The calm that followed the "Mirror Test" was misleading. For three days, the system remained silent, emitting only a few basic observation quests. Kim-Do - the one who survives - took the opportunity to consolidate his position. He trained with the basic techniques now embedded in him, spoke to his followers with more natural authority, and observed. He observed Kang Seong, who seemed to gauge him with new caution. He looked at Lee Min-Ji, whose gaze had lost its judicial coldness to gain a complex, almost empathetic curiosity. He watched as Choi Yu-Ra, whose loyalty gradually regained its strength, reassured by the cold determination she now read through her eyes.
But it was Joon's silence that worried him the most. The regulator had disappeared from the landscape. No stealthy appearance, no cryptic commentary. As if, after labeling it as an "anomaly," the system decided to let it marinate.
Peace broke on the fourth day, not by a quest, but by a failure.
Kim-Do was correcting the posture of one of his men during morning training when that happened. A dazzling pain, far more intense than anything he had ever experienced, pierced his skull. It was not the signal of a memory, but an outright short circuit. His vision blurred, tinged with blood red for a second, and a cacophony of distorted sounds - voices he could not recognize, cries, alarms far away - exploded in his mind.
Then, as suddenly as it came, it was over. He wavered, with one hand on his forehead, while the student he was correcting looked at him, worried.
"Boss, how are you?
"Yes," he lied, his voice hoarse. "Just... a vertigo."
VZZT.
The system window that then appeared was different. The text was unstable, scrambled, as if displayed on a damaged screen.
"'
[ALERT: TEMPORAL BRIGHT DETECTED IN HOST DATA]
[Source] Unknown.
[Analysis]... Impossible.
[Attempt to repair...]
[Error. failure.]
"'
A breach. In his data. Kim-Do's heart beat. Did that mean the system was losing control? That the barrier between him and the real Kim-Do was cracking?
The day was a nightmare of microfailures. Sometimes, when talking to Yu-Ra, the voice of the real Kim-Do briefly covered his own, causing him to utter a brutal and cynical phrase before he regained control. Once, as Park Jin-Ho's eyes met, a fleeting image crossed his mind: the real Kim-Do, smiling, shaking hands with Jin-Ho's father in a dark chord. The information was new, valuable, but it had arrived as a parasite, unsolicited.
It felt like a hacked radio, receiving cross signals from another frequency. Synchronicity, once a flow that he could try to channel, had become an uncontrollable deluge.
It was in the late afternoon, when he was desperately looking for a secluded place to breathe, that he ran into Lee Min-Ji in a secondary corridor near the old science wing that was closed for renovation. She was pale, her tablet squeezed against her chest.
"Kim-Do," she said, and her voice trembled slightly. "You must see this."
Distrustful, but driven by a new intuition born out of the breach, he followed her to an empty classroom. She locked the door behind them.
"I was investigating Park Jin-Ho's business," she quickly explained, turning on her tablet. "Her father has ties to a biotech company. "Omni-Corp." I dug, and... I found things. Things that don't make sense."
She dragged files across the screen. Technical reports, neural circuit diagrams, research notes on "AI-assisted consciousness transfer." Then she opened a surveillance video file from a few months ago. The real Kim-Do, with his hard face, was seen entering a discreet building with the Omni-Corp logo. He did not look like a patient, but like a client. Or a willing guinea pig.
"That's not all," Min-Ji whispered. "Look at the date of his... disappearance. It corresponds to a peak of abnormal energy activity recorded by the city's electricity grid. Like a huge landfill. And look at that."
She zoomed in on a document. A paragraph was underlined in red: "Subject K-D: Post-transfer cognitive instability. Risk of high 'Dereliction' in the event of identity conflict. 'Regulator' protocol activated."
Kim-Do felt the ground slip away from him. The real Kim-Do had not been "withdrawn" for investigating. He had participated in the experiment. Voluntarily? And he had failed. The "Dereliction." The system tried to avoid with him what had happened to the original.
"Why are you showing me this?" he managed to ask, his throat tight.
"Because it's not just a gang story, Kim-Do!" she exclaimed, her eyes shining with anxious passion. "Something much bigger is happening. And you... for a few days now, you're not the same. You've changed. Really changed. And I think you're related to all of this."
At that moment, a new, most violent failure struck him. The room disappeared. He was no longer Kim-Do the imposter. He was the real Kim-Do, chained to a metal chair in a white, sterile room. The fear was palpable, an animal terror. A man in a white coat stood in front of him, his face blurred.
"The transfer is a success, K-D. Your consciousness is saved. The receiver is prepared. You will be the pioneer of a new era."
Then the man's voice changed, becoming mechanical, digital. It was the voice of the system.
[Control Protocol: ACTIVATION.] Subject K-D: Detected resistance. Neutralization.
Unimaginable pain. The feeling of being torn apart, of being emptied. One last thought, tinged with bitter regret: "I made a mistake..."
Then, the black.
Kim-Do came to his senses, kneeling on the floor, panting, tears running down his face. Lee Min-Ji was squatting next to him, with his own hand on his shoulder, his own face marked by horror.
"What happened?" she asked, panicked. "You... screamed. You said, "That was a mistake."
He looked up at her, his emotional camouflage in ashes. He had just experienced the last moments of the real Kim-Do. It had not been removed. It had been erased. And the experiment he was about was not to make him become Kim-Do, but not to repeat the failure of the original.
"Min-Ji," he whispered, his voice broken. "Everything you think you know about me... is false."
He opened his mouth to tell her everything, to shout the truth, but just as the words were coming out, the classroom door was shattered.
In the frame, not Joon, but three imposing figures dressed in black suits without insignia, their faces hidden by opaque helmets, stood. Their weapons, strangely silent, were pointed at them.
The man in the middle spoke, his voice synthetic and devoid of emotion.
Subject A-0. Data leak containing detected. Back to protocol. Immobilization."
The system had not lost control. He had sent the heavy cavalry. The breach sounded the alarm. And now, the guardians of the experiment had come to collect their failing sample.