FALLEN KINGS -
CHAPTER 7 The Parallel Path
GANGNAM DISTRICT — 11:34 PM
Daniel's perfect body woke up in the expensive apartment like surfacing from drowning.One moment: darkness, unconsciousness, the small body's world of concrete and fluorescent lights. The next moment: soft sheets, air conditioning, Seoul's city lights filtering through floor-to-ceiling windows.The perfect body gasped, pulling oxygen into lungs that had been dormant for hours. His mind reoriented slowly. The small body was still at the facility, still in the thick of underground training. But this consciousness—the one in the perfect body—had been absent for the last six hours.Daniel checked his phone: 11:34 PM. Three minutes until the scheduled switch back. Three minutes to understand what the perfect body had been missing.He stumbled to the mirror.The perfect body looked rested. Untouched. Unmarked by the training that was destroying his small counterpart. The face was smooth. The shoulders weren't bruised. The hands showed no sign of trauma.But the eyes—both were the same eyes, after all—showed the same haunted exhaustion.Daniel's perfect body pulled up a secure video file on his laptop. Training data. Baki had left instructions: while the small body learned to break and rebuild through combat, the perfect body needed to develop something different. Pure mastery of UI—the predictive awareness that could see battles before they happened.The file showed Baki executing a series of movements. Strikes. Dodges. Repositioning. The recording was set at high speed. Normal speed would be too fast for conscious thought to track.Daniel positioned himself in front of the mirror and pressed play.The movement started. A spinning kick from the left, transitioning into a grapple attempt, flowing into a counter—Daniel's body moved.Not perfectly. Not even close to matching Baki's speed. But moved. The UI response had activated in his perfect body, calculating trajectory, predicting intent, executing optimal counter before his conscious mind could fully process what was happening.He hit play again.Again. Again. Again.Each repetition was marginally faster. Each response a fraction of a second quicker. The UI wasn't about technique—it was about seeing the battle before it happened. About reactions calibrated so precisely that the body moved before the conscious mind had finished thinking.After thirty repetitions, Daniel's perfect body was trembling with exertion. Not from the physical movements, but from the mental strain of maintaining constant predictive awareness.He collapsed onto the bed, breathing hard.Six more hours of this, he thought. Then switch back to the small body. Then six hours of direct combat training. Then back here.The exhaustion was spiritual, not just physical.UNDERGROUND FACILITY — 11:47 PMGun was timing Daniel's transitions.The small body was mid-combination—a series of strikes Doppo had taught him—when suddenly the consciousness shifted. The body went rigid. The movements became mechanical, no longer flowing.This lasted exactly seventeen seconds before Daniel's small body reasserted control. The consciousness had completed the handoff to the perfect body in Gangnam.Gun watched as the small body stumbled slightly, disoriented by the return of consciousness after the six-hour absence."How long?" Baki asked from across the room."Seventeen seconds of non-responsive transition time," Gun said. "Better than yesterday's twenty-three seconds, but still too long. In a real fight, seventeen seconds is enough time for Oliva to end it."Baki nodded, making a note. "The transition is the vulnerability. Both bodies occupying the same consciousness but not at the same time creates a gap where neither body is fully present."Daniel's small body was breathing hard, reorienting. His eyes refocused. His body remembered where it was."How was the UI training?" Baki asked Daniel directly."Difficult," Daniel's small body said. "The perfect body's UI is responding faster to your recordings. Maybe two hundred milliseconds faster than yesterday. But the accuracy still isn't perfect.""It won't be," Baki said. "UI is about probability, not certainty. The perfect body is learning to operate in states of incomplete information. That's harder than combat training because there's no feedback loop. In combat, you feel if you're right or wrong immediately. With UI, you're just calculating without verification."Goo walked over, carrying water for Daniel. The electrical burns on his arms had faded to light discoloration. The nervous system damage was still there—occasional spasms—but his body was adapting."Your dual body thing is insane," Goo said to Daniel. "One body getting destroyed, the other one getting philosophical. Most people would just go crazy.""I'm close," Daniel said quietly. "Both bodies feel like they're fragmenting. Like they're becoming two separate people instead of one consciousness in two forms.""Is that bad?" Vasco asked. He was wrapped in recovery tape, his muscles slowly rebuilding."I don't know yet," Daniel said. "Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe that's the point."GANGNAM APARTMENT — 12:45 AMThe perfect body switched back to the small body's consciousness.Darkness. Concrete. The smell of old sweat and rust. The small body's sensory input flooded in—exhaustion, muscle ache, the deep bone-level tiredness of combat training.Daniel's awareness settled back into the small body like a hand sliding into a glove that hadn't been worn in six hours.His small body was gasping for air. Doppo was pushing him through another series of strikes."Your transitions are getting better," Doppo said without preamble. "Your perfect body's UI training is showing in your small body's combat awareness. You're predicting my attacks one hundred milliseconds faster than this morning.""It's fragmentation," Daniel's small body gasped. "Both bodies are getting better at different things, but I don't know how to integrate them. The combat data and the UI data don't match.""They don't need to match," Doppo said. "Not yet. They need to exist separately first. Then, when you face Oliva, you'll figure out how to combine them."Doppo executed a combination: strike, dodge, repositioning, counter.Daniel's small body responded with foresight, but not with optimal execution. He predicted correctly but couldn't execute fast enough."That's frustration," Doppo said, observing. "Your foresight is showing you what needs to happen, but your body can't deliver. That gap between vision and execution is where growth happens."Daniel's small body kept fighting. Kept pushing. The consciousness was spread so thin between two bodies that existence itself felt fragmented.BAKI'S OBSERVATION — 1:34 AMBaki watched Daniel from across the training facility. The small body was sparring with Doppo. The perfect body was in Gangnam, practicing UI on video recordings.Gun approached him."Is this sustainable?" Gun asked. "The dual body training. He's going to fracture.""He's already fracturing," Baki said. "That's the point. When you push past the point of integration, when you push past where one consciousness can comfortably manage two bodies, something changes. The consciousness itself adapts. Becomes something more flexible. More capable.""Or breaks completely," Gun said."Yes," Baki agreed. "That's possible. But Daniel's already lived his entire life as two bodies sharing one consciousness. The infrastructure for this kind of fragmentation already exists in him. He just needs to learn to weaponize it."Baki turned to Gun."In seven hours, Oliva arrives," Baki said. "At that point, all of this training stops. There are no more theoretical frameworks. No more building blocks. Just violence and adaptation in real time."Gun's hands had healed significantly. The bandages were lighter now. The fingers moved with more fluidity. But the deep muscle memory of pain was still there."Do you think we can surprise him?" Gun asked."Yes," Baki said. "You'll survive longer than he expects. Your tactical mind will find angles he didn't predict. Goo's chaos will disrupt his rhythm. Daniel's foresight will show him openings. Johan's intuitive copying will adapt faster than Oliva anticipates. Vasco's endurance will outlast Oliva's expectations.""But we'll still lose," Gun said."Badly," Baki confirmed. "Oliva will destroy you. But the manner of destruction will matter. How long you last. How hard you fight. How many times you get back up."He looked at Gun directly."Because those details will reach Yujiro. And Yujiro is watching to see if resistance is theoretically possible. If you can show him that it is—even in the context of total defeat—then you change the calculus."DANIEL'S PERFECT BODY — 2:15 AMThe perfect body's consciousness returned to find itself covered in sweat.Daniel had fallen asleep practicing UI transitions. The laptop was still playing Baki's video on loop, and the perfect body had been executing responses even while the consciousness was absent.Muscle memory doing the work while the mind was elsewhere.Daniel checked the recordings: the UI response times had improved another one hundred fifty milliseconds during the unconscious practice. The body was learning patterns that the conscious mind didn't need to be aware of.It was beautiful and terrifying.Beautiful because it suggested that the body could become something almost autonomous—a machine of perfect prediction and optimal response.Terrifying because it suggested that consciousness was becoming irrelevant. That the body was evolving past the need for conscious direction.Daniel's perfect body looked at itself in the mirror.The face was still recognizable as Daniel. But the eyes—the eyes were beginning to look alien. Like something vast and strange was looking out from behind human features.Is this what Baki meant by breaking? Daniel thought. Not destroying who you are, but evolving into something you don't recognize?He lay down and forced himself to sleep. In five hours, the consciousness would switch back to the small body. In six hours after that, Oliva would arrive.The final preparation was nearly complete.UNDERGROUND FACILITY — 3:47 AMAll five of them were gathered in the training area.Gun. Goo. Daniel (small body, fully present). Johan. Vasco.Baki stood before them, his expression grave."Oliva arrives in four hours," Baki said. "In that time, you will rest. You will eat. You will prepare your minds for violence."He paused."I want to show you something," Baki said. He pulled up a video file on a projection screen.The video showed Baki fighting a massive man—not Oliva, but someone similar in build and power. The fight lasted forty seconds. In that time, Baki was struck multiple times. Thrown. Damaged.But Baki kept getting up.The fight ended with Baki collapsing, clearly outmatched, clearly defeated."That was me at eighteen," Baki said. "Fighting a division head. I lasted forty-three seconds. I lost catastrophically. I was broken in ways that took weeks to heal from."He looked at each of them."But something happened in those forty-three seconds," Baki continued. "I learned that I could survive longer than I thought. That my father's network wasn't invincible. That resistance, even hopeless resistance, changes something in the person doing the resisting."Baki stopped the video."In four hours, you're going to do the same thing," he said. "You're going to last as long as you can. You're going to fight with everything you have. And when you fall—and you will fall—you're going to get up.""How many times?" Vasco asked."As many times as you can," Baki said. "Until your body simply can't respond anymore. Until consciousness fades. Until Oliva decides you're no longer worth crushing.""That could be fatal," Johan said."Yes," Baki said. "It could be. But you've already accepted that Seoul might burn. You've already accepted the price of resistance. Now you need to execute it."The weight of that statement settled over them like snow—heavy, quiet, absolute.Four hours remained.Four hours before everything changed.