The handcar ground to a halt with a loud, metallic squeal.
Old Man Yoon pulled back hard on the rusted iron brake lever.
The wooden platform bumped gently against a massive concrete wall blocking the end of the tracks.
There was nowhere else for the train line to go.
In front of us stood a heavy steel maintenance door, covered in peeling yellow paint and old warning signs.
”End of the line,” Yoon grunted, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“Past this door is the old Incheon utility hub.
The water pipes here connect straight into the main sewer lines of Seoul.”
I stepped off the handcar.
My boots splashed into ankle-deep, freezing water.
I walked over to the heavy steel door and pushed my shoulder against it.
With a loud groan of old hinges, it swung inward.
A rush of damp, heavy city air hit my face.
It did not smell like the fresh pine trees of the mountains anymore.
It smelled like wet concrete, exhaust fumes, and burnt electricity.
Sua stepped down from the platform next, holding her injured left arm close to her chest.
Assemblyman Kang climbed off last.
He looked terrified as he stared into the dark, echoing pipes ahead of us.
I reached into my tactical pack and pulled out a sealed bag of waterproof food rations.
I handed it to Old Man Yoon.
”Thank you, Yoon,” I told him.
“Get back to the mountains.
Stay safe.”
Yoon took the food with dirty hands.
His old, tired eyes softened as he looked past me to Sua.
“Bring down their system, girl,” he muttered softly.
“Let the dead rest in peace.”
We stepped through the doorway.
Yoon pulled the heavy steel door shut behind us, locking us in the dark.
For the next two hours, we moved like ghosts under the city.
The underground veins of Seoul were a maze of wide concrete storm drains and narrow maintenance ladders.
The water was cold and reached our knees in some places.
Rats scattered away from the weak yellow beam of my flashlight.
We had to move slowly.
We avoided the main subway tunnels entirely because the Aegis Grid had optical cameras scanning those tracks every five minutes.
Assemblyman Kang slipped twice in the muddy water, but he did not complain.
He just picked himself up, his ruined suit clinging to his shaking body.
Beside me, Sua pushed through the pain of her stitched shoulder.
Her face was pale, but her eyes were focused.
Finally, we reached an old iron ladder leading up to a surface manhole in the Mapo district.
I climbed the rusted rungs, pressing my back against the heavy iron cover.
I pushed it up just an inch, peering through the small crack.
The sky above was a bruised, unnatural purple.
The sun was setting, but the city was not dark.
Every single streetlamp, digital billboard, and bus stop glowed with an aggressive, pulsing blue light.
Seoul had been transformed into an open prison.
The Aegis Grid was fully active.
I watched an automated police drone drift silently down the narrow street like a mechanical shark.
Its blue laser swept over the empty pavement, searching for unauthorized human faces and body heat.
There was no one walking outside.
The citizens were locked in their homes.
I waited for the drone to turn the corner.
”Move fast,” I whispered down to the others.
“Keep your heads low.”
I pushed the heavy cover aside and climbed out.
I pulled Sua up by her good arm, then grabbed Kang by his collar and hauled him onto the wet asphalt.
I slid the iron cover back into place just as another drone passed two streets away.
We darted from the shadow of a brick wall into a narrow, trash-filled alleyway.
At the end of the alley stood a small, two-story brick building.
A faded wooden sign hung above the front door.
It read: Sua’s Timepieces — Repairs & Restoration.
The windows were completely dark.
A small paper sign that said “CLOSED” hung on the front glass.
Sua stopped dead in her tracks.
She stared at the small building, her breath catching in her throat.
”My shop,” she whispered, her voice shaking slightly.
“I walked out of here just three days ago like I was going to buy groceries at the market.
It feels like a hundred years ago.”
”Is the back entrance clear?” I asked, scanning the dark sky for drones.
”Yes.
The alley behind the workshop has a heavy deadbolt lock.
I installed it myself,” she said.
She reached into her pocket with trembling fingers and pulled out a small ring of brass keys.
We hurried down the side alley, keeping our backs pressed flat against the cold brick walls.
Sua slid a brass key into the metal door at the back of the building.
The lock clicked.
We tumbled inside into the dark safety of the repair shop.
I immediately locked the door behind us and dropped a heavy iron security bar across the frame.
The air inside was totally still.
The familiar smells of wood glue, brass polish, and old machine oil washed over me.
Dozens of antique clocks lined the wooden walls and shelves. Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
Their pendulums were frozen.
The shop was totally silent, trapped in time because its owner had been chased away by a nightmare she did not even remember creating.
Sua walked slowly to the middle of the room.
She looked at her main wooden workbench.
It was covered in tiny screwdrivers, magnifying glasses, tweezers, and brass gears.
”I didn’t just build a clock shop,” she murmured.
Her eyes were wide, and small tears pooled at the edges of her lashes.
“Every clock in this room…
I didn’t design them just to tell the time.”
She walked toward a massive, dark wood grandfather clock standing in the far corner of the room.
”What is it, Sua?” I asked, stepping closer to her.
”When I had my amnesia…
something deep inside my broken memory kept telling me to build these specific mechanisms,” she whispered.
She ran her fingers along the side of the wooden clock case.
“I thought I was just building puzzles for fun.
But I was trying to save my own work.”
She pressed a hidden brass peg disguised as a decorative bump on the side of the clock.
CLICK-WHIRR.
The heavy front wood panel of the clock slid open on hidden, oiled tracks.
Inside, there were no metal weights or swinging pendulums.
Instead, sitting on a velvet cushion, was a hidden compartment containing a sleek, matte-black military data drive.
It had a heavy physical connection port on the end.
”My 1998 research backup,” Sua breathed.
She stared at the black drive in absolute shock.
“I hid it inside my own subconscious design.
My brain buried it here, waiting for the day I finally woke up.”
I stepped up right beside her.
My heart started racing.
“Can you use this drive to hack the local Aegis camera node?”
Sua looked up at me.
Her tears were gone.
They were replaced by the brilliant, terrifying focus of a master engineer ready to take her world back.
”Not just the local node,” she said, picking up the heavy black drive with her right hand.
“This is the master architecture key, Ji-hoo.
If we plug this into the street-level junction box outside, we don’t just blind a camera.
We blind this entire sector of Seoul.”
Before I could reply, a deafening, metallic explosion ripped through the room.
The large front glass window of the shop shattered into a million sharp pieces.