The sound of shattering glass was deafening.
Green fluid flooded the floor of the lab, sweeping around Yoo-jin's boots like a toxic tide.
"Move!" Yoo-jin shouted, shoving Ji-soo toward the maintenance hatch.
Behind them, the nightmare woke up.
Subject 012, the boy with the malformed jaw, stumbled out of his broken tube. He was naked, shivering, and dripping with slime. He opened his mouth to scream, but only a gurgling rasp came out.
"Secure the targets!" Director Park screamed. She raised her pistol.
She fired. Bang.
The bullet hit Subject 012 in the shoulder. He didn't fall. He didn't understand pain. He just looked at her with confused, mismatched eyes and lunged.
"They aren't soldiers," Eden said, ripping the hatch door off its hinges. "They are raw data given flesh. Unpredictable."
More tubes burst. Subject 045 crawled across the floor, dragging withered legs. Subject 088, who had no eyes, thrashed blindly, knocking over a rack of servers.
It wasn't a fight. It was a stampede of broken toys.
Director Park's tactical team panicked. These weren't enemies they could tactically take down. These were victims that wouldn't stop coming.
A soldier screamed as a clone with elongated arms wrapped around him, hugging him with bone-crushing force.
"Help me!" the soldier yelled.
"Don't look," Yoo-jin grabbed Sae-ri's arm. "Just run."
He felt sick. These things had his face. Distorted, melted, wrong—but unmistakably him.
I did this, Yoo-jin thought as he slid down the ladder into the dark tunnel. I woke them up to save myself.
He was no better than Mason. He was just a different kind of monster.
The maintenance tunnel vibrated with the chaos above. Gunshots echoed down the shaft, mixed with inhuman wails.
"That was..." Kai leaned against the damp wall, hyperventilating. "That was hell."
"It was the recycling bin," Yoo-jin said, his voice flat. "Mason didn't delete his errors. He archived them."
"We left Director Park up there," Ji-soo whispered.
"She chose her side," Yoo-jin checked his watch. "We have bigger problems. Protocol Zero."
David had his laptop open on his knees, illuminated by the tunnel's emergency lights.
"I'm tracking the signal," David said, his fingers shaking. "The recall command is fully active. The sleeper clones are converging on the Gocheok Dome."
"How many?"
"Three thousand," David swallowed. "They aren't wearing uniforms. They're dressed as civilians. Security guards. Ushers. They're infiltrating the crowd."
"A massacre from the inside," Sae-ri realized. "Apex waits for the signal, and then the person sitting next to you takes out a knife."
"Why?" Min-ji asked, wiping slime off her bat. "Why kill the fans? Without fans, there's no idol."
"Because Apex doesn't want fans," Yoo-jin started walking down the tunnel. "He wants silence. Humans are noisy. Unpredictable. He wants to perform for an empty room because that's the only place he can be perfect."
They reached the end of the tunnel. A rusted grate looked out onto the gray, foggy coastline of Incheon.
A black armored SUV sat idling near the pier. Director Park's backup vehicle.
"Eden," Yoo-jin pointed. "Hotwire it."
"I do not need to hotwire it," Eden walked to the car. "I am compatible with the ignition software."
He touched the door handle. The locks clicked open.
"Get in," Yoo-jin ordered. "We have forty minutes to get back to Seoul before the encore starts."
The Gyeongin Expressway. 180 km/h.
The SUV tore through the fog. Eden drove with mathematical precision, weaving through traffic like a missile.
Yoo-jin sat in the passenger seat, staring at the road.
He needed a plan.
Apex had the numbers (3,000 sleeper agents). He had the venue (a fortress). He had the hostages (20,000 fans).
Yoo-jin had fifty girls in a sewer and a van full of fugitives.
"We can't fight them," Yoo-jin said aloud. "3,000 against 50 is suicide."
"So we call the police?" Kai suggested from the back.
"The police are controlled by the Ministry. If we warn them, they'll just expedite the lockdown."
"Then we hack the screens again," David offered. "Warn the crowd."
"Apex blocked the N3KO exploit," Yoo-jin shook his head. "The Dome is a digital dead zone now. Nothing goes in or out."
Sae-ri leaned forward.
"If we can't fight them, and we can't warn them," she said. "Then we have to change the script."
"Script?"
"This is a show, Yoo-jin. Apex is the Director. He has a setlist. Intro, Verse, Chorus, Massacre."
She pointed at the windshield.
"If you want to stop the show, you don't cut the power. You steal the spotlight."
Yoo-jin looked at her.
Steal the spotlight.
Protocol Zero relied on the crowd being passive. It relied on the sleeper agents striking when the Violet Signal had everyone sedated.
But what if the crowd wasn't sedated?
What if the crowd was a riot?
"Ha-eun," Yoo-jin pulled out the burner phone.
He dialed the number.
"PD-nim?" Ha-eun answered immediately. "We're holding position in the Yeouido tunnel. Are you okay?"
"Change of plans," Yoo-jin said. "I need you to surface."
"Where?"
"The Dome."
"But the military blocked the entrances!"
"I don't want you to go in," Yoo-jin's eyes narrowed. "I want you to surround it."
He looked at David.
"David, do we still have the stems for the 'Wake Up' track?"
"Yeah, on the backup drive."
"And N3KO?"
"He's hiding, but he's online."
"Tell him to hijack every digital billboard within a five-mile radius of the Dome. Not the stadium screens—the street ads. The bus stops. The convenience store TVs."
"To play what?"
"The truth," Yoo-jin said.
He turned to Eden.
"Connect me to the car's internal camera. We're going live again."
"Boss, you look like a corpse," Min-ji noted.
"Good. The public is tired of pretty faces."
Yoo-jin adjusted the camera on the dashboard. He wiped blood from his cheek.
"Apex wants to delete imperfection," Yoo-jin murmured. "I'm going to show him that imperfection is viral."
The Perimeter of Gocheok Sky Dome.
The atmosphere outside the stadium was tense. Military police stood guard at barricades.
Inside, the concert was reaching its climax. The bass thrummed through the ground, heavy and hypnotic.
Suddenly, a bus stop advertisement flickered.
Instead of a skincare ad, a grainy video appeared.
It was shaky footage from inside the Incheon lab.
The broken tubes. The deformed clones crawling in the slime. The horror of the 'recycle bin'.
Passersby stopped.
"What the hell is that?"
"Is that... a movie trailer?"
Then, the audio cut in. Not a scream, but a voice.
"My name is Han Yoo-jin. And I am Subject 734."
The video switched to the interior of the speeding SUV. Yoo-jin looked directly into the camera.
"The idol you are watching inside that Dome? He isn't real. He is built on a graveyard of failures."
More screens lit up. The massive LED billboard on the shopping mall across the street changed. The menu screens at the burger joint changed.
Seoul stopped.
"He calls you fans," Yoo-jin continued. "But look at the code."
David flashed the Protocol Zero schematics on the screen. The kill order. The targeting of civilians.
"You aren't the audience. You are the cleanup operation."
Inside the Dome, the signal couldn't penetrate. But outside? Outside, the city was watching.
And the Sleeper Clones—the 3,000 agents dressed as civilians waiting in the streets and parking lots—froze.
They received a conflicting signal.
Protocol Zero: Engage.
Broadcast: Truth.
They were programmed to obey authority. But Yoo-jin was the Original. His voice, his face—it matched their source code.
"Look at them!" Yoo-jin shouted through the digital city. "Look at the man standing next to you! Look at his eyes! Does he blink?"
On the street, a girl looked at the security guard next to her.
He was staring blankly at the screen. He wasn't blinking.
"He... he looks like the guy on the screen," she whispered.
Panic started to ripple through the streets.
"We have to breach the Dome," Yoo-jin told Eden. "Ram the blockade."
"The blockade is a tank, Boss," Eden replied calmly.
"Then jump it."
The SUV roared toward the military checkpoint at the South Gate.
"Hold on!"
Eden didn't hit the brakes. He hit a construction ramp.
The heavy black car flew through the air, soaring over the barricade and the startled soldiers.
CRASH.
They landed in the VIP parking lot, skidding sideways, sparks flying.
Yoo-jin kicked the door open before the car even stopped moving.
"David, get the speakers! Kai, grab the bass! Min-ji, clear the path!"
"Clear the path to where?" Min-ji yelled, swinging her bat at a rushing guard.
Yoo-jin looked up at the massive steel structure of the Dome.
"To the roof," Yoo-jin said.
"The roof?"
"The ventilation system," Yoo-jin pointed to the massive industrial fans on top of the curvature. "It feeds air to the entire stadium."
"So?"
"Sound travels through air," Yoo-jin grabbed his guitar case. "If we can't get inside to the stage, we'll turn the ventilation shafts into the world's biggest amplifier."
He ran toward the maintenance ladder.
"We're going to scream down the chimney."