The days before the transfer passed more slowly than Tae-Hyun expected.
Helix Crown seemed to sense the coming change. Meetings shifted. Clearances updated. Security ran silent sweeps through lower levels. More people he didn't recognize appeared in corridors that once belonged only to routine.
B11 grew busier.
Crates arrived sealed in fresh polymer wraps. Cryo-units were checked twice, sometimes three times, before being cleared for movement. Transport schedules overlapped in ways that forced night crews to stay longer.
The system was tightening.
He moved through it quietly, doing what he had always done best—watching, memorizing, waiting.
He learned which shipments were rushed.
Which technicians avoided certain containers.
Which supervisors signed without reading.
By the end of the week, he could trace the rhythm of a transfer from request to departure without touching a terminal.
W-03 appeared on manifests almost every night.
Always with increased volume.
Always with higher security tags.
Whatever waited there was no longer experimental.
It was operational.
He met Dr. Seo twice before he left.
Once in the lab, where they reviewed the coastal facility's limited public records and the personnel files she had managed to unseal. The director's name. Two department heads. A security contractor that didn't officially exist.
Once outside, in a quiet café near the hospital, where neither of them brought a tablet or spoke about Helix.
She drank tea.
He watched the street.
They talked about small things.
A new ward being opened upstairs.
A bakery that had closed down the block.
The way the city felt different when you walked instead of drove.
It was easier than talking about what lay ahead.
When they stood to leave, she hesitated, then pressed a small card into his hand.
"My personal line," she said. "It doesn't route through hospital systems."
He nodded and slipped it into his pocket.
At the door, she paused again.
"You're doing this because you want answers," she said.
"Yes."
"And because you want to stop them."
"Yes."
She studied his face.
"And not at all," she added quietly, "because you're angry."
He didn't answer immediately.
"I am angry," he said. "But that's not what's moving me."
"What is?"
He considered.
"The certainty that they won't stop unless something inside their structure breaks," he said. "And that structure was built around me."
She looked down briefly.
Then back up.
"Come back," she said.
He met her gaze.
"I intend to."
The transfer order came through the following night.
Temporary relocation approved.
Transport assigned.
Departure scheduled for 04:30.
He packed what little Han Jae-Min owned into a single bag.
Clothes.
A few personal items that weren't his.
The thin sketchbook he still hadn't opened again.
He left the room clean.
As if someone might return to it.
At the Helix loading dock, a small group had already gathered when he arrived. Support staff. Two medical aides. A transport coordinator reviewing a tablet under bright white lights.
No one spoke much.
They boarded a company vehicle with darkened windows and reinforced doors. The kind built for equipment more than comfort.
Tae-Hyun took a seat near the back.
As the doors sealed and the engine started, he felt the city begin to move away from him.
The familiar grid of lights thinned.
Buildings gave way to industrial stretches.
Then to long, dark roads lined with storage yards and sleeping ports.
The sky lightened gradually.
By the time the vehicle slowed, the air had changed.
It smelled faintly of salt and metal.
They passed through two security gates. Then a third.
The coastal facility emerged from the early mist like a low, sprawling shape—concrete structures clustered around a central research wing, bordered on one side by old shipyards and on the other by a stretch of controlled shoreline.
W-03.
Rehabilitation Campus, according to its sign.
He stepped down onto the pavement.
The wind was colder here.
Carried the sound of distant waves.
A supervisor waited near the entrance, flanked by private security.
"Welcome," the man said without warmth. "Follow protocol. Stay where you're assigned. And don't wander."
Tae-Hyun inclined his head.
As he was handed a new badge and scanned through intake, he felt the hum inside him stir.
The signatures here were different.
Spread out.
Layered.
Something in this place breathed at a slower rhythm.
As he followed the group toward the inner complex, he glanced once at the gray line of sea beyond the perimeter fencing.
Helix Crown had been built upward.
This place had been built outward.
And somewhere within it, a deeper part of the same structure waited.