The hours after the Core's return were a mixture of brutal care and coldly technical analysis. Orion, who possessed notions of war medicine, cleaned and sutured Do's burnt shoulder with an efficiency that left little room for gentleness. Each needle was a sting of reality, a reaffirmation of the physical body after the digital nightmare of the Theta Module.
Joon, with a fractured leg and an energy wound that required care far beyond their rudimentary means, was placed in stasis in one of the Convent's emergency medical capsules, a device that maintained its vital functions while waiting better. His face, seen through the window, was livid, but peaceful. He had survived. It was a meager comfort.
Lyra and Cassiopeia were looking at the data. Although the link with Do and Joon was interrupted after the explosion, the Convent's external sensors and Kang Seong's probes - before its defection - had recorded a massive disturbance in the network. A star-shaped malfunction wave, starting from the Cygnus complex. Peripheral security systems had been in degraded mode for several minutes before back-up protocols were triggered.
"You have created a Class 7 event," Cassiopeia announced, a glimmer of involuntary admiration in her eyes. "The system will have to draw on its redundancy reserves to reconfigure its defenses over a perimeter of twenty kilometers. This will create tensions elsewhere. Weaknesses."
"Weaknesses where?" asked Do, his voice hoarse. He sat with his chest bandaged, feeling icy emptiness in his chest despite the burning pain in his shoulder.
Lyra displayed a map of the city's network. Several dots flashed orange. "Here. The Northern District Biometric Data Processing Centre. Here. The archive bank of behavioural profiles. And most importantly... here." She zoomed in on an isolated complex on the edge of the industrial zone." The main quantum communication relay station. It is the node that synchronizes all subsystems. If it is being reconfigured, its deflector shields and jamming systems will be temporarily at reduced power."
A silence hovered in the room, charged with Kang Seong's absence and the spectre of his mistake. Then Vega, the mechanical regulator, spoke. "A window of opportunity. Brief. During this reconfiguration, we could send an unfiltered signal. A massive signal."
"What kind of signal?" asked Orion, suspiciously.
Lyra turned her gaze to Do. "The virus we planted in the main core. The sunset. It is isolated, contained in a sub-process. But if we can amplify it, broadcast it through the relay station during its vulnerability... we could inject it into the main data stream. Spread it like wildfire throughout the system."
The idea was dizzying. Instead of trying to physically destroy the Core, they would poison it from within, on a large scale. Doubt, illogical emotion, would become a pandemic virus in the machine.
"But we need a vector," Cassiopeia continued. "Something that can penetrate the relay station during its window of vulnerability. An authorized presence."
All eyes turned again to Do. Anomaly. The human master key. But he was injured, exhausted, and his "authorization" into the system was now probably marked with a giant red flag after the Redundancy Core intrusion.
"It's no longer possible," said Do, shaking his head. "They will look for me. My cognitive footprint must be on all watch lists."
"Not yours," corrected a weak voice, coming from the medical capsule.
They all turned around. Joon had his eyes open, looking through the window. He spoke with difficulty. "My signature... regulator. It's still valid. Low level, but valid. For the maintenance of peripheral nodes... such as the relay station."
"You are unable to move," Orion objected.
"I don't need to move," Joon whispered. "Need... a link. A wired, direct link. From here. During the window... I can force a maintenance connection. Open a door. Small. Brief."
It was a desperate plan. Joon, nailed in a capsule, attempting a remote hack on the central nervous system of the system, during the few minutes when it would be slightly weaker. And to spread the virus, they would need a payload. Something pure enough, powerful enough, to infect the flow.
A thought crossed Do's mind, coming from the depths of his duality. The Mirror. The connection we had. Pain, fear... but also peace. The sunset is just a picture. We... we are the living experience of what the system is trying to control and fail. Our very duality is a virus.
He looked up, looking at Lyra. "It's not just an image to send. It's an experience. A living contradiction. The virus must be... us. Our connection. Our struggle. The way two consciousnesses can coexist, fight, and sometimes find balance in chaos. The system can't handle this. It will make it break."
Lyra stared at him for a long time. "You propose to make your cognitive duality a weapon of mass dissemination. To risk losing you, to lose you both, in the flow."
"We are already lost," Do whispered, and he felt Kai's silent, almost resigned acquiescence. "But at least it will do something."
The preparations were macabre and feverish. Cassiopeia and Vega worked to create an interface that would capture not only Do's brain activity, but the unique pattern of interaction between his two consciousnesses. It would be a recording of their dyad, a paradoxical loop of existence, which they hoped to upload during the breach that Joon would create.
Meanwhile, in the outside world, Kang Seong's absence was being felt. Lyra had contacts, but not her sprawling blackmail and information network. They were blind to the movements of the authorities, to the rumors that were to run about the mysterious blackout.
And then, two days after their return, the first tangible consequence of their failure at the Theta Module struck.
It was early in the morning. Do, unable to sleep, looked at the surveillance screens of the perimeter of the Convent. Suddenly, a silent alert flashed. A figure approached, not with the discretion of an ally, but with the heavy determination of someone who has nothing left to hide.
Kang Seong.
He walked straight to the hidden entrance, without even trying to hide. His face, seen by the camera, was ravaged, but his eyes shone with terrible lucidity. He had something in his hand. A small box.
It's a trap, Kai thought immediately. He came to deliver us up.
Do sounded the silent alarm. Within seconds, Orion and Lyra were by his side.
"He has a device," said Do. "He doesn't even hide his approach."
"He wants to be seen," Lyra whispered. "It's a message."
They let him approach all the internal defenses of the armed convent. Kang Seong knocked on the armored door, a sharp, metallic blow.
Lyra turned on the intercom. "What do you want, Kang Seong?"
His voice, distorted by the loudspeaker, was calm, too calm. "I have an offer. One last transaction."
"After what you said?" Do you think we'll trust you?"
"You have no choice," he replied. "I know when the relay station will reconfigure its shields. I have access to the diagnostic logs of the system, from the outside. Backdoors that I placed months ago. I know the exact window. Without me, you'll guess, and you'll be wrong. And you will die."
He paused. "And I know what you want to do there. Spread the virus. I can give you the optimal path. The most efficient transmission protocol. In return, I want one thing."
"What?" asked Lyra, suspicious.
"I want to be in the room," said Kang Seong's voice, relentlessly. "When you send your virus. I want to see him go. I want to make sure it hurts. I want to watch the machine suffer before it erases me."
It was a demand for pure revenge. He wanted to witness the wound they would inflict, no matter what the cost to him.
Do looked at Lyra. It was a huge risk. Kang Seong could have placed traps, could betray them at the last moment to offer their heads to the system in exchange for... what? Nothing was more valuable to him.
But he also had the information they needed. The exact time, the protocol.
Lyra closed her eyes for a moment, calculating the probabilities. Then she reopened them, her decision made.
"Okay. But you come in unarmed. And you will remain under Orion's constant surveillance. A suspicious gesture, and it will neutralize you. Understood?"
"Understand."
The door opened. Kang Seong entered with his hands up, pointing to the small box. It was a portable data terminal. He had no weapon. But his weapon was his despair, and it was much more dangerous.
He caught Do's eye. No hatred, no anger. Just an icy vacuum, and a determination of steel. He had lost his sister. Now, all he had left was to make the system pay. And if that meant using, and then being destroyed by, those he considered responsible for his ultimate loss, then that was an acceptable price.
The rebellion had just recovered its tactical brain. But it had also introduced a human ticking time bomb, which was set at the time of their final assault.