Getting all five players into the same room took two days.Not because they were unwilling, but because the logistics of moving five people from five different cities while ensuring none of them were followed by any remaining members of Director Woo's team required care that could not be rushed. Choi Jin-woo monitored their movements remotely, Han coordinated the transport, and Ara's resistance contacts provided quiet escort for the players who lived furthest from Seoul.Director Woo had been taken into government custody the same night Min-joon had found him in Jongno-gu. Director Park had handled the formal arrest process with the efficient quietness of someone who had been preparing for exactly this kind of situation and was determined not to let it become anything louder than necessary. The research institute where Ji-soo had worked was placed under investigation, its systems and documents frozen pending review.The Vela Institute in Eastern Europe and Hana Mori's operation in Osa

Tae-hyun was crouched beside So-ra when Min-joon arrived, speaking to her in a low, steady voice. So-ra was upright against the wall but her face was tight with effort, the kind of effort that came from fighting something internal rather than external.Min-joon crouched on her other side."The pull," So-ra said before he could speak, her voice strained and very controlled. "It is not just telling me to go in. It is trying to pull me in physically. Something is different about my second task. It is stronger than my first.""The cardiac event during your first task," Min-joon said carefully. "The System detected the stress response and flagged you as a high-resistance subject. It is compensating by increasing the compulsion for your second task."So-ra looked at him. "It is adjusting to me.""Yes," Min-joon replied, and he did not try to make that sound like anything other than what it was.So-ra pressed her lips together and looked at the task entrance, a plain door set into the side o

The question of who had warned Hana Mori sat at the centre of the next twenty-four hours like a weight on the table that everyone in the room kept having to reach around. Min-joon brought Ga-young to the oversight committee facility where the five players were staying, both because it was secure and because he needed her technical knowledge close while the players were between tasks. He briefed Tae-hyun and Han on what Kenji had reported about Osaka, and the three of them sat with that information for a while before anyone said what the obvious implication was. Tae-hyun said it first, which was often how it went. "Director Woo is in custody," Tae-hyun said. "Ji-soo is with us. Ga-young is with us. That leaves members of the team we have not identified. If one of them knew about Kenji's surveillance and passed that information to Hana Mori, then we have a leak." "Or Hana Mori had her own monitoring in place and detected Kenji independently," Han said. "Both are possible," Min-

The person Tae-hyun brought into the small side room at the end of the corridor was a woman, younger than Min-joon had expected, somewhere in her late twenties with a careful, composed face and the specific kind of tiredness that came from travelling a long distance very quickly and not sleeping during it. She was Korean, dressed in ordinary clothes, and she carried a small backpack that she held by one strap rather than wearing, the way someone held something they might need to put down and run from at short notice.She looked at Min-joon and did not pretend to be surprised."You figured it out faster than I expected," she said. Her Korean was clean with a slight rhythm that suggested she had been speaking Japanese in a professional setting for several years."Sit down," Min-joon said.She sat in the chair across from him. Tae-hyun remained standing near the door, and the room was small enough that there was nowhere in it that was not close to someone."Your name," Min-joon said."No

The third task activations came the following morning, and Min-joon was ready.He had spent the previous evening going through Hana's document with Ga-young, the two of them sitting at the conference room table with tea going cold between them while Ga-young read the embedded second routes and cross-referenced them against her own calibration work. It was slow, careful work, the kind of technical comparison that could not be rushed without risk of missing something important.Ga-young's conclusion, when she reached it at close to midnight, was stated simply and without drama."The second routes are better than anything I designed," she said. "Not just safer. More elegant. Hana understood the architecture at a level that I did not." She looked at the document with an expression that was partly professional admiration and partly something more complicated. "She should have been the lead architect from the beginning. Instead Director Woo used her theoretical work and sidelined her practi