The mag-lev car screamed through the disposal tube, a rusted metal bullet flying through a throat of darkness. Sparks showered against the reinforced glass as the car scraped the sides of the narrow tunnel, moving at a speed it was never designed to reach.
Inside, the air was cold and tasted of ozone.
Seol-wol lay on the floor, his chest heaving, his hands still trembling from the impact of the Reaper drone. He looked at his empty palm. The metallic bolt—his anchor, his lucky charm, the only piece of the "gutter" he had left—was gone. He felt a strange, hollow grief, as if he had left a piece of his own soul impaled in that machine back in the sub-levels.
"Seol-wol! Help me!" Kyla's voice was high-pitched with panic.
She was pinned against the back of the car, staring at Junseo. The younger brother was no longer limp. His body was rigid, vibrating with a high-frequency tremor that made the metal floor hum. But it was his eyes that were wrong. They were wide open, but the pupils weren't black—they were pulsing with a rhythmic, violet light that matched the heartbeat of the Cold Box.
"Junseo? Junseo, look at me!" Seol-wol scrambled to his brother's side, grabbing his shoulders.
Junseo's head snapped toward Seol-wol.
The movement was too fast, too precise. It wasn't the movement of a tired, sick boy; it was the movement of a machine.
"The architecture is... flawed," Junseo said.
But it wasn't Junseo's voice. It was deeper, layered with a thousand digital whispers, echoing with a chilling, aristocratic ego. "Too much carbon. Not enough light. The vessel is leaking."
"Who are you?" Seol-wol roared, shaking him. "Get out of my brother's head!"
The thing wearing Junseo's face smiled. It was a terrifying, thin expression that Junseo never used. "I am the architect of your cage, little thief. I am the blueprint that Miran thinks he can inherit. And you... you are the glitch that tried to break my wall with a piece of scrap metal."
Kyla backed away, her hands over her mouth. "The 95 percent threshold... it didn't just open the bridge. It let the data flow backwards. The Mind inside the box is using Junseo as a terminal!"
"Shut it down, Kyla!" Seol-wol yelled, his heart freezing in his chest. "Use the med-kit! Sedate him!"
"I can't!" she screamed over the roar of the wind. "His neural activity is over 400 percent! If I sedate him now, the sudden drop will cause his brain to implode. He's being held together by the data stream!"
Junseo's hand reached out, his fingers brushing Seol-wol's cheek. The touch was ice-cold. "Do not be afraid, Seol-wol. The boy is still here. He is the substrate. I am simply the passenger. But tell the 'Heir'—tell Miran—that the throne is occupied. He comes for a crown, but he will find only a grave."
Suddenly, Junseo's body went limp, the violet light in his eyes snapping out like a blown fuse. He slumped back into Seol-wol's arms, his breathing shallow and ragged.
The mag-lev car let out a piercing shriek of grinding metal.
"We're hitting the end of the line!" Kyla yelled, bracing herself against the wall. "The waste disposal bay is ahead, but the brakes are burned out! We're going to hit the scrap piles!"
"Brace him!" Seol-wol wrapped his body around Junseo, shielding his brother's head with his arms.
The impact was a deafening roar of twisting steel. The mag-lev car smashed through the heavy safety barriers at the end of the tube and flew into the air, tumbling into the vast, cavernous expanse of the Waste Disposal Sector—a mountain range made of discarded machinery, rusted hulls, and toxic sludge.
Everything went black for a second.
When Seol-wol opened his eyes, he was lying in a pile of jagged metal shavings. His vision was blurred, a single red emergency light spinning somewhere above him. He coughed, the air tasting of iron and dust.
"Kyla?" he wheezed.
"Here," a muffled voice came from beneath a pile of crates. She crawled out, her tunic torn, her face covered in grease, but she was alive.
Seol-wol ignored his own pain and crawled toward Junseo. His brother was half-buried in the wreckage of the mag-lev car, unconscious again, but breathing.
Seol-wol looked around. They were in a graveyard of technology. Miles of scrap metal stretched out in every direction under the dim, flickering lights of the massive ceiling. It was the perfect hiding place—and a perfect tomb.
He reached out to steady himself against a rusted girder, and his hand brushed against something. He froze.
It was a weapon. Not a pulse-blade or a high-tech rifle, but an old, industrial plasma-cutter left behind by a scrap-bot. It was heavy, dented, and looked like it had been through a war.
Seol-wol picked it up. It wasn't his bolt, but it was solid. It was real.
"They're coming, aren't they?" Kyla asked, looking up at the dark tunnel they had just flown out of.
The skittering sound was back. The Reapers were coming down the tube, their red eyes cutting through the dark like embers. But this time, Borislav wasn't the only one hunting them. Miran was out there, and the "Monster" inside Junseo's head was waiting for a chance to finish the job.
Seol-wol ignited the plasma-cutter. A blade of searing blue light hissed into existence, illuminating the shadows.
"Let them come," Seol-wol said, his voice dropping into a cold, lethal register. "I'm done running. If they want the Key, they're going to have to reach into the fire to get it."