The sterile corridor was a shock after the organic gloom of the memory vault. The air here was filtered, odorless, carrying a faint, high-frequency hum that set Jin-woo's teeth on edge. The stolen lab coat felt like a costume two sizes too large, and the ID badge clipped to it displayed a bland, smiling face that was not his own. Park, Dae-sung. Research Associate.
He walked with purpose, shoulders slightly hunched, eyes fixed on the tablet in his hands—a perfect mimicry of the technician's bored gait he had observed for exactly 187 seconds. His mind, however, was a hyper-alert scanner, processing every detail.
Door, 10 meters, keycard panel. No camera visible at this angle. Floor, seamless polymer, reflects sound. Footsteps must be light, rolling from heel to toe. Ventilation shaft overhead, too narrow.
The corridor ended at a junction. Left, right, and a heavy elevator door straight ahead. The map on the stolen tablet was basic, showing only the tunnel and an access point labeled "Primary Facility - Sub-Level 2 Receiving." The elevator was the only logical path.
As he approached, the elevator door slid open silently.
Inside stood a man.
He was not a guard. He wore a dark, tailored suit, no tie. His hair was perfectly grey at the temples. He held a sleek, encrypted tablet of his own. He looked up as Jin-woo entered, his gaze neither friendly nor hostile, but assessing. It was the look of a curator examining a new acquisition.
"Late shift, Associate Park?" the man asked, his voice smooth and devoid of accent.
Jin-woo's blood froze. He gave a curt, tired nod, hoping it passed for the grunt of an overworked underling. Do not speak. Your voice will betray you.
The man's eyes lingered on him for a second too long, then returned to his tablet. The elevator descended.
The silence was a physical pressure. Jin-woo stared at the floor indicator: SB-2... SB-3... They were going deeper than he'd anticipated. The man, whom Jin-woo's mind now labeled The Curator, was radiating a quiet, absolute authority. This was no mid-level manager.
At SB-4, the elevator stopped. The door opened onto a viewing gallery overlooking a vast, circular chamber. The Curator stepped out. "With me," he said, not looking back.
It was not a request.
Jin-woo followed, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against the ancient scroll hidden under his coat.
The chamber below was a cross between an operating theater and a dojo. In its center, under a ring of harsh, clinical lights, two figures moved. One was a hulking man, shirtless, his body a roadmap of scars and artificially enhanced muscle, moving with the brutal, disjointed efficiency Jin-woo recognized from Min-ho's video—a "Faulty Memory" subject. His opponent was a slim woman in simple training gear, her movements defensive, analytical, trying to anticipate the beast's chaotic onslaught.
Around the perimeter, technicians in white coats monitored banks of screens showing neural activity, heart rates, and movement vectors.
"Observation Deck C," The Curator said, leading Jin-woo to a console. "Log the subject's pattern degradation. Note any flashes of coherence."
He was being tested. The real Associate Park would know this procedure. Jin-woo did not. He stood frozen for a second, his mind scrambling. Then, he leaned over the console, his fingers hovering. He had watched Min-ho use similar software dozens of times during his own training analysis. The layout was different, but the logic was the same. Biometric overlay. Movement tracking. Deviation analysis.
He tapped a few keys, bringing up a graph. He said nothing, his focus appearing total.
The Curator watched him, then turned his gaze back to the spectacle below. "Fascinating, isn't it?" he murmured, almost to himself. "The human body as a palimpsest. We scrape away the weak, individual script, and layer on the perfect, collective text of combat history. But the original writing... it always bleeds through. Creates ghosts in the machine." He gestured to the hulking subject, who had just let out a guttural roar, forgetting his technique entirely and charging like a bull. "That is the 'Faulty' part. Residual identity. Noise."
Jin-woo's eyes were not on the brute. They were on the woman. Her defensive style was pure, elegant—a rare northern Chinese style. But she was tiring. A mistake was coming. He saw it unfold in his mind three steps before it happened: her foot would slip on a sweat-slick part of the mat, her guard would drop for 0.8 seconds...
It happened.
The "Faulty" subject lunged, not with a copied technique, but with a raw, powerful grab. His hand closed around her forearm. There was a sickening crack.
The woman didn't scream. She went pale, collapsing to her knees.
The Curator sighed, a sound of mild disappointment. "Reset him. Process the donor for memory extraction before trauma degrades the data." He turned to leave, then paused, looking directly at Jin-woo. "Your report on the Vault 7 atmospheric stability was due yesterday, Associate Park. See that it's on my desk before dawn."
He walked away, leaving Jin-woo standing there, cold sweat tracing his spine. Vault 7 atmospheric stability. It was a bluff, a probe. And Jin-woo had just passed by failing to react to a nonsense task.
But the reprieve was temporary. He was in the heart of the beast, and the clock on the incendiary charge was ticking down: 18 minutes.
He had to find Cell 3B.
Moving now with more urgency, he left the observation deck. The facility was a labyrinth of identical white corridors, numbered doors, and soft lighting. He used the tablet's limited access to pull up a generic staff directory, searching for "Detention Block" or "Holding." Nothing.
Then he remembered Kim's coded message: Open the closed circle.
In the Taijutsu movement Kim had used, the "opening" was preceded by a step back and to the left, into the shadow of the aggressor. Jin-woo stopped. He was thinking like an intruder, moving forward, seeking. What if the holding cells weren't ahead, but behind the obvious? Guarded not by visible doors, but by anonymity?
He turned and retraced his steps, back past the observation deck, to a nondescript door marked "Utilities & Climate." It was the only door in the corridor without a number or clear label. A perfect closed circle.
His stolen keycard clicked in the lock. The door opened not onto boiler rooms, but onto another, dimmer corridor. This one had real doors, heavy and sealed, with small, reinforced windows at eye level. Cell doors.
Cell 1A... Cell 2B...
Cell 3B.
Through the window, he saw Kim.
He was sitting on a narrow cot, barefoot, wearing simple grey sweats. He was thinner, his face drawn, but his posture was straight. He was staring at his own hands, slowly, methodically, performing a subtle, repetitive motion with his fingers—a finger exercise from Bagua Zhang, a style focused on continuous change and circular movement. He was keeping his mind sharp, preserving the memory of flow even in a box.
Jin-woo swiped the keycard. A red light blinked. Access Denied.
He tried the technician's master key from the vault. Another red light.
Time: 12 minutes.
Panic was a luxury he couldn't afford. He focused on the lock panel. It was a different model, biometric-assisted. A small, green scanner glowed beside the card reader. A fingerprint or retina.
He heard footsteps at the end of the utility corridor. A guard on patrol.
Jin-woo did the only thing he could. He turned away from the cell door and began walking toward the guard, pulling the tablet up, muttering angrily into a non-existent headset.
"—atmospheric readings in Sector G are spiking. I don't care if it's your break, I need a verification scan on the utility corridor climate seals now. Yes, now!"
The guard, a young man looking bored, straightened up as Jin-woo approached, his face a mask of irritated authority.
"You," Jin-woo snapped, channeling every arrogant middle-manager he'd ever seen. "Your palm scanner. I need a system diagnostic on this door's bio-seal. Mine is glitching. Hurry."
Baffled but trained to obey technical staff, the guard stepped up to Cell 3B's door. "This one, sir?"
"Yes, yes, just scan and hold. The system will ping your ID, ignore it."
The guard pressed his palm to the scanner. A green light swept over it. Jin-woo watched the main lock mechanism. With a soft clunk, the magnetic seals disengaged.
"Ah, there it is. Faulty reader. You can go," Jin-woo said, waving dismissively.
The guard, slightly confused but relieved, wandered off. The second he turned the corner, Jin-woo yanked the heavy door open and slipped inside, closing it silently behind him.
Kim's head snapped up. For a fraction of a second, raw, unguarded shock flashed in his eyes. Then it was gone, replaced by a terrifying, furious intensity. He was on his feet in a silent rush, grabbing Jin-woo by the front of the stolen lab coat.
"You fool," Kim hissed, his voice a dry rasp. "What part of 'do not come for me' was a mystery?"
"I'm not here for you," Jin-woo whispered back, pulling the ancient Okinawan scroll from his jacket. "I'm here to make an exchange."
Kim stared at the scroll, then at Jin-woo's face, reading the new hardness there, the purpose. He released his grip, understanding dawning. "You ignited the vault."
"A distraction. In eleven minutes. We need to be far from here when it happens."
"And then? They will hunt you to the ends of the earth. You have seen the Curator."
"I have," Jin-woo said. "And he thinks I'm a lazy technician named Park." He quickly stripped off the lab coat, revealing his dark clothes underneath. "The guard who opened this door will be the first one questioned after the explosion. His palm was on the scanner moments before I entered. The trail leads to him, and to a phantom 'Associate Park' who will vanish."
It was a messy, risky plan. But it was a plan built on the chaos Jin-woo had learned to cultivate.
A ghost of something—pride? regret?—flickered in Kim's eyes. "You learned more than I taught you."
"I had a good teacher who was fond of impossible tests." Jin-woo handed Kim the multi-tool. "Can you disable the cameras in this hallway from the junction box?"
Kim took the tool. "Thirty seconds." He moved to the door, peering through the window. "The plan after we exit?"
Jin-woo met his gaze. "We don't exit the way I came. We go deeper. The Curator came from below. His private elevator. Wherever he goes, security will be tight, but the patterns will be rigid. Predictable."
"You want to walk into the lion's den?"
"I want to see where the lion sleeps," Jin-woo said. "And then I want to make sure he never sleeps soundly again."
Kim's lips tightened into something that was almost a smile. It was the smile of a condemned man who has just been handed a lit match in a powder keg. "Then we are in agreement."
He slipped out into the corridor. Jin-woo stood in the cell, listening for the sound of breaking electronics, his mind already racing ahead, replaying the path from the observation deck, searching for the pattern of the Curator's descent, preparing to copy the most dangerous routine of all.
The house of mirrors was about to shatter, and he intended to be the one holding the hammer.