The silver sedan tore through the mountain fog like a ghost.
Without headlights, the winding road out of the Dosit-ri valley was a terrifying guessing game of shadows and sharp drop-offs.
I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white, fighting the loose alignment of the old car every time we took a corner.
Beside me, Sua had given up on the glovebox.
Instead, she had unzipped the top half of her ruined mechanic’s jumpsuit, tying the sleeves tightly around her wounded left bicep to create a makeshift tourniquet.
Her breathing was shallow, a quiet hiss of pain through her teeth with every bump in the road.
”How far to the highway?” she asked, her voice tight.
”Two miles,” I said, glancing at the dashboard.
“Kang is on foot.
He can’t have made it far, but if he hits the main junction, there’s an old truck stop.
It has public payphones.”
”Who is he going to call?”
”Someone he thinks can save him,” I muttered.
“A police chief.
A general.
He doesn’t understand that the Aegis Grid isn’t just a camera system—it’s a wiretap on the entire country.
The second his voice hits a phone line, the AI will match his biometric print and send Baek’s kill squads right to his coordinates.”
The dark trees suddenly broke apart, revealing the wide, flat expanse of the two-lane mountain highway.
A quarter-mile down the asphalt, glowing like a beacon in the thick gray mist, was the rusted sign of an abandoned rest stop.
The diner itself was boarded up and dark, but standing at the edge of the cracked parking lot was a single, illuminated glass phone booth.
Inside the booth, bathed in the sickly yellow glow of its overhead bulb, was Assemblyman Kang.
He had the heavy plastic receiver pressed to his ear and was frantically punching the metal keypad.
”He’s dialing!” Sua yelled, gripping the dashboard with her good hand.
I slammed my foot onto the gas pedal.
The sedan’s old engine screamed in protest.
We closed the distance in seconds.
I didn’t bother looking for a parking spot.
I yanked the steering wheel hard to the right, sending the car sliding sideways across the wet asphalt.
The tires shrieked as we skidded to a violent halt just ten feet from the glass booth.
Before the car even fully stopped, I kicked my door open and sprinted across the pavement.
”Kang!
Drop the phone!” I roared.
Kang jumped, spinning around in the narrow booth.
His eyes were wide and bloodshot, filled with pure panic.
“Ji-hoo!
You’re alive!
I—I’m calling the Capital Defense Command!
General Yoon is an old friend, he can send troops to extract us—”
”Hang it up now!” I lunged for the booth, grabbing the handle of the folding glass door.
Kang pulled back, shielding the receiver.
“No!
I have a direct line to his private residence!
It’s ringing!”
I shattered the glass pane with my elbow, reached through the jagged hole, and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt.
I ripped him completely out of the booth, sending him crashing onto the wet concrete of the parking lot.
The heavy plastic receiver dropped from his hand, dangling by its metal cord.
For a split second, there was total silence.
Then, a voice clicked through the dangling earpiece.
It wasn’t the sleepy voice of a military general.
It was smooth, synthetic, and terribly familiar.
”Voice print recognized.
Target: Assemblyman Kang.
Status: Deceased.
Re-evaluating timeline anomaly.
Aegis Grid local network activated.”
The yellow bulb inside the phone booth flickered.
With a sharp, electric crackle, the light shifted from warm yellow to a blinding, icy blue.
”Oh, God,” Kang whimpered, scrambling backward on his hands and knees.
“What did I do?”
”You just painted a target on our backs!” I shouted, hauling him to his feet by his collar.
“Get in the car!”
A low, mechanical hum vibrated through the fog above us.
It sounded like a massive swarm of hornets.
I looked up.
It was the size of a motorcycle, painted matte black, with four heavy rotors and a glowing blue sensory eye mounted under its chassis.
The drone’s spotlight snapped on, hitting us with a beam so bright it felt physical.
”Halt.
Do not move,” the drone’s external speaker blared.
“Lethal compliance authorized.”
A twin-barreled suppression turret descended from the drone’s belly.
”Run!” I shoved Kang violently toward the passenger side of the silver sedan.
The drone opened fire.
Heavy caliber rounds tore into the concrete, chewing a line of destruction straight toward us.
The glass phone booth exploded into a million shimmering shards.
I threw myself over the hood of the sedan as bullets ripped through the trunk, shattering the rear windshield in a shower of safety glass.
I scrambled into the driver’s seat, pulling the door shut just as another volley of rounds punched through the roof.
Kang was hyperventilating in the back, curled into a tight ball on the floorboards.
”Drive!” Sua yelled over the deafening roar of the gunfire.
She was already slumped low in her seat, using her good arm to pull the shattered remains of the rearview mirror off the windshield so I had a clear view.
I threw the car into drive and stomped on the gas.
The sedan lurched forward, fishtailing wildly as the tires fought for grip on the wet asphalt.
The drone banked sharply in the air, its rotors screaming as it pursued us down the dark mountain highway.
Its blue spotlight tracked our rear bumper perfectly.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
Bullets chewed through the back seats.
Kang shrieked as a round passed inches from his head, burying itself in the dashboard console between Sua and me.
”It’s faster than us!” I yelled, watching the blinding blue light fill the cabin.
“It’s going to shred the engine block!”
Sua gritted her teeth.
Her face was pale, glistening with cold sweat, but her eyes were calculating.
She looked at the center console, then at the heavy steel wrench resting near my boots.
”Ji-hoo,” she shouted over the wind rushing through the blown-out windows.
“Keep the wheel perfectly straight!
Do not swerve!”
Before I could ask why, Sua undid her seatbelt.
Ignoring her bleeding left arm, she grabbed the heavy iron wrench with her right hand and shoved her upper body halfway out of the shattered passenger window.
”Sua, get back inside!” I roared.
She didn’t listen.
The freezing wind whipped her hair violently around her face.
The drone swooped lower, hovering just twenty feet behind our trunk, lining up its turret for a kill shot right through the back window.
Sua didn’t aim at the drone.
She aimed at its blind spot.
With a fierce, agonizing cry, she hurled the heavy iron wrench straight up into the air, over the roof of our car.
The drone, traveling at sixty miles an hour, flew directly into the path of the iron.
CRUNCH!
The heavy wrench slammed directly into the drone’s front-right carbon fiber rotor.
The blade shattered instantly.
The machine lost all aerodynamic balance, violently spinning out of control.
It sparked in mid-air, plummeted toward the highway, and slammed into the asphalt, exploding in a brilliant ball of orange fire.
The blue spotlight vanished.
Darkness reclaimed the mountain road.
Sua collapsed back into the passenger seat, gasping for air.
Her face was totally drained of color, and fresh blood was seeping rapidly through the makeshift cloth tourniquet on her arm.
”Are we…
are we dead?” Kang sobbed from the floorboards in the back.
”No,” I breathed, my heart hammering against my ribs.
I looked over at Sua.
“That was…
brilliant.”
She managed a weak, exhausted smirk.
“Told you.
I’m…
the mechanic.”
Then her eyes rolled back, and she slumped forward against the dashboard, unconscious.
”Sua!” I grabbed her shoulder, pulling her back against the seat.
Her skin was freezing cold.
She was going into shock from blood loss.
The drone was destroyed, but the Aegis Grid knew our exact location now.
More machines would be coming.
I couldn’t stay on the highway.
Two miles down the road, I saw a faded wooden sign pointing toward an old logging trail: Deep Creek Cabins – 5km.
I ripped the steering wheel hard to the right, plunging the bullet-riddled sedan off the asphalt and onto the hidden, muddy forest road.
We bounced over deep ruts and exposed tree roots, driving deep into the dense pine forest until the highway was miles behind us.
Finally, hidden beneath a canopy of massive evergreen trees, I found an old, abandoned hunter’s cabin.
The roof was mossy, and the windows were caked with dirt, but it had four solid walls and a heavy wooden door.
I killed the engine.
The silence of the deep woods rushed in.
”Get out,” I ordered Kang.
“Help me carry her.”
Kang scrambled out, looking utterly ashamed of himself.
Together, we carefully lifted Sua from the passenger seat.
She was limp, her breathing terribly shallow.
I kicked the cabin door open.
The inside smelled of old dust and dry wood.
There was a rusted iron bedframe in the corner with a bare, mildewed mattress.
I laid her down gently, quickly shrugging off my coat and laying it over her chest to keep her warm.
”I…
I’m sorry,” Kang whispered from the doorway, his hands trembling.
“I didn’t know the phones were bugged.
I just wanted to stop this.”
”Go outside,” I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion.
“Keep watch.
If you hear anything, hit the wall twice.
Do not leave the porch.”
Kang nodded quickly and backed out, pulling the door shut behind him.
I knelt beside the bed.
I pulled the small first-aid kit Sua had managed to grab from the car before the attack out of her pocket.
I clicked on my small tactical flashlight, holding it in my teeth to free my hands.
Carefully, I untied the blood-soaked fabric from her arm.
The wound was deep, but clean.
The bullet had ripped right through the muscle, meaning there was no lead left inside to dig out.
I poured antiseptic directly over the wound.
Sua flinched in her unconscious state, a soft whimper escaping her lips.
”I’ve got you,” I whispered, my voice rough.
“You’re safe.”
I threaded the medical needle with surgical silk.
My hands were shaking.
I had died forty-six times.
I had been shot, stabbed, burned, and crushed.
I thought I had grown numb to the sight of blood.
But watching the needle piece her skin, knowing what she had sacrificed for me, made my chest ache in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time.
As I pulled the first stitch tight, the heavy secret of the Dosit-ri vault crashed over me again.
She is the creator.
She built the AI.
I looked at her pale face in the dim beam of the flashlight.
She looked so young.
So fiercely human.
How was I supposed to tell the woman who just risked her life for me that she was the reason this war existed in the first place?
How would the guilt of thirty stolen years not destroy her?
I finished the final stitch, tying it off and wrapping the arm in clean, tight white gauze.
I sat back on the dusty floorboards, leaning against the bedframe.
I reached out and gently brushed a damp strand of hair out of her eyes.
Her skin was warming up again.
She was going to be okay.
I pulled the Death Log from my pocket.
I didn’t open it.
I just held it in my hand, staring into the dark cabin.
I had the truth now.
But using it felt like it was going to cost me the only person in this timeline I actually cared about.
How do you feel about the pacing of the drone attack and the transition into this quieter, more intimate moment in the cabin?
Should we focus Chapter 17 on the morning after, when Sua wakes up and Ji-hoo finally tells her the truth?