Helix Crown did not panic.
It never did.
It adjusted.
Two days after Subject C-21's sudden stabilization, the underground floors changed rhythm. Security doubled. Access points blinked with new encryption. New faces appeared in white coats, their eyes sharper, their questions quieter.
An investigation.
But not the kind meant to find answers.
The kind meant to find variables.
Tae-Hyun felt it the moment he stepped into B9.
The hum inside him sharpened, not from danger—but from surveillance.
Someone was watching patterns.
And patterns were what he had become.
Dr. Seo met him in a supply corridor that didn't have cameras.
Or at least, none that worked anymore.
"I rerouted three feeds," she said softly. "Ten minutes. That's all I can give you."
"That's more than I need."
She studied his face.
"You look different."
"From last week?"
"From two days ago."
He didn't answer.
Because he could still feel her.
The girl.
The cellular chaos.
The way part of it had not left him when he released her.
"Come with me," she said.
She led him through a narrow service hall into a small diagnostics room he hadn't seen before. It wasn't part of the main network. Old. Half-forgotten. But functional.
She locked the door.
Turned.
And for a moment, neither of them spoke.
"You absorbed something," she said.
Not a question.
"Yes."
"What?"
He hesitated.
"Information," he replied. "And… sensation."
Her jaw tightened.
"That's not sustainable."
"Neither is what they're doing."
She activated the scanner.
"Sit."
He did.
She moved closer than necessary.
The machine pulsed softly as it read his vitals.
Her eyes narrowed.
"…Your neural density has increased."
"Meaning?"
"You're not just influencing biology anymore," she said. "Your body is storing patterns from other systems."
He closed his eyes briefly.
So that was why he still felt her fear.
Her exhaustion.
The echo of a life not his.
"This is how it starts," she murmured. "This is how structures collapse. When they carry more than they were designed for."
He watched her.
The way she spoke not as a researcher now—but as someone trying to keep something from breaking.
"You knew something like me existed before I met you," he said.
She stilled.
Then nodded.
"Not like you," she corrected. "Before you."
She reached for a tablet and hesitated, then handed it to him.
On the screen: sealed project files.
Partially unlocked.
Names redacted.
Images blurred.
But one thing was clear.
Early-stage models.
Failed biological integrations.
And one highlighted term repeated across multiple documents.
PRIMARY DONOR.
His fingers tightened around the device.
"They were building something using a source," she said. "Someone with abnormal cellular resilience. Someone whose biology could survive processes no one else could."
The room felt smaller.
"They never showed me the original profile," she continued. "It was classified above my clearance. But everything in the system is modeled around that donor's structure."
He looked up.
At her eyes.
At the quiet horror already there.
"…When did this research begin?" he asked.
"Seven years ago."
His breath stopped.
Seven years.
The year he had been recruited out of medical trials as an orphan.
The year Helix Crown had first found him.
Not as a businessman.
As material.
"The donor disappeared," she went on. "All records list him as 'unavailable.' The project shifted focus from replication to… reconstruction."
Reconstruction.
His jaw tightened.
"And the executives?" he asked.
She hesitated.
"Three board members directly oversee this division," she said. "Funding. Secrecy. Candidate acquisition."
Names hovered behind her words.
He already knew some of them.
Men who had attended his funeral.
Men who had touched his coffin.
"Who ordered the donor's removal?" he asked quietly.
She met his gaze.
"That file was accessed the night you collapsed in B9."
The world narrowed.
"By whom?"
She swallowed.
"…Chairman Yoon."
The name struck like bone breaking.
Yoon Jae-Sung.
His mentor.
The man who had lifted him from obscurity.
The man who had toasted his first acquisition.
The man who had called him son.
His fingers went numb.
So it hadn't been a corporate war.
It had been a harvest.
Dr. Seo watched his face change.
"Do you know him?" she asked.
He did not answer.
Because the truth was heavier than words.
Because vengeance had just been given a face.
And because the man who had raised him…
had also designed him.
Outside, Helix Crown continued to hum.
Inside a locked room, something closer to hatred was being born.