The rain hit us in freezing, blinding sheets the moment we broke out of the plaza’s immediate radius.
We dragged Assemblyman Kang through a labyrinth of narrow service alleys, moving two blocks east before cutting south into the old commercial district.
Kang wasn’t making it easy.
He was slipping in his Italian leather loafers, his chest heaving, his tailored suit completely ruined by the wet asphalt and grease of the city’s underbelly.
”My security…
my phone…” Kang gasped, trying to dig into his soaked jacket pocket as we hauled him over a low chain-link fence.
”Drop it!” Sua hissed, slapping the phone out of his hand.
It clattered into a murky puddle, the screen flashing once before dying.
“Unless you want to broadcast our GPS coordinates to every skin-stealing freak in a ten-mile radius, you’re off the grid tonight.”
”You can’t do this!
I am Assemblyman—”
”I swear to God,” Sua interrupted, grabbing him by the silk lapels of his suit and slamming him back against the wet brick wall of the alley.
She didn’t raise her voice, but the cold, flat edge in her tone made Kang instantly freeze.
“If you tell me who you are one more time, I will leave you here for the machines.
Do you understand?
Nod if you understand.”
Kang swallowed hard, his eyes darting to the sawed-off shotgun resting under Sua’s coat.
He nodded frantically.
”Good,” she breathed, letting him go.
She turned to me, wiping rain from her eyes.
“There’s an old place two streets down.
An underground jazz club that went bankrupt during the zoning shifts five years ago.
I know the owner.
He left the back delivery door keyed to a standard master lock.
We can lay low there.”
I nodded, my throat too bruised to manage more than a raspy grunt.
Commander Han’s synthetic fingers had felt like cold steel pipes crushing my windpipe.
Every breath I took burned, but the adrenaline pumping through my veins was keeping me on my feet.
We pushed through the downpour for another ten minutes until we reached a set of concrete steps leading below street level.
A rusted neon sign shaped like a saxophone hung completely dark above the entrance.
Sua went to work on the rusted padlock with her tension wrenches.
My hands were shaking too badly from the cold and the adrenaline crash to be of any help, so I stood guard, keeping my eyes on the street-level shadows.
Nothing moved except the rain.
Click.
Sua kicked the heavy door open.
“Inside.
Now.”
We stumbled into the pitch-black space.
It smelled of stale beer, decades-old cigarette smoke, and damp velvet.
Sua locked the heavy deadbolt behind us and dragged a heavy wooden crate in front of the door for good measure.
She pulled a small tactical flashlight from her apron, clicking it onto its lowest setting.
The dim beam swept across the room.
It was a spacious, defunct lounge.
Chairs were stacked upside down on circular tables, and a thick layer of dust covered a grand piano sitting on a small corner stage.
Kang collapsed into one of the dusty leather booths, burying his face in his trembling hands.
“This is a nightmare.
This is an absolute nightmare.
Han…
Commander Han was with my detail for three years.
He has a wife.
He has a daughter.”
”Commander Han is dead, Assemblyman,” I said, my voice sounding like gravel.
I pulled out one of the overturned chairs and sat down heavily, resting my elbows on my knees.
“Whoever he was, he’s been dead for a while.
The thing trying to put a needle in your neck was just wearing his face.”
Kang looked up, his face pale and slick with rainwater.
“What…
what does that even mean?
What do they want with me?
If this is about the zoning laws—”
”It’s not about zoning laws,” I cut in.
I looked at Sua, who was systematically checking the room’s perimeter to ensure all the basement windows were boarded up tight.
She gave me a brief nod.
I turned back to the politician.
“In exactly forty-eight hours, you’re supposed to be dead in an alley with a knife in your chest.
That was their original plan.
They were going to frame me for it, take your body, peel your face off, and put it on one of those androids.
But because we forced their hand tonight, they tried to do it early.”
Kang stared at me, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“Replace me?
Why?”
”That’s what we need you to tell us,” Sua said, walking over and resting her shotgun on the table.
She pulled up a chair next to me.
“You’re a politician.
You have power, but you’re not the President.
You don’t have nuclear launch codes.
So what do you have access to this week that is worth burning an undercover asset like Commander Han?”
Kang hesitated.
His political instincts were fighting his sheer terror.
He looked at the shotgun, then at me, weighing his options.
”I don’t know,” he lied, looking away.
I sighed.
I didn’t have the patience for this.
In Run 22, I had tried to play the diplomatic game with a corrupt CEO, and it had cost me three fingers and my life.
”Look at me,” I said, leaning closer.
The dim light of the flashlight caught the dark, angry bruises forming around my throat in the shape of massive, unnatural fingers.
“I have died more times than you can count trying to figure out what these things are.
If you hold back information right now, they will find us.
They will kill us.
And then they will take your life, your face, and your name, and use it to ruin this city.
What is on your schedule for the next three days?”
Kang shuddered, his eyes dropping to the floor.
“The Aegis Grid,” he whispered.
Sua frowned.
“The automated city defense network?
I thought that project was delayed by the city council.”
”It was,” Kang admitted, his voice shaking.
“Publicly, the council voted to delay the integration of the Aegis AI into the city’s police and traffic networks.
But privately…
there is a closed-door executive vote happening tomorrow night at the Ministry of Defense.
I’m the deciding swing vote on the committee.
If I vote yes, the Aegis Grid goes live at midnight.
It hands complete surveillance and automated drone control over to the central system.”
Sua and I exchanged a dark look.
If the Apex Foundation replaced Kang and cast that deciding vote, they wouldn’t just be operating in the shadows anymore.
They would have the keys to the entire city’s security infrastructure.
They could track anyone, kill anyone, and use the police’s own drones to do it.
”Who pushed for the secret vote?” I asked.
”The motion was brought forward by Director Baek,” Kang said, wiping a trembling hand across his mouth.
“Director of the 7th Bureau.”
My blood turned to ice.
The 7th Bureau.
The same intelligence agency I was supposedly a part of in Run 46.
The same agency Detective Park had mentioned in the interrogation room right before he died.
I reached into my inner coat pocket and pulled out the charred leather diary.
”What is that?” Kang asked, leaning back nervously.
”Nothing you need to worry about,” Sua told him sharply.
She pointed to a door behind the bar counter.
“There’s an old manager’s office back there.
Go inside, lock the door, and get some sleep.
We’ll wake you when it’s safe to move.”
Kang didn’t argue.
He looked thoroughly broken.
He pushed himself up from the booth and shuffled toward the office, the door clicking shut behind him.
The moment he was gone, the heavy tension in the room seemed to drop by half.
It was just the two of us now.
The sound of the rain beating against the pavement above echoed faintly through the ceiling.
Sua let out a long, exhausted breath and leaned back in her chair, staring up at the dark ceiling.
”Director of the 7th Bureau,” she muttered.
“Tell me your past selves knew about this.”
”They knew the 7th Bureau was compromised,” I said, opening the diary to the blank pages at the back.
“But the fragment of Page 12 we found in your shop didn’t name Director Baek.
It just said the organization controlled the city from the inside.”
Sua finally looked at me.
The adrenaline was wearing off, and in the dim light of the flashlight, I could see how pale she looked.
Her hands, which had been so steady holding the shotgun, were now trembling slightly as they rested on the table.
She was trying hard to hide it, but the reality of what she had just survived was crashing down on her.
She wasn’t a soldier.
She was an antique dealer who just happened to be incredibly brave.
”Hey,” I said softly.
She blinked, snapping her attention to me.
“What?”
”You did good tonight,” I told her, my voice gentle.
“If you hadn’t pulled that trigger, I’d be dead right now.
For the forty-seventh time.”
Sua stared at me for a long moment, a complex mix of emotions crossing her face.
Then, she let out a quiet, breathy laugh.
“You’re a mess, Ji-hoo.
Your neck looks like it got caught in a hydraulic press.”
She stood up and walked over to the old bar counter, rummaging through the dusty cabinets behind it.
A minute later, she returned with a faded green metal first-aid box.
”Jazz clubs always have these,” she said, sitting back down and flipping the latches open.
“Too many drunk patrons breaking glass.”
She pulled out a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, some cotton pads, and a tube of bruising ointment.
”Lean forward,” she ordered.
I did as I was told.
Sua moved her chair a few inches closer.
The scent of rain, gunpowder, and old leather washed over me as she leaned in.
Her touch was incredibly gentle as she dabbed the cold alcohol onto the minor cuts on my jawline before squeezing some ointment onto her fingertips.
”This is going to sting,” she warned softly.
She pressed her fingers against the dark bruises wrapping around my throat.
I winced, my breath hitching slightly, but I didn’t pull away.
We were sitting so close I could see the faint pulse beating at the base of her neck.
For a few quiet minutes, the only sound in the room was the drumming rain and our steady breathing.
It felt surreal.
Just an hour ago, I was sitting in a police station waiting to be executed, alone with the ghosts of my past lives.
Now, I was sitting in a dark, dusty jazz club with someone who actually believed me.
”Why did you trust me?” I asked quietly, not breaking eye contact as she worked the ointment into my skin.
“Back in the alley.
You could have run.
You could have handed me over.”
Sua paused, her fingers resting lightly against my jaw.
She looked down, her dark eyes studying my face as if searching for something.
”Because of the way you looked at me,” she finally answered, her voice dropping to a near-whisper.
“When that van crashed through my shop, you didn’t look scared for yourself.
You looked terrified for me.
I’ve met a lot of liars in my life, Ji-hoo.
But you can’t fake that kind of panic.”
She pulled her hand back, wiping the excess ointment onto a tissue.
She cleared her throat, suddenly looking a little flustered.
“Anyway.
You’ll live.
Assuming your magic book doesn’t tell us we’re about to be blown up.”
I smiled faintly.
“Thanks, Sua.”
I reached for the diary resting on the table.
The cover was cool to the touch, meaning we weren’t in immediate danger.
But as I opened the cover, the hairs on my arms stood up.
A fresh paragraph of deep, black ink was slowly etching itself onto the page.
I leaned over the book, and Sua leaned in right beside me, our shoulders brushing as we read the words forming in real-time.
Run 47.
You saved the Assemblyman.
The timeline has violently corrected itself.
Apex knows you are not working alone anymore.
Because Commander Han failed, the Foundation has activated the ‘Cleaner’.
He does not wear a mask.
He does not use androids.
He is human, and he is hunting the girl.
My heart stopped.
To find the second fragment of Page 12, you must access the server room in the basement of the Ministry of Defense before the vote tomorrow night.
But be warned, Ji-hoo.
The man who holds the keys to that server room…
is Detective Park.
I stared at the last line, my mind reeling.
”Detective Park?” Sua asked, reading over my shoulder.
“I thought you said he died in the police station.”
”He did,” I whispered, a cold knot tightening in my stomach.
“I saw his body on the floor.”
If Detective Park was dead…
then whoever was holding the keys to the Ministry of Defense tomorrow wasn’t him at all.
It was something wearing his face.
And it was waiting for us.