The emergency sirens were no longer just a sound; they were a physical pressure, a rhythmic, screaming pulse that vibrated through the floorboards and into Seol-wol's shattered nervous system. The red tactical strobes turned the smoke-filled Calibration Chamber into a jagged, hellish landscape where shadows stretched and snapped like black elastic.
[57:45:10]
Seol-wol's fingers were slick with a mixture of cold sweat and leaked cooling fluid as he fumbled with the magnetic locks on Junseo's cradle. His brother's head hung at an unnatural, limp angle, his skin so pale it looked like translucent porcelain under the flickering red lights.
"Junseo! Wake up! You have to wake up, Wol!" Seol-wol hissed, his voice cracking into a raw, desperate rasp. He slammed his fist against the manual override button, the impact bruising his knuckles.
Through the Sync, Seol-wol felt nothing but a vast, echoing silence. It was like a radio station that had suddenly gone off the air, leaving only the hiss of dead static. For the first time in their lives, Seol-wol was truly alone inside his own mind. It was a terrifying, hollow loneliness that hurt worse than the neural burns on his temples—a reminder of the gutter where they had started, and the void that was trying to take them back.
The heavy blast doors at the far end of the chamber groaned as they were forced open by a hydraulic ram. A squad of "Black-Site" security—Borislav's personal hounds—poured in, their tactical flashlights cutting through the thick chemical smoke like white blades.
"Don't move! Hands where we can see them, thief!" a familiar, booming voice roared.
Seol-wol froze. Standing at the head of the squad, silhouetted against the bright hallway light, was Peter.
But this wasn't the Peter who had shown him the photograph of his daughter in the mess hall. This was the Captain. He was draped in heavy ceramic-composite armor, his pulse-rifle leveled directly at Seol-wol's heart with terrifying precision. Behind him, the technicians were pointing frantically at the twins, shouting about "unstable assets" and "security breaches."
"Commander's orders!" Peter shouted over the sirens, his voice distorted by his helmet's speakers. "Secure the younger subject! If the older one resists, take his legs out! Borislav says we only need the older one's brain for the link, not his mobility!"
Seol-wol looked directly into Peter's visor, searching for a flicker of the father he had spoken to only hours ago. "Peter... look at him," Seol-wol said, his voice trembling but loud enough to carry. "You saw the 95 percent spike. You saw what Borislav did. If they take him back now, they'll just plug him back in. He'll never wake up. He'll be a battery until he burns out."
"Shut up and step away from the cradle, kid!" Peter barked, but Seol-wol noticed the barrel of the pulse-rifle waver—just a fraction of an inch.
"Think about Mina!" Seol-wol screamed, the name cutting through the noise like a knife.
"You think Borislav will let you walk away with that house in the High-Clouds after you've seen what's really in that vault?
You're a witness, Peter! Once the 'Master Key' turns the lock, you're just another loose end to be clipped. You won't be going home to your daughter. You'll be joining us in a canister!"
The guards behind Peter shifted, their boots crunching on the glass shards. "Captain, we're losing the window! Secure the assets or we open fire!" one of the subordinates growled, his finger tightening on the trigger.
Seol-wol reached into his pocket. He didn't have a gun. He didn't have a pulse-blade. He pulled out the rusted metallic bolt, the jagged edges catching the red strobe light.
He held it like a ritual dagger, his eyes burning with a suicidal, manic light.
"I'll jam this into his carotid," Seol-wol whispered, pointing the rusted bolt at his own brother's neck. It was a bluff—the most horrific lie he had ever told—but his hand was steady. "If you take another step, I'll kill the 'Master Key' myself. Borislav gets nothing. You get no payout. Mina gets no lungs. We all die in this smoke."
The room went deathly silent. Even the sirens seemed to fade into the background.
The guards stopped, confused by the sheer insanity of a boy threatening to kill the person he loved most.
Peter stared at the bolt. He stared at the smear of blood on Seol-wol's face and the desperation in his eyes. In that moment, Peter didn't see a thief. He saw a mirror. He saw a man willing to burn the whole world down just to protect one person.
"Captain? Give the order!" the subordinate pressed.
Peter's jaw tightened behind his visor. He reached into his tactical vest, his thumb brushing the crumpled photo of Mina for what he feared might be the last time. He made his choice.
"Target lock lost! The interference is too high!" Peter suddenly yelled, his voice a frantic, staged lie. He swung his rifle 180 degrees and fired a sustained burst—not at Seol-wol, but at the overhead fire suppression tanks and the gas lines.
The massive canisters exploded, flooding the chamber with thick, freezing white chemical foam and blinding CO2 gas. The room became a white-out.
"Ambush! We're under fire from the ventilation sub-levels!" Peter roared into the comms, creating a phantom enemy to confuse the base security. In the chaos, he lunged through the fog, grabbing Seol-wol by the collar and dragging him toward the cradle.
"Unlock it! Move, you idiot!" Peter hissed, his voice raw. He slammed a heavy tactical override key—a piece of tech he shouldn't have even had—into the cradle's port. The magnetic restraints hissed open, and Junseo's limp, cooling body fell forward.
Seol-wol caught him, the weight nearly buckling his knees. "Peter... why?"
"Because I'd rather go to hell knowing I helped a brother... than live in a High-Cloud house built on a kid's grave," Peter growled.
He shoved a small, high-frequency transmitter into Seol-wol's hand. "Go to Sub-Level 4. There's a maintenance mag-lev that leads to the waste disposal. Kyla is waiting there. She's got the medical kit and the bypass codes. If you aren't there in five minutes, she's instructed to leave."
"What about you? They'll kill you for this,"
Seol-wol said, his voice thick with a sudden, unexpected debt.
Peter looked back at the swirling smoke, where his own squad was coughing and struggling to find their bearings. "I'm going to tell Borislav you killed two of my men and escaped through the primary exhaust. I'll buy you ten minutes. Now move! Run!"
Seol-wol didn't look back. He couldn't afford to. He slung Junseo's arm over his shoulder, his muscles screaming under the weight, and began to drag his brother into the service tunnel.
But as the heavy pneumatic door began to hiss shut, a shadow blocked the escaping light.
Miran was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed. He wasn't helping Peter. He wasn't helping the guards. He was just watching, his dark eyes fixed on Seol-wol with a cold, analytical curiosity—the way a scientist watches a rat find its way out of a maze.
"Ten minutes, Seol-wol," Miran's voice drifted through the smoke, sounding impossibly clear despite the alarms. "Make them count. Because once Borislav realizes the 'Master Key' is gone, he won't send guards. He'll send the Reapers. And they don't care about daughters or brothers."
The door slammed shut with a heavy, final thud.
Seol-wol was in the pitch black, the only sound the ragged breathing of two brothers and the distant, fading screams of a facility in lockdown. He gripped the metallic bolt in his free hand, the rust stinging his palm, a reminder of the blood it had already drawn.
The heist was dead. The survival had begun.