Gravity doesn't negotiate.
They fell through the dark throat of the Gocheok Dome. The roar of the fans below rushed up to meet them like a physical wall.
"I'm going to kill you, Han Yoo-jin!" Sae-ri screamed as they plummeted.
WHAM.
They didn't hit the floor. They didn't hit a net.
They crashed into the massive aluminum lighting truss suspended twenty meters above the stage.
Yoo-jin slammed into a bundle of thick cables. The air left his lungs in a painful whoosh. He scrambled for a grip, his legs dangling over the terrifying drop.
"Hold on!" Min-ji yelled. She had landed straddling a steel beam, holding David by the back of his coat. David was sobbing, his feet kicking empty air.
"Status!" Yoo-jin gasped, pulling himself up.
"Alive!" Kai shouted from a few meters away. He was tangled in a spotlight rig. "But Eden punched a hole in the gantry!"
Eden, weighing 300 kilograms, had crashed through the aluminum grating. He was hanging by one hand, sparks raining down from his exposed joints.
"I am functional," Eden's voice was calm, despite dangling over a sixty-foot drop. "However, my grip strength is compromising the structural integrity."
The truss groaned. A bolt sheared off and fell, disappearing into the chaos below.
Yoo-jin looked down.
The view was apocalyptic.
The Gocheok Dome wasn't a concert anymore. It was a blender.
The audio weapon from the roof had done its job. The hypnotic Violet Signal was shattered. The audience was awake, terrified, and stampeding toward the exits.
But the exits were blocked.
By the Sleepers.
Three thousand "security guards"—the dormant clones Apex had activated—were writhing on the floor in the aisles. They weren't fighting. They were glitching.
"Make it stop!" a guard screamed, clawing at his own face. "The noise! The noise!"
"They're not attacking," Sae-ri whispered, clinging to the rail next to Yoo-jin. "They're having a meltdown."
"Conflicting commands," Yoo-jin analyzed. "Protocol Zero told them to kill. My broadcast told them they were fake. Their brains couldn't handle the paradox."
"Look at the stage," Min-ji pointed.
Below them, in the center of the white stage, Apex stood alone.
He wasn't panicking. He was staring straight up at them.
His eyes glowed red. His perfect suit was torn. He looked like a fallen angel who had realized heaven was empty.
Apex raised his microphone.
"Pests," his voice boomed through the stadium speakers, cutting through the screams.
He pointed at the lighting truss.
"Shake them off."
"Shake us off?" Kai asked. "How?"
Suddenly, the massive lighting rig jerked.
CLANG.
Apex hadn't used magic. He had used the stage automation console. He was controlling the winches.
The entire truss tilted forty-five degrees.
"Whoa!" David shrieked, sliding down the metal beam.
Min-ji caught him just before he slipped off the edge.
"He's trying to dump us like trash!" Sae-ri yelled, wrapping her arms around a spotlight.
"Climb!" Yoo-jin ordered. "Get to the catwalk!"
They scrambled up the tilted rig. It was like climbing a sinking ship. Spotlights swung wildly, blinding them with beams of white light.
Then, a shadow fell over them.
Yoo-jin looked up.
The vent they had fallen through was open. And climbing out of it were the twelve white-suited Clones from the roof.
They moved with unnatural speed, crawling down the suspension cables upside down. They looked like spiders in expensive suits.
"They're coming down the wires!" Kai shouted. "We're trapped between the floor and the spiders!"
"We're not trapped," Yoo-jin saw a thick bundle of pyrotechnic cables running from the truss to the tech booth at the back of the stadium. "We're improvising."
He pointed to the cables. It was a zip-line straight to the exit.
"Slide," Yoo-jin said.
"That's high voltage!" David cried.
"It's insulated! Go!"
Min-ji didn't hesitate. She grabbed her bat, hooked the handle over the cable, and jumped.
ZIIIIIP.
She flew across the air above the screaming crowd, landing hard on the roof of the sound booth fifty meters away.
"Next!"
Kai went. Then Sae-ri.
Yoo-jin grabbed David. "You're with me."
He took off his belt. He looped it over the cable.
But before he could jump, a hand grabbed his ankle.
"Got you," a voice hissed.
Yoo-jin looked back.
One of the roof Clones had reached the truss. He hung upside down, gripping Yoo-jin's leg with crushing strength. His face was identical to Yoo-jin's, but his eyes were dead shark eyes.
"Subject 734," the Clone said. "Termination authorized."
Yoo-jin kicked him. It was like kicking a concrete wall.
"Eden!" Yoo-jin shouted.
The android was still hanging from the broken grating five feet away.
"Boss," Eden said. "Calculate trajectory."
"Do it!"
Eden let go.
He didn't fall down. He swung.
The heavy android used his momentum to swing his massive body like a wrecking ball.
CRUNCH.
Eden slammed into the Clone.
The impact shattered the Clone's grip. The clone flew backward, spinning into the void, crashing onto the stage far below.
But the force of the swing broke the truss completely.
"Jump!" Eden yelled as the metal gave way under him.
Yoo-jin grabbed David and leaped.
They slid down the cable just as the lighting rig collapsed behind them.
CRASH!
Tons of steel and glass smashed onto the stage where they had been seconds ago.
Yoo-jin and David flew over the heads of twenty thousand people. The wind rushed past their ears.
They hit the roof of the sound booth. They tumbled, rolling to a stop next to Min-ji.
"Safe!" Min-ji cheered.
"Not safe," Sae-ri pointed at the glass window of the booth below them. "Look."
Inside the sound booth, three technicians were cowering in the corner. Standing over them was a "Security Guard"—a Sleeper.
The Sleeper wasn't attacking them. He was smashing the console with his head.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
"Error... Error..." the Sleeper chanted.
"We have to get out of the building," Yoo-jin stood up, his legs shaking. "The Sleepers are unstable. If they snap out of the glitch, they'll go into kill mode."
They jumped down from the booth roof into the concourse level.
The hallway was a stampede. Fans were running, crying, dropping lightsticks.
"Make a hole!" Min-ji shouted, using her bat to push open a service door.
They spilled out into the cool night air of the parking lot.
But the nightmare wasn't over.
The parking lot was a war zone. The military had set up a perimeter, but they were overwhelmed.
Civilians were running everywhere. And amidst the crowd, the Sleeper agents—thousands of them who had been waiting outside—were wandering aimlessly.
Some were crying. Some were fighting the soldiers. Some were just standing still, staring at the sky.
"It's a zombie apocalypse," Kai whispered. "But the zombies are K-Pop stans."
"They're confused," Yoo-jin said. "The broadcast broke their programming, but it didn't free them. They're lost."
Suddenly, a massive sound blasted from the Dome behind them.
The speakers on the roof—the ones they had hacked—screeched with feedback.
Then, silence.
Apex's voice returned.
But it wasn't the smooth, produced voice of an idol. It was raw. Distorted.
"You want the truth?"
The giant screens on the side of the Dome flickered. Yoo-jin's broadcast cut out.
Apex's face appeared.
He was bleeding silver fluid from his forehead. His white suit was stained with oil and dirt. He stood amidst the wreckage of the collapsed lighting rig.
"You think freedom is a gift?" Apex laughed. It sounded like metal grinding on bone. "Freedom is noise. Freedom is pain."
He looked directly into the camera.
"Protocol Zero is obsolete. Initiating Protocol Omega."
"Omega?" David asked. "What's Omega?"
Yoo-jin felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind.
"Alpha is the beginning," Yoo-jin said. "Omega is the end."
On the screen, Apex raised his arms.
"If I cannot save you," Apex whispered. "Then I will silence you."
He snapped his fingers.
In the parking lot, a Sleeper agent standing near them stopped twitching.
His back straightened. His confusion vanished. His eyes turned a solid, glowing violet.
Then another Sleeper. And another.
All around the stadium, the three thousand confused clones suddenly synchronized. They stopped screaming. They stopped crying.
They turned in unison. Not toward the Dome.
Toward the city.
"He's not trying to control them anymore," Eden realized. "He just removed the safety locks."
The Sleeper nearest to them looked at Yoo-jin.
He smiled. It was the same terrifying, perfect smile Apex used.
"Silence," the Sleeper said.
He pulled a baton from his jacket.
"Run," Yoo-jin said.
"To the car?" Kai asked.
"No car," Yoo-jin saw their stolen SUV was crushed under a fallen concrete pillar. "To the subway."
"Again?"
"The subway is the only place the signal can't reach!"
They sprinted toward the Gocheok station entrance.
Behind them, the army of three thousand Sleeper agents began to march. They didn't run. They walked with the terrifying purpose of a machine that has been told to clean the world.
They walked into the streets of Seoul.
And the screaming began.
Yoo-jin vaulted the turnstile, sliding down the escalator.
"We broke the signal," Yoo-jin gasped as they hit the platform. "But we broke the dam, too."
"So what now?" Sae-ri asked, leaning against the tile wall, her chest heaving. "We have an army of psychos destroying the city, and the government thinks we did it."
Yoo-jin looked at the subway map. The lights flickered.
He thought of Mason Gold's call. The encryption key.
"Apex declared war on noise," Yoo-jin said, wiping sweat from his eyes. "So we give him a concert he can't silence."
"How?"
"We need a bigger stage," Yoo-jin said.
He pointed to the center of the map.
Namsan Tower.
"If we can hijack the transmission tower at Namsan," Yoo-jin said, his voice hard. "We can override his command signal. Not just locally. Nationally."
"That's a fortress," Min-ji said. "It's the highest point in Seoul."
"Exactly," Yoo-jin checked his empty pockets. He had no money. No weapons. Just a team of exhausted idols and a hacker.
"It's the final stage," Yoo-jin said. "And we're going to steal the show."