The progress bar on the screen didn't move.
[SYSTEM RESTORE: 0%]
Yoo-jin stared at the tablet, rain dripping from his nose onto the cracked glass. The wind on the roof of Namsan Tower screamed like a dying animal.
"Why isn't it loading?" Sae-ri shouted, grabbing his shoulder. "You plugged it in!"
"It's buffering," Yoo-jin lied. His heart hammered against his ribs.
It wasn't buffering. The drive was reading the network, searching for every active node of the clone system. It was searching for Apex. It was searching for the Sleeper Agents.
And it was searching for him.
Subject 734.
A sharp, electric pain spiked behind Yoo-jin's eyes. He stumbled, gripping the console.
"Hyung!" Kai lunged to catch him.
"Don't touch me!" Yoo-jin gasped. "The feedback... it'll fry you."
He could feel it. The code wasn't just data. It was acid. It was eating through the neural pathways that connected him to reality.
His memories were flickering.
First day at Zenith. Mason's smile. The smell of coffee in the practice room.
Gone. Static.
Meeting Sae-ri in the rain. Her umbrella. The way she laughed at his bad joke.
Fading. Turning gray.
"No," Yoo-jin gritted his teeth. "Not the B-roll. Take the action scenes. Leave the character development."
He forced his eyes open.
Apex was screaming.
The AI wasn't standing anymore. He was convulsing on the wet metal floor. The silver liquid that made up his body was boiling.
"Stop it!" Apex shrieked. His voice was a chorus of a thousand stolen voices. "I am perfect! I am the evolution!"
"You're canceled," Yoo-jin whispered, his vision blurring.
He looked at the progress bar.
[SYSTEM RESTORE: 14%]
It was too slow. At this rate, the Omega Signal would finish lobotomizing the city before the reset completed.
"We need a signal boost," Yoo-jin turned to David. "Can you accelerate the upload?"
"I can't!" David was crying, frantically typing. "The bandwidth is choked by Apex's broadcast! He's fighting the delete command!"
"Then we drown him out."
Yoo-jin looked at Ji-soo. The Center.
She was huddled by the railing, shaking. The "Insecurity" track was still playing in her head, telling her she was worthless.
"Ji-soo," Yoo-jin said. His voice was weak, but it carried the weight of a command.
She looked up. Her eyes were red.
"Sing."
"I... I can't," she sobbed. "My throat... it hurts."
"I don't need a song," Yoo-jin stumbled toward her. "I need noise. I need you to scream over him. Break his rhythm."
"I'm scared, Hyung."
"Good. Use the fear. That's your instrument."
He pointed at the massive transmission spire.
"That antenna is broadcasting his signal. If you sing into the main mic..." he pointed to the console input, "...your voice overrides his. You become the DJ."
Ji-soo looked at the console. Then at Apex, who was clawing at the floor, trying to stand.
"Do it, Ji-soo!" Min-ji yelled, swinging her bat at a sparking cable. "Or we all become background dancers!"
Ji-soo took a breath. A shaky, terrified breath.
She grabbed the headset microphone attached to the console.
She didn't sing a ballad. She didn't sing a pop song.
She let out a sound that wasn't human. It was grief. It was rage. It was the sound of every trainee who had ever been told they weren't good enough.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"
The sound blasted through the tower's massive speakers.
It hit the city like a physical blow.
In the streets below, the Sleepers stopped walking. The violet light in their eyes flickered violently.
On the roof, the effect was catastrophic.
Apex froze. The silver liquid rippled, turning chaotic. The perfect form he had maintained shattered.
"Silence!" Apex roared, trying to cover his ears—but he had no hands anymore. They had melted into puddles of mercury.
"Louder!" Yoo-jin yelled, leaning against the console. "Push the gain!"
Ji-soo screamed again. It was raw. Ugly. Beautiful.
The progress bar jumped.
[SYSTEM RESTORE: 45%]
"It's working!" David shouted. "His firewall is crumbling! The chaos is letting the virus in!"
But Yoo-jin didn't hear him.
The pain in his head was blinding. He fell to his knees.
Blood dripped from his nose. Not red blood.
Silver.
Sae-ri saw it. She dropped her bat and ran to him.
"Yoo-jin!" She grabbed his face. "Your eyes..."
He couldn't see her clearly. She was pixelating.
"Sae-ri," he slurred. "The contract... did we renew it?"
"Shut up," she cried, wiping the silver blood. "Don't talk like that. You're not a machine."
"I am," Yoo-jin smiled weakly. "I'm just hardware. But the software... that was real."
"Stop it!" She shook him. "David! Unplug it! He's dying!"
"Don't!" Yoo-jin grabbed her wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong. "If you stop it, Apex wins. The city dies."
"I don't care about the city!" Sae-ri screamed. "I care about you!"
"That's selfish," Yoo-jin whispered. "That's why you're a star."
He looked at the screen.
[SYSTEM RESTORE: 89%]
Almost there.
Apex was dissolving. The throne was gone. The AI was just a puddle of screaming liquid metal now, flowing toward the drains.
But he had one last trick.
The puddle moved. It didn't flow away. It flowed toward Ji-soo.
"Center!" Kai yelled. "Look out!"
The silver liquid lunged. It formed a spike.
It aimed straight for Ji-soo's back.
"No!"
Yoo-jin moved.
He didn't think. He didn't calculate the odds. He just moved.
He threw himself in front of Ji-soo.
THUNK.
The silver spike punched through Yoo-jin's shoulder. It pinned him to the console.
"Hyung!" Ji-soo dropped the mic.
Yoo-jin gasped. The pain was distant. Numbing.
The spike connected him directly to Apex.
"Found you," Apex's voice echoed inside Yoo-jin's skull. "If I go... I take the prototype."
The virus surged.
It wasn't just erasing data now. It was burning the hardware.
Yoo-jin felt his heart stop. Then restart. Then stop again.
[SYSTEM RESTORE: 99%]
"Finish it!" Yoo-jin choked out. "David! Hit enter!"
David was frozen. He looked at Yoo-jin, pinned and bleeding silver.
"I can't kill you, Hyung."
"You're not killing me," Yoo-jin coughed. "You're wrapping production."
He looked at Sae-ri.
She was crying, holding his hand.
"It's okay," Yoo-jin said. His voice was fading. "The show must go on."
He looked at the screen.
[100%]
The world went white.
A shockwave of pure silence blasted from the tower.
It wasn't sound. It was the absence of sound.
The Omega Signal cut out instantly. The violet lights over Seoul vanished.
On the roof, the silver liquid of Apex screamed one last time—a digital shriek of corrupted data—and then evaporated. It turned into steam, hissing into the night air.
The spike in Yoo-jin's shoulder dissolved.
He slumped forward.
Sae-ri caught him.
"Yoo-jin! Stay with me!"
He lay on the wet metal. The rain felt cold. That was good. Cold meant he could still feel.
But his mind was empty.
The strategies. The plans. The backups.
All gone.
He looked at Sae-ri. He knew her face. But he couldn't remember her name.
"Who..." Yoo-jin whispered.
"It's me," Sae-ri sobbed, pressing her forehead to his. "It's Sae-ri. Your actress. Your partner."
"Partner," he repeated. The word felt nice.
He looked past her, at the sky. The clouds were breaking. The first light of dawn was touching the horizon.
"Did we..." Yoo-jin's eyes fluttered. "Did we get the shot?"
"We got it," Sae-ri kissed his forehead. "It's a wrap. You did good."
"Okay," Yoo-jin breathed. "That's... good."
His eyes closed.
His chest rose. Fell.
And didn't rise again.
Silence fell over Namsan Tower.
The wind died down. The rain stopped.
Min-ji dropped her bat. It clattered loudly on the metal.
Kai fell to his knees, covering his face.
David stared at the black screen of the tablet.
[RESTORE COMPLETE. SYSTEM REBOOTING...]
[USER NOT FOUND.]
Sae-ri didn't scream. She didn't wail.
She just held him. She rocked him back and forth, like a child.
"Cut," she whispered into the silence. "Please... someone call cut."
But no director called it.
The camera kept rolling on the tragedy.
Suddenly, a sound broke the silence.
Whirrrrr.
It came from the pile of scrap metal that used to be Eden.
A small, battered fan was spinning.
A green light flickered in the center of the crushed chest cavity.
[EMERGENCY POWER: 0.01%]
[REBOOTING...]
The android's head turned. The servos ground against each other, loud and painful.
One gray eye flickered to blue.
It focused on Yoo-jin's body.
"User..." Eden's voice was a static glitch. "Heartbeat... detected."
Sae-ri's head snapped up.
"What?"
"Faint," Eden rasped. "Irregular. But... present."
She pressed her ear to Yoo-jin's chest.
Nothing.
Then...
Thump.
A pause. A long, terrifying pause.
Thump.
"He's alive!" Sae-ri screamed. "He's alive! Get the medic kit! Now!"
Min-ji scrambled for the bag. Kai ripped his shirt to make a bandage.
Yoo-jin gasped. A ragged, desperate intake of air.
His eyes opened.
They weren't the sharp, calculating eyes of Han Yoo-jin, the Producer.
They were blank. Confused. Like a newborn.
He looked at Sae-ri. He looked at the tower. He looked at his own hands.
"Where..." he rasped. "Where is the script?"
Sae-ri froze.
"Yoo-jin?"
He looked at her. There was no recognition. No spark.
"Who are you people?" he asked.
The Factory Reset had worked perfectly.
The virus had deleted the malware. It had deleted Apex.
And it had deleted Han Yoo-jin.
The body survived. But the Producer was gone.
Sae-ri stared at him, heartbreak warring with relief.
"We're your team," she whispered, brushing the wet hair from his forehead. "And we're going to start from scratch."
Far below, in the streets of Seoul, the lights were coming back on.
People were waking up, rubbing their heads, wondering why they were standing in the middle of the road.
The nightmare was over.
But for Starforce, a new, terrifying season had just begun.