Seoryon rose out of the fog like a verdict.
The transport slowed before I saw it fully—tires humming against reinforced pavement, the engine's pitch lowering as if even the vehicle knew it was approaching something that demanded restraint. The windows were tinted, but not enough to hide the shape of it. Not enough to soften the impact.
Concrete.
Steel.
Glass that didn't reflect the sky so much as absorb it.
I leaned forward despite myself, forehead nearly touching the cool window as the mist thinned. What emerged wasn't a single building, but a complex—layered terraces and angular towers connected by skybridges, each structure braced with exposed support ribs like bones deliberately left visible.
Seonghwa Pressure Clinic.
No signage in bright colors. No welcoming facade. Just a symbol etched into the outer wall—clean, minimalist, unmistakable. The same one that had pulsed on my phone. On the clinic tablet.
🟧 Amber.
The gates parted without a sound. Not swung. Not lifted. They slid into the ground, seamless and efficient, swallowing the boundary behind us as we passed.
No hero fantasies, I thought.
No dramatic entrance. No last-second escape.
Just arrival.
The vehicle rolled deeper into the compound. The air changed subtly, even through sealed windows—cooler, drier, filtered. The smell of salt from the island was gone, replaced by something faintly metallic, like rain hitting exposed wire.
"Eyes forward." One of the attendants said quietly from the front. I hadn't realized I'd turned my head.
We passed an open courtyard where trimmed stone and pale grass formed precise geometric patterns. No benches. No trees tall enough to cast real shade. A space designed to be seen, not used.
Cameras followed us.
Not obviously—not the clumsy, dome-shaped kind you noticed in convenience stores. These were embedded in architecture itself. Dark slits along walls. Thin lenses nested inside lighting fixtures. Reflections that didn't quite behave like reflections when you moved.
I felt it.
That subtle tightening between my shoulders.
They're watching.
Not in a paranoid way. In a factual one.
The transport came to a stop beneath an overhang that jutted out from the main structure like a clenched jaw. The engine cut. Silence dropped heavy and complete, broken only by the distant hum of systems I couldn't see.
The door slid open. Cold air spilled in. "Step out." The attendant said.
I did.
The ground beneath my feet wasn't concrete. It looked like it, but when I shifted my weight, there was a faint give—shock-absorbing, maybe. Designed to reduce impact. Or damage.
My damage. I straightened slowly. Up close, the building was worse.
The scale of it distorted the perspective. Walls rose at angles that made it difficult to judge height, lines converging and diverging in ways that drew your eyes upward, whether you wanted to look or not. The glass was dark, not reflective, as if it didn't care what stood in front of it.
This wasn't a place meant to impress.
It was meant to endure.
A pair of doors opened ahead of me, synchronized, precise. Two staff members waited just inside—clinic gray, same as the others, but with subtle differences. Their collars bore thin silver lines. Authority markers.
"Subject Kwon Tae-Yang. Welcome to Seoryon." One said, voice echoing faintly in the entry chamber. Welcome. The word felt out of place. I didn't respond. They didn't expect me to.
Inside, everything was bigger than it needed to be.
Ceilings stretched high overhead, supported by exposed beams that crisscrossed like the framework of a machine left intentionally unfinished. Light came from everywhere and nowhere—panels embedded in walls, floors, even handrails, casting a uniform brightness that erased shadows instead of creating them.
My footsteps echoed.
I hated that.
It made me aware of my body. Of space. Of how small one person sounded inside something built to contain many. We walked.
Past sealed doors labeled with alphanumeric codes. Past observation windows that revealed rooms filled with equipment I didn't recognize—frames, harnesses, containment rigs suspended in magnetic fields. Some rooms were empty. Some were not.
I didn't linger long enough to see faces. But I felt them. Eyes behind glass. Measurements being taken without my consent. "Is all this necessary?" I asked, my voice sounding too loud in the corridor. "Yes." The handler replied immediately.
No elaboration.
We passed through a checkpoint where a faint hum washed over my skin, prickling like static. My muscles tensed instinctively.
"Pressure scan. Routine." The handler said.
Routine, I thought.
The word had lost meaning days ago. Another corridor. Another set of doors. Each one opened only after we stopped walking, as if the building itself needed to confirm I was where I was supposed to be.
No running.
No wandering.
Everything here moved on permission.
My hands curled slowly into fists at my sides. I noticed the movement a second too late. "Relax your hands." The handler said calmly, without turning around. I forced my fingers open.
They ached.
Not from power.
From restraint.
—
They took me through intake without ceremony.
Biometric confirmation. Retinal scan. Blood was drawn with a device that didn't even look like a needle. A bracelet clasped around my wrist—sleek, lightweight, warm for a moment before cooling.
The amber indicator lit up, steady and watchful. "This will remain active at all times. Removal constitutes a violation." The technician said. "I figured." I muttered. She didn't react. I was given a room.
Not a cell.
That distinction mattered, apparently.
It had a bed bolted to the floor, a desk molded seamlessly from the wall, and a narrow window that looked out onto another section of the complex. No view of the outside world. Just Seoryon, reflected endlessly back at itself.
Surveillance nodes dotted the corners of the ceiling—small, unobtrusive, unmistakable. I stood in the center of the room, bag still slung over my shoulder.
"This is temporary housing. You'll be assigned a schedule tomorrow." The handler said from the doorway. "Am I allowed to leave?" I asked. "You're allowed to move within designated zones. Unescorted." He replied.
"And outside?"
He met my eyes for the first time.
"No."
The door slid shut behind him with a soft click that sounded permanent. I exhaled slowly. The silence here was different from home. Not empty—managed. Every sound was dampened. Every echo is controlled. Even the air felt like it moved through filters before it reached me.
I set my bag down and sat on the edge of the bed.
The mattress didn't sag. Of course it didn't.
I looked at my hands. They were steady. I curled them into fists again—harder this time, nails biting into skin. The familiar pressure stirred faintly in my chest, responding to the tension like a coiled thing aware of its cage.
I breathed through it.
Not here, I told myself. Not now.
Somewhere beyond the walls, systems monitored my heart rate. My stress levels. The subtle changes in my posture betrayed what I was feeling before I ever spoke. They knew. That was the worst part.
Seoryon wasn't trying to scare me.
It didn't need to.
It was built on the assumption that I would break myself if left unchecked—and that everything here existed to make sure that didn't happen. Or to make sure the damage stayed contained.
I stood and moved to the window, resting my forehead briefly against the cool glass. No horizon. No sky.
Just concrete, steel, and glass stretching on and on, massive and unyielding. My fists clenched again, slow and deliberate. Not in anger. In refusal.
You can watch me, I thought. Measure me. Classify me.
But you don't own what's inside me.
The amber light on my wrist pulsed once, faint but persistent. Seoryon watched. And for the first time since all of this began, I understood exactly what that meant.