The Convent was an empty shell that smelled of smoke, cold sweat and death. The emergency lights, powered by a backup source, cast a blood-red glow on abandoned equipment, sharp cables, dark spots where Joon had been. The silence was a palpable entity, heavier than the rumble that had preceded it.
Lyra oversaw the evacuation with broken machine efficiency. His orders were brief, unaffected." Orion, take Kang Seong by the north duct. Vega, Cassiopeia, erase the last biometric traces. We're splitting up. Meet at Point Zêta in seventy-two hours. Only if you're clean."
Point Zêta. A place of retreat that she had never talked about. One last safety net.
Do sat on a crate, his hands trembling. The echo of the virus's extraction still resonated with him like a phantom limb. Kai... he still felt it, but it was like looking through a thick, frosty window. The presence was distant, indistinct, more a memory of consciousness than an active entity. The device had taken something essential from them in their connection. Perhaps he had taken Kai himself, leaving only an emotional imprint, a habit of thought.
"You're coming," said Lyra's voice next to him. It wasn't a question.
He raised his head. "Where?"
"Far away. The system will launch a physical purge. All the old regulators, all the known or suspected anomalies. Your signature is now the brightest red flag in their sky. You can't go back to Ganguk. You can't go back anywhere you've been Kim-Do."
Kim-Do. The name seemed to belong to another life. A life of lies and precarious survival that, in retrospect, seemed almost simple compared to the current vacuum.
He stood up with his legs flagging. He had nothing to take away. His few belongings in the room that were not his were as dead as the identity they represented.
They came out through a secret exit, a narrow sewer hose that led into a pungent industrial river. The night was dark, starless, obscured by light pollution and perhaps by the first disturbances of the virus in surveillance networks.
They walked silently for hours, crossing deserted areas, industrial wasteland. Lyra knew where to go. She stepped forward, her face a mask in the dark. Do followed her, a ghost after another ghost.
In the early morning, they reached an old abandoned pumping station, nestled in a meander of the river. The Zeta Point. It was a wet, cold concrete shell, but it was isolated and defensible.
Cassiopeia and Vega had preceded them there. Orion arrived an hour later, depositing Kang Seong's inert body on a makeshift mattress. The man was breathing, but his eyes remained open, glazed, seeing nothing. His mind was gone, dissipated in the counterattack of the system. He was nothing more than an empty shell, a living monument to their bitter victory.
No one was hungry. No one was talking about what had happened. They settled in separate corners of the main hall, each locked in mourning and shock.
It was Vega, connected to a pirate radio receiver, that picked up the first signs from the outside world. His mechanical voice broke the silence, charged with unusual perplexity.
"Something... is happening. The official information channels are chaotic. Localized power outages. Malfunctions in automatic transport. Reports of...erratic behavior in low-level security control centers."
Lyra approached. "The virus. It's spreading."
The news that filtered through the following days was fragmentary, but telling. A traffic management AI in the southern district suddenly prioritized emergency vehicles for an hour, and then broke down while repeating a loop of classical music. A social grading system in one school had given perfect scores to all students for a day, with the grade: "Any attempt at classification is a limitation." Low-level security guards had been caught discussing philosophy during their service, before being turned off.
The virus of duality, mixed with Kang Seong's rage, did not destroy. It corrupted. It introduced illogical, emotional, doubt. He made the machine... capricious. Unpredictable. Human, in its worst and sometimes best aspects.
It was a victory. But in the wet pumping station, it sounded like a sinister joke. Joon was dead. Kang Seong was a vegetable. And the world was just becoming a different place, not necessarily a better place.
On the fourth day, Do went out for a walk along the muddy bank. The cold air bit his face. He was trying to feel Kai, to reach that other presence that had been his burden, his enemy, his partner. There was nothing. Only an echo, like the memory of a voice in an empty room.
Am I alone now? he thought, and the question was terrifying. For so long, duality had defined its existence. Without her... who was he? Neither imposter Do, nor the real Kim-Do. Just one more survivor, in a broken world.
When he came home, Lyra was waiting for him. She looked more tired than ever, but her gray eyes stared at him with new intensity.
"We cannot stay here indefinitely," she said. "The system is weakened, disoriented, but it is not dead. It will reorganize itself. And he's going to get us. You first."
"What do you want me to do?" asked Do, his voice filled with infinite weariness.
"Disappear. Really. Not like Kim-Do. Not as an anomaly. Like a ghost." She handed him a small sealed envelope. "New identities. Funds. Instructions to leave the city. Discreet contacts abroad. People who don't know anything about the system, but who owe favors to... former associates."
Do took the envelope. It was full of possibilities and renunciations. "What about you? What about the others?"
We're going to disperse. Observe. The virus will continue to work. It will create faults, shadows. We'll find some. We'll build some. One day, perhaps, we can do more than just survive." She paused. "But not you. You're too familiar with the system. Your only chance is to erase yourself completely."
It was an order, but it was also a gift. Freedom. A life without a fight, without a permanent lie, without another conscience in his head. A normal life. Or at least, the illusion of one.
He nodded. He didn't have the strength to argue, or even to feel anything.
The separation took place that night. No moving farewell. Cassiopeia briefly shook his hand. Vega bowed his head. Orion gave him a brutal slap on the shoulder - a goodbye between soldiers. Lyra looked at him one last time.
"You were a magnificent mistake," she said, and it was the greatest compliment he had ever received. Then she turned away.
Do left the pumping station with his envelope and the clothes he was wearing on his back. He followed the instructions: bus, freight train, walk, other bus. He left the megalopolis behind, its lights and shadows, Ganguk High, the Convent, everything.
A few days later, under a new identity, with features slightly altered by negligence and fatigue, he was in a small coastal town, at a contact who had given him a seedy room in exchange for repair work on his fishing boat. The air smelled of salt and rotten fish. It was real, tangible, with no hidden meaning.
One evening, as he was repairing a net under the light of a bare light bulb, a familiar pain passed through his temple. Not a sharp pain, but a pressure, like a memory that seeks to materialize.
And in that pressure, a thought, clear and distinct, but weak, as if coming from far away.
The fish... it stinks.
Do let the net slip away. With his heart beating, he closed his eyes, concentrating.
Kai?
A silence. Then, not an answer, but a sensation. A shared weariness. An acceptance. Not a full presence, but a trace. A scar in his mind that had retained a spark. Maybe the device hadn't taken everything. Perhaps their bond, forged in the Mirror Hell and the fire of rebellion, was too deep to be completely erased.
He wasn't alone. It may never be completely. Kai was no longer a co-pilot, or even a voice. He was an echo, a conscious memory, a part of himself that he had once perceived as separate.
Do opened his eyes and looked out over the black sea beyond the harbor lights. The system was wounded, scattering his whims around the world. His friends were gone, dead or missing. He was here, with a new identity and an old echo in his skull.
It wasn't a happy ending. It wasn't an end at all. It was a break. A breath in the in-between.
He resumed the net and continued to repair, his fingers agile, his mind both lighter and heavier than it had ever been. The war against the machine may have entered a new phase, a phase of silent guerrilla warfare led by others. His own war, that for his own identity, had just found a new, fragile and strange balance.
He was a survivor. With all that this implied of loss, scarring, and the tenuous, just audible possibility of a new beginning, somewhere beyond dawn.