The gunshot was deafening inside the small room.
The heavy bullet slammed straight through the masked man’s chest.
He staggered backward into the hallway, his silenced pistol clattering onto the floor.
For a moment, I thought he was going to fall.
Instead, he grabbed the doorframe and slowly straightened his body.
He didn’t scream.
He didn’t even seem to feel any pain.
Through the bullet hole in his dark suit, I didn’t see blood.
I saw thick silver sparks and a mess of wires twitching beneath the torn fabric.
A small mechanical sound came from inside his chest, followed by a faint clicking noise that grew louder as he tried to move.
My breath caught in my throat.
He’s not human.
The realization sent a cold shiver down my spine.
It’s an android.
Before I could process what I was seeing, the second masked man stepped over his damaged partner.
He didn’t even glance at the hole in the first man’s chest.
Instead, he reached beneath his jacket and pulled out a long, needle-like weapon.
The weapon was almost as long as my forearm.
A thin glass chamber ran along its side, filled with bright green liquid that moved whenever he tilted his wrist.
He raised it toward my neck.
I tried to aim the revolver, but my hands were shaking, and the handcuffs made it difficult to hold the weapon properly.
The masked man moved with frightening speed, closing the distance between us before I could steady my arms.
I squeezed the trigger twice.
BANG!
BANG!
The gunshots echoed through the room.
Both bullets struck his shoulder, forcing him sideways.
His weapon slipped from its original path, and the needle shot past my head before embedding itself in the concrete wall barely an inch above my ear.
A sharp hiss followed.
I turned just in time to see the green liquid leaking from the needle.
The concrete around it began to bubble, and a thin stream of smoke rose from the damaged wall.
My blood ran cold.
Whatever that substance was, I didn’t want to find out what it would do to a human body.
The second android grabbed its shoulder, trying to regain its balance.
The first one was already moving again, despite the damage to its chest.
I couldn’t stay there.
I pushed myself off the floor, nearly losing my balance as pain shot through my shoulder.
The revolver felt heavy in my hands, and my ears were still ringing from the gunshots.
I rushed past the two androids before either could block the doorway, stumbling into the hallway with my heart hammering against my ribs.
I expected to hear shouting.
I expected officers running toward the interrogation room, weapons drawn, demanding to know what had happened.
Instead, the police station was dead silent.
It wasn’t ordinary silence.
It was the kind that made every small sound feel wrong.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and my shoes scraped against the floor, but there were no ringing phones, no conversations, and no keyboards clicking behind the desks.
I slowed down.
Something terrible had happened.
I moved toward the front desk, keeping the revolver close to my chest.
My eyes searched the corridor, looking for a police officer or anyone who could explain why the entire station had gone quiet.
Then I saw him.
Detective Park was lying face down near the coffee machine.
For a moment, I couldn’t move.
His brown trench coat was spread across the floor, and a pool of dark blood had formed beneath his head.
One of his hands rested near a fallen paper cup, while the other was stretched toward the desk as though he had been trying to reach something before he collapsed.
Three other officers lay nearby.
None of them moved.
I stared at Park, remembering the way he had questioned me only minutes earlier.
He had been suspicious, impatient, and convinced that I was hiding something.
But he had still been alive when he walked out of the interrogation room.
Now he was lying on the floor, and I couldn’t tell whether he had even known what was coming.
I took one uncertain step toward him.
A sharp spike of pain shot through my head.
I grabbed the side of my face, nearly dropping the revolver.
The pain was so intense that my knees almost gave way.
At the same time, the leather diary inside my coat grew strangely hot against my side.
I pulled it out with trembling hands and opened it.
The pages fluttered as I searched for the latest entry.
Most of them were still blank, but a faint red glow had begun to spread across one of the pages.
Then, right before my eyes, fresh red ink appeared.
The letters formed quickly, as though an invisible hand was writing furiously across the paper.
Don’t look at Park.
He’s already dead.
I stared at the words, unable to understand how the book knew what I was doing.
Another sentence appeared beneath the first.
The androids aren’t here to capture you.
They are wiping the entire precinct to erase your existence from the city records.
My grip tightened around the diary.
Leave through the basement garbage chute NOW.
If you take the front door, the sniper on the rooftop opposite the station will put a bullet through your head in four seconds.
I looked toward the station’s main entrance.
Through the glass doors, I could see the street outside.
A few cars passed in the distance, their headlights moving across the wet pavement.
Everything looked normal.
I couldn’t see a sniper, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
The ink stopped moving.
For a moment, I stood there, trying to decide whether I should trust a diary that claimed I had already died forty-six times.
Then heavy footsteps echoed from the far end of the hallway,I turn immediately,
Several figures appeared in the distance, their dark suits almost blending into the shadows.
The same smooth black masks covered their faces.
One of them carried a rifle, while another held a compact weapon that looked nothing like anything issued to ordinary police officers.
They were coming toward me, I didn’t wait to count them.
I turned and sprinted down the corridor toward the back staircase.
My shoes slipped against the polished floor, and I had to grab the wall to stop myself from falling.
Behind me, the footsteps grew louder.
“Target located,” a metallic voice called out.
I pushed harder.
The corridor seemed longer than it had when I first entered the station.
My lungs burned, and every breath scraped against my dry throat.
I reached the heavy fire door at the end and slammed my shoulder against the push-bar.
The door burst open.
I stumbled through and nearly fell down the concrete steps.
I caught the railing with one hand and hurried downward, taking the stairs two at a time until I reached the basement.
The air down there smelled of rotten vegetables, wet cardboard, and old cleaning chemicals.
A single emergency light cast a weak red glow across the narrow boiler room.
Pipes ran along the ceiling, and several large garbage bins stood against the wall.
At the far end was a metal chute built into the concrete.
It was used to dispose of heavy rubbish bags, dropping them into the service alley behind the building.
I looked at the opening.
It was narrow, dark, and covered in grease.
There was no way to know how far the drop was or what waited at the bottom.
But I had no other choice.
A loud explosion shook the basement.
I spun around just as the fire door at the top of the stairs blew off its hinges.
The metal door crashed against the wall, sending fragments tumbling down the steps.
Dust filled the air, and the emergency light flickered as the sound rolled through the room.
A figure appeared at the top of the staircase.
Its black mask reflected the red light.
“Target identified,” a cold, metallic voice announced.
“Moving to execute.”
I didn’t think twice.
I shoved the revolver into my coat pocket, ran toward the chute, and climbed onto its metal edge.
My hands slipped against the greasy surface, but I managed to pull myself forward.
For one last second, I looked back.
The masked figure was coming down the stairs.
Then I threw myself into the darkness.
The slide was steep, greasy, and painfully narrow.
I tumbled through the chute, striking my shoulder against the metal walls.
My coat caught on something, and I felt the fabric tear as I continued downward.
For three agonizing seconds, I had no idea which way I was facing.
Then the chute opened beneath me.
I crashed onto a pile of garbage bags in the alley behind the station.
The impact knocked the breath out of my lungs.
I lay still for a moment, staring at the dark sky between the buildings while the smell of rotten food filled my nose.
My shoulder throbbed, my back hurt, and something wet had soaked through the sleeve of my coat.
I forced myself to roll onto my side and pushed away the garbage bags covering my legs.
The cool night air hit my face.
I had escaped.
I was bruised, covered in filth, and still wearing handcuffs, but I was alive.
For now.
I struggled to my feet and looked toward the mouth of the alley.
The street beyond appeared empty, though I could hear the distant hum of traffic.
I couldn’t see the police station’s main entrance from where I stood, and I didn’t know whether the androids had followed me into the basement.
I wanted to believe I had lost them.
But the diary had already taught me that believing something didn’t make it true.
I pulled the book from my coat again.
The red writing from earlier had begun to fade.
As I watched, the letters slowly disappeared, leaving the page blank for a few seconds before a new paragraph formed in my own familiar handwriting.
Good.
You made it to the alley.
Now look under the blue dumpster to your left.
I left a small black key there during Run 45.
It unlocks those handcuffs.
I read the message twice.
Run 45.
The words made my stomach tighten.
My past self had been here before.
Not just in this alley, but in this exact situation.
He had escaped through the same garbage chute, and he had left a key beneath a dumpster because he knew I would need it.
How much of my life had already been planned by someone who was supposed to be me?
I looked to my left.
A rusted blue dumpster stood against the wall, its lid partly open.
Several garbage bags lay scattered around its wheels.
I hurried toward it and dropped to my knees, ignoring the pain in my shoulder.
The ground beneath the dumpster was damp and covered in dirt.
I pushed my cuffed hands underneath, feeling around until my fingers brushed against a small piece of metal.
I reached farther and managed to pull it free.
It was a tiny, flat handcuff key attached to a piece of faded red string.
For a moment, I simply stared at it.
Then I tried to fit the key into the lock.
My hands shook so badly that I missed the opening twice.
I cursed under my breath, took a slow breath, and tried again.
The key slid into place.
I turned it.
Click.
The steel cuffs opened and fell into the dirt.
I rubbed my raw wrists, feeling a wave of relief wash over me.
The skin beneath the cuffs was red and sore, and my fingers felt stiff after being held in the same position for so long.
At least I could move freely now.
But the relief didn’t last.
I looked down at the handcuffs lying beside my knees, then at the key in my palm.
If my past self had left this key during Run 45, that meant he had known I would end up in this exact alley during Run 47.
He had known the police would arrest me, that the androids would attack the station, and that I would escape through the basement garbage chute.
He had prepared for all of it.
How many times had I done this?
I stared at my hands, noticing the rough skin across my knuckles and the small scars I couldn’t remember getting.
How many times had I run down that chute, found this key, and tried to fix the same disaster?
And how many times had I failed?
I opened the diary again, hoping the next entry would give me an answer.
Instead, fresh red ink began to form across the page.
You have twenty minutes before the Apex Foundation locks down the district.
My eyes moved quickly across the sentence.
Your first goal is not to fight them.
You are too weak right now.
You need to find the first fragment of Page 12.
Page 12.
The missing page.
The only part of the diary that might explain who had betrayed me during the previous run.
I turned the book over, checking the binding again as if the missing piece might have returned on its own.
Nothing had changed.
“Where is it?” I whispered.
The red ink disappeared.
For several seconds, the page remained blank.
I was beginning to think the diary had nothing more to tell me when a new line slowly appeared.
302 Mapo Street.
I leaned closer.
Old antique shop.
Ask the shopkeeper for the ‘Broken Clock.’
I read the address carefully, committing it to memory.
Then another sentence appeared beneath it.
And Ji-hoo…
I stopped breathing for a moment.
The handwriting looked exactly like mine, but something about those words made them feel more personal than the other instructions.
Do not tell her your real name.
I stared at the sentence.
Her?
Who was the shopkeeper, and why would telling her my name put me in danger?
Before I could think of another question, the ink began to fade.
I quickly closed the diary and pushed it inside my coat.
Then I looked toward the street beyond the alley, where the distant glow of Seoul’s buildings rose against the night sky.
Somewhere out there, a man named Kang Min-seok was still alive, unaware that a photograph of his dead body already existed.
Somewhere inside the police station, Detective Park and three other officers lay dead.
And somewhere, two damaged androids were probably reporting my escape to the people who had sent them.
I had no money, no phone, no safe place to hide, and no memory of the forty-six lives that had brought me here.
All I had was a charred diary, a mysterious address, and a warning not to trust anyone.
I started walking.
If I wanted to survive, I needed to find the antique shop before the Apex Foundation locked down the district.
But as I reached the end of the alley, one question refused to leave my mind.
Who was the woman waiting for me at 302 Mapo Street, and why had my previous self been so afraid to let her know my name?