I sat at my desk, staring at the brown manila envelope resting on the cheap wood. The crowds outside the building had finally dispersed, leaving behind a street littered with discarded protest signs and crushed coffee cups. The public hated me. They thought I was a hypocrite who traded his morals to protect a violent, corrupt prosecutor.I didn't care about the protests. I cared about the man sitting in a federal holding cell.Han Do-Woon was locked in a six-by-eight concrete room right now, stripped of his badge and his dignity, all because of the piece of paper I held in my hands.I picked up the forensic DNA report. The paper felt rough against my fingertips. The stark black ink listed the genetic markers recovered from Shin Na-ri’s bruised neck. It showed a perfect, flawless match to Han Do-Woon. It was a digital death sentence.But perfection is a flaw in itself. Human biology is messy. Crime scenes are chaotic. A 99.9% match on a rapid test processed in the middle of the night d

It was a microscopic earpiece. The kind used by stage actors and covert security.She wasn't remembering the assault. She was simply repeating the lines being fed to her in real-time.I kept my face completely blank. I slowly turned my head, letting the blue grid sweep across the packed gallery behind me. Hundreds of faces stared back, most of them glaring at me with open hostility.The System filtered through the crowd, tracking the localized short-wave radio frequency emitting from Na-ri’s ear.A bright blue line drew itself through the air, connecting the witness box to a man sitting in the third row of the gallery.It was Kang Do-hyun.The senior partner of Titan Law sat casually among the reporters. He wore a flawless dark suit. His arms were crossed over his chest, his head tilted slightly downward. He looked like an interested spectator. But the digital grid highlighted the small, specialized microphone hidden inside the expensive silver tie clip resting against his chest. He w

Judge Kang blinked, shaking herself out of her shock. She grabbed her gavel and struck the block repeatedly."Bailiffs!" the judge ordered, her voice shaking with rage as she realized how badly the court had been manipulated. "Detain that man! Nobody leaves this room! The state’s charges against Prosecutor Han Do-Woon are hereby dismissed with prejudice! Uncuff him!"The guards who had rushed forward to grab me suddenly pivoted, marching straight toward Kang Do-hyun. They grabbed the senior partner by his expensive lapels, pushing him hard against the wooden benches.Another guard walked up to Han Do-Woon, pulling a small silver key from his belt. He inserted the key into the heavy steel handcuffs. The lock clicked. The chains fell away, clattering loudly onto the defense table.Han rubbed his raw, red wrists. He was a free man.At that exact moment, the crimson grid in my vision vanished.The familiar electronic hum at the base of my skull shifted, swelling into a massive, triumphant

The machine spat my card back out with a loud, angry beep.I stared at the red text. A cold knot formed in my stomach. I grabbed the card, picked up my box, and walked directly toward the customer service desks.A young woman in a crisp navy uniform looked up from her computer monitor. She offered a polite, practiced smile."How can I help you, sir?" she asked."My card was just declined," I said, keeping my voice steady. "I need to withdraw funds from my primary business account. The name is Jin Tae-Rin."The teller typed my name into her keyboard. Her eyes scanned the screen. The polite smile vanished instantly. Her face turned pale."One moment, please," she whispered, standing up so fast her chair rolled backward and hit the filing cabinet behind her.She hurried over to a glass-walled office at the back of the lobby. She spoke rapidly to the branch manager, a balding man in a tight suit. He looked through the glass, his eyes locking onto me. He swallowed hard, grabbed a manila fo

The ringing in my ears was a high, piercing shriek that drowned out the screams of the teenagers in the PC cafe.I lay flat on the sticky laminate floor, my right cheek pressed against a discarded candy wrapper. The sharp scent of burnt gunpowder hung thick in the cold air conditioning, mixing with the sharp copper smell of my own blood.The sniper’s bullet had carved a deep, burning groove across my right shoulder. The flesh was torn open, bleeding freely into the cheap fabric of my shirt. The pain was a bright, pulsing fire that flared with every beat of my heart, radiating down my arm and tightening the muscles around my fractured ribs.I forced my eyes open.Above me, Baek Jun-seo sat completely frozen in his chair. He was staring blindly at the shattered frosted window, his face dusted with tiny, glittering fragments of glass.He was entirely exposed.I gritted my teeth, ignoring the fire in my shoulder, and lunged upward. I grabbed the front of his faded black windbreaker with m