Freedom arrived the way everything in W-03 did.
Clean.Calibrated.And already fenced.
Their access bands were replaced within the hour.
Sleeker. Darker. Embedded deeper into the skin at the wrist and behind the ear. New corridors lit when they approached. Old ones dimmed. Doors that had never responded before now opened as if they had always been waiting.
They were escorted less.
Observed more.
Eun-chae felt it immediately.
The inner wing no longer leaned in to contain her. It leaned back.
Space widened.
But the listening never stopped.
"Congratulations," she murmured as they walked through a curved skybridge overlooking lower sectors. "We've been promoted from subjects to scenery."
Tae-Hyun glanced sideways at her. "Scenery that triggers alarms."
She smiled faintly. "The interesting kind."
Below them, translucent floors revealed layers of activity—biological storage chambers, research arrays, quiet transit lines moving people and materials like blood through arteries.
For the first time, she could see how vast W-03 truly was.
It wasn't a facility.
It was a city folded inward.
"And they want you to be its heart," she said quietly.
He didn't answer.
He was listening.
Not to the building.
To the spaces between its sounds.
There were patterns forming now. Gaps. Places where monitoring thinned. Where old systems still whispered to one another in languages newer protocols hadn't fully overwritten.
W-03 was not one design.
It was layers of abandoned ones.
"They're letting us roam," Eun-chae continued. "Which means they're mapping what we choose."
"Yes," he replied. "And who we meet."
As if summoned by the thought, a man stepped from a side corridor and fell into step a few paces behind them.
Not security.
Research staff.
Early forties. Dark hair. A faint scar near his left ear. His band glowed a subdued blue rather than the institutional gray they were used to seeing.
Eun-chae slowed.
So did he.
"Dr. Rho," the man said, offering a small nod. "Cognitive architecture."
She tilted her head. "We're collecting titles now?"
A flicker of amusement crossed his face.
"I wanted to meet you without a table between us," he said. "Before the environment makes that impossible again."
Tae-Hyun studied him.
"Then speak," he said.
Dr. Rho hesitated only a fraction of a second.
"Not everyone here agrees with Director Han," he said quietly.
Eun-chae's expression remained light. "That's comforting. Also dangerous."
"Yes," he agreed. "That's why I chose this corridor."
He glanced subtly toward a junction where the lighting shifted, softer, older.
"A few of us were involved in the earliest theoretical models," he continued. "Before Devil's Heir became an objective instead of a question."
Tae-Hyun felt the hum stir.
"What was the question?" he asked.
Dr. Rho's gaze met his.
"Whether consciousness could survive becoming architecture," he said. "Or whether architecture would always eat it."
Eun-chae felt a chill that had nothing to do with temperature.
"And what did you conclude?" she asked.
"That it depends," Dr. Rho said softly, "on who gets to define the center."
Silence followed them for several steps.
Then he added, "You're being watched as a solution. Both of you. But there are people here who remember what happened the last time a solution began making choices."
"What happened?" Eun-chae asked.
Dr. Rho's jaw tightened.
"The system tried to seal itself," he said. "Around him."
Tae-Hyun stopped walking.
The man did too.
"What did he do?" Tae-Hyun asked.
Dr. Rho looked at him.
"He tried to leave."
The words settled heavily.
"And?" Eun-chae asked.
Dr. Rho exhaled.
"That's when the body failed," he said. "And the pattern was harvested."
Eun-chae's fingers curled slowly.
"You're saying he didn't break," she said. "He was broken."
Dr. Rho didn't correct her.
"There are still internal partitions sealed since that event," he continued. "Data sets Director Han never reopened. Places even the current system isn't allowed to query."
"And you're telling us this because…?" Eun-chae prompted.
"Because," he said, lowering his voice, "they're about to let you see more of W-03 than anyone has in twenty years."
Tae-Hyun felt it then.
A subtle shift.
The corridor lighting ahead changed hue.
A door that had never opened before illuminated faintly.
"You're not being given freedom," Dr. Rho said. "You're being invited into the parts of the structure that matter."
He met Tae-Hyun's eyes.
"And those places still remember what happened last time."
The door ahead slid open.
Beyond it lay a darker sector. Older. Less refined. The air itself felt different.
Before either of them could move, Dr. Rho added quietly,
"If you intend to choose something other than what's being offered… that's where the questions actually live."
Then he stepped back, letting the hum of the corridor swallow him.
Eun-chae looked at the open doorway.
Then at Tae-Hyun.
"Well," she said softly. "This is either where we die horribly…"
She glanced at the dim space beyond.
"…or where the story finally gets interesting."
His gaze held the darkness.
"It already has," he replied.
Together, they stepped forward.
And somewhere deep in W-03, systems that had not been active in decades began to stir.