The keytar solo ended. The war began.
"Suppress the target!" David Kim shouted, pointing his instrument like a baton.
The mercenaries didn't fire bullets. They fired canisters.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
The canisters exploded on impact against Subject Zero's chest. They didn't release shrapnel; they released a thick, rapidly expanding gray foam.
[Weapon Analysis]
[Type: Acoustic Dampening Polymer]
[Effect: Silence]
Subject Zero roared, opening its chest speakers to blast them away. But the foam expanded instantly, clogging the subwoofers. The sound was muffled, choking in the monster's throat.
It thrashed, clawing at the sticky substance.
"Aim for the legs!" the lead mercenary barked.
Two more canisters hit the monster's knees. The foam hardened into concrete within seconds. Subject Zero stumbled, heavy and unbalanced, and crashed to the floor.
It struggled, vibrating violently, but the sound was trapped. It was a speaker wrapped in a blanket.
David Kim jumped down from the server rack. He landed smoothly, dusting off his velvet suit.
"That stuff costs ten thousand dollars a canister," David said, grimacing. "I'm adding it to your bill."
Yoo-jin ignored him. He crawled across the debris-strewn floor to the wall where Eden had fallen.
"Eden!"
The boy was limp. His silver hair was matted with dust. Sparks jumped faintly from his fingertips.
Mina was already there, holding his head in her lap. She was crying silently.
"He's not breathing," Mina choked out.
"He doesn't need to breathe," Yoo-jin said, checking Eden's pulse. It was erratic. A frantic, digital flutter. "His CPU is in shock. The forced disconnect caused a system crash."
Yoo-jin placed his hand on Eden's chest.
[System Check]
[Target: Subject One]
[Status: Rebooting... Error... Rebooting...]
"Come on, kid," Yoo-jin whispered. "Don't quit on me."
Eden's eyelids fluttered. The blue light in his eyes flickered on, dim and static-filled.
"Boss?" Eden's voice was a garbled glitch. "Did... did we get deleted?"
"No," Yoo-jin let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "I pulled the plug. We're still here."
"Illogical," Eden murmured, his eyes drifting shut again. "Mission... failed."
"Mission aborted," Yoo-jin corrected. "There's a difference."
"Touching reunion," David Kim drawled, standing over them. "But we have a problem. You broke the mainframe."
He pointed to the severed power cable Yoo-jin had ripped from the wall.
"That was the only thing keeping the Incubator online. Now we're sitting in a dark hole in the desert with a silenced monster and no exit strategy."
Yoo-jin stood up. He swayed, the world tilting on its axis. Sae-ri moved to steady him, but he waved her off.
He faced the Godfather of Titan.
"Why are you here, David?" Yoo-jin asked. "You didn't come to save us."
"Of course not," David scoffed. He tapped a cigarette out of a silver case. "I came for the hardware."
He gestured to the struggling form of Subject Zero.
"Do you know how much the Pentagon will pay for a biological sonic weapon? Titan US has been trying to acquire the Ministry's rejected prototypes for years. You just flushed one out for me."
"You're going to sell it?" Olivia Ray stepped forward, disgusted. "It's a person. Or it used to be."
"It's a broken asset," David lit his cigarette. "I'm a recycler."
He looked at Yoo-jin. His mismatched eyes—one brown, one cybernetic blue—drilled into him.
"But I can't haul it out if I'm arrested. And right now, we have company."
"Company?"
David pointed upward, toward the hole in the ceiling.
A deep, rhythmic thumping sound echoed from the surface. Not bass. Rotors.
"Helicopters," Director Park whimpered. "The police?"
"Worse," David said. "I intercepted the comms. It's a Joint Task Force. Ministry of Culture liaisons and US private contractors. They aren't here to arrest you. They're here to bury the site."
Yoo-jin's blood ran cold.
The Ministry wasn't taking chances anymore. If they couldn't control the prototypes, they would erase the evidence. The Incubator, the data, the artists—all of it.
"We're trapped," Hana said, looking at the ladder. "If we go up, they shoot us."
"And we can't stay down here," Min-ji kicked a piece of rubble. "We have no food, no power, and a monster in a foam cocoon."
Yoo-jin looked at the dead terminal.
The kill switch. Dr. Oh said it needed to overload the System with emotion. But without the mainframe to broadcast the signal, the code in Version 1's drive was useless.
Unless...
Yoo-jin looked at David Kim.
"You have a satellite uplink," Yoo-jin said.
David raised an eyebrow. "I have a comms truck on the surface. Why?"
"Dr. Oh's kill code," Yoo-jin said rapidly, his brain working faster than his dying body could handle. "It's a frequency. A song. If we broadcast it, it disrupts the System's connection to the host."
"So?"
"So I don't need the mainframe," Yoo-jin said. "I just need a microphone and a transmitter. If we can hijack the global signal, we can play the song to the whole world."
"You want to use my truck to broadcast a pirate signal?" David laughed. "The FCC will strip my license. The government will seize my assets. Why would I help you?"
"Because if you don't," Yoo-jin stepped closer, "I will use my Command Authority to order Subject Zero to self-destruct."
He bluffed. He didn't have the authority. But David didn't know that.
"A sonic explosion in this confined space?" Yoo-jin whispered. "It won't just kill us. It will vaporize your prize. And your mercenaries. And you."
David froze. The cigarette hung from his lip.
He looked at Subject Zero. He looked at Yoo-jin's burning, desperate eyes.
"You're a maniac," David said appreciatively. "I like it."
He tossed his cigarette on the floor and crushed it.
"My truck is parked next to your bus. But the military is landing a perimeter. We have maybe ten minutes before they breach the trapdoor."
"Ten minutes is enough," Yoo-jin said.
He turned to his team.
"Sol. Luna. Min-ji. Olivia."
They straightened up.
"We aren't escaping," Yoo-jin said. "We're performing."
"Performing?" Mina blinked. "Here?"
"The acoustics are terrible," Min-ji noted.
"We don't need acoustics," Yoo-jin said. "We need raw data. We're going to record the kill code live and beam it straight into the System."
He looked at Sae-ri.
"Help me get Eden up. We need everyone."
"He can barely stand," Sae-ri argued.
"I can stand," Eden's voice rasped.
The boy pushed himself up. He swayed, sparks jumping from his shoulder, but he stood.
"I am the error," Eden said. "The error must be heard."
"Good," Yoo-jin said.
He grabbed the keytar David was holding.
"Hey!" David protested. "That's vintage!"
"I'm borrowing it," Yoo-jin said. He plugged the keytar into the dead console's auxiliary port. It wouldn't power the server, but it would act as an interface.
"David, patch your truck into this port. Now."
David sighed, signaling his men. One mercenary ran a cable from the surface down through the hole in the roof.
Yoo-jin plugged it in.
The keytar lit up.
[Connection Established: Titan Satellite Network]
[Bandwidth: Global]
Yoo-jin turned to his artists.
"This isn't a pop song," he told them. "This is a scream. Pour everything you have into it. The fear. The anger. The exhaustion. Give it all to me."
He looked at the countdown on his interface.
[Life Force: 3%]
[Enemy Proximity: 50 Meters]
"Ghost," Yoo-jin tapped his headset. The connection sizzled back to life via the satellite. "Are you there?"
"I'm here!" So-young shouted in his ear. "I see the military feed! They're setting up breaching charges on the diner door!"
"Hijack the feed," Yoo-jin ordered. "We're going live."
"Where? YouTube?"
"Everywhere," Yoo-jin said. "Times Square. Shibuya Crossing. The AMAs. Every screen you can touch."
"That's illegal," So-young said. "That's... really fun. On it."
Above them, a muffled BOOM shook the earth. Dust rained down.
"They blew the door!" Director Park screamed. "They're coming down!"
Yoo-jin put his fingers on the keys.
He didn't know how to play the piano. But the System did.
[Skill Activated: The Maestro's Hands]
[Cost: 1% Life Force]
Pain shot through his arms. His nose dripped fresh blood onto the keys.
He didn't care.
He looked at Sol and Luna. They held hands.
He looked at Min-ji. She raised her mic stand.
He looked at Olivia. She cocked her flare gun.
He looked at Eden. The boy's eyes were glowing blindingly bright.
"One take," Yoo-jin whispered.
He hit the first chord.
It wasn't music. It was a command code wrapped in a melody. A virus made of sound.
The screens of the world flickered.
In New York, the billboards went black.
In Seoul, the subway monitors froze.
In living rooms across America, the news feed cut out.
And then, a face appeared.
Not Yoo-jin's face.
The face of a broken, bleeding boy with silver hair and electric blue eyes, standing in a dark dungeon.
Eden opened his mouth.
And the world held its breath.