The maintenance tunnels of Sub-Level 4 were a suffocating nightmare of sweating pipes and grinding gears. The air here was thick with the smell of stagnant water and recycled oxygen, vibrating with the distant thrum of the facility's massive cooling fans.
Seol-wol staggered through the dark, his boots splashing into oily puddles. He was carrying Junseo on his back now, his brother's limp arms dangling over his shoulders. Every step was a battle against gravity; every breath felt like inhaling hot ash.
[57:22:08]
"Kyla!" Seol-wol rasped, his voice bouncing off the damp concrete walls. "Kyla, answer me!"
A small, flickering light appeared near a rusted mag-lev platform. Kyla stepped out from behind a massive turbine, her face illuminated by the green glow of a portable med-kit. She looked terrified, her eyes darting to the shadows behind Seol-wol.
"Over here!" she hissed. When she saw the state of Junseo—his face smeared with dried blood, his skin the color of a winter sky—she let out a choked sob. "Oh god, Seol-wol... Peter told me it was bad, but he's... he's not breathing right."
"Fix him," Seol-wol commanded, his voice raw as he lowered Junseo onto the cold metal platform. "Peter said you had the kit.
Fix him now!"
Kyla's hands were shaking so hard she nearly dropped the neuro-stabilizer. "I—I'm a technician, Seol-wol, not a doctor! I can only patch the link, I can't—"
"DO IT!" Seol-wol roared, the sound echoing through the tunnels.
Kyla flinched, but she snapped into action.
She tore open Junseo's tunic, exposing the black neural interface ports along his spine.
They were glowing with a faint, sickly violet light—the residual energy of the 95 percent spike. She slammed a stabilizer patch over the primary port.
Hiss.
Junseo's body jerked as the sedative-stimulant cocktail flooded his system. His chest hitched, a ragged, wet breath finally escaping his lungs. He didn't wake up, but the blue tint in his lips began to fade.
"His brain is in a feedback loop," Kyla whispered, her fingers flying across her tablet. "The 'Master Blueprint' is trying to rewrite his consciousness. If I don't keep the dampeners active, his mind will just... dissolve into data. We have to keep moving.
If we stay here, the signal will lead them right to us."
"We go to the waste disposal," Seol-wol said, wiping the sweat from his eyes. He reached into his pocket and felt the metallic bolt. It was cold again, its jagged edges a grounding weight. "Peter said there's a mag-lev."
"We can't," Kyla said, her voice trembling.
She pointed to a small radar screen on her med-kit. "The primary exits are already sealed. Borislav didn't send the regular security. He's activated the internal perimeter."
Suddenly, the hum of the facility changed.
The heavy, rhythmic thud of the cooling fans was joined by a new sound—a high-pitched, metallic skittering. It sounded like hundreds of needles clicking against the floor.
Click-clack. Click-clack.
It was coming from the ventilation ducts above them.
"What is that?" Kyla whispered, shrinking back against the mag-lev car.
"Miran called them the Reapers," Seol-wol said, his blood turning to ice.
He looked up just as a vent cover forty feet away was ripped off its hinges. Something dropped from the ceiling. It wasn't a man. It was a quadrupedal combat drone, its chassis sleek and black, its "head" a cluster of red optical sensors. It didn't have guns; it had long, serrated blades where its forelimbs should be—blades designed for "harvesting" neural tissue.
The Reaper tilted its head, the red sensors locking onto the violet glow of Junseo's interface.
"It's tracking the Sync signal," Seol-wol realized. He pulled the bolt from his pocket, his knuckles white. "Kyla, get Junseo into the car. Now!"
"Seol-wol, you can't fight that with a piece of scrap!" Kyla screamed, dragging Junseo's body into the small, rusted mag-lev transport.
The Reaper didn't growl. It didn't warn. It simply lunged.
It was a blur of black metal and red light.
Seol-wol dove to the side, the Reaper's blade whistling past his ear and sparks flying as it struck the concrete. He scrambled to his feet, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm.
He knew he couldn't kill it, but he had to break it.
The drone turned, its sensors clicking as it recalibrated. It leaped again.
This time, Seol-wol didn't dodge. He waited until the last possible second, then jammed the metallic bolt directly into the Reaper's open cooling intake on its chest.
The sound was horrific—a screeching of metal on metal as the rusted bolt caught in the drone's high-speed internal turbines.
The Reaper spasmed, its red eyes flickering wildly. It hit the floor, twitching as white sparks erupted from its joints. The bolt, forced deep into the machinery, had created a physical "glitch" the drone's software couldn't account for.
"Get in!" Kyla yelled, the mag-lev car's engine roaring to life.
Seol-wol lunged for the moving car, his fingers catching the edge of the door. He hauled himself inside just as a second skittering sound echoed from the dark. Then a third. And a fourth.
Dozens of red eyes began to blink in the shadows of the tunnel.
"They're coming," Seol-wol gasped, looking back as the mag-lev accelerated into the pitch-black disposal tube.
He slumped against the wall, his hand empty. The bolt was gone, left behind in the chest of the dying Reaper. He felt a sudden, sharp pang of loss—the only thing that had kept him "real" was gone.
But then he looked at Junseo. His brother's hand twitched. His eyes didn't open, but a single word escaped his lips, a whisper that made Seol-wol's heart stop.
"Miran..." Junseo whispered. "He's... inside."
Seol-wol looked at the dark tunnel ahead.
They were escaping Borislav, but something told him that the "Master Key" had already been turned. And the door it opened wasn't a way out—it was an invitation.