The elevator ride was silent.
It wasn't a box. It was a glass tube shooting up the exterior of the Spire. Outside, the digital storm raged.
Yoo-jin looked at his reflection in the glass. He looked tired. His avatar's suit was torn, and his HP bar was flashing red.
"You okay, Hyung?" Kai asked, checking his microphone.
"I'm fine," Yoo-jin lied. "Just rehearsing the pitch."
"We're not pitching," Min-ji gripped her bat. "We're evicting."
Ding.
The doors opened.
The Chairman's Office wasn't an office. It was a cathedral.
Massive stained-glass windows depicted the history of K-Pop—but rewritten. In Mason's version, there were no scandals. No suicides. Just perfect, smiling idols ascending to heaven.
In the center of the room sat a massive organ made of silver pipes.
And playing it was Mason Gold.
He wasn't a giant face in the sky anymore. He was human-sized. He wore a simple white turtleneck and glasses. He looked annoyingly humble.
He didn't stop playing as they entered. A haunting, mathematically perfect melody filled the air.
"Do you hear it?" Mason asked softly. "The frequency. 432 Hertz. The vibration of the universe."
"It sounds like a ringtone," Min-ji spat.
Mason stopped playing. He turned around on his bench.
"Yoo-jin," Mason smiled warmly. "And the rejects. Welcome to the launch party."
"Turn it off, Mason," Yoo-jin stepped forward. "The Violet Signal. Stop the upload."
"Why?" Mason stood up. He walked to the window, looking out at the chaotic purple storm. "Look at them out there. The real world is messy. People are anxious. Depressed. Lonely."
He gestured to the Spire.
"Here? I can patch sadness. I can delete loneliness. I am offering humanity a software update."
"You're offering a lobotomy," Sae-ri said, her voice shaking. "You're erasing choice."
"Choice is overrated," Mason walked to his desk. He picked up a remote. "People don't want to choose. They want to be entertained."
He pressed a button.
The floor of the cathedral dissolved.
It became transparent. Beneath their feet, they saw... Earth.
Or rather, a map of Earth. Seoul was glowing purple. Millions of connection lines streamed from the city up into the Spire.
"Integration is at 99%," Mason announced. "In ten minutes, the distinction between 'User' and 'Citizen' will vanish. Everyone will be logged in. Forever."
"Not if we crash the server," Yoo-jin signaled his team.
"Attack!"
Zeus_Prime lunged first. He was the fastest.
"Dragon Strike!"
He swung his greatsword at Mason's neck.
PING.
The sword bounced off. Not off a shield. Off Mason's skin.
"Invulnerability?" Zeus gasped.
Mason didn't even flinch. He just flicked Zeus on the forehead.
Thwack.
Zeus flew backward across the room, crashing into a pillar. His HP dropped to 1.
"I am the Admin," Mason sighed. "You cannot damage me. I wrote the physics."
"Then we rewrite them!" N3KO, the cat hacker, jumped out of Yoo-jin's pocket.
"Phantom Guild! DDOS attack!"
N3KO unleashed a stream of corrupt code.
Mason just waved his hand.
DELETE.
N3KO vanished. Deleted.
"No!" David screamed. "He wiped the cat!"
"Anyone else?" Mason asked, bored.
Yoo-jin stared at Mason. Physical attacks were useless. Code attacks were useless. Mason was God in this domain.
But every God has a weakness. A prayer they can't ignore.
"You want perfection," Yoo-jin said quietly. "That's your bug."
"Excuse me?"
"You built this whole world because you hate imperfection," Yoo-jin walked closer, unarmed. "You hate the crack in the voice. The missed step. The scandal."
"I hate inefficiency," Mason corrected.
"No," Yoo-jin stopped five feet away. "You hate humanity."
He turned to his team.
"We can't beat him with damage," Yoo-jin said. "We have to beat him with noise."
"Noise?"
"The Muse Engine runs on harmony," Yoo-jin explained rapidly. "It syncs everyone to a perfect rhythm. If we introduce a sound that it can't process... a sound so raw, so ugly, so human that the algorithm breaks... the server will crash."
"You want us to sing badly?" Sol asked, confused.
"No," Yoo-jin looked at Kai. "I want you to sing the truth."
He looked at Sae-ri.
"I want you to scream."
He looked at Min-ji.
"I want you to break the instrument."
Mason laughed. "A diss track? That's your plan?"
"It's not a track," Yoo-jin raised his hand like a conductor. "It's a riot."
"Now!"
Kai stepped up. He dropped the perfect idol persona. He ripped his digital shirt open.
He grabbed the mic.
"I hated it!" Kai screamed. It wasn't a melody. It was a confession. "I hated every fan meeting! I hated the diet! I hated smiling when I wanted to die!"
The silver pipes of the organ vibrated. A crack appeared in the glass floor.
[System Warning: Emotional Variance Detected.]
[Harmony Synchronization: 98%]
"It's working!" David yelled. "The engine can't categorize the emotion! It's too complex!"
"Keep going!" Yoo-jin commanded. "Sae-ri!"
Sae-ri stepped forward. She thought of her mother. The clone. The years of failure.
She let out a wail. It wasn't acting. It was pure, unfiltered grief.
AAAAAHHHHHH!
The sound wave hit Mason. He stumbled.
"Stop!" Mason covered his ears. "It's discordant! It's off-key!"
"Min-ji! Eden!"
Min-ji didn't play her bat like a guitar. She smashed it against the floor.
CRASH. CRASH. CRASH.
Eden added a mechanical grinding noise—the sound of his own servos breaking as he pushed past his limits.
It was a cacophony. It was ugly. It was beautiful.
[Harmony Synchronization: 85%]
[System Instability: Rising]
"You're ruining the mix!" Mason roared. His face contorted. He lost his cool composure. He looked like a frustrated producer in a recording booth.
He summoned a conductor's baton made of lightning.
"Silence!" Mason swung the baton.
A wave of silence magic swept toward them.
"Sol! Luna!" Yoo-jin shouted. "The Counter-Melody!"
The twins stepped forward. They held hands.
They didn't sing a pop song. They sang a folk song. A lullaby their grandmother used to hum.
It was simple. Imperfect. Ancient.
The melody cut through Mason's silence magic like a knife through butter.
"Why?" Mason gasped, dropping to one knee. "Why is the code accepting it? It's low bitrate! It's inefficient!"
"Because it has a soul," Yoo-jin said.
He walked up to the kneeling Mason.
"You tried to optimize art," Yoo-jin looked down at him. "But art is about the mistake. The flaw is where the feeling lives."
Yoo-jin placed his hand on the silver organ.
"Let's add some distortion."
He pressed a single key. The lowest note. The Brown Note of the Metaverse.
HMMMMMMMMMM.
The vibration shook the Spire.
The stained-glass windows shattered.
The floor cracked open.
[CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE.]
[Muse Engine: Offline.]
[Upload Cancelled.]
"No!" Mason screamed as his perfect cathedral disintegrated around him. "My world! My masterpiece!"
The purple light outside vanished. The storm cleared.
The connection lines to Earth snapped.
"We did it," Sae-ri gasped, falling to her knees. "We stopped the upload."
"Not yet," Yoo-jin looked at the crumbling ceiling. "The server is crashing. If we're still here when it reboots, our consciousness will be wiped."
"Log out!" David yelled. "The restriction is lifted!"
"Go!" Yoo-jin ordered. "Everyone! Eject!"
One by one, the team vanished in pillars of blue light.
Sol. Luna. Min-ji. Eden. Kai. Sae-ri.
"Yoo-jin!" Sae-ri shouted as she faded. "Come on!"
"I'm right behind you," Yoo-jin promised.
He watched her disappear.
He was alone in the crumbling office with Mason.
Mason was sitting on the floor, staring at his hands. His avatar was glitching, turning into static.
"It was perfect," Mason whispered. "Why couldn't you just let it be perfect?"
Yoo-jin looked at the man who had created him. The man who wanted to be God.
"Because," Yoo-jin adjusted his tie. "Perfection is boring."
He reached for the logout button.
But his hand passed through it.
Yoo-jin froze.
[Error: User 'Subject 734' is not a Registered Human.]
[Logout Denied.]
Yoo-jin stared at the message.
Of course. He was a clone. A biological construct with digital memories. The system didn't recognize him as a "player." It recognized him as an "NPC."
NPCs can't log out.
The ceiling began to fall. The code of the room was deleting itself, turning into white void.
"You're stuck," Mason laughed softly. His legs were already gone. "We both are."
Yoo-jin lowered his hand. He wasn't afraid. He felt... strangely calm.
He had saved them. Sae-ri was safe. The world was messy again.
He walked to the shattered window. He looked out at the dissolving digital horizon.
"Well," Yoo-jin pulled out a digital cigarette. It wouldn't light, but the habit was comforting.
"At least the view is nice."
The white void consumed the room.
Darkness.
Real World. Gwanaksan Mountain.
Sae-ri gasped, ripping the VR headset off.
She was back in the truck. The smell of pine and ozone filled her lungs. It was raining—real, cold rain.
"We're out!" Min-ji cheered, pulling off her gear. "We're alive!"
"Did we win?" Sol asked, looking around.
"The purple signal is gone," David checked the monitors. "Zenith's servers are dark. We killed the engine."
"Yoo-jin?" Sae-ri looked at the chair next to her.
Yoo-jin sat there. He was still wearing the headset. His chest wasn't moving.
"Yoo-jin?" Sae-ri touched his shoulder.
He slumped forward.
"No," Sae-ri's heart stopped. "David! Check his vitals!"
David scrambled to the monitor.
"Pulse is... faint," David said, his face pale. "But brain activity is flatlining. He's comatose."
"Wake him up!" Min-ji shook him. "Hyung! Stop joking!"
"He didn't log out," Eden said quietly. The android was staring at the screen.
"What?"
"The system rejected his ID," Eden pointed at the error log. "He is trapped in the crash dump."
Sae-ri stared at the silent man. The man who had lied, cheated, and fought for them. The man who wasn't even "real," but was more human than anyone she knew.
"He's still in there?" Sae-ri whispered.
"He's in the recycle bin," David said grimly. "If Zenith reboots the server... he gets deleted permanently."
Sae-ri grabbed the headset. She tried to put it back on.
"I'm going back in."
"You can't!" David stopped her. "The server is offline! There's no door!"
"Then we build one!" Sae-ri screamed. Tears streamed down her face. "We are not leaving him!"
Suddenly, Yoo-jin's phone buzzed on the table.
Everyone froze.
Sae-ri picked it up.
A text message. From an unknown number.
Sender: The Ghost
Message: I found him.
Sae-ri stared at the screen.
"Mom?"
The text continued.
He is fragmented. His data is scattered across the localized network. I can hold him, but I cannot reassemble him.
Bring him to the Source.
"The Source?" Min-ji asked. "Where is that?"
Eden looked at the map.
"The original Zenith lab," Eden said. "Where we were made. The cloning facility."
Sae-ri wiped her tears. She looked at Yoo-jin's sleeping face.
She put the phone in her pocket.
"Start the truck," Sae-ri commanded. Her voice was steel.
"We're going to the factory."