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Chapter 148
He lowered the document and looked at Seung-ah."Why is Hana doing this now?" he asked. "She could have sent this before the selection events. She could have contacted us weeks ago."Seung-ah's expression shifted, and something behind her composure showed through briefly, something that looked like complicated loyalty and the weight that came with it."Because until the selection events happened, Hana still believed she could fix it from the inside," Seung-ah said quietly. "She believed she could convince Director Woo to modify the deployment parameters, to reduce the calibration load, to run the cycle in a way that was harder than she wanted but survivable without serious harm. She kept trying until the day he finalised the deployment without incorporating any of her corrections." A pause. "When she saw the first task biometric data and understood what his calibration was actually doing to the players, she decided.""She decided to send you," Min-joon said."She decided to stop prote
Chapter 147
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
Chapter 146
Five objects on the table.Chan-young's seventeen mirror fragments, still arranged in the rough shape of the original mirror, the pieces catching the overhead light in ways that did not quite correspond to the angle of the source.Ji-young's compass, its surface absorbing light rather than reflecting it, its needle drifting slowly in the direction of the strongest emotional signal in the room, which appeared to be somewhere between Chan-young and So-ra.Byung-ho had retrieved a length of rope from his task, dark grey, exactly one metre long, that tied itself back into the original configuration every time it was unknotted. No matter how the knot was undone, within thirty seconds the rope rearranged itself into the same complex knot it had started with.Sung-min had found a tuning fork, copper-coloured, that when struck produced not a single tone but five simultaneous tones of different frequencies. Four of those frequencies, Sung-min had noticed during his task, corresponded to the ha
Chapter 147
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-joon said
Chapter 144
Mapo-gu was twenty minutes from Yeongdeungpo in the midmorning traffic, and Min-joon spent most of that drive on the phone with Choi, listening to the technical description of what was happening to Sung-min's node signal while trying to translate it into something he could act on."The interference is rhythmic," Choi said, his voice carrying the focused intensity it got when he was watching something that his instruments could see but his understanding was still catching up with. "It is not random noise, it is patterned. Someone or something is sending a signal into the node from outside, not trying to shut it down but trying to communicate with the architecture.""From where?" Min-joon asked."The direction of the signal source is northeast of the task facility," Choi replied. "I cannot give you a precise location with the equipment I have but it is not far. Within a kilometre, maybe less.""Someone near the facility is actively reaching into the node signal," Min-joon said."Yes," C
Chapter 143
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
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