Kang Seong's response was both a victory and a trap set. "Show me the machine." It was a leap into the unknown, a tacit agreement to cross a point of no return. But how to show the invisible to a man whose specialty was precisely to see what others lacked?
In the Convent, the Do/Kai dyad confronted Lyra and Joon. The atmosphere was tense, loaded with the weight of the decision to be made.
"We cannot reveal to her the existence of the regulators or the Convent," Lyra said, her arms folded. His figure was cut out in the bluish glow of the screens. He must first prove his worth, and his discretion. And it has to be... prepared. The untrained human mind can break in the face of the reality of the system."
He is more solid than it seems, Kai thought, his judgment is constrained by constrained respect. His quest hardened him. But Lyra is right. We need a test. A gradual revelation.
Do nodded, feeling the correctness of the analysis. "You can't show him the whole machine. But we can show him a cog in it. This is tangible proof that what he is looking for exists."
The chosen "cog" was a peripheral monitoring node of the system, a small data processing relay located in the basement of an abandoned municipal administration building. It was a weak point, little defended, but whose function was clear: to collect and sort the behavioral data of thousands of individuals in the neighborhood, looking for "deviances." A microcosm of the machine.
The plan was simple, but risky. Do would guide Kang Seong to the place. Joon, hidden at a distance, would blur local detection signals during a narrow fifteen-minute window. Meanwhile, Do had to connect Kang Seong - physically, via a tinkered terminal - to the raw data source, allowing him to see, with his own eyes, the cold stream of lives reduced to statistics and alerts. It was brutal, but it was the naked truth.
The night of the meeting was cold and without a moon. Kang Seong was waiting for them at the agreed location, a dark alley behind the building. He was alone, dressed in black, his usual shoulder bag. His face was a mask of calm, but Do perceived a tension in his jaw, a feverish glow in his eyes behind the glasses.
"No speech," said Do as he approached. "We have fifteen minutes. Follow me."
They sneaked through a forced low window. The interior smelled of musty and dust, but also a subtle smell of ozone and hot metal. In the basement, behind a false partition, was their target: a rack of grey, discreet servers, from which a constant purring emanated. Flesh-colored cables escaped, plunging into walls and floors like veins.
Kang Seong watched the scene, his observer gaze recording every detail. A pirate server?"
"No," Do answered, plugging a portable screen and a strange keyboard, provided by Lyra, into one of the ports. A tiny neuron in a huge brain. Look."
The screen lit up, first showing a stream of binary code. Then, under Do's impulse (guided by Lyra's whispered instructions in her earpiece), the interface changed. Lines of text appeared, names, addresses, timetables. Reviews: "Subject #4587: Social compliance level: 92%. Detected deviance: participation in an unauthorized gathering (student protest). Flag sent. " "Subject #3291: Biometric parameters indicate high chronic stress. Risk of unpredictable behaviour: moderate. Increased monitoring recommended."
Kang Seong read, his face getting paler and paler. "They are... people. From the neighborhood."
"Reduced to numbers and parameters," said Do, his own nausea resurfacing. "That's how the machine sees them. That's how she classifies them. That way she decides who is "normal," who is a "risk," and who... disappears."
"Disappears?" repeated Kang Seong, finally raising his eyes from the screen.
Do hesitated. He felt Kai's presence prompting him to continue. It's time. Show him the consequence.
He typed a new order. The screen displayed a different, shorter list marked with red seals. "Subject #1123: Major cognitive deviation detected. Erasure protocol triggered. Status: COMPLETE. " " Topic #0876: Unstable substitute. Reset required. Status: Waiting."
"Erasement..." whispered Kang Seong. His hand went to his forehead, as if to chase away a sudden vertigo. What does that mean?"
It means that when someone strays too far from the path that has been traced to them, the machine does not punish them. It replaces them. She erases the person who was there and puts another one in her place. A more... compliant version."
Kang Seong's gaze became fixed, haggard. The pieces of her sister's puzzle began to come together in her mind, forming an image of unimaginable horror. "Yoona...she was investigating personality changes. On people who were "no longer themselves." She must have been... she must have been too close."
His voice broke. For the first time, the detached observer had disappeared, giving way to a brother who was wiped out by a truth worse than death. His sister had not run away. It had been erased. She was replaced by a stranger who was wearing her face.
"We don't know exactly what happened to him," said Do, with a gentleness he didn't know he could have. Could be. That's what the machine does."
Kang Seong dropped into a dusty crate with his shoulders arched. The shock was deep, violent. He looked at his hands, as if they were foreign to him. Then, slowly, the pain in his eyes crystallized into something hard, cold. Determined.
"This machine," he said, his voice becoming strangely calm again, but charged with a new metallic resonance. A weak spot?"
Do exchanged a glance with Joon, who had just appeared in the doorway, signaling that their time was almost up.
"Yes," said Do. "But it's a fortress. Achieving it requires more than curiosity. We need an army. Information. Penetration capabilities that we don't have."
Kang Seong looked up at him. The broken scientist had disappeared. In his place stood a tactician, a vengeful. "I spent three years observing this school, this city. I have files on everyone. Weaknesses, debts, secrets. People in the administration, in the police, in surveillance companies. People who might have access to things, or who might be... persuaded."
That was exactly what Lyra hoped for. An asset with real-world connections.
"This information... it comes at a price," added Kang Seong, his eyes getting piercing. "I want two things. The first one: you help me find out what happened to Yoona. Really. Not assumptions. The truth. Even if it's... erased. I want to know how, and why."
"And the second one?" asked Do, suspiciously.
"The second is that when you hit this machine," said Kang Seong as he stood up, his figure suddenly appearing taller in the dark, "I want to be the one pressing the button."
There was no room for negotiation in his voice. It was a Faustian pact. His knowledge against his revenge, and a place at the forefront of destruction.
"That's okay," replied Lyra's voice, which filtered through Do's earpiece. She had heard everything." Bring him back. Carefully."
The return to the Convent was silent. Kang Seong absorbed everything, his observer gaze having regained its sharpness, but with a radically new purpose. When they entered the regulators' lair, and he saw Lyra, Joon, and the others, his calm did not crack. He simply bowed his head.
"Regulators. Guards turned rebels. Logic."
Lyra approached him, peering at him as she had scrutinized Do once. "Do you understand the risks? If the system discovers your alliance with us, your disappearance will be complete. There won't even be a body to cry for."
"My sister didn't have a body to cry either," Kang Seong replied in a flat voice. "The risks are calculated and accepted. Show me what you have. And tell me what you need."
So a new actor came on the scene. No longer an observer, but a shadow archivist, a potential black blackmailer, a cold avenger. The rebellion had just won a double-edged sword. Kang Seong could open forbidden doors for them. But her thirst for truth about Yoona and her thirst for revenge could also lead them into traps or distract them from their main purpose.
As the night ended, Do felt Kai's presence in him, vigilant.
He is dangerous, thought the veteran. But all the sharp tools are. You just have to know which way to point the blade.
Do looked at Kang Seong, sitting at a table, already browsing through the system data Lyra had provided him, frantically searching for a trace of the number that might have been Yoona's. He had entered the machine. And now he wanted to dismantle it, viscerally viscerally viscerally.
The rebellion had reached a new stage. It was no longer just a matter of survivors and idealists. It was now also a matter of personal revenge. And this, as Kai said, was a blade that had to be handled with extreme caution.