The digital counter on the screen hit 50 Billion Won.
In the cramped backroom of a derelict PC bang in Gangnam, the air was thick with cigarette smoke and adrenaline. The Starforce team huddled around the monitors.
"It's working," Luna whispered, her eyes wide. "We sold five million tickets in an hour."
"At this rate, we pay the debt in two days," David Kim punched the air. "We're going to buy your freedom, Yoo-jin."
Yoo-jin didn't celebrate. He watched the numbers spin. It felt too easy.
Mason Gold wasn't the type to let a crowd-funding campaign defeat him. He was the type who owned the bank.
"Something is wrong," Yoo-jin murmured.
"Don't be a buzzkill," Min-ji grabbed a bag of shrimp crackers. "The people love us. The movie is trending higher than oxygen."
BZRT.
The screen flickered.
The counter stopped. 52,400,000,000 Won.
Then, it turned red.
"Server crash?" Sae-ri asked, leaning in.
"No," So-young typed furiously. "The app is stable. The blockchain is holding. It's... the users."
A notification popped up on the main screen. It wasn't from the app. It was a push notification sent to every smartphone in South Korea.
EMERGENCY ALERT: PUBLIC SAFETY WARNING.
DETECTED ILLEGAL FINANCIAL ACTIVITY LINKED TO TERRORIST GROUP 'STARFORCE'.
ALL PARTICIPANTS WILL BE ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CREDIT BLACKLIST.
"He didn't block the app," Yoo-jin realized, his blood running cold. "He targeted the buyers."
On the screen, the number started to drop.
Refunds. Thousands per second.
People were terrified. Buying a movie ticket wasn't worth destroying their credit score. The revolution had a price tag, and Mason just raised it.
"He's doxxing our fans," David Kim said, horrified. "He's weaponizing the credit bureaus against teenagers."
"We're bleeding out," So-young said. "We're down to 30 Billion. It's a panic sell."
Yoo-jin stood up. He kicked his chair back.
"He wants to starve us out," Yoo-jin said. "We can't win an economic war. He owns the currency."
CRASH.
The glass front door of the PC bang shattered.
Yoo-jin spun around.
Three men stepped through the broken glass. They weren't police. They weren't Zenith security.
They wore street clothes—leather jackets, motorcycle helmets, tactical vests. They carried stun batons and zip-ties.
"Who are they?" Luna shrieked, backing away.
"Repo men," Yoo-jin realized.
He looked at his phone. A new notification had just gone out.
ZENITH GLOBAL BOUNTY:
ASSET: HAN YOO-JIN (DEBTOR).
REWARD: 1 BILLION WON FOR LIVE CAPTURE.
STATUS: OPEN CONTRACT.
"He put a bounty on me," Yoo-jin said. "He crowdsourced the arrest."
The lead biker raised his baton. It crackled with blue electricity.
"That's a billion won standing right there," the biker grinned under his visor. "Grab him."
"Eden!" Yoo-jin shouted.
Eden didn't need instructions. He vaulted over the counter of the snack bar.
He moved faster than humanly possible. He grabbed the lead biker's wrist mid-swing.
SNAP.
The biker screamed as his wrist bent backward. Eden kicked him in the chest, sending him flying into a row of gaming monitors.
Spark-fizz-pop.
"Kill the freak!" the second biker yelled, pulling a taser gun.
He fired. The prongs hit Eden's chest.
Eden didn't fall. He looked down at the wires. His optimized nervous system absorbed the voltage like a battery.
He ripped the prongs out.
"Inefficient," Eden said.
He grabbed a computer keyboard. He swung it like a baseball bat.
WHAM.
Keys flew everywhere like confetti. The second biker went down.
"Back door!" David Kim yelled, grabbing the hard drives. "Go! Go!"
They scrambled toward the rear exit.
Yoo-jin grabbed Sae-ri's hand. They sprinted down the narrow hallway, slipping on discarded soda cans.
They burst out into the alleyway.
It wasn't empty.
A delivery scooter was blocking the path. The driver, a skinny kid with a helmet, looked at his phone, then at Yoo-jin.
He saw the bounty face. He saw the Billion Won.
The kid revved his engine. He drove straight at them.
"Move!" Yoo-jin shoved Sae-ri aside.
He didn't dodge. He jumped.
He landed on the scooter's handlebars. The bike wobbled and crashed into a pile of trash bags. The kid scrambled up, pulling a knife.
"I need the money!" the kid screamed, his voice cracking. "My mom is sick!"
Yoo-jin looked at the kid. This was what Mason had done. He had turned the desperation of the city into a weapon against them.
Min-ji stepped forward. She didn't use her fists. She smashed her acoustic guitar over the kid's head.
TWANG.
The wood splintered. The kid collapsed.
"Sorry about your mom," Min-ji panted, holding the neck of her broken guitar. "But I'm broke too."
"We can't stay here," David Kim was hyperventilating. "Every person with a phone is a hunter. We have nowhere to hide."
"The van," Yoo-jin pointed to the street. Mr. Oh was waiting, engine idling.
They piled in. The tires screeched as they peeled away.
Inside the van, the mood was suffocating.
"We lost the revenue," So-young said, checking the laptop. "Ticket sales are zero. The refund rate is 100%."
"And now we have a bounty on our heads," Sae-ri wiped dirt from her cheek. "We can't go back to the basement. We can't go to a hotel. We can't even buy food without triggering an alert."
Yoo-jin looked out the window. Seoul looked different now. Every pedestrian looking at their phone seemed like a threat.
"We stop running," Yoo-jin said.
"And do what?" David asked. "Surrender?"
"No," Yoo-jin's eyes hardened. "We rob the bank."
"What?"
"Mason blocked our money," Yoo-jin said. "He froze our sales. But he has a vault. A physical vault where he keeps the leverage."
"The Leviathan?" Eden asked.
"No. The Leviathan was the lab. I'm talking about the Zenith Tower. The server room on the 50th floor."
"That's suicide," Min-ji argued. "That building has more security than the Blue House."
"It also has the Muse Engine," Yoo-jin said.
He looked at Sae-ri.
"The Muse Engine is generating the deep-fakes. It's generating the credit blacklists. It's the brain of his operation. If we unplug it, the bounty drops. The credit scores reset. The fear vanishes."
"You want to heist the Zenith Tower?" Sae-ri stared at him. "How do we even get in?"
Yoo-jin pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. It was the flyer from the audition line.
ZENITH GLOBAL: OPEN CASTING CALL.
EXTRA ROLES NEEDED FOR 'THE MOONLIT SONATA' RESHOOTS.
LOCATION: ZENITH TOWER, STUDIO B.
"He's re-shooting the movie," Yoo-jin said. "He's trying to replace Sae-ri's scene with a new AI version. He needs bodies to fill the background."
"We already pulled the 'fake crew' trick," Luna said. "They'll scan us."
"They won't scan us," Yoo-jin said. "Because we're not going as crew."
He looked at Sol and Luna.
"We're going as a distraction."
"What kind of distraction?"
"A concert," Yoo-jin grinned. A manic, desperate grin. "On the roof."
"The roof of Zenith Tower?"
"It has a helipad," Yoo-jin said. "If we land there, and you start singing... security rushes up. The lobby clears out."
"And how do we get to the roof?" David asked. "We don't have a helicopter."
"No," Yoo-jin looked at the heavy drone sitting in the back of the van—the one they had stolen from the Coast Guard raid. "But we have a heavy-lift drone."
"That carries cameras," Min-ji said. "Not people."
"It carries 100 kilos," Yoo-jin calculated. "Sol and Luna together are 90."
"You want us to hang from a drone?" Sol looked horrified.
"I want you to descend from the sky like angels of vengeance," Yoo-jin said. "While you sing, the rest of us blow the front doors."
"Blow them?" Sae-ri asked.
Yoo-jin looked at Eden.
"Eden," Yoo-jin asked. "Can you punch through reinforced glass?"
Eden looked at his fist.
"I can punch through a tank," Eden said.
"Good."
Yoo-jin looked at the team. They were battered, broke, and hunted.
"We have one hour before the bounty hunters organize a grid search," Yoo-jin said. "We use that hour to get to Yeouido."
"If we fail," David Kim swallowed hard. "We don't just go to jail. We get liquidated."
"Then don't fail," Yoo-jin said.
He tapped the driver's shoulder.
"Mr. Oh. Take us to the enemy."
The van made a sharp U-turn, cutting across four lanes of traffic. Horns blared.
Yoo-jin checked his phone. The bounty had gone up.
REWARD: 2 BILLION WON.
"He's scared," Yoo-jin whispered.
Sae-ri took his hand. Her palm was sweaty, but her grip was firm.
"Let's go unplug him," she said.