The drive back to Mullae-dong felt longer than the flight to Incheon.
Yoo-jin sat in the back of the unmarked police car, clutching the hard drive like it was a live grenade. Prosecutor Cha sat next to him, scrolling through her phone.
"Mason's lawyers are already spinning it," Cha muttered. "They're claiming the 'Origin' files are deep-fakes created by you. They say you planted the drive on the ship."
"Let them spin," Yoo-jin said, staring out the window at the gray Seoul skyline. "The metadata is twenty years old. It predates the deep-fake tech."
"Maybe," Cha lit a cigarette, cracking the window. "But the public doesn't understand metadata. They understand drama. If you drop this bomb... it's going to hurt your girlfriend more than it hurts Mason."
Yoo-jin looked down at the drive.
If he released the video, he cleared Sae-ri's mother's name. He proved she wasn't a gambling addict.
But he also revealed that Sae-ri's DNA was harvested in utero to stabilize the cloning program. That she was, in a twisted scientific way, a donor for the project that created him.
The scandal wouldn't just be about Mason. It would be about them. The Clone and the Donor. The tabloids would eat it alive. They would call their relationship incestuous, grotesque, unnatural.
"I have to tell her," Yoo-jin whispered.
"Good luck," Cha exhaled smoke. "That's a conversation I don't envy."
The basement was celebrating.
When Yoo-jin walked in, Min-ji popped a party popper. Confetti rained down on his tired shoulders.
"The King returns!" David Kim cheered, raising a paper cup of champagne. "Zenith stock is halted! The KRX suspended trading pending investigation! We killed the giant!"
"We didn't kill him," Yoo-jin walked past the celebration. "We just wounded him."
He saw Sae-ri. She was sitting on the couch, smiling, watching the news report about Mason's arrest. She looked relieved. For the first time in years, the shadow over her family seemed to lift.
"You did it," Sae-ri stood up and hugged him. "You found the contract?"
Yoo-jin didn't hug her back. He stood stiffly.
Sae-ri pulled away. She saw his eyes.
"Yoo-jin?" Her smile faded. "What's wrong? Did Alice wipe it?"
"She wiped the contract," Yoo-jin said.
"Oh." Sae-ri slumped. "It's okay. At least Mason is in jail. We can rebuild the reputation slowly."
"I found something else," Yoo-jin placed the drive on the table.
The room went quiet. The celebration died.
"What is that?" Eden asked, sensing the tension.
"The Origin files," Yoo-jin said. "Videos from the lab. From twenty years ago."
He plugged the drive into the main server.
"Sae-ri," Yoo-jin said softly. "You need to see this. But... it's going to change everything."
"Just show me," Sae-ri crossed her arms. "I'm tired of secrets."
Yoo-jin clicked the file.
The video played on the big screen. The grainy footage of the lab. The young Original Yoo-jin lying on the table. And Sae-ri's mother, pregnant, sitting in the chair.
"The Subject requires a maternal bond..." Mason's voice echoed in the silent basement.
Sae-ri watched. She didn't blink. She didn't breathe.
When the video ended, she didn't scream. She just stared at the static on the screen.
"My mother..." Sae-ri whispered. "She wasn't just an actress. She was a lab rat."
"She was a hostage," Yoo-jin stepped closer. "Mason forced her. He needed her genetic markers to stabilize my... the Original's... neural patterns."
Sae-ri turned to look at him. Her eyes were wide, processing the horror.
"And me?" she asked. "I was in her stomach. Did he use me too?"
Yoo-jin nodded. "The file says... 'Fetal Resonance'. Your heartbeat was used to calibrate the clone's emotional baseline. That's why I..."
He stopped.
"That's why you what?" Sae-ri stepped closer.
"That's why I felt a connection to you," Yoo-jin admitted, his voice cracking. "From the moment I met you. It wasn't love. It was programming. My system recognized your bio-rhythm because it was used to build me."
The silence in the room was suffocating.
Sae-ri looked at him. She looked at his hands, his face. The face that had been engineered using her mother's pain and her own existence.
"So it's fake," Sae-ri whispered. "Us. It's just code."
"No," Yoo-jin reached for her. "The System is gone, Sae-ri. What I feel now... it's me. It's real."
"How do you know?" Sae-ri backed away. "How do you know where the programming ends and the human begins?"
She hit the wall. She slid down to the floor, burying her face in her hands.
"I'm a spare part," she sobbed. "I'm just a spare part for a monster."
"Don't say that!" Min-ji shouted, stepping forward. "Yoo-jin isn't a monster! And you're not a part! You're Sae-ri!"
"Am I?" Sae-ri looked up, her face streaked with tears. "Or was I just bred to be his Muse?"
Yoo-jin felt his heart breaking. This was Mason's final trap. Even from jail, he was destroying them. He had engineered their tragedy decades before they even met.
"We have to release the video," Yoo-jin said, his voice dead. "To clear your mother's name. The world needs to know she was a victim, not a gambler."
"If you release that," David Kim warned gently. "The tabloids will destroy you both. 'Incestuous Bio-Horror Love Story.' You'll be freaks."
"I don't care about me," Yoo-jin looked at Sae-ri. "It clears her name. That's what you wanted."
Sae-ri stood up. She wiped her face.
"Do it," she said coldly.
"Sae-ri..."
"Upload it," she ordered. "Burn it all down. If my life is a lie, let's at least make it a useful one."
She walked to the door.
"Where are you going?"
"I need air," she said. "Don't follow me."
She walked out into the rain.
Yoo-jin watched the door close. He felt like he had just lost her forever.
"Upload it," Yoo-jin told So-young.
"Boss, are you sure?"
"Do it."
So-young hit Enter.
The video hit the internet.
The explosion was immediate.
Within ten minutes, the internet crashed. The video was everywhere. News anchors were weeping on air. The vindication of Jung Soo-jin—a beloved national actress—was overwhelming.
But the backlash against Yoo-jin and Sae-ri was just as violent.
The "Cider" moment of clearing the mother's name was soured by the grotesque reality of the science.
Yoo-jin sat alone in the basement. The others had gone to sleep, exhausted.
His phone rang. Unknown number.
"Hello?"
"It's a beautiful tragedy, isn't it?"
It was Mason Gold.
"You're in jail," Yoo-jin said. "How do you have a phone?"
"I have resources," Mason laughed softly. "I saw the upload. You cleared the mother's name. Very noble. But you lost the girl."
"I didn't lose her," Yoo-jin said.
"Oh, you did. She can't look at you now without seeing her own exploitation. You are the living monument to her mother's torture."
Mason paused.
"But there is a way to fix it."
"I'm not making deals with you."
"Listen, Yoo-jin. The public is disgusted. They think you're an abomination. Starforce is finished. But I can offer you an exit."
"What exit?"
"Leave," Mason said. "Leave Korea. Leave Sae-ri. Go into exile. I'll arrange a new identity for you. A quiet life in Europe. If you disappear... the scandal dies. Sae-ri becomes the tragic victim who survived the monster. Her career recovers. She becomes a legend."
Yoo-jin gripped the phone.
"You want me to run?"
"I want you to save her," Mason said. "As long as you are near her, she is tainted. If you love her... be the monster she escaped from."
The line went dead.
Yoo-jin lowered the phone.
He looked at the empty couch where Sae-ri used to sit. He imagined her life if he stayed. The cameras. The questions. The whispers that their love was just a biological glitch.
Mason was right. He was the stain on her life.
He stood up. He grabbed a notepad.
He wrote a letter. It was short.
Sae-ri,
The code was real. But the feelings were mine.
You are not a spare part. You are the whole world.
I'm sorry.
He left the note on the desk.
He grabbed a backpack. He didn't take any money. He didn't take the hard drives.
He walked up the stairs.
The rain outside was heavy. It washed away the grime of the city, but it couldn't wash away the DNA.
Yoo-jin pulled his hood up. He walked toward the train station.
He was going to disappear. He was going to give her the only thing he had left to give.
A clean slate.