The Namsan Tunnel was a long, orange-lit throat swallowing them whole.
Yoo-jin stared at the passing lights. They blurred into streaks, like a film reel spinning too fast.
"Stop staring," Director Park said, her eyes on the rearview mirror. "You look like a deer in headlights. It makes me nervous."
Yoo-jin flinched. He looked at his hands. They were trembling.
"Where are we going?" he asked again. It was the third time he'd asked.
"To the archives," Park muttered. "Somewhere off the grid. If the military finds you, you'll be dissected before lunch."
Sae-ri squeezed Yoo-jin's hand. Her grip was tight, possessive.
"He's not a specimen," she snapped. "He's a person."
"He was a person," Park corrected, taking a sharp turn that threw them against the doors. "Now he's a liability with a pulse."
Yoo-jin pulled his hand away from Sae-ri. He didn't know why, but her touch felt overwhelming. Like a fan getting too close at a meet-and-greet he hadn't agreed to.
"Who are you?" Yoo-jin whispered to her.
Sae-ri froze. Pain flashed across her face—raw and unmasked.
"I'm Sae-ri," she choked out. "I'm... your talent."
"My talent?" Yoo-jin tested the word. It felt heavy in his mouth. "Do I own you?"
"No," Kai leaned forward from the back seat, wincing as his bruised ribs protested. "You manage us. You protect us. Usually."
Yoo-jin looked at Kai's bloody shirt. He looked at Min-ji, who was staring out the window with a thousand-yard stare.
"I did a bad job," Yoo-jin said softly.
Silence filled the car. It was heavy, suffocating silence. The kind that comes after a show is cancelled mid-season.
The sedan swerved off the main road. They entered an industrial district—Incheon's abandoned dockyards. Rusted shipping containers were stacked like Jenga towers against the gray sky.
Park pulled up to a nondescript warehouse. The sign above the door was faded: ECHO SOUND STUDIOS.
"Get out," Park ordered. "Quickly. Before the satellites sweep this grid."
They scrambled out. The air smelled of salt and old oil.
Kai and Min-ji hauled Eden's heavy, inert body from the trunk. The android was a mess of exposed wires and scorched metal. His head lolled back, the gray eye staring blindly at the clouds.
"Careful!" David hissed, supporting Eden's legs. "His chassis is cracked. If you drop him, his core might leak."
"He's heavy," Min-ji grunted, tears mixing with the soot on her face. "He's so heavy."
They dragged the fallen bodyguard inside.
The studio was a graveyard of analog tech. Dust sheets covered massive mixing consoles. Reels of magnetic tape lay scattered on the floor like dead snakes.
It was a place time had forgotten. A production booth for ghosts.
"Put him there," Park pointed to a leather couch in the control room.
They lowered Eden. He looked like a fallen knight on a tomb.
David immediately pulled out his cables, hooking his tablet into Eden's access port.
"Status?" Sae-ri asked, hovering over them.
"Boot loop," David wiped sweat from his forehead. "His logic board is fried. He's stuck in the startup sequence. He keeps trying to verify his user, but..."
David looked at Yoo-jin, who was standing by the door, hugging himself.
"But the user is gone," David finished quietly.
Yoo-jin felt everyone looking at him. The pressure was physical. It felt like standing center stage without knowing the choreography.
"Why are you looking at me?" Yoo-jin backed away. "I can't fix him. I don't know how."
"You built him," Min-ji yelled. She slammed her hand against the wall. "You designed him! You wrote his code!"
"Min-ji, stop," Kai grabbed her shoulder.
"No! Look at him!" Min-ji pointed a shaking finger at Yoo-jin. "He's useless! Eden died for him, and he doesn't even remember!"
Yoo-jin shrank back. He felt a sharp headache spike behind his eyes.
Code. Design. Build.
The words floated in his mind, detached from meaning. Like subtitles in a language he didn't speak.
"I'm sorry," Yoo-jin whispered. "I don't know who Eden is."
Min-ji let out a strangled sob and stormed out of the room.
Park sighed. She walked over to a dusty TV monitor in the corner and turned it on.
"Enough drama," she said. "Let's see what the critics are saying."
The screen flickered to life. News footage.
[BREAKING NEWS: SEOUL IN CHAOS]
The headline scrolled in red. The footage showed Namsan Tower. It wasn't glowing anymore. It was dark, surrounded by smoke.
"...mass hallucinations reported across the capital..." the reporter said, breathless. "Authorities are calling it a cyber-terrorist attack orchestrated by the rogue agency, Zenith."
The image changed.
A photo appeared on the screen. It was a mugshot.
Han Yoo-jin.
His face was plastered on every screen in the country.
"The mastermind, identified as former Zenith manager Han Yoo-jin, is currently at large. The Ministry of Defense has issued a shoot-to-kill order."
Yoo-jin stared at the screen.
The man in the photo looked like him. But the eyes were different. They were cold. Calculating. Sharp as a scalpel.
They were the eyes of a predator.
"That's me?" Yoo-jin asked. His voice trembled.
"That was you," Park corrected. She lit a cigarette, blowing smoke at the screen. "Public Enemy Number One. The villain of the year."
"I... I'm a bad person?"
"Depends on who you ask," Park tapped ash onto the floor. "To the government, you're a terrorist. To the trainees you saved, you're a god. To me? You're an investment."
She turned to Sae-ri.
"We have a problem, Manager Jung. The world is hunting him. And he can't even tie his own shoes."
Sae-ri stepped between Park and Yoo-jin.
"We hide him," she said firmly. "We wait for his memory to return."
"And if it doesn't?" Park stepped closer. "The reboot wiped his personality, Sae-ri. The 'Han Yoo-jin' who knew all the secrets, who held the leverage over Mason Gold... he's gone. Deleted."
Park gestured to the shivering man in the corner.
"This? This is just raw footage. Unedited. And frankly, unmarketable."
"Don't talk about him like a product," Sae-ri snarled.
"He is a product!" Park snapped. "He's a clone! A biological machine created to dominate the industry! Without his software, he's just expensive meat!"
The words hit Yoo-jin like a slap.
Clone. Machine. Meat.
He looked at his hands again. They looked real. He pinched his arm. It hurt.
"I'm real," he whispered. "I feel pain."
"Pain is easy," Park said coldly. "Ambition is hard. Do you have ambition, kid? Do you want to rule the world?"
Yoo-jin shook his head rapidly. "No. I just want the noise to stop."
Park scoffed. She turned back to Sae-ri.
"See? He's useless. I should turn him in. Maybe cut a deal with the Ministry."
Sae-ri grabbed a heavy glass ashtray from the table. She held it like a weapon.
"You won't touch him," Sae-ri said. Her voice was low, dangerous. "We have leverage. We have the truth about the cloning program. If you turn him in, we leak everything. We burn the whole industry down."
Park stared at her. Then, slowly, a smile spread across her face.
"There it is," Park chuckled. "I was wondering when you'd show your teeth. You spent too much time with him, Sae-ri. You're starting to think like a producer."
Park sat down on the dusty console.
"Fine. We keep him. But he can't stay here forever. We need to reboot him manually."
"How?" Kai asked.
"Trigger response," Park pointed at the mixing board. "Muscle memory. The brain forgets, but the body remembers the grind."
She looked at Yoo-jin.
"Hey. Kid. Come here."
Yoo-jin hesitated. He looked at Sae-ri. She nodded, lowering the ashtray.
He walked slowly toward the massive mixing console. It was covered in dust, but the sliders and knobs gleamed in the dim light.
"Sit," Park ordered.
Yoo-jin sat in the producer's chair. The leather creaked. It felt... familiar. Like an old coat that fit perfectly.
"Put your hands on the board."
Yoo-jin reached out. His fingers hovered over the faders.
"What do I do?" he asked.
"David," Park commanded. "Play the track. The one from the Dome."
David tapped his tablet. He routed the audio to the studio monitors.
Click.
The "WAKE UP" track began to play.
It was chaotic. Grinding metal. Screams. Distorted bass. It was the sound of the rebellion.
Yoo-jin flinched at the noise. He covered his ears.
"Too loud," he whined. "It's messy."
"Don't cover your ears," Park barked. "Fix it. It's messy? Clean it up. That's your job."
Yoo-jin looked at the board. The red lights on the VU meters were peaking into the danger zone.
Messy, his mind echoed. Unbalanced. The treble is clipping. The bass is muddy.
Without thinking, his left hand shot out.
He grabbed the equalizer knob. He twisted it.
The screeching treble smoothed out.
His right hand found the fader for the vocal track. He pushed it up, finding the pocket where the scream became a melody.
He tapped a button. Compressor. Engage.
The chaotic noise tightened. It punched. It stopped being noise and started being a rhythm.
Yoo-jin's eyes were still blank, but his hands were flying.
He adjusted the reverb. He panned the drums. He cut the low-end rumble.
For ten seconds, the studio was filled with perfect, driving sound.
Then, the track ended.
Yoo-jin's hands froze. He blinked, looking down at the board as if it had bitten him.
"I..." he stammered. "I fixed the levels. The gain staging was wrong."
He looked up at Sae-ri. Confusion swirled in his eyes again.
"Why did I do that?"
Sae-ri let out a breath she had been holding. She smiled, tears welling in her eyes.
"Because you're a control freak," she whispered.
Park clapped slowly. The sound was dry and sarcastic.
"Well," Park said, standing up. "The hardware is intact. The Producer is still in there. He's just buried under a lot of static."
She looked at the team.
"We don't need a doctor. We need a training camp."
She pointed at the door.
"Rest up. Tomorrow, we start production on the reboot. We're going to rebuild Han Yoo-jin from the ground up."
Yoo-jin looked at the dark screen of the mixing board.
He felt a ghost of a sensation in his fingertips. A hunger. A need to fix the broken things.
"Reboot," he whispered.
In the corner, on the leather couch, Eden's chest panel flickered.
A single, weak green light blinked once.
Thump.
It synced with the beat Yoo-jin had just mixed.
The connection was weak. But the network was still there.