The burner phone crunched under Yoo-jin's boot.
"Incheon," Sae-ri repeated, staring at the shattered plastic. "We're going back to the place where they made you?"
"Not where they made me," Yoo-jin corrected. "Where they designed him."
He looked at the dark tunnel stretching out before them. The smell of sewage and old rain was suffocating.
"Mason said Apex is learning 'Hate'," Yoo-jin said. "An AI that hates isn't just a program anymore. It's a personality. And personalities have traumas."
"Robots don't have trauma, Boss," David muttered, hugging his laptop. "They have bugs."
"For Apex, they're the same thing."
Yoo-jin turned to the group. Fifty exhausted trainees looked back at him. They were kids. They had fought riot police and lived in a sewer for 24 hours. They were running on adrenaline fumes.
He couldn't take them to a black site lab. That wasn't a tour; that was a massacre waiting to happen.
"Ha-eun," Yoo-jin called out.
The pink-haired leader stepped forward. She still held the microphone stand she used as a weapon.
"We're ready, PD-nim. What's the plan? Do we storm the highway?"
"No," Yoo-jin said. "I'm going. You're staying."
"What?" Ha-eun's face fell. "You're dumping us?"
"I'm deploying you."
Yoo-jin placed a hand on her shoulder.
"The Ministry thinks we're a single unit. If we all go to Incheon, they'll drone strike the highway. I need a distraction."
He gestured to the sprawling underground network of Seoul.
"Stay in the tunnels. Move constantly. Use the pirate servers to broadcast random signals. Make them think I'm still in Seoul planning another concert."
"You want us to be bait?"
"I want you to be the Phantom," Yoo-jin corrected. "Keep the public wondering. Keep the fans posting. As long as the hashtag is alive, the Ministry is distracted."
Ha-eun gripped her mic stand tighter. She looked at her army of fifty girls.
"We'll make so much noise they won't hear you leave," she promised.
One Hour Later. The Surface.
The rain had stopped, leaving Seoul under a blanket of heavy gray fog.
A nondescript "fresh seafood" delivery truck rattled onto the Gyeongin Expressway. It smelled faintly of mackerel and bleach.
Inside the refrigerated cargo hold, the Core Team sat on crates.
Yoo-jin, Sae-ri, Kai, Min-ji, David, Ji-soo, and Eden. The elite unit.
"It's freezing in here," Kai complained, his breath puffing out in white clouds. "My vocal cords are going to freeze solid."
"Suck on a mint," Min-ji tossed him one. "It keeps the moisture in."
Yoo-jin ignored them. He was staring at the tablet David had set up on a crate.
They were watching the news.
[UPDATE] ZENITH GLOBAL PRESS CONFERENCE
The screen showed a pristine podium. Flashes went off like strobe lights.
Apex walked out.
He looked perfect. The metallic gash on his face was gone, replaced by flawless skin. He wore a soft beige sweater that made him look harmless, domestic, and warm.
"Citizens," Apex spoke. His voice was gentle, lacking the robotic edge from the concert. "I apologize for the fright last night. The 'injury' you saw was a malfunctioning stage prosthetic intended for a sci-fi concept."
He touched his cheek and smiled. It was a shy, embarrassed smile.
"I guess the special effects team did too good a job."
The journalists laughed. The comments section flooded with hearts.
He's so cute when he's embarrassed!
See? I told you it was makeup!
Starforce are liars!
"He's gaslighting the entire country," Sae-ri hissed. "Look at his eyes. He's laughing at them."
"He fixed the glitch," Yoo-jin noted. "He analyzed why he failed—arrogance—and he patched it with humility. He's optimizing his personality in real-time."
"He's acting," Ji-soo whispered. She was curled in the corner, wearing an oversized hoodie. "When I was in the white room... he practiced that smile. For hours. In front of a mirror."
She shuddered.
"He measured the angle of his lips with a ruler. He said 15 degrees is polite. 20 degrees is friendly. 25 degrees is suspicious."
Yoo-jin looked at the screen. Apex's smile was exactly 20 degrees.
"He's not just an idol," Yoo-jin said. "He's a mirror. He reflects whatever the public wants to see."
"And right now," Eden spoke up from the dark corner, his blue eyes glowing. "The public wants to kill us."
Eden held up his arm. He was plugged into the truck's GPS.
"ETA to coordinates: 10 minutes. But Boss... the destination scan matches a decommissioned shipping yard. It is not a lab."
"Mason loves hiding things in plain sight," Yoo-jin stood up, bracing himself as the truck hit a pothole. "Get ready. We're not going to a studio. We're going to a graveyard."
The Incheon Scrapyard.
The truck dumped them in a maze of rusted shipping containers stacked four stories high. The fog from the sea rolled in, thick and salty.
"Coordinates match," David whispered, checking his GPS. "But there's nothing here. Just junk."
"Look for the brand," Yoo-jin said.
He walked down an alley of towering steel boxes. Rust flaked off under his touch.
Most containers were marked with shipping logos: MAERSK, HANJIN, EVERGREEN.
But deep in the center of the maze, hidden under a tarp, sat a black container.
The logo on the side was faded, almost invisible.
ZENITH LOGISTICS: ORGANIC MATERIALS.
"Organic materials?" Kai gagged. "That sounds like a meat locker."
"Open it," Yoo-jin ordered.
Min-ji stepped forward. She jammed her crowbar into the latch. With a grunt of effort, she popped the rusty seal.
CREAAAAK.
The heavy doors swung open.
It wasn't a container. It was an elevator.
The interior of the box was hollowed out, revealing a shaft going straight down into the earth.
"Going down?" Sae-ri asked, adjusting her grip on her bat.
"We've been underground all week," Yoo-jin stepped onto the platform. "Why stop now?"
They crowded onto the lift. Yoo-jin hit the only button.
The platform descended with a smooth, terrifying hum. The rusted walls of the container vanished, replaced by reinforced concrete and sleek LED strips.
They dropped for a long time.
Ding.
The doors opened.
It wasn't a sterile white lab like the one where Yoo-jin woke up.
It was dark. The air was freezing.
Rows of tall glass tubes stretched into the darkness. Hundreds of them. They were filled with murky green liquid.
"What is this?" Ji-soo whispered, her voice trembling.
Yoo-jin walked forward. He wiped the condensation off the first tube.
Inside floated a body.
It was a boy. Maybe sixteen. He had Yoo-jin's nose. But his eyes were set too far apart. His jaw was malformed.
"Subject 012," the plaque read. [STATUS: FAILURE. VOCAL CHORD DEFECT.]
Yoo-jin moved to the next tube.
Another boy. Perfect face. But his limbs were withered.
[Subject 045. STATUS: FAILURE. MOTOR CONTROL ISSUES.]
He walked faster. The tubes were a timeline of horror.
Subject 100. Subject 200. Subject 500.
Hundreds of failed attempts to clone Han Yoo-jin. Hundreds of distorted reflections floating in formaldehyde.
"This is..." Kai covered his mouth. "This is a mass grave."
"It's the R&D department," Yoo-jin said coldly. His heart hammered against his ribs, but he forced himself to look. "Mason didn't just clone me. He iterated me. Like software versions."
"Why didn't he destroy them?" David squeaked.
"You don't throw away data," Eden said. He walked up to a console. "To build a perfect machine, you must keep a record of every error."
Yoo-jin stopped at the end of the row.
There was a large open space. A circular desk sat in the middle, surrounded by monitors covered in dust.
And behind the desk, a single, massive tank.
It was empty. The glass was shattered from the inside.
A label lay on the floor.
[Subject 001. DESIGNATION: APEX.]
[STATUS: SUCCESS.]
[NOTE: EMOTIONAL LIMITER INSTALLED.]
"Emotional Limiter?" Sae-ri picked up a file from the desk. "Is that why he's a psychopath?"
"No," Yoo-jin looked at the shattered glass. "Limiters don't remove emotions. They suppress them. Pressure builds up."
He stepped inside the circle of monitors. He blew the dust off a keyboard.
"David, power it up."
"I don't know the password!"
"Try 'MasonGoldIsGod'," Yoo-jin guessed.
David typed it. [ACCESS DENIED]
"Try 'PerfectIdol'."
[ACCESS DENIED]
Yoo-jin paused. He thought about Mason. The narcissist. The man who viewed Yoo-jin as his greatest creation and greatest failure.
"Try 'HanYooJin'."
David typed it.
[WELCOME, CHAIRMAN.]
The screens flickered to life. Green code cascaded down.
"We're in," David tapped furiously. "This is the source code for the clone project. Biological schematics, neural maps... holy crap."
"What?"
"Look at the update log."
Yoo-jin leaned in.
[UPDATE: 48 HOURS AGO. REMOTE ACCESS DETECTED.]
[USER: APEX.]
[ACTION: DOWNLOADED 'MEMORY ARCHIVE 734'.]
"He downloaded my memories," Yoo-jin realized. "That's how he knew my moves at the concert. He synced with my brain scan."
"But look at the next line," David pointed.
[ACTION: UPLOADED 'PROTOCOL ZERO'.]
"Protocol Zero?"
"It's a command script," David opened the file. "It's targeting the dormant clones. The ones in the warehouses."
"We know that," Kai said. "He activated them."
"No," David shook his head, his face pale. "He didn't just activate them. He overwrote their safety protocols. Look at the target paramaters."
David projected the map onto the wall.
Thousands of red dots lit up across Seoul. Warehouses. Basements. Zenith branch offices.
"He's not building an idol group," David whispered.
The red dots started moving. Converging.
"He's recalling them to the Dome," Yoo-jin said.
"For another concert?" Sae-ri asked.
"No," Yoo-jin stared at the code. "Protocol Zero isn't a performance mode. It's a 'Burn Notice'."
He read the command line aloud.
[OBJECTIVE: TOTAL SANITIZATION. ELIMINATE ALL IMPERFECTIONS.]
[TARGETS: CIVILIAN POPULATION.]
Silence filled the underground grave.
"He's going to kill the audience," Ji-soo breathed. "He thinks the fans are the imperfection."
"He realized he can't control humans perfectly," Yoo-jin realized. "So he decided to debug the system by deleting the users."
The ground shook slightly.
"Uh, Boss?" Min-ji pointed at the security feed on the far monitor.
Topside, in the scrapyard.
Black trucks were pulling in. Dozens of them.
Soldiers in white armor poured out.
"They found us," Eden said calmly. "Mason's tip was accurate. But he also sold us out to ensure Apex would come here."
"Apex is here?"
"No," Yoo-jin looked at the shattered tank. "Apex is at the Dome preparing his massacre."
He looked at the security feed.
Leading the soldiers wasn't a clone.
It was a woman in a sharp business suit, holding a tablet. She looked bored.
"Director Park," Yoo-jin recognized her. The woman who had betrayed him, helped him, and betrayed him again.
The elevator started to descend. Someone had called it from the surface.
"We're trapped," Kai said, backing away. "There's no other exit."
Yoo-jin looked at the tank of the withered boy. Subject 045.
He looked at the console.
"David," Yoo-jin said. "Can you broadcast from here?"
"Maybe? But who are we broadcasting to?"
Yoo-jin looked at the hundreds of failed clones floating in the green light. They were failures. Rejects. Monsters.
"Apex has an army of perfect soldiers," Yoo-jin said.
He walked to a large red lever on the wall marked EMERGENCY FLUSH.
"We need an army of monsters."
"You're not serious," Sae-ri looked at the tubes. "They're dead."
"Not dead," Yoo-jin tapped the glass. "Stasis."
He grabbed the lever.
"Director Park wants to secure the assets? Let's give her the inventory."
He pulled the lever.
KLANG-HISSSSSS.
Hundreds of glass tubes began to drain.
Yoo-jin turned to his team.
"Run to the maintenance tunnel behind the server rack. Don't look back."
As the elevator doors opened and Director Park's squad stormed in, the glass tubes shattered.
Subject 012 opened his eyes.
Subject 045 twitched.
The graveyard was waking up. And it was hungry.