Subject 735's thumbs pressed violently into Yoo-jin's windpipe.
The physical pain was blinding, but Yoo-jin's amnesiac brain analyzed the assault like a bad script. The understudy was relying entirely on brute strength. It was a boring, one-dimensional performance.
Yoo-jin couldn't breathe. His vision fractured into static at the edges. His torn shoulder screamed as the clone's knees pinned his arms to the blood-slicked concrete.
Above them, the broadcast room's automated medical sirens wailed. The biometric sensors wired to Yoo-jin's pulse were flatlining, flashing a terrifying, rhythmic red across the dark studio.
"You're cancelled," 735 spat, spittle flying onto Yoo-jin's pale face.
Yoo-jin didn't waste his rapidly depleting oxygen trying to break the clone's grip. Fighting a physically superior asset was a plot hole he refused to write. Instead, he forced his bloody lips into a mocking, gruesome smile.
He tapped the earpiece still wedged in his ear.
"Doctor," Yoo-jin choked out, his voice a broken rasp. "Five seconds... until the database formats."
In the secondary control room, Dr. Oh shrieked. The arrogant director had just realized that letting his understudy murder the leading man would permanently bankrupt his studio.
"Automated defense grid! Override!" Dr. Oh screamed over the internal comms. "Incapacitate Subject 735!"
Yoo-jin let his eyes roll back. He went entirely limp, purposefully accelerating the drop in his heart rate. He was calling the director's bluff with his own life.
The broadcast room ceiling instantly hissed. A concealed security pod dropped from the ceiling tiles, locking onto the violent movement on the floor.
Two high-voltage taser darts shot out, sinking deep into Subject 735's broad back.
The clone convulsed violently. A massive, crackling surge of blue electricity arched across his perfect musculature. 735's eyes rolled back in his head, his vocal cords locking up in a silent, agonizing scream.
He collapsed sideways, twitching helplessly on the concrete floor.
Yoo-jin gasped. Raw, burning air flooded back into his crushed windpipe. He rolled onto his side, coughing up a terrifying amount of blood.
He didn't stay down. A good producer never let the camera catch them sleeping on set.
Gritting his teeth, Yoo-jin dragged himself toward the master console. His boots slipped on the bloody floor. He reached up, slapping a crimson handprint against the pristine glass of the mixing board to pull himself into the executive chair.
He collapsed into the leather seat, panting heavily. He looked at his reflection in the dark monitors. His face was a mask of bruised, bloody ruin.
He looked exactly like a villain. He found the aesthetic highly effective.
"You cut that awfully close, Doctor," Yoo-jin croaked into the microphone, his voice dripping with icy condescension.
"You are a monster," Dr. Oh whispered over the comms, his breathing ragged. "You would have let him kill you just to destroy my life's work."
"I told you," Yoo-jin replied, wiping blood from his left eye. "I dictate the pacing of this show. Stay out of my director's chair."
He forcefully muted the Director's channel. He had reclaimed complete creative control of the bunker.
Yoo-jin immediately scanned the wall of security feeds. He needed to verify the status of his supporting cast. Camera 4-Sub showed Kai and Min-ji stumbling out of the ventilation shaft into a dimly lit maintenance corridor.
They were covered in dust and soot, but they were breathing.
"Keep moving," Yoo-jin ordered over their PA speaker, his voice a cold, mechanical rasp. "You are off schedule."
On the monitor, Min-ji looked up at the camera lens. Her eyes were red-rimmed and filled with a devastating mixture of relief and horror. She had heard the sounds of his strangulation over the open comms.
"Yoo-jin," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Are you hurt? We heard the alarms."
"My physical status does not affect your blocking," Yoo-jin answered smoothly. "Proceed to the western loading dock."
He cut their audio feed before she could let her emotions ruin the scene's pacing. Sentimentality was a distraction. He needed them focused purely on survival.
"Yoo-jin!"
The frantic, tear-filled voice exploded through his earpiece. It was Sae-ri. She was still patched in from the abandoned Incheon studio.
"I heard everything," Sae-ri sobbed, the sound of her heartbreak piercing straight through his digital armor. "You're bleeding out, aren't you? Your biometrics on David's screen are crashing!"
Yoo-jin stared at the flashing red numbers on his own console. His heart rate was dangerously low. The gunshot wound in his shoulder was still flowing sluggishly.
"The damage is superficial," Yoo-jin lied with practiced, terrifying ease. "David. What is the status of the western loading dock firewall?"
"I... I have it, hyung," David's voice crackled, thick with unshed tears. "I can pop the external locks on your mark. But you have to get out of that room. You need a medic!"
"I don't need a medic. I need a clear stage," Yoo-jin corrected.
He felt that phantom ache in his chest again. The way Sae-ri breathed, the way David called him 'hyung'—it felt like they were trying to hand him a script he had never read. He hated the confusion it caused in his perfectly ordered, amnesiac mind.
"Stop acting like a machine!" Sae-ri suddenly yelled over the encrypted line. Her voice was fierce, stripping away her tears. "You are Han Yoo-jin! You are not one of their disposable props! Stop sacrificing yourself for us!"
Yoo-jin froze. Her fierce, protective anger resonated perfectly with the phantom muscle memory in his hands.
"I am the Producer," Yoo-jin said quietly, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "It is my job to make sure the talent shines. Everything else is just behind-the-scenes trivia."
He didn't wait for her response. He severed the Incheon connection.
He turned his full attention to Monitor 9. The camera displayed the massive, cavernous space of the bunker's western loading dock. This was the final exit point.
It was a complete death trap.
A heavy, mechanized blast door sealed the exit to the surface. Standing in front of it was a full platoon of Ministry Special Forces. There were at least twenty soldiers, entirely clad in black tactical gear. They held heavy riot shields forming an impenetrable, interlocking wall.
Sniper lasers cut through the gloom, painting the maintenance corridor door where Kai and Min-ji were about to emerge.
Dr. Oh hadn't given up. He had simply moved his final blockade to the exit. If Kai and Min-ji stepped through that door, they would be immediately cancelled.
"Stand by," Yoo-jin ordered Kai over the comms. "The stage is currently overbooked. Do not open the door."
"We can't wait!" Kai argued back, his voice tense. "We hear boots coming up the stairs behind us. We have to push through!"
Yoo-jin stared at the wall of riot shields on the monitor. He didn't have any automated defenses left in the loading dock. He couldn't hack their guns. He couldn't change the lighting.
He had completely run out of internal stage tricks.
His eyes drifted to the peripheral monitor in the corner. The hacked YouTube live stream was still running. The viewer count had just crossed five million. The chat was a raging waterfall of public fury, demanding answers about the clones and the government cover-up.
A ruthless, brilliant idea struck his amnesiac brain.
The Ministry was treating this like a classified military operation. They had forgotten the most important rule of the entertainment industry.
You never go to war with a mobilized fandom.
Yoo-jin opened a heavily encrypted, untraceable audio channel. He typed in a frequency he had memorized from the raw Zenith clone files. It was a direct line to a burner phone.
The line rang once. Twice.
"Who is this?" a sharp, guarded female voice answered.
"Ha-eun," Yoo-jin said, his voice dropping into a smooth, commanding baritone. "I need you to step up to the microphone."
At the Yongsan Electronics Market, miles above the underground bunker, Ha-eun gasped. "Producer Han? We saw the broadcast! The whole trainee army is on standby! Where are you?"
"I am trapped in a Ministry sub-basement," Yoo-jin stated clinically. "My supporting cast is pinned at the western loading dock. The military is preparing to execute them."
"Give me the coordinates," Ha-eun demanded instantly. Her voice carried the fierce, unwavering loyalty of a fandom leader who had finally found her general.
Yoo-jin typed the exact GPS location of the bunker's concealed surface entrance into the chat.
"The Ministry has riot shields and assault rifles," Yoo-jin warned her.
"We have smartphones and five million live viewers," Ha-eun replied, her tone practically vibrating with adrenaline. "They can't shoot us all on camera. We're going to break their servers, Producer."
"You have four minutes before the scene ends," Yoo-jin said.
He cut the line. He leaned forward, resting his bloody chin on his hands, and stared intently at the loading dock monitor.
The tactical soldiers stood perfectly still, their weapons aimed at the door. They thought they were the main characters of this operation. They didn't realize they were just warm-up acts.
Above them, a low, rhythmic vibration began to shake the bunker's concrete ceiling.
Yoo-jin smiled. The live audience was finally arriving at the venue.