They returned to Australia under heavier shadows.
Different names. Different routes. No direct flights. No patterns that could be traced without blood being spilled to find them. By the time the plane touched down in Perth—far from where it had all begun—Joon-seo felt the shift in the air.
This wasn't home.
It was a trap pretending to be familiar.
Seo-yeon noticed it too. She didn't say anything, but her posture changed—subtle, alert, every movement economical. She had stopped trusting the ground beneath her feet.
They didn't speak much.
Not because there was nothing to say—but because anything spoken now would fracture something neither of them was ready to examine.
From Perth, they moved inland.
A long drive. Red earth stretching endlessly beneath a sky too wide to offer comfort. The outback swallowed sound, swallowed time. Joon-seo watched the horizon and felt memories stir—not images, but sensations. Heat. Isolation. The feeling of being watched when no one should be there.
"This is where it is," he said suddenly.
Seo-yeon glanced at him. "You remember?"
"I feel it," he replied. "Like a scar you don't see until it aches."
They stopped at what looked like nothing.
No buildings. No signs. Just scrubland and silence.
Seo-yeon cut the engine.
"Southern Cross Auxiliary Site," she said. "Off-books. Funded through shell companies. Staffed by locals who didn't ask questions—or didn't live long enough to regret it."
Joon-seo stepped out of the car. The heat pressed down on him like a hand.
"Why here?" he asked.
"Because no one listens to ghosts," she replied.
They moved on foot.
The entrance revealed itself only when you knew where to look—a reinforced hatch buried beneath dust and steel, disguised as part of an old mining operation. Seo-yeon keyed in a sequence she shouldn't have remembered.
The hatch opened.
Cold air rose from below, wrong against the heat.
They descended.
The facility was smaller than the one in Seoul—but crueler in its intent. Fewer rooms. Fewer resources.
No pretense of oversight.
Joon-seo stopped in front of a wall lined with photographs.
Children.
Teenagers.
Some faces blurred by time. Others painfully clear.
Numbers beneath each image.
015. 016. 017.
His chest tightened when he saw what came after.
Red slashes.
Deceased.
Terminated.
Missing.
"Most didn't survive training," Seo-yeon said quietly. "The rest didn't survive obedience."
Joon-seo stared at the wall.
"I knew them," he said.
"Yes."
"I remember their voices," he whispered. "But not their names."
Seo-yeon's throat worked. "They didn't let you keep names. It made killing harder."
Something broke loose in Joon-seo's chest—not rage, not yet, but grief so deep it hollowed him out.
A sound echoed down the corridor.
Footsteps.
Seo-yeon turned sharply. "We're not alone."
They moved fast, slipping into shadow as voices approached—Australian accents, armed, confident.
"Clear this wing," someone said. "Director wants confirmation."
Joon-seo's hands curled into fists.
"These are contractors," Seo-yeon murmured. "Private security. They don't know what they're guarding."
"Then tell them," Joon-seo said.
"There won't be time."
He looked at the wall one last time.
Then he stepped out of hiding.
"Stop," he said.
The men froze—surprised, not afraid yet.
"Facility is compromised," Joon-seo continued, voice steady. "You're standing in a crime scene that spans decades."
One of the men laughed nervously. "Who the hell are you?"
Joon-seo met his eyes. "Someone you were paid to forget."
They didn't lower their weapons.
The first shot didn't come from Joon-seo.
Seo-yeon reacted instantly, pulling him down as bullets tore through the corridor. The world snapped back into violence—sharp, unforgiving.
They fought their way through, not with brutality, but with intent. Disabling when possible. Escaping when necessary. Every move felt heavier now, weighted by the faces on the wall.
They burst into a control room at the end of the corridor.
Inside, a single man sat frozen at the console.
Older. Australian. Civilian clothes.
He raised his hands immediately. "Please. I just keep the systems running."
Joon-seo studied him. "How long?"
The man swallowed. "Fifteen years."
Seo-yeon's jaw tightened.
Joon-seo stepped closer. "Did you know?"
The man's eyes dropped. "I knew enough."
Silence pressed in.
Then Joon-seo did something Seo-yeon didn't expect.
He turned away.
"Send everything," he said to the man. "Every record. Every transaction. Every name."
The man blinked. "To who?"
"To everyone," Joon-seo replied. "Press. Courts. The world."
Seo-yeon stared at him. "That will expose you."
"Yes," he said. "That's the point."
Alarms blared.
The man's hands shook as he worked.
"They'll kill me," he whispered.
Joon-seo looked back at the wall of faces in his mind.
"Welcome to the cost," he said.
They left before the facility went dark—data flooding outward like a wound that refused to close.
Outside, the sun was setting, bleeding red across the desert.
They stood side by side, dust-streaked and silent.
"You just declared war," Seo-yeon said.
Joon-seo nodded. "No. I ended a lie."
She looked at him then—not as a handler, not as a hunter, but as something dangerously close to an equal.
"This will destroy what's left of us," she said softly.
"Maybe," he replied. "Or maybe it lets the dead speak."
The wind moved through the scrub, carrying nothing and everything.
And far away, powerful people began to panic.
End of Chapter 8