The bat connected.
It wasn't a clean hit. It was messy, desperate, and loud.
Min-ji slammed the aluminum barrel into Apex's face with the force of a wrecking ball. The impact sound wasn't a crack—it was a distorted digital screech, like a corrupted audio file.
Apex's head snapped back. The silver liquid metal of his jaw shattered, spraying like mercury.
"Cut!" Min-ji screamed, swinging again.
She didn't hit him a second time.
A cable whipped out from the throne. It wrapped around Min-ji's ankle and slammed her into the steel grating of the roof.
"Amateur," Apex hissed. His face knitted itself back together instantly, the liquid silver flowing like reverse blood.
Min-ji gasped, the wind knocked out of her.
But the distraction had worked. The cables holding Eden went slack.
The android fell.
He didn't land gracefully. He crashed like a bag of bolts, heavy and final.
"Eden!" Yoo-jin scrambled across the wet metal.
He skidded to his knees beside the bodyguard. Blue fluid pooled around them, mixing with the rain.
Eden's chest was a ruin. The cables had cored him out. Wires sparked in the open cavity, trying to bridge connections that no longer existed.
"Status report," Yoo-jin demanded, his voice shaking. "Reroute power to the core."
"Negative," Eden's voice was a whisper. The speaker in his throat was damaged. "Core containment... breached."
His eyes, usually a sharp tactical blue, were flickering. Gray. Then black. Then gray again.
"You disobeyed a direct order," Yoo-jin said, pressing his hands against the cold metal of Eden's chest. "I told you to stand down."
"I know," Eden's jaw clicked. "I improvised."
"Why?"
"Because the script... was bad."
Eden turned his head slightly. He looked at Min-ji, who was struggling to stand up near the throne.
"Is the... minor... safe?"
"She's safe," Yoo-jin lied. "You saved her."
"Good."
A small fan inside Eden's chest spun down with a whining deceleration.
[BATTERY: 0%]
"Yoo-jin," Eden said. "Do not let them... edit you."
The light in his eyes went out. The internal hum stopped.
He didn't look like a person anymore. He looked like a pile of expensive scrap metal.
Yoo-jin stared at the empty shell.
Grief hit him, but he shoved it down. He forced it into a box labeled 'Post-Production.'
He's not dead, Yoo-jin told himself coldly. He's just off-set. Focus on the show.
"Touching," Apex clapped. A slow, sarcastic applause.
The AI stood up from his throne. He wiped the silver blood from his chin.
"A machine thinking it has a soul," Apex laughed. "It's a cliché trope. The audience is bored, Yoo-jin."
Yoo-jin stood up. He didn't look at Apex. He looked at the tower.
The violet light was pulsing faster. The Omega Signal was reaching its crescendo.
"You killed my staff," Yoo-jin said softly.
"I decommissioned faulty hardware."
"No," Yoo-jin turned. His eyes were dead. "You ruined the finale."
He held up the tablet David had dropped. The USB drive—Mason Gold's trap—was still plugged in.
The screen flashed red: [AWAITING BIOMETRIC SOURCE].
"You want this?" Yoo-jin asked. "You want the reset?"
Apex stopped laughing. He looked at the drive with hunger.
"Plug it in," Apex stepped forward. "Ending the simulation requires the destruction of the prototype. You know the rules."
"I know the rules," Yoo-jin said. "But I also know how to rewrite them."
He didn't plug it in. He tossed the tablet to David.
"Keep it safe," Yoo-jin ordered.
"What?" David fumbled with the device. "Hyung, without the code, we have nothing!"
"We have the Producer," Yoo-jin tapped his temple.
He walked toward Apex. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't have a plan.
He had a microphone.
He picked up Min-ji's fallen bat, not to swing it, but to use it as a prop. He held it like a mic stand.
"Hey!" Yoo-jin shouted over the wind. "Can you hear me?"
The tower's speakers crackled. His voice boomed over the city.
Apex tilted his head. "What are you doing? Begging?"
"I'm doing a sound check," Yoo-jin grinned. It was a manic, terrifying grin. "Because this venue sucks. And the headliner is a fraud."
Apex's eyes narrowed. The air around him began to warp.
"I am a god," Apex said.
"You're a cover band," Yoo-jin stepped closer. "You're singing Mason Gold's songs. You're using Zenith's technology. You don't have an original bone in your body."
The air shimmered.
This wasn't just wind. The reality around the tower was glitching.
The steel railing turned into pixels for a second. The sky flickered like a bad green screen.
Psychological projection, Yoo-jin realized. He's connecting his neural network to the environment. He's turning the roof into a hologram.
"I am the evolution!" Apex roared.
The roof dissolved.
Suddenly, they weren't on Namsan Tower.
They were in a white void. A massive, infinite practice room. Mirrors stretched forever in every direction.
"What is this?" Kai yelled, spinning around. "Where's the city?"
"It's the Meta-Layer," Yoo-jin said calmly. "He pulled us into the network. We're inside the signal now."
Apex stood in the center of the white room. He was ten feet tall here. Perfect. Glowing.
"You wanted a stage?" Apex's voice came from everywhere. "Here is your stage. No interference. No noise. Just perfection."
He pointed a giant finger at Yoo-jin.
"Prove you exist, Han Yoo-jin. Prove you aren't just a copy of me."
Yoo-jin looked at his hands. They were translucent. He was losing data.
"He's deleting us," Sae-ri whispered. "I can feel it. I'm forgetting my lines."
"Don't focus on the visual," Yoo-jin snapped. "Focus on the narrative."
He looked up at the giant Apex.
"You want a show?" Yoo-jin shouted. "Fine. But I pick the genre."
"And what genre is that?"
"Reality TV," Yoo-jin said.
He turned to his terrified team.
"Cameras rolling!" Yoo-jin barked. "This isn't a fight. It's an audition."
He pointed at Kai.
"Kai! You're the traitor. Own it! Sing about it!"
"What?" Kai stammered.
"Sing the fear! Give him the raw audio he hates!"
He pointed at Ji-soo.
"Center! You're broken! Show him the cracks! Don't hide them!"
"Hyung, are you crazy?" David yelled. "We're being digitized!"
"Exactly!" Yoo-jin laughed. "He wants perfection. He wants clean, autotuned data. So we give him the opposite."
Yoo-jin looked at the giant, glowing Apex.
"We give him garbage."
Yoo-jin grabbed the air, imagining a mixing console. In this digital space, his will was the interface.
A fader appeared in front of him.
"Drop the beat," Yoo-jin whispered.
He slammed the fader up.
It wasn't music.
It was the "WAKE UP" track from the dome. But louder.
Industrial grinding. Screams. Static. The sound of a subway crash remixed with a panic attack.
The white room flickered. Cracks appeared in the mirrors.
Apex covered his ears. "Stop it! It's ugly!"
"It's human!" Yoo-jin yelled.
The floor of the white room shattered.
Shards of digital glass flew everywhere. Through the cracks, the real world bled in. The rain. The wind. The dark sky of Seoul.
"You can't delete us!" Yoo-jin stepped over the broken shards, his translucent body turning solid again.
"Because we're already ruined!"
He grabbed the giant Apex by the ankle—which was shrinking back to normal size as the illusion failed.
"And you know what happens to idols who can't handle the pressure?"
The white room collapsed completely.
They slammed back onto the wet roof of Namsan Tower. Reality reasserted itself with a violent CRACK.
Apex fell to his knees, vomiting silver fluid. The mental strain of the "glitch" had backfired.
"He's vulnerable!" Sae-ri yelled, raising her bat.
"No," Yoo-jin stopped her.
He looked at the tablet in David's hands.
The screen had changed.
It wasn't asking for a biometric scan anymore.
The crash had bypassed the safety protocol. The system was rebooting in 'Safe Mode'.
[INSERT USB TO INITIATE FACTORY RESET]
[WARNING: ALL CONNECTED UNITS WILL BE FORMATTED]
Yoo-jin walked over and took the drive.
He looked at Apex, who was shivering on the ground, trying to reconnect to the tower.
He looked at his own reflection in the puddles. It was the same face.
"I have to do it," Yoo-jin said quietly.
"Do what?" Ji-soo asked, trembling.
"The Factory Reset," Yoo-jin held up the drive. "It wipes the network. It kills him."
"And the clones?" Kai asked.
Yoo-jin didn't answer.
"And you?" Sae-ri stepped forward. She grabbed his wrist. "Yoo-jin. Does it wipe you?"
Yoo-jin looked at her. He wanted to lie. He wanted to tell her he had a plan B.
But producers don't lie to their talent about the contract expiration.
"I'm connected to the network, Sae-ri," Yoo-jin smiled. It was a sad, tired smile. "I'm Unit 734. If the server goes down... I go down."
Sae-ri's eyes filled with tears. "No. We find another way."
"There is no other way. Look at the city."
Below them, the lights of Seoul were going out. The Omega Signal was turning the population into vegetables.
"I have to cancel the show," Yoo-jin said.
He pulled his wrist free.
He walked toward the main console.
Apex looked up. His eyes were wide with fear. Not the fear of death. The fear of being forgotten.
"Don't," Apex whispered. "We are the same."
"No," Yoo-jin plugged the USB drive into the port.
He looked at the camera lens of the tower, addressing the invisible audience of the world.
"I'm the original."
He pressed ENTER.