Day 7.
06:30.
The transit authority building in Sector 8 was one of the oldest structures in the city — built in Year Zero, before the System's standard architectural protocols had been fully developed, in the specific utilitarian style of infrastructure that was designed to function rather than to impress.
This was why the Year Zero Harvest mechanism was here.
The Founders had embedded their earliest infrastructure in the city's earliest buildings. Before the System had standardized. Before the Architecture had been optimized. In the specific, crude, functional spaces of Year Zero construction that had been maintained for twenty-two years by a consciousness that knew exactly where every pipe and junction and non-standard element was.
Jinsu and Soo-yeon arrived separately.
Soo-yeon at the building's north maintenance access — the one that led to the sub-basement junction where the Year Zero mechanism sat in its original installation housing, unchanged for twenty-two years because it had never needed changing. It worked. The Founders didn't fix things that worked.
Jinsu at the building's east service entrance — the one that the compliance-blind route Ryu Jae-won had provided took him past without a single logged camera interaction.
They met in the sub-basement.
The mechanism was exactly where Ryu Jae-won's maintenance layer intelligence had placed it.
Three meters tall. Original Year Zero construction — grey metal, no optimization coating, the specific utilitarian aesthetic of infrastructure built before anyone cared what infrastructure looked like. The housing covered in twenty-two years of accumulated dust and the faint, specific residue of Harvest frequency radiation that Jinsu's Eyes of the Architect read as a distinct shimmer at the boundary of visible light.
Soo-yeon looked at it.
She notched the first round.
"The resonance coordinate," she said. "Walk me through it."
Jinsu activated Eyes of the Architect at full output and read the mechanism's frequency harmonic — the specific internal architecture of the Year Zero design, the place where the Harvest signal entered the node's processing circuit and could be disrupted at the source rather than the housing.
"1.3 meters from the base," he said. "Left face. There's a frequency seam where the original installation connected to the building's power grid. The seam runs vertical, approximately 40 centimeters long. The resonance coordinate is the midpoint of the seam."
Soo-yeon adjusted her aim.
She fired.
[Round 1: Impact — resonance coordinate — Efficiency: 67%]
The mechanism shuddered. The Year Zero housing absorbing the void-frequency impact and generating the specific, deep resonance of old infrastructure encountering a frequency it wasn't designed to filter.
Not enough. One round, 67% efficiency — insufficient to disrupt a functioning node.
"Round 2," Jinsu said. "Same coordinate. Two seconds after the first resonance fades."
She fired.
[Round 2: Impact — resonance coordinate — Efficiency: 71%]
Higher efficiency on the second round — the first strike had opened the frequency seam slightly, creating a cleaner resonance pathway for the second.
The mechanism's operational signal stuttered.
"The seam is opening," Jinsu said. "Round 3 needs to hit 4 centimeters above the coordinate — the seam is propagating upward."
She adjusted.
Fired.
[Round 3: Impact — adjusted coordinate — Efficiency: 74%]
The mechanism's housing developed a hairline fracture along the frequency seam. The Harvest signal inside it flickering — not dead, disrupted. The difference between a machine that is broken and a machine that has been hit somewhere it doesn't expect.
"Rounds 4 and 5," Jinsu said. "Rapid sequence. Same coordinate. Don't wait for the resonance to fade between them."
Soo-yeon notched both rounds.
She fired the fourth.
Immediately the fifth.
The resonance from the fourth hadn't faded when the fifth arrived. The two frequencies overlapping in the seam — not canceling, amplifying. The specific physics of rapid-sequence void-frequency strikes against Year Zero architecture producing a compounding resonance effect that neither strike alone would have generated.
[Round 4+5: Compounding resonance — Efficiency: 89%]
The mechanism screamed.
Not audibly — in the System's architecture. The specific, silent signal of a Harvest node losing operational coherence, its frequency signal fracturing across the seam, the processed data it had been accumulating for the reconstruction network suddenly no longer processable.
The mechanism's operational signal died.
One round remaining.
Soo-yeon looked at it.
The mechanism was dark — the operational signal gone. But the housing was intact. The Year Zero construction still standing, still functional as physical infrastructure. Without the operational signal it was just a metal box in a sub-basement.
But if the Founders ran a restart protocol—
"The sixth round," Jinsu said. "Not the resonance coordinate. The restart circuit. 2.1 meters from the base, right face. It's the original Year Zero restart mechanism — analog, physical, the Founders' failsafe for the earliest infrastructure." He paused. "If you hit it—"
"The mechanism can't restart," Soo-yeon said.
"Ever," Jinsu confirmed. "Not without complete replacement. And complete replacement requires physical installation that would take days and generate the kind of construction activity that even the Association's standard monitoring would flag."
Soo-yeon looked at the sixth round.
At the mechanism.
She fired.
The round hit the restart circuit.
At 67% efficiency.
Close enough.
The restart circuit — analog, original Year Zero, the Founders' failsafe — fractured.
The mechanism was dark.
Permanently dark.
The restart circuit damaged beyond the tolerance that remote restoration protocols could handle.
Soo-yeon exhaled.
Jinsu looked at his status.
[Stability: 51.0%]
He hadn't used any skills. The stability cost was ambient — the Eyes of the Architect running at full output for the targeting guidance, the Processing overclock for the frequency reading, the cumulative cost of sustained high-output perception.
51%.
Acceptable.
Then the sixth round's detonation residue expanded.
Not the main impact — the afterwave. The specific, secondary void-frequency pulse that the refined calibration produced after the primary impact as the round's void-frequency material finished its reaction with the target architecture.
It expanded in the wrong direction.
Not toward the mechanism. Toward Soo-yeon.
She moved — A-Rank reflexes, the specific speed of someone who had been trained to read projectile trajectories and respond faster than conscious thought. She moved correctly. She cleared the primary wave.
The edge of the afterwave caught her left arm.
[Void-frequency contact — Team member — Partial exposure]
Not the full blast. The edge. The specific, partial detonation of a refined round's afterwave at fifteen percent of its primary impact force.
Soo-yeon hit the sub-basement wall.
She did not make a sound.
She slid down the wall.
She looked at her left arm.
The void-frequency had done what void-frequency did — not burned, not broken. The mana in the arm's musculature temporarily disrupted. The specific, numb paralysis of tissue that has had its System-integrated mana activation temporarily interrupted.
Not permanent. Not fatal.
Painful. Functionally compromising. The left arm at approximately 20% capability for the next several hours.
She looked at Jinsu.
"The mechanism is dark," she said. Her voice was steady. The specific steadiness of someone maintaining operational composure through pain because the operation wasn't finished yet and operational composure was currently the most useful thing she had. "Let's move."
He helped her up.
They moved.