The violent static from Monitor 7C hissed like a disappointed crowd.
Yoo-jin stared at the screen of white noise. Subject 735 had just shot out the camera. The understudy wasn't following the Ministry's retreat orders anymore.
He glanced down at his own left shoulder. Blood continued to seep through the makeshift bandage, staining his stolen jacket a deep, glossy black. His body was failing, but his mind had never felt clearer.
Without the burden of emotional attachments or past trauma, the world was just a very complex, very dangerous soundstage.
He moved his right hand across the master mixing console, bringing up the bunker's central PA routing. On a peripheral monitor, a hacked news stream silently played a chaotic montage. Millions of red-hot comments blurred past on a YouTube live chat, moving too fast to read.
Zenith Agency's stock line was a jagged red cliff plunging into nothingness. The public audience was completely completely hooked, but Yoo-jin minimized the window. The macro-politics didn't matter until his cast was safe.
He pressed the intercom button connected to the Sector 4 service elevator.
"Hold your positions," Yoo-jin ordered, his voice echoing in the concrete stairwell.
On Monitor 4B, Kai and Min-ji froze instantly. Kai raised his stolen rifle, his eyes darting to the shadows. Min-ji leaned against the cold wall, her breathing heavy.
"We're clear on our end," Kai whispered, glancing at a security camera. "The elevator is right here."
"The elevator is a death trap," Yoo-jin corrected coldly. "An unscripted hazard is moving through Sector 6. He just destroyed his tracking lens. He is heading for my booth."
Min-ji's head snapped up. "The clone? The one from the broadcast?"
"The understudy, yes," Yoo-jin said, adjusting an audio slider. "His physical specs are identical to mine, but his emotional stability is failing. He is armed and unpredictable."
"Let us come to you," Kai urged, stepping toward the camera. "We have weapons. We can flank him before he breaches your room."
"Denied," Yoo-jin replied instantly. "Your current combat stats are compromised. Min-ji is limping. You would both be cancelled before you fired a shot."
Min-ji gripped her rifle so tightly her knuckles turned white. Her eyes burned as she stared up at the unblinking camera lens.
"Stop talking to us like we're just assets on a spreadsheet," she gritted out, her voice cracking. "We're your family, Yoo-jin."
Yoo-jin felt a strange, hollow echo in his chest. The word 'family' meant absolutely nothing to his brain, yet his fingers hesitated over the console. He pushed the phantom glitch away.
"Assets who follow blocking survive the scene," Yoo-jin stated with brutal objectivity. "Take the ventilation sub-level to the western loading dock. Wait for my cue."
He muted their channel before they could argue. A good director didn't debate with the talent during a live broadcast.
He needed to secure their exit. The Ministry bunker was sealed shut from the outside, locked behind heavy blast doors. He had internal control, but he needed an external tech crew to pry the lid off this concrete box.
His fingers flew across the keyboard, bypassing the Ministry's firewall. He routed a heavily encrypted signal out through the Namsan Tower relay, pointing it directly at the abandoned Incheon studio.
The line rang twice before clicking open. Heavy, frantic breathing filled his earpiece.
"David?" a woman's voice whispered. "Is that you? Did you get the firewall down?"
Yoo-jin froze. The voice belonged to Jung Sae-ri.
He didn't remember her face. He didn't remember her name, or her smile, or the way she had stood by him when Zenith Agency fell. But the moment her voice vibrated through his earpiece, the biometric sensors on his master console flared brightly.
His heart rate spiked. A sharp, physical ache bloomed tight in his chest, entirely separate from his gunshot wound. It was terrifying.
"Identify yourself," Yoo-jin demanded, trying to keep his voice perfectly level.
A sharp intake of breath echoed over the line. Then, a devastating, shattered silence.
"Yoo-jin," Sae-ri choked out, the single word carrying a mountain of grief. "You... you really don't remember me?"
He hated the sound of her crying. He didn't know why, but it felt like a catastrophic failure on his part. He gripped the edge of the console, forcing himself to breathe.
"My memory files were formatted," Yoo-jin said, retreating into his sterile, professional armor. "But my strategic functions are intact. I need your hacker. Put him on the line."
He heard her swallow hard, fighting a losing battle against her tears. "David is right here. We're patched into the main terminal. We watched your broadcast."
"Good. That saves us the exposition," Yoo-jin said rapidly. "I am sending David a backdoor packet. I need him to force open the western loading dock doors in exactly six minutes. Can he do it?"
Keys clattered frantically in the background. "I'm on it, hyung!" David's voice squeaked, thick with panic. "The Ministry ICE is heavy, but I can break it from the outside if you keep the internal servers distracted!"
"I will provide a distraction," Yoo-jin confirmed.
Before he could hang up, Sae-ri's voice returned, fierce and desperate. "Yoo-jin. Please. Don't do anything reckless. We are coming to get you."
"Just hit your marks," Yoo-jin replied smoothly, and severed the connection.
He exhaled a long, shaky breath. He felt like a man reading a script written in a language he used to speak fluently. There was no time to translate his feelings now.
Another monitor went dark with a burst of static. Camera 6A.
Subject 735 was now only one hallway away.
Suddenly, the bunker's general intercom screamed to life. Dr. Oh's panicked voice blasted through the entire facility, bouncing off the concrete walls.
"Subject 735! This is a direct order from the Director! Stand down immediately!"
Yoo-jin pulled up the audio feed from the hallway outside his door. He could hear the heavy, rhythmic thud of the clone's boots approaching.
"If you kill him, the master database deletes!" Dr. Oh shrieked over the PA. "You will erase yourself! Drop your weapon!"
A harsh, metallic laugh echoed from the hallway feed. Subject 735 was standing right outside the heavy steel doors of the broadcast room.
"I don't care about your database, Doctor," 735 yelled, his voice carrying the raw, unhinged edge of a ruined man. "I'm tired of being the understudy. If the original dies, I'm the only lead this show has left!"
The clone raised his rifle and fired point-blank into the door's digital keypad.
Sparks showered the corridor as the locking mechanism shattered. The heavy steel doors groaned, sliding open halfway before jamming on their ruined tracks. Thick white smoke from the fried circuitry poured into the broadcast booth.
Yoo-jin didn't draw a weapon. He didn't even stand up from the executive chair.
Instead, he slammed his hand down on the master lighting grid. Every fluorescent bulb in the broadcast room instantly shut off. The only light remaining came from the dozens of glowing monitors behind him, casting his silhouette in sharp, imposing relief.
Subject 735 stepped through the smoking doorway, his rifle raised. The clone's chest heaved, his face twisted in a mask of furious desperation.
"End of the line, Original," 735 spat, leveling the barrel at Yoo-jin's dark silhouette.
Yoo-jin smiled, his teeth gleaming faintly in the monitor light. The clone had physical perfection, but he had zero stage presence.
"You missed your cue," Yoo-jin whispered.
He hit the audio playback button on the console. A deafening, high-frequency microphone feedback loop blasted through the room's studio monitors.
Subject 735 screamed, dropping his rifle to clamp his hands over his bleeding ears.
The unscripted hazard had just walked right onto Yoo-jin's stage.