The fall felt like being dropped into a meat grinder of ice and gravity.
In the simulations, the jump had been a clean, mathematical descent—a graceful arc onto a static digital model. Reality was a screaming, horizontal gale that tried to peel the skin from Seol-wol's face despite his pressurized mask. The Siberian air at three hundred kilometers per hour wasn't air at all; it was a solid, freezing wall of pressure that threatened to snap his bones before he even touched the steel. The sound was a deafening, chaotic roar, the kind of noise that didn't just fill the ears but vibrated the fluid in the skull until balance became a distant memory.
"Sync! Hold the Sync, Junseo!" Seol-wol screamed into his comms, though his voice was swallowed by the sheer ferocity of the wind.
He could feel his brother through the neural link—a frantic, vibrating pulse of pure, unadulterated panic. Junseo was spinning, his orientation lost in the white-out of the tundra, his sensor data a jumbled mess of red warnings. Seol-wol didn't think; he reacted with the instinct of a man who had spent a lifetime catching his brother before he hit the pavement. He fired his compressed-air thrusters, a sharp hiss cutting through the atmospheric noise, and slammed his body into Junseo's mid-air.
They collided with a bone-jarring thud, their magnetic locks engaging with a violent clack that echoed in their bones. For a second, they were a single entity, a four-armed shadow tumbling through a void of white and grey.
"I've got you," Seol-wol gasped, the link flooding with a stabilizing warmth that he forced himself to project. "Don't look down.
Look at the markers! Focus on the red strobe!"
Below them, the Trans-Siberian Black-Alpha surged forward like a prehistoric predator of iron and steam. The black armor of the roof was slick with frozen rime, reflecting the pale, dying light of the afternoon sun in jagged, mirror-like flashes. The automated turrets were already swiveling with a predatory grace, their red sensor eyes tracking the heat signatures of the falling thieves.
THOOM.
They hit the roof of the third carriage. The impact sent a shockwave up Seol-wol's spine that made his vision flicker to black for a terrifying heartbeat. His magnetic boots slammed into the vibrating steel, anchoring them with a force that nearly tore his ligaments. The train beneath them wasn't just moving; it was screaming. The vibration was so intense it blurred the edges of the world, making the horizon look like a jagged, broken line.
Junseo collapsed beside him, his breath coming in jagged, wheezing sobs that hissed through the comms. "Hyung... my legs... the shock... I can't feel my legs..."
"It's just an adrenaline surge. Just breathe, Junseo. The Sync will regulate it," Seol-wol commanded, though his own heart was trying to kick its way out of his ribs. He looked up. Ahead of them, Peter and Orina had landed with the terrifying efficiency of career soldiers. Peter was already deploying a thermal jammer, a small device that emitted a cloud of ultra-cold nitrogen gas to blind the turrets' heat-seeking logic.
"Team, move!" Peter's voice crackled, distorted by the magnetic interference of the locomotive. "You have ninety seconds before the next wide-band sensor sweep! Do not get caught in the open!"
Seol-wol hauled Junseo to his feet, their suits groaning under the tension. They scrambled toward the fourth carriage—the "Vault Car." This was the place Kyla had warned him about, the heart of the high-power draw. As they crossed the coupling between cars, Seol-wol saw the maintenance hatch he had noticed from the air. It wasn't locked. It was vibrating, a hairline fracture of darkness in the reinforced steel that suggested someone—or something—had already breached the seal from the inside.
Something is already inside, Miran's warning echoed in his mind like a death knell.
"Junseo, the breach point. Now!" Seol-wol shouted, gesturing toward the center of the roof.
They knelt over the reinforced seal.
Junseo's hands were shaking, his fingers fumbling with the tools, but as he pulled the sonic cutter from his belt, the "Twin Brother" instinct took over. He looked at Seol-wol, his eyes wide and dilated behind his visor.
"Wol-wol hyung... the 'Sync'... it's getting heavy. It feels like... like lead in my head."
Seol-wol felt it too. It wasn't the usual warmth of their connection. It was a crushing, magnetic pressure, as if the train itself was a giant magnet trying to pull the thoughts out of their heads. The "Power Draw" Kyla had mentioned wasn't just electricity; it was a localized neural field.
Borislav hadn't just sent them to a train; he had sent them into a microwave for the mind.
"Focus on me," Seol-wol urged, leaning his helmet against Junseo's to create a physical anchor. "Ignore the train. Ignore the noise.
Just the seal. Just the box. Think of the garden, Junseo. Think of the sea."
Junseo triggered the cutter. A high-frequency blue flame hissed to life, slicing through the titanium-carbon alloy with a scream that pierced through their helmets. The smell of scorched metal and ozone filled Seol-wol's mask—a sharp, acrid scent that brought back the terrifying "maintenance" smells of the sub-levels.
The seal gave way with a pressurized whoosh of escaping nitrogen.
They dropped into the carriage, the roar of the wind replaced instantly by the deep, heavy thrum of the train's internal heart. The air here was unnaturally cold—far colder than the Siberian waste outside. Thick, waist-high clouds of nitrogen fog rolled across the floor, obscuring their boots and making every step feel like walking through a cloud.
In the center of the room, bolted to a hydraulic pedestal that hummed with immense power, sat the Cryogenic Container. It was a sleek, hexagonal box of matte-black composite, glowing with a soft, pulsing violet light that seemed to beat in time with Seol-wol's own heart.
"The Cold Box," Junseo whispered, his voice hushed with a mixture of awe and terror. "We actually did it. We're inside."
He stepped forward, reaching for the primary handle, but Seol-wol grabbed his wrist with an iron grip.
"Wait," Seol-wol hissed, his eyes darting around the shadows.
The simulation had shown this carriage as a standard storage vault—empty except for the pedestal. But as the nitrogen fog cleared, Seol-wol saw the reality Borislav had hidden. The walls weren't just armor.
They were lined with floor-to-ceiling glass canisters, each one filled with a pale, amber fluid that shimmered with bio-luminescence. And inside the fluid...
"Hyung," Junseo's voice was a trembling thread of horror that vibrated through the link. "Are those... people?"
Seol-wol felt the "Sync" shatter. In the canisters were bodies. Not Remnants. Not thieves. They were soldiers—or what was left of them. Their bodies were riddled with neural links that looked like black vines, their skin glowing with the same sick, violet hue as the box. Their eyes were open, staring at nothing.
This wasn't a transport for blueprints. It was a mobile laboratory. A nursery for a new kind of weapon.
Suddenly, the "Cold Box" on the pedestal hissed, the violet light turning a violent, angry red. The vibration in the floor intensified until Seol-wol's vision blurred.
"Security Breach," a calm, feminine, synthesized voice announced over the carriage speakers. "Neural compatibility detected: 99.8%. Initiating 'Sync' Harvest."
Seol-wol felt a jolt of pure, white-hot electricity shoot through his neck, originating from the link. He fell to his knees, his muscles locking in an agonizing, tetanic cramp. Beside him, Junseo screamed—a sound of pure, unadulterated pain that tore through their shared mental space like a serrated blade. Seol-wol could feel Junseo's agony as if it were his own, a double-weighted torture that threatened to stop his heart.
The box wasn't the prize. The box was the sensor. They weren't there to steal the data; they were the data.
"Junseo! Get back! Disconnect!" Seol-wol gasped, his lungs refusing to expand.
Through the red haze of his vision, Seol-wol saw the maintenance hatch above them fly open. A figure dropped down, landing silently in the nitrogen fog without a sound.
He moved with a grace that wasn't human—fluid, predatory, and terrifyingly fast, as if he existed in a world with different physics.
The figure stepped into the flickering light, and Seol-wol's heart stopped.
It was a Remnant. But his suit was unlike anything the "Remnants" wore. It was sleek, black, and marked with a silver crest of a weeping eye—the same crest Seol-wol had seen on the "Excellency's" signet ring in the sub-levels. This was a "High-Tier," a true predator of the organization.
The stranger didn't pull a weapon. He didn't need one. He looked at Seol-wol, then at the screaming, convulsing Junseo, and tilted his head with a chilling, clinical curiosity.
"So," the stranger said, his voice a perfect, haunting echo of the "Sync" frequency that vibrated directly into their brains. "You're the compatible 'Twin Brothers' Borislav was so proud of. I expected something... more.
What a tragic waste of potential."
He raised a hand, and the "Cold Box" opened with a series of mechanical clicks, revealing not a drive or a blueprint, but a pulsing, organic core that looked like a human brain encased in jagged violet crystal. It was the "Master Blueprint"—a living neural map.
"Don't worry," the stranger whispered, stepping toward the paralyzed Junseo. "The harvest only hurts for a second. After that, you won't feel anything ever again."
Seol-wol's world narrowed to a single point of white-hot rage. The "Sync" was being sucked out of him, his very life force draining into the crystalline core, but he forced his fingers to move. He reached into his tactical pocket and gripped the small metal bolt—the piece of junk, the only honest thing he had left.
I am not a battery, Seol-wol thought, his teeth grinding until they cracked. And you are not taking my brother.
The train screamed into a mountain tunnel, plunging the carriage into absolute, soul-crushing darkness. In the blackness, the only thing visible was the glowing violet eye of the stranger, moving closer.