The beat dropped. It was perfect.
Too perfect.
Inside the cramped, lead-lined garage, Sol and Luna moved like clockwork. Their limbs snapped into position at the exact millisecond the snare drum hit. Their synchronization was absolute. It was a mirror image of the choreography they had practiced thousands of times.
"Cut," Yoo-jin said.
The music stopped. The silence in the garage was heavy, smelling of old motor oil and nervous sweat.
"Was it the angle?" Luna asked, wiping her forehead. "I can adjust the hip rotation."
"No," Yoo-jin rubbed his eyes. "It was flawless."
"Then why did you stop us?"
"Because flawless is what Mason Gold sells." Yoo-jin walked onto the makeshift dance floor—a piece of linoleum rolled out over stained concrete. "You look like machines. You look like Eden."
In the corner, Eden flinched. He was wrapped in a wool blanket, shivering despite the California heat.
Yoo-jin felt that familiar, phantom itch behind his retinas. His instincts were screaming for a blue status window to pop up. He wanted to see the numbers. Synchronization: 100%. Charisma: S-Rank.
But the air remained empty. He was blind. He had to use his eyes.
"We are fighting an algorithm," Yoo-jin said, his voice raspy. "If you dance perfectly, the audience won't distinguish you from the Zenith idols. We need friction."
He grabbed Sol's shoulder. He physically turned her, ruining her posture.
"Don't hit the beat," Yoo-jin ordered. "Drag it. Be late. Just by a fraction of a second."
"That goes against everything we trained for," Sol frowned. "It'll look messy."
"It'll look human," Yoo-jin said. "Humans hesitate. Humans feel the weight of the moment. I want you to struggle against the music, not ride it."
He looked at Min-ji, who was tuning her guitar on top of a stack of tires.
"Min-ji, when the bridge hits, don't play the chord cleanly. Buzz the strings. Make it ugly."
Min-ji grinned. It was a sharp, feral expression. "Finally. A producer who asks for noise."
"Boss," So-young's voice crackled through the laptop speakers on the workbench. "We have a problem."
Yoo-jin stepped over a coil of cables. "Tell me you have the remix."
"I have it," So-young said. "But it's volatile."
On the screen, a waveform spiked in red. It looked jagged, like the teeth of a saw.
"I buried the Kill Code in the bassline of 'Eclipse,'" So-young explained. "But the frequency is too aggressive. It keeps trying to eat the melody. If the audio engineers at the Grammys run a standard compression filter, it'll flatten the code. It won't broadcast."
"So we need to bypass their filters," Yoo-jin said.
"We need to overload them," So-young corrected. "There's a specific note. A High C. If Sol hits it perfectly while the bass is peaking, it creates a harmonic dissonance. That spikes the volume beyond the limiter. That's when the code goes out."
"And if I miss the note?" Sol asked from behind him.
"Then it's just a bad pop song," So-young said. "And we all go to jail."
The garage door rattled.
Everyone froze. Min-ji's hand went to the neck of her guitar like it was a weapon handle.
"Relax," David Kim said, leaning against a rusted shelving unit. " It's just the wind. Or a rat."
David was looking at his phone, his face bathed in blue light. He looked older than he had yesterday. The thrill of the gamble was fading; the reality of bankruptcy was setting in.
"We're trending," David muttered. "Hashtag StarforceFugitives. Zenith's PR team is spinning the narrative. They're saying you kidnapped Eden. They're calling it a 'mental health crisis intervention'."
"Let them talk," Yoo-jin said. "It builds the hype."
"It builds a police perimeter," David countered. "Yoo-jin, my accounts are frozen. The credit cards are dead. Even this burner phone is acting weird."
Yoo-jin's head snapped up. "Weird how?"
"Static," David tapped the screen. "Flickering. Like bad reception, but... rhythmic."
Yoo-jin looked at Eden.
The boy had stopped shivering. He was sitting bolt upright, staring at the lead-lined ceiling. His pupils were dilated so wide his eyes looked entirely black.
"Eden?" Sae-ri knelt beside him.
"It's leaking," Eden whispered.
"What is?"
"The Violet," Eden's voice wasn't his own. It was flat. Mechanical. "The shielding... it has a hole."
Yoo-jin grabbed the laptop. He checked the wifi signal. It was supposed to be dead.
One bar.
"Cut the power!" Yoo-jin shouted.
Before anyone could move, the garage lights flared. The bulbs didn't just brighten; they screamed with high-voltage intensity.
HUMMMMMMMM.
A low-frequency vibration shook the fillings in Yoo-jin's teeth. It wasn't sound. It was data.
Eden arched his back, gasping. He clawed at his ears.
"Optimize," Eden choked out. "Optimize. Optimize."
"Min-ji! The amp!" Yoo-jin roared.
Min-ji kicked her amplifier on. She cranked the volume knob to the max. She didn't play a chord. She just slammed her hand against the strings.
SKREEEEEONK!
Feedback exploded in the small room. It was a physical wall of noise.
The light bulbs shattered.
Darkness fell instantly. The humming stopped, replaced by the ringing in their ears.
"Is everyone okay?" Sae-ri's voice trembled in the dark.
"I'm here," Sol coughed.
"Eden?" Yoo-jin fumbled for his phone, turning on the flashlight.
The beam cut through the dust. Eden was curled on the floor, breathing hard. Blood trickled from his nose. But his eyes were gray again. The feedback had severed the connection.
"They found us," David Kim said. He sounded impressed, in a terrified way. "They didn't send a SWAT team. They turned the local power grid into an antenna."
"How?" Min-ji spat, helping Eden sit up. "This place is a bunker."
"My nephew," David kicked a pile of boxes. "Lil' D. He probably installed a signal booster for his gaming rig and forgot to tell me. He punched a hole in the Faraday cage."
Yoo-jin grabbed his jacket. The "phantom limb" sensation was gone. Replaced by cold, hard adrenaline.
This was reality. No stats to save them. Just gravity and consequences.
"We're leaving," Yoo-jin said.
"Now?" Director Park squeaked. "The show isn't for eight hours!"
"If they pinged us, the physical teams are ten minutes away," Yoo-jin checked his watch. It was a cheap analog watch he bought at the airport. "We can't hide anymore. We have to go on the offensive."
"Go where?" Luna asked. "The venue is on lockdown."
"David," Yoo-jin turned the flashlight on the older man. "You said you know a guy in catering."
"Yeah. Jimmy. He owes me for a poker debt in '08."
"Call him. Tell him his delivery truck just broke down and he needs urgent replacements."
David's eyes widened behind his sunglasses. "You want to drive the catering van?"
"I want to be the catering," Yoo-jin said. "Min-ji, pack the gear. Only the essentials. Leave the costumes."
"What are we wearing?" Sae-ri asked.
Yoo-jin looked around the garage. He saw a pile of mechanic coveralls hanging on a hook. They were greasy, stained with oil, and patched with duct tape.
"We wear those," Yoo-jin pointed.
"Coveralls?" Sol looked horrified. "To the Grammys?"
"Zenith is perfection," Yoo-jin said, grabbing a wrench from the workbench. He tossed it to Min-ji. "We are the blue-collar error in their system. We dress like work. We smell like work."
He looked at Eden. The boy was wiping the blood from his lip. He looked frail, like a piece of glass held together by glue.
"Can you walk?" Yoo-jin asked.
Eden stood up. He swayed, then steadied himself.
"I can walk," Eden said softly. "But I want to run."
"Good."
Yoo-jin kicked the side door open. The morning sun of East LA was blinding.
"Into the van," Yoo-jin ordered. "If anyone stops us, Min-ji handles it."
"With pleasure," Min-ji cracked her knuckles.
They piled into David's battered transport van. The engine sputtered, then roared to life. As they peeled out of the driveway, a black drone descended from the sky, hovering exactly where they had been standing seconds ago.
Min-ji rolled down the window. She didn't use her guitar. She just extended her middle finger.
The van turned the corner, tires screeching.
"So-young," Yoo-jin spoke into his headset. "Are you still there?"
"I'm mobile," Ghost replied. "I'm in a coffee shop three blocks away. I saw the power spike. You guys cut it close."
"Change of plans," Yoo-jin said, watching the LA skyline get closer. "The remix isn't enough. We need a visual trigger too."
"A visual trigger?"
"Mason Gold is going to try to drown us out," Yoo-jin said. his eyes narrowing. "I need you to hack the stadium's jumbo-tron."
"Yoo-jin, that's a closed circuit. That's impossible."
"Nothing is impossible," Yoo-jin lied. He felt sick to his stomach, but his voice was steady. "Just get ready. When Sol hits that High C... I want you to paint the screens black."
"Black?"
"Pitch black," Yoo-jin said. "If we can't be louder than him... we have to blind him."
He looked back at his team. They were dirty, exhausted, and terrified. They looked like a disaster.
They were perfect.
"Get some sleep," Yoo-jin told them. "You're going to need it."
Nobody slept.
Thirty minutes later, the Staples Center loomed ahead like a fortress of glass and steel. Security checkpoints were everywhere. Bomb dogs. Metal detectors. Zenith private guards in tactical gear.
David pulled the van into the delivery lane.
A guard with a clipboard stepped in front of them. He wore a Zenith earpiece. The violet light on the device pulsed slowly.
He wasn't just a guard. He was optimized.
David rolled down the window. "Catering delivery for the Green Room."
The guard didn't blink. He didn't smile. He just stared at David with dead, efficient eyes.
"Manifest," the guard said.
David handed over a crumpled piece of paper. The guard scanned it.
"You are not in the system," the guard said.
He reached for his radio.
Yoo-jin's hand tightened on the door handle. He looked at Min-ji in the back seat. She gripped the wrench.
"Wait," the guard paused. He tilted his head, listening to a voice in his ear that only he could hear. "Correction. New data received."
The guard stepped back. The barrier lifted.
"Proceed to Loading Dock B," the guard said. "Mr. Gold is expecting you."
The van rolled forward.
"He knows," Sae-ri whispered, her face pale. "He let us in."
"Of course he did," Yoo-jin stared at the looming arena. "He doesn't want to arrest us."
Yoo-jin felt the weight of the USB drive in his pocket.
"He wants to execute us on live television."