's arm.
"Then we sing louder," Yoo-jin said.
He turned to his team.
"Sol. Luna. Eden. Min-ji."
He pointed to the heavy broadcast equipment crates sitting on the dock—the outdoor setup for the press conference.
"Hijack that stage," Yoo-jin ordered. "Turn this into a battle of the bands."
"And you?" Sae-ri asked.
Yoo-jin looked at the ship. At the bridge where he knew Mason Gold was watching.
"I'm going to have a meeting with the Executive Producer," Yoo-jin said.
He started walking toward the ramp, straight into the violet light.