Stepping back onto a rigged stage isn't bravery. It's simply the morbid obligation of the man who wrote the script.
Sae-ri grabbed Yoo-jin's wrist with terrifying, desperate strength. Her dark eyes were wide with absolute, paralyzing horror. She instantly realized what he was about to do as he turned toward the dark, open doorway of the concrete bunker he had just fought so desperately to escape.
The dark, concrete maw of the bunker entrance exhaled a breath of cold, dusty air over their faces.
"No!" Sae-ri screamed over the chaotic roar of the confused crowd.
She violently fought the two trainees who instinctively tried to pull her away from the crumbling bunker entrance. She didn't care about the subterranean explosions echoing beneath their feet.
"You just got your memories back!" Sae-ri sobbed, digging her fingernails into his bloody wrist. "You promised me! You can't leave me again!"
Yoo-jin gently but firmly pried her fingers away from his arm. His restored heart completely shattered at the raw, devastating sound of her voice. Every single instinct in his human body screamed at him to stay on the surface, to run away with her and let the government deal with the monsters.
But a producer never abandons his audience to save himself.
"If I stay up here, the crowd dies," Yoo-jin said, forcing his voice to remain perfectly steady despite the tears burning in his own eyes.
He didn't soften the truth. He pointed at the massive, packed sea of five million screaming fans surrounding the extraction zone.
"I am the target," Yoo-jin explained rapidly, his ruthless showrunner logic overriding his grief. "Protocol Eve is hunting the DRM master key. I have to pull their aggro back into the basement. If I fight them up here, the panic alone will cause a fatal stampede."
Before Sae-ri could argue again, the massive crowd violently parted.
Kai and Min-ji broke through the front line of trainees. The two idols were covered in soot and sweat, but they had their stolen Ministry assault rifles raised and ready. They had heard the subterranean explosion and instantly sprinted toward the bunker entrance.
"We're coming with you," Kai yelled, his voice thick with adrenaline as he stepped up beside Yoo-jin.
Min-ji cocked her heavy rifle with a sharp, metallic clack. "We didn't survive that basement just to watch you go back down alone, Yoo-jin."
Yoo-jin stepped directly into the dark, open doorway of the bunker. He physically blocked the concrete stairwell with his own bleeding body, completely preventing the two armed idols from following him inside.
"Your scene is over," Yoo-jin ordered them, his voice dropping the cold producer persona entirely.
He spoke to them as their older brother, the man who had built Starforce Agency from the ground up to protect them.
"Protect Sae-ri," Yoo-jin commanded, looking directly into Kai's desperate eyes. "Protect the fans. Get everyone out of the blast radius. That is a direct order from your CEO."
Kai opened his mouth to protest, but the heavy, shuddering boom of another reinforced steel door being completely destroyed echoed violently up the concrete stairwell. The clones were moving terrifyingly fast.
Yoo-jin didn't wait for their tearful goodbyes. He took a heavy step backward into the dark shadows of the stairwell.
He reached out and grabbed the heavy handle of the massive steel surface door.
"I'll see you at the wrap party," Yoo-jin lied smoothly, flashing them a brief, exhausted smile.
He violently pulled the heavy steel door shut. The massive metal slab slammed into the concrete frame with a deafening boom. The automated deadbolts instantly engaged, completely locking Yoo-jin back inside the suffocating nightmare.
The chaotic, roaring noise of the massive fandom was instantly cut off. The dark stairwell plunged into a terrifying, heavy silence, broken only by the rhythmic, pulsing red glow of the emergency strobes on the ceiling.
Yoo-jin didn't waste a single second catching his breath. He turned and sprinted down the concrete stairs.
His boots slipped dangerously on the slick, pooled blood he had left behind during his previous ascent. The agonizing, throbbing pain in his shot left shoulder was completely numb, entirely overridden by a massive surge of pure tactical adrenaline.
He needed to find a stage where he controlled the lighting. He needed an acoustic choke point.
He reached the heavy metal doors of Sector 4. This was the massive, cavernous loading dock where Kai and Min-ji had previously been trapped by the Special Forces.
Yoo-jin shoved the doors open and stumbled into the dark, echoing room. The space was massive, filled with heavy metal shipping containers and giant industrial exhaust fans mounted on the high concrete walls.
It was the perfect arena for a final cut.
"David," Yoo-jin panted heavily into his earpiece, leaning heavily against a yellow industrial forklift to catch his breath. "Are you still tracking the red dots on the tablet?"
"I have them on the internal grid, hyung," David cried over the encrypted line, his keyboard clattering frantically. "They are two floors directly below you. They are tearing through the biometric security bulkheads like wet tissue paper. They are ascending the central maintenance shaft."
Yoo-jin didn't look for a dropped assault rifle or a tactical knife. He knew his failing, bleeding body couldn't survive a physical confrontation with nine physically optimized supersoldiers.
He remembered his brutal, sloppy fight with the unhinged Subject 735. The Zenith clones possessed perfect, bio-engineered physical specs. That meant their auditory and visual receptors were completely hyper-sensitive, designed to process battlefield data faster than a normal human.
It was a massive tactical flaw that Dr. Oh had completely overlooked.
"David," Yoo-jin ordered, staring up at the massive industrial exhaust fans on the walls. "Route every single PA speaker in this entire facility directly to this loading dock. Maximize the audio gain to absolute peak levels. Turn off the internal limiters."
"What are you going to play?" David asked, his voice shaking.
"Nothing," Yoo-jin replied, a cold, terrifying smile touching his bloody lips. "I'm going to blow their perfect eardrums out with pure, uncompressed static."
Yoo-jin pushed off the forklift. He grabbed a heavy, jagged piece of scrap metal off the concrete floor. He dragged the heavy steel pipe behind him, the metal screeching loudly across the floor, and positioned himself entirely in the wide, open center of the cavernous loading dock.
He stood perfectly still under the pulsing red emergency lights, waiting for the curtain to rise.
Thirty seconds later, the heavy steel doors at the far end of the massive room violently bulged inward.
The thick reinforced metal screamed and tore open like cheap tinfoil. A massive cloud of gray concrete dust and smoke instantly flooded the entrance.
Nine identical figures stepped through the thick smoke simultaneously.
They didn't look unhinged or enraged like the defective Subject 735. They were completely terrifying in their absolute, flawless perfection. The nine clones wore pristine white tactical uniforms. Their identical, perfectly handsome faces were entirely blank, devoid of any human emotion or ego.
They looked exactly like a terrifyingly synchronized K-Pop group executing a flawless debut stage choreography.
They moved forward into the room as one single, terrifying organism. Their heavy boots hit the concrete floor in perfect, mathematical unison. Their identical dark eyes immediately locked onto Yoo-jin's bleeding figure standing alone in the center of the room.
"Target acquired," the nine clones stated in perfect, chilling unison.
The synchronized sound of his own voice echoing back at him from nine different throats was profoundly unnatural.
Yoo-jin didn't flinch. He didn't step back. He stood his ground, the blood dripping steadily from his ruined shirt onto the concrete floor.
He raised the heavy, jagged piece of scrap metal high into the air, holding it exactly like a brilliant conductor raising his baton before an orchestra.
He tapped his stolen earpiece.
"Hit the music, David," Yoo-jin whispered softly.
He violently smashed the heavy steel pipe directly into the master lighting control panel bolted to the nearest structural pillar.
The entire loading dock instantly plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness.