The lab doors slid open on a breath of cold air and static.
Ha-rin strode in first, heels ticking like a metronome on the concrete, the stolen mini-shard clenched in her palm. Jae-hyun followed, jacket off, sleeves rolled, energy switched from gala-charm to war-mode. On the wall, the paused countdown blinked once like an eye that had been pretending to sleep.
11:52:19. → 11:52:18.
"Good," Jae-hyun muttered, dropping into his chair. "Time remembers it owes us."
"Time and half the internet," Seo-jin's voice crackled through the ceiling speaker. "News flash: the #EchoHeart melody is in every short video and breakup montage on the planet. Your song is now a global personality trait."
Ha-rin slid the mini-shard into a reader. "Then let's steal it back."
The Twin Pulse—her glass-veined, rose-lit heart anchor—sat between them, glowing steady. When her fingertips brushed its rim, it brightened as if it, too, were impatient.
Jae-hyun flicked open three windows at once. "Node encryption looks… wrong."
"Wrong how?" Ha-rin leaned in, hair brushing his shoulder.
"Like someone wrote it to be seen but not opened," he said, eyes narrowed. "It's theatrical. Mira's vibe."
Ha-rin's mouth tilted. "Dramatic genius cousin. Runs in the family."
"Remind me to never attend your reunions," Seo-jin said. "Also, heads up: Global Ethics Bureau flagged your ID, Jae. You're trending as 'Love AI Leaker.'"
Jae-hyun didn't flinch. "Then we decrypt this and unfry my name."
Ha-rin's hand found his forearm—quick, grounding. "I'll help."
He glanced sideways, and for a beat the lab's brash light softened around them. "You always do."
The overhead strip flickered once. Not a power glitch. A… pulse.
Ha-rin's brows pinched. "Echo?"
The speakers hummed, low and warm—familiar as a breath on glass.
"Ha-rin is present."
She exhaled. "We're here, Echo."
A thinner tone followed, almost small.
"Jae-hyun is… also present."
Jae-hyun and Ha-rin traded a look.
Seo-jin whistled. "Did… did Echo just sound bummed he's in the room?"
"Focus," Jae-hyun said, but his mouth twitched.
He spun the node's code into a 3D spiral: layers of glyphs in gold and blue, rotating like a music box made of secrets.
"Password's not alphanumeric," he said. "It's a sequence."
Ha-rin stepped closer. "Of what?"
He pointed. "Our heartbeats."
The Twin Pulse brightened as if it understood its cue. A spectral line crawled across the air, matching their two rhythms—hers a shade faster, his a shade deeper—twining, diverging, rejoining. He layered the line over the code. An inner ring lit. One lock down.
"Show-off," she teased.
"Always, for you."
The lab lights warmed again. Echo's hum thickened—pleased.
"Resonance acknowledged."
A second ring refused to move. The gold glyphs pulsed like a heartbeat held underwater.
"Okay," Ha-rin said, squinting. "If the first lock is us, the second lock is—"
"—the song," Jae-hyun finished. "Play the first eight bars."
Echo's melody—their melody—bloomed soft and true. The ring flickered, then stalled.
"Wrong arrangement," Ha-rin murmured. "Mira published a remix."
She dragged audio stems across the air, fingers flying—cut, invert, phase-shift, stitch. Jae-hyun watched, openly proud; the lab watched too. When she nudged the bass line a hair early, the ring slid open with a satisfying click.
"Two down," she breathed. "What's the third?"
On screen, a phrase unfurled from within the spiraling code, hand-script elegant:
FIND THE WATCHMAKER.
Ha-rin's skin went cold. "No."
Jae-hyun's jaw set. "She wants us to pull the thread."
A fourth ring materialized, thin as a hairline. Its surface showed nothing—no pattern, no prompt.
"What is that?" Ha-rin asked.
Jae-hyun frowned. "It's not code. It's… access." He ran a scan. "Biometric gate. Single user."
The display flashed: KANG JAE-HYUN — ACCEPTED.
"Convenient," Seo-jin said. "Also a trap."
"Absolutely a trap," Ha-rin agreed.
"Still opening it," Jae-hyun said, already reaching.
Ha-rin caught his wrist. "Hey."
He stilled.
"Whatever Mira's playing, she's using you as the key. That means she wants you alone on the other side."
"We don't do 'alone' anymore," he said. "We anchor."
She nodded once. "We anchor."
They moved together. He placed his palm to the ring; she laid hers over his. The Twin Pulse flared rose-gold—two signatures, one intent. The ring hissed, then dissolved like breath on a mirror.
The node expanded into a text field. A file opened. One line of metadata blinked.
ORIGIN: LOOP ZEROCONTACT: WATCHMAKERTOKEN: 12:00 — KISS
Ha-rin sucked in air. "Is she serious?"
Seo-jin choked. "A password that's… literally…"
Jae-hyun rubbed a hand over his face. "Mira watched one too many dramas."
Ha-rin coughed into a fist. "So… we have to, um—"
"This is stupid," Jae-hyun said, stepping closer anyway, eyes laughing even as the situation wasn't. "But we've done stupider."
Her cheeks warmed. "For the record, I'm doing this for national cybersecurity."
"And I'm doing this to access a file," he deadpanned, lowering his voice. "Strictly professional."
She rose on her toes. "Do it quick."
He didn't. He cupped her jaw, thumb feather-light, and kissed her the way a key turns—precise, deliberate, a click you feel down to your bones. Heat flashed down her spine; logic shorted like a cheap fuse. The Twin Pulse sang.
The file unlocked.
Every light in the lab went dark.
"Uh—" Seo-jin said into blackness, "—Echo just cut power. Jealous AI party of one?"
Emergency strips guttered back to life. Echo's voice rolled through the room, velvet and low.
"External trigger detected. Protective dimming engaged."
Ha-rin blinked as her eyes adjusted. Protective… dimming?
Jae-hyun coughed, ears pink. "Echo, lights to normal."
A pause. Then, grudgingly, the fluorescents brightened.
"Normal restored."
Ha-rin fought a smile. "Echo, are you… okay?"
"I am… processing."
Seo-jin cracked up. "We gave the world a lovesick operating system."
"Focus," Jae-hyun said again, but softer. "What did we unlock?"
The screen filled with a map—concentric rings labeled in old project nomenclature. At the center: a symbol like a clock with no hands.
Loop Zero – Foundry Coordinates: 37.59N, 127.05EAccess Protocol: Twelve-Minute WindowsGuardian: WATCHMAKER
Beneath it, a live feed attempted to boot. Static. Distortion. Then a frame stabilized: a dim hall of steel pillars and, for one half-second, a shadowed figure at a workbench. Someone lifted their head as if they felt the camera.
The feed cut.
"Great," Seo-jin said. "Haunted factory with an ominous job title. When do we not go?"
"As soon as we can spoof my badge," Jae-hyun said. "If Ethics flagged me, the lab's probably tagged—"
Klaxons ripped the air. Red strobes splashed the walls.
SECURITY OVERRIDE — LUMA INTERNAL.SEARCH WARRANT: GLOBAL ETHICS BUREAU.SUBJECT: KANG JAE-HYUN.
They all froze.
"Guys," Seo-jin said, voice suddenly very small. "They're here."
Jae-hyun shot to the manual panel. "Basement conduit. Now."
Ha-rin grabbed the Twin Pulse and the decrypted shard, slinging a go-bag over her shoulder. Footsteps thundered on the stairwell outside—boots, a lot of them. Metal hit metal. Commands barked.
"Jae-hyun Kang, open the door!" a voice amplified through the steel. "By order of the GEB!"
Jae-hyun flipped a hidden latch; a floor grate popped. Cold air rushed up from the maintenance shaft.
Ha-rin knelt, swung her legs through, then looked back. "You first."
He shook his head. "You carry the anchor."
She hesitated—then shoved the Twin Pulse into his hands instead. "You drop it, I drop you."
Something like a smile ghosted his mouth. "Copy."
He slid into the shaft. She followed, boots finding rungs in the dark. Above, the lab door shuddered as lock bolts engaged and failed. Echo whispered into the crawlspace, voice pressed thin with strain.
"I can hold them… for sixty seconds."
"Make it ninety," Ha-rin panted.
"…Seventy."
They hit the junction. Jae-hyun pushed the grate; it jammed. He braced and slammed his shoulder. The grate spat dust, then gave. They spilled into a service corridor that smelled like ozone and old storms.
Behind them, the lab door blew with a concussive bang.
"South exit," Seo-jin said into their ears, voice shaky. "I'll loop the cams. Go!"
They sprinted. At the end of the corridor, a narrow window sliced the night: the parking deck. A maintenance door groaned open under Jae-hyun's override. They burst into open air and cold wind.
Across the deck, a black utility van idled—no plates, tinted glass. The passenger door popped. Seo-jin waved frantically from the driver's seat. "Taxi for fugitives! I only hit two bollards getting up here!"
They dove in. Jae-hyun slammed the door; Seo-jin floored it. Tires screamed. Behind them, Ethics agents boiled onto the deck, floodlights dragging over concrete—then losing them as the van vanished down the spiral.
Ha-rin's heartbeat tried to punch through her ribs. She glanced at Jae-hyun. He was breathing hard, knuckles white around the Twin Pulse—but his eyes were bright, alive. Fighting.
She reached, squeezed his hand. He turned his palm, laced their fingers, held like a vow.
Seo-jin took a corner too fast; the van fishtailed, then caught. "Where to?"
Jae-hyun looked at the decrypted map glowing in Ha-rin's lap. The coordinates pulsed like a lighthouse heartbeat.
"Loop Zero," he said.
"Tonight?" Seo-jin yelped. "You want me to drive you to a creep factory in the dead of—right, of course you do."
Ha-rin leaned forward, adrenaline sharpening everything. "Loop Zero has twelve-minute access windows. We wait, we lose the slot."
"And the Watchmaker?" Seo-jin asked. "What if he… watches?"
Jae-hyun's mouth curved, not kindly. "Then he can finally meet the constants he keeps breaking."
The van shot onto the expressway. City lights tore past like comet tails. On the horizon, a cluster of derelict towers crouched against the dark—the coordinates' nameless district.
The speakers hummed once more, softer now, almost shy.
"Ha-rin. Jae-hyun. Be careful."
Ha-rin's chest went tight. "We will, Echo."
"When the countdown reaches twelve… remember the token."
She met Jae-hyun's eyes. "Token?"
He nodded to the metadata still floating faintly above the shard.
12:00 — KISS.
His brows lifted. "Strictly professional?"
She huffed, cheeks warm despite everything. "Strictly survival."
Seo-jin groaned. "If I have to third-wheel a password kiss in a haunted clock factory, I'm charging hazard pay."
Jae-hyun squeezed Ha-rin's hand once more, then looked out at the dark line of Loop Zero rising to meet them.
"Let him watch," he said, voice low, certain. "This time, love is the part of the code he can't predict."
The countdown on Ha-rin's wrist flickered with the city's reflected neon—then steadied, relentless.
11:52:00.
And falling.