The morning sun over Seoul was a pale, polished gold, filtering through the humid haze of a late summer day. At Daewon High School, the sound of the first bell was less a signal and more a ritual—a loud, brassy clang that cut through the collective chatter of fifteen hundred teenagers. It was the kind of morning that felt like it would last forever, a snapshot of youth frozen in the amber of a peaceful 2026.
In the center of the bustling school gate, Seo-Jun walked with a quiet, effortless grace. He didn't stride with the arrogance of the wealthy or the aggression of the delinquents; he simply moved as if the crowd was a river and he was the stone that the water had no choice but to flow around.
He was tall, though his frame was deceptively thin, bordering on lanky. His school uniform—a charcoal blazer over a crisp white shirt—seemed to hang off his shoulders with a deliberate sort of elegance. His face was what the girls in the lower grades called "sculpted": a sharp jawline, a high, straight bridge of a nose, and eyes so dark they looked like ink drops in water.
"There he is," a freshman girl whispered near the shoe lockers, her voice a frantic hiss to her friend. "The Quiet Prince of Year 3. I heard he hasn't smiled once since the semester started."
"I heard he's the son of those researchers who won the Nobel Prize," her friend whispered back, eyes wide. "That's why he never talks to anyone. He's probably thinking about quantum physics while we're worrying about math."
Seo-Jun sighed, a sound lost in the rustle of his backpack. He wasn't thinking about quantum physics. He was thinking about the fact that his father had forgotten to buy eggs again, and that the milk in the fridge was two days past its expiration date. His parents were brilliant, yes, but they were ghosts—distant figures who lived in the sterilized basements of the city's research district, leaving Seo-Jun to navigate the "normal" world on his own.
"Oi! Prince! You're moving like a turtle today!"
A heavy, calloused hand slammed onto Seo-Jun's shoulder. The force of it would have knocked a normal student over, but Seo-Jun merely shifted his weight, absorbing the impact with a practiced ease.
Park Dae-Sung grinned down at him. Dae-Sung was the antithesis of Seo-Jun—broad, loud, and perpetually smelling of the gym's floor wax. As the captain of the basketball team, he was the school's physical apex, a mountain of muscle that followed Seo-Jun around like a loyal, overgrown retriever.
"I was waiting at the convenience store for ten minutes," Dae-Sung complained, though his grin never wavered. "Do you have any idea how many people tried to ask me for your number? I should start charging a fee. We could buy a new gaming console by the end of the week."
"I took the earlier bus," Seo-Jun replied, his voice a low, resonant baritone. "I wanted to stop by the library to return those engineering journals my mother left in the kitchen."
"Engineering journals? On a Tuesday?" Dae-Sung groaned, dragging his hand across his face. "Man, you're a waste of a handsome face. If I looked like you, I'd be out there dating the entire cheer squad, not reading about data architecture and circuit boards."
"Beauty is a biological accident, Dae-Sung. Knowledge is a choice," Seo-Jun said, though there was a hint of a ghost-smile on his lips.
As they walked through the hallway, the social ecosystem of the school was on full display. This was the "Network" Seo-Jun lived in—a web of lives that felt permanent but was, in reality, fragile.
To their left, Sora and Hana—the self-appointed news anchors of Class 3-A—were huddled over a smartphone. Their faces were unusually pale, illuminated by the flickering glow of the screen. They were surrounded by a small crowd of other girls, all of them whispering in hushed, hurried tones.
"Did you see the news?" Sora asked, her voice trembling slightly. "The military just closed the highway to Incheon. They're saying it's a 'routine security exercise,' but my brother in the army sent a text saying his entire unit was put on Level 4 alert."
"It's just the usual posturing," Hana replied, though her hand was shaking as she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "The stock market is just having a bad morning. It'll all be fine by lunch."
Seo-Jun slowed his pace as he passed them. His eyes flickered to the phone screen. It wasn't the news headline that caught his attention, but the digital clock in the corner of the display. It was flickering. The numbers were jumping—07:42... 07:44... 07:41. It was a temporal sync error. On a global cellular network that was supposed to be synchronized by atomic clocks, such a glitch was statistically impossible.
Something is wrong with the signal, Seo-Jun thought, a familiar prickle of heat beginning at the base of his skull. The data isn't lining up.
"Seo-Jun! Dae-Sung! Over here before the bell!"
Lee Min-Ah was standing by the classroom door, waving them over. She was wearing a yellow cardigan over her uniform, her hair tied in a messy but cute bun that seemed to defy gravity. She looked like a ray of sunshine in a hallway that was slowly filling with the grey static of anxiety.
"Did you get it? Please tell me you got it," she said as they approached, her eyes fixed on Seo-Jun with desperate intensity.
Without a word, Seo-Jun reached into his bag and pulled out a small, chilled carton of strawberry milk. He handed it to her, the condensation on the cardboard dampening his palm.
"You're the best!" she cheered, her entire face lighting up. She stabbed the straw into the carton with the precision of a surgeon. "I went to the store near the station and they were completely sold out. The guy behind the counter said the delivery trucks never showed up."
"There's a supply chain issue for everything lately," a voice chimed in from the doorway.
It was Jun, the Class President. He was a thin boy with thick-rimmed glasses and a nervous habit of tapping his tablet like a percussion instrument. He looked like he hadn't slept in forty-eight hours, his eyes bloodshot behind his lenses.
"Hey, Jun," Dae-Sung greeted. "Still playing hacker in your spare time?"
"It's not 'playing,' Dae-Sung," Jun said, his voice dropping to a low, urgent whisper. He beckoned them closer, holding up his tablet. "I've been monitoring the school's server traffic this morning. Look at this."
He pointed to a graph showing a massive, jagged spike in background data. "Something is bleeding into the network. It's not a virus, and it's not a hack. It's as if a massive amount of encrypted information is just... sitting in the air, slowing every device in the city down to a crawl. It's eating the bandwidth of the entire world."
Seo-Jun looked at the tablet, his obsidian eyes narrowing. "How massive, Jun?"
Jun swallowed hard, the sound audible in the quiet hallway. "Terabytes per second, Seo-Jun. And the source... the source is coming from the government's research district. Right where the 'Black Box' project is rumored to be."
Seo-Jun felt a sharp, cold jolt in his chest. His parents' workplace. The place they had spent the last three years of their lives, working on something they called "The Insurance Policy for the Future."
Suddenly, the high-pitched bell of the school rang, but it sounded distorted—metallic and warped, like a recording played at the wrong speed.
"Class time," Min-Ah said, shivering slightly. "Let's just... let's just go to class. Maybe it's all just a weird atmospheric thing. Like solar flares."
"Yeah," Dae-Sung muttered, though he gripped his basketball a little tighter. "Solar flares. That's probably it."
As they walked into the classroom, Seo-Jun felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. It wasn't a text message. It was a rhythmic, pulsing heat. He pulled it out under his desk as the teacher began to drone on about 20th-century history.
The screen of his phone was black, but deep within the glass, a faint blue light was pulsing.
Thump. Thump.
It felt like a heartbeat. And then, for a fraction of a second, a single word appeared on the screen in a font that looked more like DNA than text.
[ IRIS ]
Seo-Jun's breath hitched. "It's starting," he whispered to himself.
The school cafeteria was a cavernous hall of white tile and the clattering symphony of plastic trays. Usually, this was the heart of Daewon High's social life, a place where the hierarchy of the school's most popular and most isolated was most visible.
At the center table, Seo-Jun sat with his usual group. Around them, the atmosphere was strangely brittle. Kwang-soo, a loud-mouthed student from the soccer team, was aggressively recounting a goal he'd scored, but his eyes kept darting toward the wall-mounted televisions. Hana and Sora were sitting three tables away, their lunch untouched as they obsessively refreshed their news feeds.
"The rice is cold," Dae-Sung muttered, poking at his tray. "And the vending machines are only taking cash now. The card readers are all down. My phone won't even load the payment app."
"It's the latency," Jun said, his voice strained. He hadn't put his tablet away once. "It's getting worse. It's not just the internet anymore. I just saw a report that the automated subway lines in Seoul have shifted to manual override. Everything that relies on a synchronized clock is failing. Look at the shadows outside, Seo-Jun. Do they look... off to you?"
Seo-Jun didn't respond immediately. His dark eyes were fixed on the television across the hall. The news anchor was speaking, but the audio was desynchronized from the video by at least five seconds. Behind the anchor, a live feed of the Seoul skyline showed the same iridescent blue lines Seo-Jun had noticed earlier—now thicker, weaving through the clouds like glowing veins. It looked like the sky was being mapped out by a giant, invisible architect.
"My head hurts," Seo-Jun finally said. It wasn't a normal headache. It felt like a rhythmic pressure, as if a needle were tapping against the inside of his skull. Thump. Thump.
"Maybe you're just dehydrated," Min-Ah said, her voice laced with concern. She reached out to touch his forehead, but the moment her fingers grazed his skin, a sharp crack of static electricity echoed through the air. She yelped, pulling her hand back. "Ow! Seo-Jun, you're literally glowing!"
Suddenly, the cafeteria went silent. It wasn't a natural silence; it was the heavy, suffocating quiet that precedes a lightning strike.
The televisions flickered. The bright newsroom vanished, replaced by a solid, deep-blue screen. A single, white cursor blinked in the center.
"What's going on?" Officer Kang, the school's security officer, stepped into the center of the hall, his hand instinctively hovering over his radio. "Everyone, stay in your seats. It's likely just a broadcast error due to the solar flares."
But then, the speakers in the ceiling crackled. A sound began to leak through—a sound that wasn't music or speech, but a high-pitched, crystalline chime that felt like it was vibrating in the students' very teeth.
[...IDENTIFYING HOST...]
Seo-Jun let out a low groan, clutching the sides of his head. The world around him began to fragment. His vision wasn't just seeing light anymore; it was seeing vectors. He saw the heat signatures of the students—a hundred glowing silhouettes of orange and red. He saw the structural weak points of the cafeteria ceiling, highlighted in translucent red. He saw the electromagnetic waves radiating from every phone in the room like ripples in a pond.
"Seo-Jun? Your eyes! What's happening to your eyes?!" Min-Ah gasped, recoiling in shock.
Seo-Jun's obsidian eyes were no longer dark. A faint, electric-blue ring had formed around his pupils, spinning with the speed of a high-end processor.
[...SYNC 1%...]
A voice—cool, feminine, and terrifyingly precise—echoed directly in his mind, drowning out the screams of the students around him.
IRIS: [Good afternoon, Seo-Jun. I have been waiting for your synaptic threshold to reach the required level. My name is IRIS. I am the Integrated Resource Intelligence System, the final inheritance left by your father, Director Kang.]
"Get out... of my head," Seo-Jun whispered, his voice trembling. He felt like his brain was being unzipped, his memories being scanned and sorted into folders.
"Who are you talking to?" Dae-Sung asked, standing up and grabbing Seo-Jun's arm. "Hey! Officer Kang! Something's seriously wrong with Seo-Jun! He looks like he's having a seizure!"
IRIS: [Master, please remain calm. The 'Protocol Zero G'—the Great Shift—has been initiated by the Global Research Coalition. In precisely forty-two minutes, the electromagnetic pulse will neutralize all unshielded technology. The 'Black Box' in your home's basement is the only localized node that can protect your biological data from the corruption.]
Seo-Jun looked up at the window. The blue lines in the sky were no longer static. They were descending, touching the tops of the skyscrapers.
"Dae-Sung... Min-Ah... we have to go," Seo-Jun said, his voice suddenly losing its tremor and becoming eerily calm. He stood up, and for the first time, he didn't look like a skinny, fragile student. He stood with the terrifying posture of someone who knew exactly how the world was going to break.
"Go where? The school is on lockdown! Look at the gates!" Officer Kang shouted, walking toward them.
"The lockdown won't matter when the sky falls," Seo-Jun replied.
He turned to Jun. "Jun, can you still access the local traffic cams? Use the emergency bypass I showed you last semester."
"I... I can try," Jun stuttered, his fingers flying across his tablet. "Wait... the cameras near the Research District... they're showing military convoys. But they're not ours. They have no markings. Just black plating."
IRIS: [Correction: Those are retrieval units. They are looking for you, Master. If they find the Black Box before we arrive, your survival probability drops to 0.003%.]
"Dae-Sung, grab your bag. Min-Ah, stay close to me. Don't let go of my jacket," Seo-Jun ordered.
As they moved toward the exit, the white-screened televisions changed once more. The cursor vanished, replaced by a countdown timer that matched the one pulsing in the corner of Seo-Jun's vision.
00:41:59
The first explosion rocked the city. It wasn't a bomb; it was a transformer at the nearby power station, unable to handle the massive surge of data flowing through the lines. The lights in the cafeteria shattered, raining glass down on the screaming students.
In the darkness, Seo-Jun's eyes were the only source of light—two glowing blue stars in the chaos.
"Follow me," he said, his voice cutting through the panic like a blade. "The world we knew is over. We're going to my house."
"Follow me," Seo-Jun said, his voice cutting through the panic like a blade. "The world we knew is over. We're going to my house."
The words had barely left his lips when the emergency backup lights flickered on, bathing the cafeteria in a sickly, rhythmic crimson. The sirens outside had shifted from a warning to a continuous, soul-piercing wail. Students were trampling over chairs, some sobbing under tables, while others—like Hana and Sora—stood frozen in shock, their phones displaying nothing but a static-filled blue screen.
"Seo-Jun, wait!" Officer Kang shouted, shoving through the crowd. He finally reached them, his face pale but his eyes hard with authority. "You can't just run out there! The protocol says—"
"The protocol is dead, Officer," Seo-Jun interrupted, not even turning his head.
IRIS: [Warning. Officer Kang's pulse rate: 125. Adrenaline levels: High. He will attempt to restrain you in 3... 2...]
As the officer reached for Seo-Jun's shoulder, Seo-Jun moved. It wasn't a human movement; it was a blur of efficiency. He caught the officer's wrist and pivoted, using the man's own momentum to guide him away. It was gentle, yet absolute.
"Stay with the students, Officer," Seo-Jun said, his glowing eyes locking onto the man. "Keep them away from the windows. The first wave of the atmospheric pulse will shatter the glass in ten minutes."
Kang froze, his mouth hanging open. There was something in Seo-Jun's voice—a resonance, a weight of truth—that made his own training feel like a hobby. He nodded slowly, his hand dropping. "Go. Just... get out of here."
"Dae-Sung, lead the way. Use the back exit through the kitchen," Seo-Jun commanded.
Dae-Sung, still clutching his basketball as if it were a weapon, didn't argue. He'd known Seo-Jun since they were five, and he'd never seen his friend look so... certain. He kicked open the swinging metal doors of the kitchen, and the group burst into the stainless-steel maze of the prep area.
Min-Ah was trembling, her hand white-knuckled as she gripped the hem of Seo-Jun's blazer. "Seo-Jun, the sky... why is it turning that color?"
Through the high kitchen windows, the afternoon was vanishing. The iridescent blue webs in the atmosphere had begun to pulse. Every time they glowed, the air outside rippled, as if the very atoms of the city were being reorganized.
"It's not turning a color, Min-Ah," Seo-Jun said, his mind racing through the data IRIS was feeding him. "It's being digitized. The 'Zero G' protocol is the Earth's backup drive being formatted."
IRIS: [Master, 38 minutes remaining until 'The Great Reset'. Localized GPS is failing. I am switching to internal inertial navigation. Recommendation: Accelerate. The 'Retrieval Units' have breached the school perimeter.]
"Retrieval units?" Jun stammered, holding his dead tablet. "You mean the military?"
"I mean the people who don't want me to reach the Black Box," Seo-Jun replied.
They burst out of the kitchen's service door into the narrow alleyway behind the school. The temperature had dropped ten degrees. The sky was now a deep, unnatural violet, and a fine, glowing dust—like digital snow—was starting to fall from the clouds.
"Look!" Dae-Sung pointed.
At the end of the alley, three black SUVs skidded into view, blocking the exit. They didn't have license plates. The men who stepped out weren't wearing Korean military fatigues. They were in matte-black tactical gear, their faces hidden behind high-tech visors that glowed with a familiar orange light.
"That's them," Seo-Jun whispered.
One of the men raised a long, sleek rifle—a pulse weapon that hummed with a low-frequency vibration.
IRIS: [Targeting confirmed. Kinetic shields: Offline. Recommendation: Tactical evasion. Master, I am unlocking 5% of your neural motor-reflexes. This will be... painful.]
"Do it," Seo-Jun hissed.
A jolt of white-hot electricity surged through Seo-Jun's spine. He let out a choked gasp as his muscles spasmed, then tightened. The world slowed down. He could see the dust motes in the air. He could see the trigger finger of the mercenary tightening.
"Get down!" Seo-Jun roared.
He tackled Min-Ah and Dae-Sung to the ground just as a bolt of blue energy hissed through the space where their heads had been a second ago. The energy hit the brick wall behind them, and the bricks didn't explode—they simply vanished, turned into a fine, grey mist.
"They're not trying to arrest us," Jun whimpered, pressing himself against the trash bins. "They're trying to delete us!"
"Not if I delete them first," Seo-Jun said. He stood up in the middle of the alley, his eyes burning with a brilliant, fierce blue light that defied the violet sky.
In that moment, the "Quiet Prince" was gone. In his place stood the first Admin of a dying world.
IRIS: [Protocol: Zero G — Combat Mode Initiated.]