The VHS tape sat on the table like a dormant relic, its magnetic ribbon holding the ghost of Kim's final gamble. Jin‑woo did not touch it again. He didn't need to. Every grainy frame, every flicker of light on Kim's hollow face, every micro‑gesture of his chapped lips was already etched into Jin‑woo's memory—replayed, analyzed, and fixed through thousands of mental repetitions.
Min‑ho watched him pack. The boy moved with an economy of motion that was new. There was no wasted energy, no hesitant fumbling. Each item—a dark hoodie, thin leather gloves, a multi‑tool, two protein bars, a flask of water—was selected with intent and placed precisely.
"You understand," Min‑ho said, not as a question, but as a final verdict. "This is not a rescue mission. It's a demolition job. Kim isn't asking you to pull him out. He's asking you to pull the temple down on top of them."
Jin‑woo zipped the small backpack. "I know."
"The Guardian Memory cannot sanction this. We cannot help you. If you are caught, we will deny you."
"I know."
"Then why are you smiling?"
Jin‑woo hadn't realized he was. It wasn't a smile of joy, but of grim alignment. For the first time, his purpose was not tangled in doubt or fear. It was single‑pointed, like a blade. "Because for once," he said, "the repetition is over. Now comes the performance."
04:17 AM. Incheon Port.
The air smelled of salt, diesel, and rust. Warehouse No. 7 was a dinosaur among its newer, automated neighbors—a long, low building of corrugated steel, its paint blistered by decades of sea wind. According to Kim's message and Jin‑woo's cross‑referenced research, the "Reservoir" was below ground level, accessible through a disguised maintenance hatch in the rear loading bay.
Jin‑woo moved not as a intruder, but as a shadow borrowing the shapes of the port. He used the rhythm of distant container cranes, the sweep of perimeter lights, the predictable patrol route of a lone, bored security guard—all patterns he had studied and internalized until they were as familiar as his own breath.
He reached the rear of the warehouse. There, just as described, was a heavy steel hatch, flush with the concrete, disguised as a drainage cover. The lock was a serious industrial model, but its weakness wasn't in its mechanism—it was in its routine. Security checks here were visual only; no one ever physically verified the lock. Why would they? The real security was inside.
From his pocket, Jin‑woo pulled the multi‑tool and a small, custom‑shaped tension wrench Min‑ho had reluctantly provided during a lesson on physical security failures. He didn't need to pick the lock by feel. He had watched Min‑ho demonstrate the technique on a similar model 47 times. His hands performed the memory: insert wrench, apply precise pressure, feel for the binding pin, set it, repeat. The lock yielded in 22 seconds.
The hatch opened onto a steep metal ladder descending into utter blackness. The air that rose was cool, dry, and carried a faint, eerie smell—old paper, chemical preservatives, and something metallic, like blood or ozone.
The descent was the point of no return. Jin‑woo paused at the top, not from fear, but to perform one final mental exercise. He replayed the entire layout Kim had described through body language, overlaying it with the blueprints of similar industrial sub‑levels he'd memorized. He created a predictive map in his mind's eye. Then he descended, closing the hatch silently above him.
The sub‑level was a cathedral of forgotten knowledge. Rows of industrial shelving units stretched into the gloom, illuminated by the sickly green glow of emergency exit signs. But these shelves didn't hold machine parts. They held memory.
Jin‑woo's enhanced perception took it in, category by category:
Section A: Analog. Cardboard boxes labeled in handwritten Hangul, Chinese, Japanese, Thai. Reels of film, audiocassettes, VHS tapes like the one he'd received.
Section B: Biological. Small refrigerated units humming softly. Vials with labels like "Master Yoon – Muscle Tissue Sample – Hapkido" or "Silat Guru Mahmud – Blood – 1987."
Section C: Digital. Racks of older servers, their lights blinking, and stacks of external hard drives in static‑free bags.
Section D: Live. This was the most chilling. A series of small, clear isolation pods, currently empty, with IV stands and EEG monitors beside them. This was where they did the "distillation."
It was vast. Overwhelming. The sheer volume of stolen history pressed on him. This was the heart of The Collection's sickness—not just stealing techniques, but trying to bottle the very essence of human mastery.
His mission was clear: destruction. Min‑ho had given him three small, powerful incendiary charges, magnetized to stick to metal shelving. Place them at load‑bearing points among the most volatile materials (the old paper, the servers), set the timer, and exfiltrate.
But as he moved silently between the aisles, something made him stop. In Section A, a box had fallen, spilling its contents. Not tapes, but notebooks. One lay open, its pages filled with beautiful, intricate brush‑stroke diagrams of a fluid, dance‑like martial art. At the bottom, a name: Choi Hae‑sun, 1972. The same name from the paper fragment in the abandoned society office.
This wasn't just data. This was a man's life work, his art, his soul, penned in ink before Jin‑woo was born. To burn it felt not like justice, but like completing The Collection's crime for them.
A soft, rhythmic sound broke his paralysis. Footsteps. Not from the hatch, but from deeper within the vault. A door he hadn't noticed—a heavy, sound‑proofed door—swung open, and a man walked out, humming.
He was young, maybe mid‑twenties, wearing lab coat over casual clothes. An archivist, or a technician. He carried a tablet and walked with the bored focus of someone on a nightly data‑check routine.
Jin‑woo melted back into the shadows behind a server rack, his breathing slowing to near‑nothing. The man's path was predictable. He stopped at a specific server, tapped on his tablet, nodded, and moved on. His pattern was a simple loop. Jin‑woo watched him complete it three times in his mind before the man had even finished his first circuit. He knew where the man would be in 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds.
This is the security Kim mentioned, Jin‑woo realized. Not guards, but routine. The terrifying banality of evil. This man cared for stolen memories with the same dull diligence as a nightshift librarian.
As the technician passed his hiding spot for the second time, Jin‑woo saw his opening. A 4‑second blind spot created by the angle of a shelving unit and the man's own focus on his tablet. It was a move he'd practiced in the warehouse with Jang—not an attack, but an interception.
He moved. Not a martial arts step, but the most efficient line between two points. His gloved hand shot out, not to strike, but to cover the man's mouth and nose with a chloroform‑soaked pad (another reluctant gift from Min‑ho's kit). His other arm snaked around, pinning the man's arms. The struggle was brief, silent, and ended with the technician slumping to the floor.
Jin‑woo caught the tablet before it clattered. He dragged the unconscious man into a shadowy corner. No time for guilt. The routine was broken. The clock was ticking faster now.
He looked at the tablet. It was logged into an internal system—an inventory database of The Collection. He scrolled, his photographic memory absorbing codes, listings, locations. And then he saw it: a sub‑folder labeled "Active Subjects / Holding." He tapped it. A list appeared. The third name down:
Kim, Jae‑hwan. Status: Sedated. Cell: 3B. Location: Primary Facility (Geo‑locked).
Primary Facility. Not here. This vault was just the library. Kim was in the laboratory.
The plan unraveled and re‑wove itself in an instant. Destroying this place would be a blow, but it wouldn't stop them. It wouldn't free Kim. They would just rebuild. The real target wasn't the memories they'd already stolen.
It was the machine that stole them.
Jin‑woo made a decision. He wouldn't plant all the charges. He planted only one, on the main server array, set for 30 minutes. A distraction.
Then he went to Section A, the analog archive. He didn't look for the most valuable item. He looked for the oldest, most fragile, most dusty box he could find. He chose a small wooden crate labeled in faded Japanese. He opened it. Inside, wrapped in silk, were hand‑drawn scrolls of a nearly extinct Okinawan grappling art. He took one single, brittle scroll.
He then went to the technician, removed his lab coat and ID badge, and put them on. He pocketed the man's keycard.
The new plan was infinitely more dangerous. Instead of fleeing after the explosion, he would use the chaos to go deeper. The tablet's map showed the Primary Facility was connected to this vault by a secure underground tunnel, used for transporting "subjects." The entrance was behind the sound‑proofed door.
He had 28 minutes before the fire would start, the alarms would scream, and this vault would become the center of The Collection's universe.
Jin‑woo tucked the ancient scroll into his jacket, over his heart. It was no longer just a mission of loyalty. It was a trade. He would give them a fire. He would give them a thief. And in return, he would take back one memory they thought they owned, and shatter the one they valued most: their own security.
He swiped the keycard. The heavy door hissed open, revealing a sterile, white‑lit corridor sloping downward. Taking a final breath of the vault's dusty air, Park Jin‑woo, the boy who remembered everything, walked into the belly of the beast, leaving a burning fuse in the archive of forgotten shadows.