The Zenith Tower pierced the Seoul skyline like a needle made of black glass.
At its base, security was tight. Armored vans. Drone patrols. A perimeter of private contractors with assault rifles. Mason Gold wasn't taking chances.
But he wasn't looking up.
Two thousand feet above, a heavy-lift industrial drone buzzed in the thin air. It struggled against the wind, its motors whining like a dying wasp.
Dangling beneath it, strapped into a makeshift harness made of climbing rope and duct tape, were Sol and Luna.
"I'm going to throw up," Luna screamed over the wind. Her face was green.
"Don't you dare!" Sol yelled back, clutching Luna's harness. "Vomit falls down! It'll hit the fans!"
"We're too heavy!" Luna squeezed her eyes shut. "The drone is drifting!"
"It's fine!" Yoo-jin's voice crackled in their earpieces. He sounded calm, which was a lie. "You're over the helipad. Drop in 3... 2..."
"I hate you, Boss!" Sol screamed.
She pulled the quick-release cord.
They plummeted.
For a second, it was freefall. Then, the secondary parachutes—stolen from the marine base—deployed.
FOOMP.
The chutes caught the air. They jerked violently, swinging toward the building.
"Brace!"
They slammed onto the helipad, rolling across the painted 'H'.
Security guards burst out of the roof access door.
"Intruders on the roof! Freeze!"
Sol scrambled up. She didn't freeze. She grabbed the wireless microphone taped to her chest.
"Cut the feed!" the guard yelled, raising his rifle.
Luna grabbed a portable speaker from her belt. She hit play.
The opening riff of "Riot" blasted across the rooftop.
"HELLO ZENITH!" Sol screamed. "ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She started singing. It wasn't a performance; it was a distraction. She belted the high notes, her voice amplified by the hacked building PA system So-young had breached seconds ago.
Inside the tower, on every floor, the elevators stopped. The muzak died. "Riot" echoed through the halls.
Security teams scrambled. "Roof! Go to the roof! It's an assault!"
While the guards rushed up, a delivery van smashed through the front lobby doors.
CRASH.
Glass shattered everywhere. The van skidded across the polished marble floor, knocking over a priceless sculpture.
The back doors flew open.
"Knock knock," Min-ji grinned, stepping out with a sledgehammer.
"Secure the lobby!" A guard shouted.
Eden stepped out of the van. He looked at the squad of guards.
"I am not here to fight," Eden said calmly.
He stomped his foot.
The marble floor cracked. The vibration traveled through the substrate. The guards stumbled, losing their balance.
"I am here to breach," Eden corrected.
He ran at the main security turnstiles. He didn't jump over them. He ran through them. Metal twisted and snapped like plastic.
"Go! Go!" Yoo-jin sprinted behind him, flanked by Sae-ri and David Kim.
They raced toward the service elevators.
"Locking down elevators!" The security chief screamed into his radio.
"Too late," So-young's voice whispered in Yoo-jin's ear. "I've looped the elevator logic. It thinks it's in Fire Rescue mode. It's coming to you."
The doors dinged open.
They piled in.
"Floor 50," Yoo-jin panted, hitting the button. "The Server Room."
The elevator shot up.
"That was too easy," Sae-ri checked the ammo in the taser gun she had looted from a guard. "Mason knows we're here."
"He wants us here," Yoo-jin watched the floor numbers tick up. "He thinks he's the final boss in his own video game. He wants the confrontation."
"Then let's give him a game over," Min-ji hefted her hammer.
Ding.
Floor 50.
The doors opened.
It wasn't a server room.
It was a stage.
Yoo-jin blinked. They weren't in a hallway. They were standing in the middle of a perfect replica of the Moonlit Sonata concert hall set.
Red velvet curtains. A grand piano. And an audience.
But the audience wasn't human.
Rows and rows of androids sat in the seats. They were the "extras" Mason had been printing. Perfect, motionless mannequins with silicone skin.
"Welcome to the premiere," Mason Gold's voice boomed from the darkness.
A spotlight hit center stage.
Mason stood there. But he wasn't alone.
Standing next to him was a woman in a black dress.
Sae-ri gasped. She grabbed Yoo-jin's arm.
"Mom?" she whispered.
The woman turned. It was Jung Soo-jin. Sae-ri's mother. The actress who had died twenty years ago.
She looked alive. She looked young. She looked terrified.
"It's a clone," Yoo-jin realized, his stomach churning. "He cloned her."
"Not just a clone," Mason smiled, resting his hand on the woman's shoulder. "A reprint. With the original memories restored from the archive."
He looked at Sae-ri.
"I told you, Sae-ri. I own the rights. To the movie. And to the cast."
Sae-ri stepped forward, her taser trembling.
"Let her go," she choked out.
"She doesn't want to go," Mason whispered to the clone. "Do you, Soo-jin?"
The clone looked at Sae-ri. Her eyes were vacant, confused.
"My baby?" the clone whispered. "Where is my baby?"
Sae-ri broke. She dropped the taser.
"Mom!" She ran toward the stage.
"Sae-ri, wait!" Yoo-jin shouted. "It's a trap!"
As Sae-ri crossed the threshold of the stage, the floor dropped.
A glass cage rose from the ground, trapping her.
"Sae-ri!" Yoo-jin slammed into the glass. It was reinforced polycarbonate. Bulletproof.
Inside the cage, gas hissed from vents.
"Sleep," Mason said. "We have a scene to shoot."
Sae-ri coughed, pounding on the glass. Her eyes rolled back. She slumped to the floor.
"You monster," Yoo-jin turned to Mason. The phantom itch was gone. All he felt was pure, red rage.
"Don't look at me," Mason pointed to the android audience. "Look at them."
The androids in the seats stood up. Their eyes glowed violet.
There were fifty of them.
"This isn't a server room, Yoo-jin," Mason stepped back into the shadows, taking the clone of Sae-ri's mother with him. "It's a kill box."
"Eden!" Yoo-jin yelled. "Formation!"
Eden stepped in front of Yoo-jin. Min-ji flanked him with her hammer. David Kim... David Kim hid behind the piano.
The androids charged.
They moved fast. Faster than human. They were combat models masked as civilians.
Eden met the first wave. He punched an android's head clean off. Sparks showered the stage.
"They are unshielded!" Eden shouted. "Aim for the chest units!"
Min-ji swung her hammer. CLANG. She caved in the chest of a tuxedo-wearing robot.
"Die, you creepy dolls!" she screamed.
But there were too many. They swarmed over the stage like ants.
Yoo-jin looked for a weapon. He saw the taser Sae-ri had dropped.
He grabbed it. He didn't aim at the robots.
He aimed at the sprinkler system on the ceiling.
"Min-ji! The piano!" Yoo-jin yelled. "It's electric!"
"What?"
"The piano! Smash it!"
Min-ji didn't ask questions. She brought her hammer down on the Steinway.
CRACK.
Under the wood, wires sparked. It was a digital piano housed in a classic shell. 220 volts exposed.
Yoo-jin fired the taser at the sprinkler head.
POP.
Water sprayed down. A torrent of rain soaking the stage.
"Jump!" Yoo-jin screamed.
He leaped onto the top of the glass cage. Eden and Min-ji followed.
The water hit the exposed wires of the piano.
ZZZZZTTTTTT!
Current arced through the water on the floor.
The androids, standing ankle-deep in the puddle, convulsed. Their circuits fried. Smoke poured from their ears. One by one, they collapsed, twitching.
Silence fell, except for the hissing of the sprinklers.
Yoo-jin looked down into the cage. Sae-ri was unconscious, but safe inside the sealed glass.
"Mason!" Yoo-jin shouted at the darkness. "Come out!"
Slow clapping echoed from the balcony.
Mason appeared. He was holding the clone of Sae-ri's mother by the arm. She looked dazed, like a sleepwalker.
"Impressive," Mason said. "You short-circuited my extras. But you missed the main event."
He pointed to the massive screen behind the stage.
It lit up.
A countdown appeared. 10:00.
"What is that?" Min-ji wiped water from her eyes.
"The Muse Engine," Mason said. "It's uploading. Not to the internet. To the satellites."
"Uploading what?"
"The Patch," Mason smiled. "Humanity 2.0. A firmware update for the brain. Once it broadcasts... the Violet Signal becomes permanent. No more glitches. No more rebellion. Just peace."
"You're going to lobotomize the planet," Yoo-jin said, horror dawning on him.
"I'm going to save it," Mason corrected. "You have ten minutes, Yoo-jin. You can try to stop the upload. Or..."
He pulled a gun. He put it to the clone's head.
"...Or you can save Sae-ri's mother."
Yoo-jin looked at Sae-ri in the cage. If she woke up and her mother was dead again... it would destroy her.
But if he didn't stop the upload, the world ended.
The classic Trolley Problem. Save the one you love, or save the millions you don't know.
Yoo-jin looked at Eden.
Eden was looking at the screen. He saw the code scrolling.
"I can stop it," Eden whispered. "I can interface with the terminal. But the firewall... it will burn me out. It will melt my neural net."
"No," Yoo-jin said immediately. "We find another way."
"There is no other way," Eden smiled sadly. "I was made for this, Yoo-jin. I am the patch."
Eden looked at Min-ji.
"Tell the world I was real," Eden said.
He ran. Not toward Mason. Toward the server terminal behind the screen.
"Eden, no!" Min-ji screamed, chasing him.
But Eden was too fast. He slammed his hand onto the interface panel.
Violet light exploded.
Eden screamed. It wasn't a scream of pain. It was a scream of data being ripped apart.
"Stop him!" Mason yelled, aiming his gun at Eden.
Yoo-jin didn't think. He threw the taser.
It hit Mason's hand. The gun fired wild, shattering a spotlight.
Mason dropped the gun. He scrambled to pick it up.
Yoo-jin tackled him.
They rolled across the wet stage. Mason was older, but he fought with the desperate strength of a fanatic. He punched Yoo-jin in the jaw.
"You're nothing!" Mason spat, choking him. "You're a copy of a dead man!"
Yoo-jin couldn't breathe. Black spots danced in his vision.
He reached out. His hand found a piece of the broken piano. A sharp shard of wood.
He jammed it into Mason's leg.
"Argh!" Mason howled, releasing his grip.
Yoo-jin gasped for air. He kicked Mason away.
He looked at the terminal.
Eden was glowing. His skin was cracking, light leaking out.
"Eden!" Yoo-jin crawled toward him.
"It is done," Eden whispered. His voice was glitching. "Upload... canceled."
The screen went black.
The countdown stopped at 00:01.
Eden slumped against the console. The light in his eyes faded from violet to gray. Then to black.
"Eden?" Min-ji fell to her knees beside him. She shook him. "Wake up, idiot. Wake up!"
He didn't move.
Mason laughed. He was bleeding, limping, but he was laughing.
"You saved the world," Mason wheezed. "And it cost you your son."
Yoo-jin stood up. He walked over to Mason.
He didn't punch him. He didn't kill him.
He looked at the clone of Sae-ri's mother, who was cowering in the corner.
"Take her," Yoo-jin told Min-ji. "Get Sae-ri out of the cage."
"What about you?" Min-ji asked, tears streaming down her face.
Yoo-jin picked up Mason's gun.
He pointed it at the Muse Engine servers.
"I'm going to make sure this never happens again," Yoo-jin said.
He fired.
Once. Twice. Until the clip was empty.
The servers sparked and died. The hum of the Violet Signal vanished forever.
The silence that followed was heavy.
Yoo-jin dropped the gun. He walked over to Eden's body. He picked him up. He was heavy, but Yoo-jin didn't feel the weight.
He carried him to the elevator.
"We're leaving," Yoo-jin said.
Mason watched them go, defeated amidst the ruins of his empire.
"It's not over," Mason whispered.
But Yoo-jin didn't hear him. He was already planning the funeral.