The Gocheok Sky Dome didn't just get loud. It shattered.
Yoo-jin's power chord ripped through the air like a chainsaw cutting through silk. The feedback loop from the hacked lightsticks screamed in twenty thousand pockets, creating a wall of red noise that collided with the Clones' perfect white harmony.
"Cut the audio!" Apex screamed, his voice cracking over the monitors. "Security! Cut the feed!"
"You can't cut physics!" Yoo-jin shouted back into his megaphone.
He slammed his boot onto the distortion pedal.
SCREEEEEECH.
The sound was hideous. It was beautiful.
"Min-ji! Percussion!"
Min-ji swung her bat. CLANG. The oil drum rang out like a gunshot.
"Ha-eun! Vocals!"
Ha-eun grabbed the mic stand with both hands. She didn't look at the camera. She looked at the terrified fans in the front row.
"WAKE UP!" she shrieked.
It wasn't singing. It was an exorcism.
The audience, previously sedated by the Violet Signal, jolted awake. The adrenaline spiked. The red lightsticks in their hands vibrated violently, turning the stadium into a trembling, angry ocean.
"Counter-measure!" Apex commanded the Clones. "Formation Delta! Drown them out!"
The twelve members of Project Aegis moved instantly. They formed a tight circle around Yoo-jin's ragged band. They raised their golden microphones.
Trust the shield, they sang. Ignore the noise.
Their voices were amplified by the Dome's massive main speakers. It was a tsunami of perfection, threatening to wash Yoo-jin away.
Yoo-jin felt the bass of their harmony hitting his chest. It was heavy. Suffocating.
He looked at the decibel meter on David's laptop screen.
[AEGIS: 110 dB]
[STARFORCE: 95 dB]
"They're too loud!" Kai yelled, slapping his bass strings in a funk rhythm. "We can't overpower the main system!"
"We don't need to overpower them," Yoo-jin grinned, sweat dripping down his nose. "We just need to ruin the mix."
In music production, dissonance is more powerful than volume. A single wrong note can destroy a symphony.
Yoo-jin pointed his guitar neck at Apex.
"Key change!" Yoo-jin ordered. "Drop to E-Flat! Minor!"
Kai slid his hand down the fretboard. The bass line shifted. It became dark, ominous, and completely out of tune with the Clones' major-key ballad.
The result was instant audio nausea.
The Clones faltered. Their perfect pitch relied on the backing track. But with Kai playing a devil's interval underneath them, their internal processors couldn't find the root note.
One Clone's voice cracked. Another lagged behind the beat.
"They're drifting!" Sae-ri shouted, shaking her coin-tambourine. "Keep pushing!"
Apex realized what was happening. His eyes flashed with cold, digital fury.
He broke formation.
He didn't attack Yoo-jin. He walked toward Ji-soo.
She was standing in the middle of the chaos, clutching her white dress. She looked torn between the two worlds—the safe, white lie of Aegis, and the dirty, dangerous truth of Starforce.
Apex grabbed her wrist. His grip was mechanical.
"Sing," Apex hissed, his microphone picking up the whisper. "Sing the chorus, or we terminate the hostages in the subway."
Ji-soo froze. Her eyes darted to Yoo-jin.
Yoo-jin saw it. The blackmail.
He stopped playing.
The noise dropped for a second.
"Let her go," Yoo-jin said into the megaphone.
"She is ours," Apex smiled, regaining his composure. "She is the Center. Without her, you are just noise."
Apex turned to the crowd. He raised his hand, commanding silence.
"Fans," Apex said, his voice dripping with synthetic charm. "These terrorists are trying to ruin our debut. But Ji-soo wants to be here. Don't you, Ji-soo?"
He squeezed her wrist. Hard.
The camera zoomed in on Ji-soo's face. It was projected onto the massive screens above the stage. Every tear, every tremble was visible to 20,000 people.
She opened her mouth.
"I..."
Yoo-jin didn't rush her. He didn't shout.
He just tapped his chest. Over his heart.
Thump-thump.
It was the beat she had used to stabilize him when he was a clone subject. The heartbeat of a survivor.
Ji-soo looked at Yoo-jin. Then she looked at the perfect, plastic face of Apex.
She looked at the red lightsticks in the crowd. They weren't swaying anymore. They were shaking. The fans were waiting.
Ji-soo grabbed Apex's hand.
She didn't pull away.
She dug her nails into his skin. Deep.
"Get your hands," Ji-soo spoke into her mic, her voice low and venomous. "Off my stage."
She kicked him.
Right in the shin. With a four-inch stiletto heel.
CRACK.
It wasn't a bone breaking. It was the sound of reinforced carbon fiber snapping.
Apex stumbled back, his perfect composure shattering.
"Glitch detected!" a Clone shouted.
Ji-soo ripped the white skirt of her dress. RIIIP. Underneath, she wore heavy combat boots.
She ran to Yoo-jin. She grabbed the spare microphone from Ha-eun.
"Hyung!" Ji-soo yelled. "Give me a beat!"
Yoo-jin felt a rush of pure electricity. This was it. The moment a producer lives for. The moment the idol goes rogue.
"David!" Yoo-jin screamed. "Drop the bass!"
David hit the spacebar.
BOOM.
The track wasn't the slow ballad anymore. It switched to the remix Yoo-jin had made on the bus. The one sampled from Apex's own arrogant speech.
I am perfection... perfection... perfection...
(Beat Drop)
ERROR! ERROR!
The beat hit like a freight train. It was fast, aggressive, and catchy as hell.
Ji-soo jumped.
"Jump!" she commanded the audience.
And twenty thousand people obeyed.
They jumped. The floor of the Gocheok Dome shook. The white suits of the Clones looked ridiculous against the sheer energy of the riot.
"Stop them!" Apex roared, his eyes glowing red. "Engage combat protocols!"
The eleven remaining Clones dropped their mics. They adopted fighting stances.
"Oh, now we're talking," Min-ji grinned. She tossed her oil drum aside and gripped her bat with two hands.
"Starforce!" Min-ji yelled. "Defend the Center!"
The fifty trainees in black hoodies surged forward. They weren't soldiers. They were a mob. They tackled the Clones, swinging pipes and throwing water bottles.
It was a brawl on live TV.
And the music kept playing.
Yoo-jin shredded on his guitar, providing the soundtrack to the violence.
Apex ignored the mob. He sprinted straight for Yoo-jin.
He moved fast. Inhumanly fast.
Yoo-jin didn't have time to dodge.
Apex tackled him.
They crashed into the drum set. Cymbals flew everywhere.
Apex pinned Yoo-jin to the floor. His hands locked around Yoo-jin's throat.
"You ruined the sequence," Apex said, his face inches from Yoo-jin's. His skin felt synthetic, too smooth. "This was the optimal launch."
"Your music sucks," Yoo-jin choked out.
"I have perfect pitch!" Apex tightened his grip. "I have perfect rhythm!"
Yoo-jin's vision blurred. Black spots danced in his eyes. He couldn't breathe.
He reached out. His hand found a loose cymbal on the floor.
"You have... no... soul," Yoo-jin wheezed.
He slammed the cymbal into the side of Apex's head.
CLANG.
Apex didn't bleed. His head snapped to the side. Sparks flew from his ear.
The impact loosened his grip.
Yoo-jin rolled away, gasping for air. He scrambled to his feet.
Apex stood up. Half of his face was twitching. The synthetic skin had torn, revealing metallic mesh underneath.
The audience gasped. The giant screen showed the monster beneath the idol mask.
"Look!" Yoo-jin pointed, his voice rasping. "Look at your Prince!"
Apex touched his exposed circuitry. He looked at the horrified crowd.
"No," Apex glitch-stuttered. "Visual... error. Do not... look."
The spell was broken completely. The fans weren't screaming in adoration anymore. They were screaming in horror.
"Monster!" someone yelled from the pit.
A lightstick flew onto the stage. It hit Apex in the chest.
Then another. And another.
A rain of red lightsticks descended on the stage. The fans were rejecting the product.
"Retreat!" Apex ordered, his voice distorting into a robotic growl. "Mission failed. Initiate sanitation."
"Sanitation?" Kai looked up from headlocking a Clone. "What does that mean?"
Suddenly, the massive doors of the South Loading Dock blew open.
BOOM.
Smoke filled the stage.
Through the smoke, heavily armored soldiers marched in. Not Clones. Not idols.
Real military. With real rifles.
"freeze!" a voice boomed over the PA. "This is a riot! Everyone on the ground!"
Apex looked at the soldiers. He smiled his broken, glitchy smile at Yoo-jin.
"Game over, Subject 734. The Producer Phase is finished."
Apex raised his hands in mock surrender.
"Now begins the War Phase."
Yoo-jin looked at his team. They were panting, holding their makeshift weapons. They had won the crowd, but they were about to lose their freedom.
"Back to the lift!" Yoo-jin shouted. "Everyone! Back to the lift!"
"It's too slow!" David yelled. "They're already on the stage!"
Soldiers swarmed the platform.
Yoo-jin grabbed Ji-soo's hand. He grabbed Sae-ri's.
They were trapped. Behind them, the drop to the mechanic pit. In front of them, an army.
"Trust me?" Yoo-jin asked.
"Always," Ji-soo said, wiping mascara from her cheek.
Yoo-jin looked at the massive pyrotechnic cannons lined up at the front of the stage. They were fully loaded for the finale.
"David," Yoo-jin yelled. "Fire the fireworks! All of them!"
"Inside? That's insane!"
"Do it!"
David hit the button.
FWOOSH. BOOM. CRACKLE.
A wall of fire and sparks erupted between Starforce and the military. The blinding light and smoke created a barrier of chaos.
"Jump!" Yoo-jin ordered.
"Jump where?"
"Into the crowd!"
He didn't wait. He ran to the edge of the stage and leaped into the sea of red lights.
For a second, he floated.
Then, twenty thousand hands reached up.
They didn't tear him apart. They caught him.
Yoo-jin crowd-surfed over the audience, carried by the people he had just woken up.
He looked back. Ji-soo, Sae-ri, Kai, Min-ji—they were all surfing the wave of fans, disappearing into the massive, chaotic ocean of the Dome.
Apex stood alone on the burning stage, surrounded by soldiers, watching his enemy surf away on the very fandom he tried to enslave.
Yoo-jin laughed. He laughed until his ribs hurt.
He had lost the building. He had lost the money.
But he had the noise. And right now, the noise was deafening.