The match burned down to my fingers, stinging my bare skin before the darkness swallowed the vault again.
I dropped the charred wood onto the cold stone floor, but I couldn’t move.
My lungs felt tight, as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.
I stood in the pitch-black chamber, staring blindly at the spot where the three torn fragments of Page 12 lay assembled on the pedestal.
1998.
I whispered the year aloud into the silence.
My mind raced, fighting against basic human logic.
1998 was nearly thirty years ago.
If Han Sua had been Director Baek’s lead research partner back then, she would have to be in her late fifties by now.
But the woman lying bleeding on the catwalk outside was twenty-five years old.
Her face, her energy, her reflexes—none of it belonged to an aging scientist.
Then, the memory of the factory floor outside flashed in my mind.
The towering glass pods.
The glowing blue chemical fluid.
The preservation tanks designed to keep synthetic organs fresh for decades.
A cold wave of absolute horror washed over me.
Baek didn’t just steal her life’s work.
He had stolen her actual life.
He had locked a brilliant twenty-five-year-old woman inside a stasis pod, drowning her in chemical sleep while he built a machine empire using her stolen code.
For almost three decades, she hadn’t aged a single day.
When she finally woke up and escaped, her memories were entirely shattered by the trauma of the freezing process.
She wasn’t a clock repairer.
She was a ghost from a stolen timeline.
And she was the only one who could end this war.
A sudden, sharp groan echoed from the other side of the heavy steel door, snapping me out of my shock.
Sua.
I blindly reached out in the dark, my hands finding the massive iron wheel on the inside of the vault door.
I braced my boots against the stone floor and pulled with everything I had.
The explosion had warped the outer frame, making the heavy hinges grind like screaming metal.
With a final, desperate heave, the six-inch steel door cracked open.
Thick, acrid black smoke poured into the vault, smelling of melted plastic and burned explosives.
I pushed through the gap, stepping back out onto the chaotic factory floor.
The emergency backup lights had kicked on, bathing the cavernous underground room in a harsh, pulsing red glow.
The main vault doors were blackened and scorched.
I looked up.
The metal catwalk where Sua had been fighting the Cleaner was twisted and broken from the blast wave.
”Sua!” I shouted, my voice raw from the smoke.
”Down…
here,” a weak voice coughed.
I scrambled over a pile of fallen debris, my boots splashing through the clear synthetic fluid leaking from the shattered assembly tanks.
Sua was sitting slumped against the base of a concrete pillar near the center of the room.
Her shotgun lay in pieces a few feet away, the wooden stock splintered by the shockwave of the bomb.
She was holding her left arm tight against her ribs.
Blood was soaking through the torn fabric of her blue mechanic’s jumpsuit.
I dropped to my knees beside her, my heart hammering in my throat.
”Let me see,” I said, gently pulling her right hand away from the wound.
A high-velocity bullet had grazed her upper arm.
It was a deep, ugly gash, but the bullet hadn’t hit the bone.
She was going to live.
”The Cleaner?” I asked, looking frantically around the red-lit factory.
Sua swallowed hard, wincing in pain.
“Gone.
When I looked up…
he was dragging himself toward the freight elevator.
His knees were shattered, Ji-hoo.
I hit him solid with the iron pipe, but he still crawled out.”
”He’s retreating to call for a medical evac and reinforcements,” I said, tearing a long strip of fabric from the hem of my own jumpsuit.
I wrapped the cloth tightly around her bleeding arm, tying it off to stop the blood flow.
My hands were shaking slightly.
As I pulled the knot tight, I looked down at her face.
Covered in soot, sweat, and a few stray streaks of blood, she looked exhausted.
But looking at her now, everything was completely different.
I wasn’t just looking at the tough, stubborn girl who saved me in the jazz club.
I was looking at a genius.
A woman whose brilliant mind had been tortured and erased by the very man we were trying to kill.
I reached up, my thumb gently wiping a smear of black ash off her cheek.
My hand lingered there for a second longer than it needed to.
Sua looked up at me, her dark eyes catching the red emergency lights.
She noticed the shift in my expression immediately.
”Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked quietly, her breath hitching slightly.
”Like what?” I asked, my voice softer than I intended.
”Like I’m a ghost,” she murmured.
I felt the heavy weight of the Death Log in my pocket, pressing against my chest.
The truth of 1998 was burning a hole in my mind.
If I told her right now, in the middle of this ruined, terrifying laboratory, the shock of it might break her completely.
She had just fought a master assassin and survived a bomb blast.
She needed an anchor, not an identity crisis.
Not yet, I told myself.
Get her to safety first.
Then tell her the truth.
”I’m just looking at you because I thought I lost you,” I said honestly.
Sua’s eyes softened.
The tough, defensive wall she always kept up cracked just a fraction.
She leaned her face slightly into my palm, letting out a long, shaky breath.
For a fleeting second, the nightmare of the factory, the androids, and the Aegis Grid faded away.
It was just the two of us, surviving in the dark.
”You didn’t lose me,” she whispered.
Then, she pulled back, wincing as her arm throbbed.
“But we are going to lose our ride if we don’t get out of here.
Did you get the page?”
I nodded, helping her to her feet.
I wrapped my arm securely around her waist to support her weight, and she draped her uninjured arm over my shoulders.
”I got it,” I said.
“We have the answer.
We know how to stop Director Baek.”
”How?” she asked as we limped together toward the southern maintenance tunnel.
”We’ll talk about it in the car,” I deflected smoothly.
“Right now, we need to get back to Assemblyman Kang before the Cleaner’s backup arrives.”
We didn’t go back up the steep coal chute we used to break in.
With Sua’s injured arm, climbing was impossible.
Instead, we followed the red emergency arrows painted on the concrete floor, leading us toward a heavy steel fire door at the back of the facility.
I kicked the push-bar open.
The door gave way, revealing a long, sloping access tunnel that smelled of fresh mountain air.
We walked in silence for ten minutes, leaning heavily on each other.
Every step jarred my bruised ribs, and I could hear Sua gritting her teeth against the pain in her arm, but neither of us stopped.
Finally, the tunnel ended at a rusted iron gate.
We were standing in a small ravine just behind the abandoned town of Dosit-ri.
The moon was hidden behind thick clouds, but I could see the outline of the collapsed wooden miner shacks a hundred yards away.
”The car is just past those sheds,” I told her.
We moved quietly through the mud, staying low.
As we approached the specific shack where we had hidden the politician, I felt a knot tighten in my stomach.
The broken wooden door of the shack was swinging gently in the wind.
I let go of Sua’s waist, drawing my heavy police revolver.
I stepped in front of her, moving silently to the edge of the doorframe.
”Assemblyman?” I whispered into the dark shed.
No answer.
I pulled out my matchbox, struck a match, and threw it inside.
The tiny flame lit up the dirt floor.
The shack was entirely empty.
The heavy iron wrench I had given Kang to protect himself was lying in the mud near the doorway, abandoned.
”He’s gone,” Sua said, her voice tight with panic.
“Did the Cleaner get him?”
”No,” I said, picking up the iron wrench.
There was no blood on it.
There were no signs of a struggle in the dirt.
“If the Cleaner found him, there would be a body.
Kang ran.”
”Why would he run into the mountains alone in the dark?”
I looked back toward the main mountain road leading out of the valley.
“Because he was terrified.
He heard the explosion from the vault.
He thought we were dead, and he panicked.”
I pulled out the Death Log.
The leather was warm.
I flipped it open, praying for a location.
Run 47.
Kang has fled the valley.
He is walking west toward the highway, desperately trying to find a working telephone to call his political allies in Seoul.
He does not understand that the Aegis Grid controls all communications.
If he makes a phone call, Director Baek will locate him instantly.
I slammed the book shut, my jaw clenching.
”He’s heading for the highway to make a phone call,” I told Sua, turning back toward our hidden silver sedan.
“If he dials a number, the Aegis Grid will pinpoint his voice print.
Baek will send a strike team to the mountains.”
”Then we have to catch him before he finds a phone,” Sua said, pulling her car keys from her pocket with her good hand and tossing them to me.
”You’re bleeding, Sua.
You need medical supplies, not another chase.”
”I am the mechanic.
You are the driver,” she said fiercely, walking toward the passenger door.
“We need his political clearance to expose Baek to the military generals.
We don’t leave him behind.
Start the car.”
I didn’t argue.
I unlocked the sedan, jumped behind the wheel, and twisted the ignition wires together.
The old engine roared to life.
As I threw the car into gear and sped back down the dark canyon road, I looked over at Sua in the passenger seat.
She was tearing open the glovebox, looking for a first aid kit, her face set in determined concentration.
You have no idea who you really are, I thought, gripping the steering wheel.
But I swear, I won’t let Baek take you again.