The small orange flame danced terrifyingly close to the yellowed scrap of paper.
My heart felt like it was going to burst out of my ribs.
That piece of paper was the second fragment of Page 12.
If it burned to ash, I would lose another piece of the truth—and the identity of the person who had killed me forty-six times.
“Ji-hoo!
He’s going to burn it!” Sua hissed beside me, her knuckles white around her hidden weapon.
“I know!” I whispered back furiously.
My mind spun in circles.
The fake Park stood thirty feet down the hallway, holding the lighter in his right hand and the fragment in his left.
He wasn’t breathing, he wasn’t blinking, and he wasn’t going to negotiate.
He was programmed to force me into a mistake.
Think, Ji-hoo.
Think!
In Run 46, my past self had hidden that very fragment in the real Detective Park’s desk drawer at the station.
Apex must have stripped Park’s dead body and searched his office immediately after the massacre, handing the fragment to this android as bait.
They knew I would come for it.
“You have five seconds,” the cold, mechanical voice of fake Park echoed through the corridor.
The flame flickered higher, licking the bottom corner of the paper.
“Sua,” I breathed quickly, keeping my eyes locked on the lighter.
“Can you hit his right hand with a single shot from here without hitting the paper?”
Sua didn’t answer with words.
She stepped out from behind the concrete pillar, threw off her baggy mechanic canvas jacket, and raised her sawed-off shotgun in one smooth, fluid movement.
“I don’t miss at thirty feet,” she said.
BANG!
The thunderous roar of the shotgun shattered the quiet basement.
The heavy blast of pellets tore down the narrow hallway.
The fake Detective Park didn’t even have time to react.
The shotgun spray obliterated his right forearm.
The metallic lighter flew out of his hand, skipping across the linoleum floor as his arm shattered into a mess of sparking wires, melted plastic, and synthetic blood.
The fragment fell from his left hand, floating harmlessly toward the floor.
“Run!” Sua shouted.
I didn’t wait.
I sprinted down the hallway at full speed.
The android let out a distorted, electronic screech as its damaged systems glitched.
Even with its right arm completely destroyed, its internal combat programming kicked in.
It lunged forward with its remaining hand, reaching straight for my throat with terrifying speed.
I slid across the slick floor beneath its reaching fingers, scooping the falling scrap of paper right out of the air.
“Ji-hoo! Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
Watch out!” Sua screamed.
I rolled onto my back just in time to see fake Park turning toward me, his human face tearing apart along the jawline to reveal silver metal and glowing red optical sensors underneath.
He raised his heavy boot to crush my chest.
Page 8, Paragraph 2, my past self’s memory flashed in my brain.
Androids of this model have their central battery core located directly under the left collarbone.
I grabbed the heavy steel wrench I had tucked into my jumpsuit belt and swung it with everything I had straight into the left side of his chest.
CRACK!
The heavy iron tool punched clean through the synthetic skin and shattered the blue glass battery core beneath his collarbone.
A blinding shower of white sparks exploded from his shoulder.
The android froze instantly mid-stance, its red eyes flickering out before its heavy body collapsed onto the floor like a sack of bricks.
I lay on the floor, panting heavily, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Synthetic fluid and smoke drifted up from the dead machine inches from my face.
Sua rushed over, her shotgun held low as she scanned the hallway behind us.
“Are you okay?!”
“I’m…
I’m alive,” I gasped, pushing myself up into a sitting position.
“Did you get it?”
I held up my trembling hand.
Pinched between my thumb and index finger was the scorched, torn piece of Page 12.
It was slightly singed at the bottom corner, but the text written in my own slanted handwriting was completely readable.
Sua dropped to her knees beside me, her eyes scanning the paper over my shoulder.
The fragment read:
—is Director Baek of the 7th Bureau.
He is not a machine.
He is human.
He created the Apex Foundation using military budget funds to build the skin-wearing androids.
He plans to use the Aegis Grid to monitor every citizen in the country.
To stop him, you must reveal the truth to—
The sentence ended right there.
The rest of the page had been torn away into a third fragment.
“Director Baek,” Sua whispered, her dark eyes wide.
“The head of the entire national intelligence agency.
He’s the mastermind.”
“He’s human,” I said, the gravity of the revelation hitting me like a ton of bricks.
“The machines aren’t acting on their own.
A human being is pulling all the strings.”
“And he’s sitting upstairs in this very building right now for the secret Aegis Grid vote,” Sua added, her voice turning grim.
Before we could read any further, a loud, high-pitched alarm suddenly burst to life throughout the basement walls.
Red emergency lights began to flash frantically along the ceiling.
WAAAH!
WAAAH!
“Security breach in Sub-Level 2,” an automated female voice chimed over the loudspeakers.
“Lockdown initiated.
Armed response team dispatched.”
“We need to move!” Sua urged, grabbing my arm and pulling me to my feet.
“The shotgun blast triggered the building’s noise sensors!”
I shoved the fragment into my coat alongside the Death Log.
“The stairwell is blocked by the lockdown doors!
Where do we go?!”
Sua looked around frantically, her eyes stopping at the heavy steel door fake Park had been standing in front of.
“The server room!” she yelled over the deafening alarm.
“It has a direct emergency ventilation shaft that leads to the roof!”
She rushed to the keypad next to the door.
“What’s the code?!”
My pocket burned red hot against my ribs.
I ripped out the Death Log and flipped it open.
Fresh red ink was wildly scribbling itself across the page:
Code: 0–7–4–2.
Enter it NOW.
But Ji-hoo…
look at the server room floor when you step inside.
“Zero, seven, four, two!” I called out to Sua.
Her fingers flew across the digital pad.
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
The heavy steel door unlocked with a loud pneumatic hiss and slid open.
We threw ourselves inside, slamming the heavy door shut behind us just as heavy combat boots began thundering down the concrete staircase outside.
The server room was massive, filled with rows of towering black computer racks humming with blue neon lights and freezing cold air.
But as the door sealed behind us, I looked down at the floor, and my breath hitched.
Scattered across the polished concrete floor were dozens of empty, glass preservation pods.
And lying inside those pods…
were row upon row of perfectly sculpted, lifeless human faces waiting to be worn.
“God in heaven…” Sua breathed, backing away in utter horror.
My eyes swept across the terrifying display until they stopped on a glass pod sitting right in the center of the room.
Floating inside the blue preservative fluid was a face I recognized immediately.
It was my own face.