The neon glow of Daehwa's lower districts cast a hazy blur against the rain-slicked alleys. Gin Chan moved like a phantom, coat hooded, steps calculated. Every streetlight could be a lens. Every corner a test.
He wasn't going home. Not yet.
He was going underground.
He stopped at a run-down cybercafé buried between a massage parlor and a pawnshop — all neon and grime. But beneath the flickering "OPEN 24HRS" sign was a steel door that didn't belong. Gin knocked twice, paused, then three times in rhythm.
A hiss. A click. A slide open.
The face behind the door didn't smile — he never did.
> "You're back early," said Roku, his eyes hidden behind thick AR-lensed goggles, hair tied into messy locs and dyed deep purple. A cigarette with an AI-generated scent filter dangled from his lips.
"Trouble, or treasure?"
"Both," Gin replied, stepping inside.
---
Roku had been his contact in a previous life — a recluse code-junkie with no ties to the surface world. Gin had once saved his sister in a forgotten loop of time. Roku had never forgotten. He's the one that Gin told the hacker to give the drive to before he was caught
> "You still carrying the drive?" Gin asked.
"Always. Wouldn't want to sell it by mistake and blow up half the city." Roku half-joked, pulling out a small case from a climate-locked cabinet. He slid it across the desk like it was an artifact.
> "Encryption hasn't changed. But if you've brought fresh meat, I might be able to squeeze something new."
Gin nodded and handed over the documents — files he'd extracted from the secret chambers in Haejin Dynamics and CorOne Labs, encrypted blueprints, black ledger codes, internal email chains.
Roku's fingers flew across three separate keyboards, controlling five monitors. Data flowed like rain across a windshield.
> "Alright, alright... what the hell do we have here... Jeez, man, these are pressure-cooked signatures... Wait—hold on... this sequence looks familiar..."
Gin leaned in.
Roku enlarged a small folder deep in the drive. It had once been locked behind layers of obfuscation. But the codes from Minjae's operation floor gave it just enough vulnerability.
One decrypted video popped open. Security footage. Pixelated. Time-stamped.
The location? Unnamed warehouse.
But the subject?
Yoon Seo.
Gin's breath caught.
There she was — walking home from a hospital shift, earbuds in, oblivious.
Then another angle: her entering a café.
Then another: stepping off a bus.
> Surveillance. Multiple feeds.
Live tracking.
Timestamped within the last three days.
Gin's hands curled slowly into fists.
> "They're still watching her," he muttered.
Roku looked up slowly. "And judging by the live pings... they haven't stopped."
The room fell silent for a beat.
Gin's heart was thunder, his instincts screaming for action.
He could go to her now.
He could warn her.
Hold her again.
But—
> No. Too early.
One wrong move, and they'll bury us both.
He exhaled, slow and sharp.
> "We wait. We collect more. We strike when they think I'm just a ghost."
Roku gave a rare, grim nod. "You're playing with fire."
Gin didn't blink.
> "No," he said quietly.
"I'm the fire."
---
For weeks, Gin Chan watched.
The man's name was Baek Do-Won — a high-level media liaison, well-known in journalistic circles for managing emergency news releases, political commentary, and broadcast scheduling. To the public, he was a strategist. A gatekeeper of information. A man behind curtains.
But Gin knew better.
Baek Do-Won was a cleanser — one who redirected the public narrative every time the Syndicate left blood in its wake. A skilled manipulator who turned massacres into accidents, disappearances into suicides, and corruption into policy changes.
And he was the one who had trembled during the Syndicate's meeting in that blackened room in Beat 1.
Gin marked him for the next thread to be cut.
---
Baek Do-Won lived in the towers of Seonghwa Crescent — a three-building complex shaped like a crescent moon, guarded by biometric gates, private security teams, and mirrored elevators that scanned retinas before allowing access.
Gin took his time.
He mapped patrol routes, hacked camera grids, intercepted food deliveries, traced emergency protocols. His notes became blueprints. His days, calculations. His nights, shadows.
> "He has a panic room on the 22nd floor," Roku had said from behind his monitors.
"Auto-lock. Independent air filtration. If he gets there — game over."
Gin didn't plan to let him.
---
It began on a rainy Wednesday.
Baek Do-Won stepped into the elevator after a gym session — two bodyguards with him. Gin was already inside — dressed as a maintenance worker, cap low, tool belt strapped.
As the doors slid shut, no one paid him any mind.
Until the elevator jolted.
Lights blinked. Emergency mode activated.
And then…
Silence.
> "What the—"
One guard reached for his pistol — too slow.
Gin moved like water and wire.
He slammed the first guard's head into the mirrored wall. A sharp CRACK echoed as the nose caved in, spraying blood across the glass. The second spun, but Gin had already ducked, rising with an elbow that shattered the man's clavicle. Bone jutted from skin. Screams echoed in the tiny chamber.
Baek stumbled back, hand shaking.
> "Don't— Please—!"
A taser hit his chest before he could finish.
He slumped to the floor, twitching.
---
Same warehouse. Different thread.
Baek awoke strapped to a chair, bruised and breathing heavily. A single bulb swung overhead, casting a strobe of tension in the dark.
Across from him stood Gin — masked, silent, calm.
> "Do you know who I am?" Gin asked.
Baek trembled. "Red Trace…"
Gin nodded slowly.
> "Then you know why you're here."
There was no rage in Gin's voice. Only calculation.
> "I'm just a messenger," Baek gasped. "I didn't— I only follow orders!"
"And hide crimes," Gin replied.
Then came the interrogation.
---
Baek didn't hold long.
He screamed at the first touch of heated metal, sobbed at the second needle prick. He spat names — dozens — before he broke enough to give something useful.
> "There's six of them," he gasped, blood on his teeth.
"The core circle. Only six."
"Names," Gin demanded.
But Baek shook his head violently. "I can't… They'll know. They'll find my sister—!"
Gin froze.
Then spoke quietly:
> "You've helped veil murders for a decade. Your sister doesn't even know who you really are."
Baek looked into his eyes.
Then… silence.
He refused.
Even to his final breath.
Gin didn't smile. He simply whispered, "Another shadow cast," and slipped the needle in.
Baek convulsed once. Then slumped.
Gin tied a new red thread around Baek's wrist.
But this time, he didn't leave it hidden.
He left the body in Baek's own media van — parked beside the National Broadcast Center. Left the van unlocked. Head leaning back. A bloodied note taped to the chest with bold black ink:
> "All strings lead to the Veiled One."
---
The media tried to lock it down.
But the photo leaked within minutes.
Baek Do-Won — found dead, tortured, and marked with the now-infamous red thread. It wasn't just a murder.
It was a message.
And it broke the illusion.
TV anchors stuttered through breaking news.
Some stations refused to cover it.
But the whispers exploded online:
> "This isn't just murder."
"It's a declaration."
"Red Trace is calling out someone untouchable."
And in that secret Syndicate room where once six screens flickered, five men and one woman stared at the image on their private network. No one spoke.
But one name echoed silently in their minds:
Kang Seo-Yul.
The man who watched death
like a connoisseur.
He leaned back, expression unreadable.
> "Interesting," he murmured to himself.
> "Now this… is getting personal."
---