The broadcast hit the world like a solar flare.
In Times Square, tourists stopped dead, staring up at the massive curved screens. The ads for soft drinks and fashion vanished. Replaced by a grainy, shaking image of a boy in a dungeon.
In a PC bang in Seoul, gamers pulled off their headsets. The monitors all showed the same thing.
Eden stood in the center of the dark atrium. Dust swirled around him in the beams of the flashlights. He looked like an angel that had fallen into a coal mine.
Yoo-jin's fingers flew across the keytar. His vision was tunneling. The pain was no longer a headache; it was a fire consuming his nervous system.
[Life Force: 2%]
"Sing!" Yoo-jin roared, his voice cracking.
Eden sang.
It began as a hum. Low. Resonant. The same frequency that had calmed the stadium. But this time, it wasn't calming. It was pleading.
"I am the code..."
Sol and Luna joined in. Their harmonies wrapped around Eden's voice, adding human warmth to his digital coldness.
"That breaks the cage..."
Min-ji added the grit. A low, growling counter-melody that sounded like chains rattling.
Above them, boots hit the ladder. The military task force was descending.
"Breach! Breach!" a voice yelled from the corridor. "Neutralize targets!"
Laser sights cut through the gloom, dancing on Eden's chest.
"Keep playing!" David Kim shouted, pulling a custom handgun from his velvet jacket. He fired blindly down the hallway. "I'll hold the door! This is getting expensive!"
Yoo-jin didn't look up. He focused on the melody. He poured every stat point, every ounce of potential he could see, into the sound.
He wasn't producing a song. He was producing a weapon.
The soldiers burst into the atrium.
"Drop the instruments!" the commander screamed. "Fire on my mark!"
Olivia Ray stepped in front of the group. She raised her flare gun.
"Smile for the camera, boys!" she yelled.
She fired at the ceiling. Not at the soldiers. At the loose debris around the hole David had made.
BOOM.
A chunk of concrete the size of a car fell, blocking the soldiers' path. Dust exploded outward, blinding everyone.
"Sing louder!" Yoo-jin screamed. "Push it to the red line!"
Eden closed his eyes. Sparks flew from his skin. The blue light intensified until he was a silhouette of pure energy.
He hit the high note. The "Kill Code."
It wasn't a sound humans could fully hear. It was a frequency that rattled the bones. A frequency designed to resonate with the System itself.
[System Alert]
[External Interference Detected]
[Signal Source: The Core]
[Protocol: OVERWRITE]
Around the world, people felt it. A strange vibration in their chests. A sudden, unexplained urge to cry.
In the Ministry of Culture headquarters in Seoul, the servers began to smoke. Alarms wailed.
"What is happening?" Director Yoon screamed, watching the screens go white. "Stop the feed!"
"We can't!" a technician yelled back. "The signal is embedded in the audio! It's viral! Every device playing it is rebroadcasting it!"
Back in the Incubator, Yoo-jin felt the snap.
It felt like a cable snapping inside his brain.
The blue windows—the stats, the numbers, the objectives—they flickered.
[Life Force: 1%]
[System Integrity: CRITICAL]
[Disconnecting...]
He fell.
His hands slipped off the keytar. He hit the concrete floor hard.
"Yoo-jin!" Sae-ri's scream was the last thing he heard.
Then, silence.
The void was white.
Yoo-jin floated in nothingness. No pain. No sound. No stats.
"Am I dead?" he thought.
"Not yet," a voice said.
He turned. Standing in the white space was a man. He looked exactly like Yoo-jin. But older. Tired. He wore a cheap suit from 2013.
Version 1.
"You pushed it close, kid," Version 1 said, lighting a cigarette that didn't smoke. "One percent. That's risky."
"I had to," Yoo-jin said. "Did it work?"
"Look," Version 1 pointed.
The white void rippled. Through the ripples, Yoo-jin saw the world.
He saw the Ministry servers crashing. He saw the "Idol Particle" data dissolving. He saw the invisible strings that connected every trainee to the System snapping.
He saw people waking up.
"You killed the algorithm," Version 1 said. "No more S-Rank potential. No more guaranteed hits. Just... music."
"Good," Yoo-jin whispered.
"But there's a price," Version 1 looked at him sadly. "The System was keeping your heart beating. It was the pacemaker for your prototype body. Without it..."
He didn't finish.
Yoo-jin looked at his own hands in the void. They were fading. Turning transparent.
"I knew the cost," Yoo-jin said. "It was in the contract."
"You have a choice," Version 1 flicked ash into the nothingness. "You can let go. Stay here. It's peaceful. Or..."
He pointed to a faint, blue thread stretching out into the dark.
"You can try to reboot. But the System won't be there to help you. You'll just be... human. Flawed. Weak. Mortal."
Yoo-jin looked at the thread.
He thought of Sae-ri's cold hands. He thought of Eden's first smile. He thought of the terrifying, beautiful chaos of a live stage.
"I never liked peace," Yoo-jin said.
He reached for the thread.
"I prefer the noise."
"Clear!"
ZAP.
Yoo-jin's body jerked on the floor.
"Again!" Sae-ri shouted. She was holding the defibrillator paddles from the emergency kit on the wall. Her face was streaked with tears and dust. "Charge to 200!"
"He's gone, Sae-ri," David Kim said quietly, lowering his gun. The soldiers had retreated, confused by the global blackout. "He's been down for three minutes."
"No!" Sae-ri screamed. "He promised! Charge it!"
She slammed the paddles onto his chest.
ZAP.
Nothing.
Eden knelt beside him. The blue light in the boy's eyes was gone. They were just... gray. Dull, human gray.
"Boss," Eden whispered. He touched Yoo-jin's hand. "Please. I am... vibrating. It hurts."
He cried. Real tears. Tears that weren't programmed.
"Wake up," Mina sobbed, holding Hana's hand.
Sae-ri threw the paddles aside. She grabbed Yoo-jin's collar and shook him.
"You arrogant jerk!" she yelled. "You don't get to die like a hero! You don't get to leave me here to clean up this mess! Wake up!"
She pressed her forehead against his chest. She listened.
Silence.
Then...
Thump.
A weak, stuttering beat.
Thump-thump.
Sae-ri gasped. She pulled back.
Yoo-jin's eyes fluttered. He coughed, a dry, racking sound.
"Yoo-jin?" Sae-ri whispered.
He opened his eyes.
They were brown.
Just brown. No blue interface. No glowing text. No stats.
He blinked, trying to focus on her face.
"Sae-ri," he rasped. His voice sounded like sandpaper.
"I'm here," she choked out. "I'm right here."
Yoo-jin looked around the room. He saw Eden. He saw the girls. He saw David Kim looking surprised.
He tried to summon a System window. He tried to check their potential.
Nothing happened.
The air was empty.
He looked at Sae-ri again.
"You..." Yoo-jin squinted. "You have dirt on your face."
Sae-ri laughed. A wet, broken laugh. She hugged him, burying her face in his neck.
"Shut up," she cried. "Just shut up and breathe."
David Kim holstered his gun. He looked at the smoking server tower.
"Well," David said, straightening his tie. "That was dramatic. But we have a problem."
"What?" Director Park asked, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief.
"The soldiers retreated, but the perimeter is still locked down," David said. "And we just broadcast a global virus. The US government is going to want answers. And probably arrests."
Yoo-jin pushed himself up to a sitting position. His body felt heavy. Painfully heavy. Gravity felt stronger without the System's buffs.
"Let them come," Yoo-jin said. He felt weak, but his mind was clear. clearer than it had been in years.
"We have the world's attention," Yoo-jin said. "We have the number one trending topic in history. If they arrest us now, we become martyrs."
He looked at Eden. The boy looked lost without his connection to the network.
"Eden," Yoo-jin said.
"Yes?" Eden answered automatically.
"How do you feel?"
Eden touched his own face. He felt the tears.
"I feel... empty," Eden said. "The data is gone. I don't know what to do next. There is no objective."
"That's good," Yoo-jin smiled. It was a genuine smile. Not a producer's smirk.
"That means you're free to choose."
Suddenly, Olivia's phone buzzed. Then Park's. Then David's.
The signal was back. But different.
"Look at this," Olivia held up her phone.
The news feed was flooded. Not with panic. With music.
People were remixing the broadcast. They were sampling Eden's scream. They were adding beats, lyrics, dances. The "Kill Code" hadn't just crashed the System. It had become the biggest open-source track in the world.
#THE_CRASH was trending worldwide.
And below it, a new headline:
MINISTRY OF CULTURE UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS.
The evidence from Version 1's drive—the corruption, the experiments, the bribes—had been embedded in the video file. While the song played, the data leaked.
The secrets were out.
Yoo-jin leaned back against the wall. He was exhausted. He was mortal. And he was unemployed.
"We did it," he whispered.
He looked at Sae-ri. She was still holding his hand.
"What now?" she asked.
Yoo-jin looked at the hole in the ceiling, where the desert sun was starting to peek through the dust.
"Now?" Yoo-jin said. "We negotiate the exit fee."