The wind at sixty meters above the ground didn't just blow; it bit.
Yoo-jin clung to the freezing metal rungs of the maintenance ladder. His knuckles were white. Below him, the VIP parking lot was a chaos of flashing police lights and the smoking wreckage of their SUV.
"Don't look down," Sae-ri panted from below him. Her expensive heels were long gone, left in the mud. She was climbing in socks.
"I'm not looking down," Yoo-jin yelled over the wind. "I'm looking for the hatch."
They were scaling the outer shell of the Gocheok Sky Dome. It was a massive, curved bubble of Teflon and steel. To the fans inside, it was a sanctuary. To Yoo-jin, it was just a giant speaker cabinet waiting to be plugged in.
"My hands are freezing!" David wailed. He was strapped to Eden's back like a backpack. The android climbed with mechanical ease, ignoring the gravity.
"Warm them up," Yoo-jin reached the top of the ladder. "You need fingers to hack."
He pulled himself onto the catwalk that circled the dome's apex.
The view was dizzying. Seoul stretched out in a grid of neon and fog. But Yoo-jin didn't care about the view. He cared about the roar.
In the center of the roof, massive industrial fans spun like jet engines. They were sucking hot air out of the stadium.
"There," Yoo-jin pointed. "Main Exhaust Vent 01."
They ran across the slippery catwalk. The wind threatened to blow them off the edge, but they stayed low.
The vent was a gaping mouth of steel, five meters wide. The noise coming from it was deafening—the collective roar of twenty thousand fans and the thumping bass of Apex's music.
"It's blowing out!" Kai shouted, shielding his face. "If we drop a speaker in there, the sound will just blow back in our faces!"
"David!" Yoo-jin grabbed the hacker by the collar of his coat. "The HVAC system. Reverse the polarity."
"That's industrial equipment! It's not a laptop!"
"It's a fan, David. It has a motor. Motors have controllers. Hack it!"
David scrambled to the service panel on the side of the vent housing. Eden ripped the padlock off with a crunch.
"Give me thirty seconds!" David plugged in his USB.
Yoo-jin looked through the grate. Through the spinning blades, he could see the distant, ant-sized lights of the stage below.
He saw the white dot that was Apex.
"He's starting the finale," Yoo-jin realized. "The massacre starts when the beat drops."
Inside the Dome. Stage Level.
Apex stood center stage. He was sweating, but his breathing was perfectly regulated.
The crowd was confused. The hijacked billboards outside had started a ripple of panic, but inside, the signal was jammed. The fans only saw their idol.
"Ignore the screens!" Apex commanded, his voice echoing with hypnotic authority. "Focus on me."
He raised his hand.
In the shadows of the aisles, the Sleeper Clones—dressed as security guards in yellow jackets—stiffened. Their pupils dilated.
[PROTOCOL ZERO: STANDBY.]
[TARGET ACQUISITION: ACTIVE.]
[WEAPON: IMPROVISED.]
A "security guard" in Section C quietly locked the exit door. He pulled a baton from his belt. It wasn't standard issue. It was weighted with lead.
"Sing with me," Apex whispered into the mic.
The world is messy.
The silence is clean.
The crowd began to sway again. The Violet Signal pulsed from the stage speakers, fighting to regain control.
Apex smiled. He checked his internal clock.
[PURGE IN: 10 SECONDS.]
9...
8...
He would cleanse this world. He would build a silence so perfect that no one would ever question him again.
7...
The Roof.
"Access granted!" David screamed.
He hit the Enter key.
THUD-THUD-THUD.
The massive fan blades slowed down. They shuddered. Then, with a groan of stressed metal, they stopped.
Silence fell on the roof.
"Now!" Yoo-jin ordered. "Reverse it!"
David typed the command.
WHOOSH.
The fans started spinning the other way. Instead of pulling air out, they began sucking air—and sound—into the dome.
"Min-ji! The package!"
Min-ji hauled the heavy equipment case to the edge of the vent. It contained their secret weapon: The directional acoustic emitter they had stolen from the police car's riot gear, wired to Kai's bass amp.
"Drop it!"
They lowered the speaker array on a winch cable. It dangled twenty meters down the shaft, aiming straight at the heart of the stadium.
"Kai, plug in the phone."
Kai connected the device containing the raw audio files from the Incheon lab.
"Volume?" Kai asked.
Yoo-jin looked at the city below. He looked at the scars on his hands.
"Maximum," Yoo-jin said.
Inside the Dome.
Apex opened his mouth to give the kill order.
SCREEEEEEECH.
A sound like a dying god tore through the air.
It didn't come from the stage. It came from the ceiling.
It blasted down from the ventilation shafts, hitting the center of the crowd with physical force.
It wasn't music.
It was the sound of the Incheon lab. The gurgling screams of the failed clones. The wet slap of flesh hitting glass. The mechanical whir of the disposal units.
And over it all, Yoo-jin's voice, distorted and huge.
"Look at him."
The giant screens above the stage flickered. They had been hard-wired to the stage system, but the audio from the roof was overriding the sensory input.
"He is a copy. A copy of a copy."
The audience covered their ears. The sound was terrifying. It broke the trance instantly.
"What is that?" a girl in the front row screamed.
"It sounds like... people dying."
Then, the Sleeper Clones reacted.
The audio frequency from the roof clashed with the Violet Signal from the stage.
The "security guard" in Section C dropped his baton. He grabbed his head. He started to twitch.
"Unit 445... Error..." he mumbled. His face, which had been blank, suddenly contorted into a rictus of pain.
All over the stadium, three thousand "guards" began to malfunction. They collapsed, seizing on the floor.
"The soldiers!" someone yelled. "The guards are having seizures!"
Chaos erupted. But it wasn't a massacre. It was a panic. The crowd wasn't dying; they were running.
Apex looked up at the ceiling. His perfect vision zoomed in on the dark vents.
"Above," he hissed.
He tapped his earpiece.
"Team Alpha. The roof. Kill them."
The Roof.
"It's working!" Sae-ri shouted, looking down the grate. "The crowd is moving! The sleepers are down!"
"We broke the signal," Yoo-jin nodded, stepping back from the vent. "Protocol Zero is aborted."
But the victory was short-lived.
THWOP-THWOP-THWOP.
A bright light blinded them.
A black helicopter rose from the other side of the dome. It bore the insignia of the Ministry of National Defense.
"Step away from the vent!" a voice boomed from the chopper's loudspeaker. "This is a restricted area!"
"Cops?" Kai asked.
"No," Min-ji pointed. "Look at the side door."
The helicopter door slid open. A sniper rifle barrel poked out.
"They're not here to arrest us," Yoo-jin realized. "They're here to silence the DJ."
"Run!"
CRACK.
A bullet sparked off the metal catwalk inches from Yoo-jin's foot.
They scrambled across the slippery roof. There was nowhere to hide. It was just a curved white desert of Teflon.
"The ladder is exposed!" Eden calculated. "Probability of survival on descent: 0%."
"We can't go down," Sae-ri yelled over the rotor wash. "And we can't fly!"
Yoo-jin looked around desperately.
The helicopter banked, coming around for a clear shot.
Then, the roof hatch burst open.
It wasn't the police.
Twelve figures in white suits climbed out.
The Project Aegis Clones.
They moved like spiders, clinging to the slippery surface with magnetic gloves. They weren't singing anymore. They were hunting.
"We're trapped," David whimpered. "Sniper in the air. Murder-idols on the ground."
Yoo-jin backed up until his heels hit the edge of the intake fan housing.
"Eden," Yoo-jin said.
"Yes, Boss?"
"How much do you weigh?"
"300 kilograms of reinforced chassis."
Yoo-jin looked at the spinning fan blades below them. Then he looked at the massive power cable feeding the rooftop motor.
"Create a blackout," Yoo-jin ordered.
"That will disable the ventilation," Eden warned. "The sound weapon will stop."
"The message is already delivered," Yoo-jin watched the Clones sprinting toward them. "Now we need an exit."
"Understood."
Eden didn't argue. He grabbed the thick, high-voltage cable with both hands.
"Warning: System overload imminent."
Eden ripped the cable from the housing.
ZZZZZT!
A massive arc of blue electricity exploded. It hit the helicopter's tail rotor.
The pilot screamed. The chopper spun out of control, smoke pouring from the engine. It veered away, crashing into the Han River below with a massive splash.
The roof went dark. The fans stopped.
But the Clones were still coming. Their eyes glowed red in the sudden darkness.
"They have night vision!" Kai shouted. "We're blind!"
Yoo-jin grabbed Sae-ri's hand.
"Jump," he said.
"Jump where? Off the roof?"
"No," Yoo-jin pointed at the now-still fan blades. The gap between them was wide enough for a person.
"Into the vent."
"You want us to jump into the stadium?" Min-ji asked, horrified. "That's a sixty-meter drop!"
"There's a maintenance net ten meters down," Yoo-jin lied. He hoped there was a net. Most stadiums had them.
"If we stay here, we die," Yoo-jin shouted. "Go!"
He shoved David into the dark hole.
"Ahhhhh!" David's scream faded.
Min-ji jumped. Kai followed. Eden stepped in heavily.
The lead Clone lunged for Yoo-jin.
Yoo-jin didn't fight back. He stepped backward into the abyss, pulling Sae-ri with him.
As they fell into the dark throat of the Gocheok Dome, Yoo-jin saw the Clone staring down at him.
Then, gravity took over.
They plummeted straight toward the center of the chaos.