Tae-Hyun left the underground without realizing how he did.
He remembered the elevator doors closing.
He remembered the numbers climbing.
He did not remember walking out of the building.
He found himself across the street from Helix Crown Tower, standing among strangers, the night wind cutting through borrowed clothes, the city glowing as if nothing inside it had just broken.
Chairman Yoon.
The name kept repeating.
Not loud.
Not violently.
Like something embedded.
Yoon Jae-Sung had been the first man to look at him and not see an orphan.
The first to pull him out of government trials.
The first to put a suit on his back, a book in his hand, a future in front of him.
"You don't belong in cages," Yoon had said once, years ago, placing a hand on his shoulder. "You belong at tables where decisions are made."
He had believed him.
He had worked for him.
He had built an empire beside him.
And when he had finally uncovered Project Devil's Heir…
when he had finally traced the missing bodies, the sealed labs, the falsified reports…
Yoon had not stopped him.
He had removed him.
Tae-Hyun's fingers curled slowly.
Not shaking.
Hardening.
He walked.
Didn't take the bus.
Didn't call anyone.
Just walked until the streets narrowed and the city lost its shine.
By the time he reached Han Jae-Min's building, the sky was already paling.
He unlocked the door.
Stepped inside.
Closed it.
And stood there.
The small room felt smaller than ever.
A place meant for someone who expected nothing.
He sat on the mattress and stared at the opposite wall.
For a long time, there was no hum.
No power.
No strategy.
Just memory.
Yoon's laugh.
Yoon's rare anger.
Yoon's pride when Tae-Hyun had closed his first hostile takeover.
Yoon's voice at his funeral, played on every channel.
"My greatest regret," the man had said, eyes wet, voice steady,
"is that he never got to see how far he had come."
Tae-Hyun lowered his head.
Something tight pressed behind his eyes.
Not tears.
He didn't allow those anymore.
But something close.
"You didn't build me," he said quietly to the empty room.
"You harvested me."
The hum stirred faintly.
Responding not to command—
but to emotion.
He closed his eyes.
And for the first time since waking in this body, he didn't push it down.
He didn't go to Helix for three days.
He didn't answer Dr. Seo's calls.
He didn't turn on the phone.
Instead, he searched.
Not through systems.
Through memory.
Through the fragments still buried in his cells.
He focused on his old life.
On the years before Helix Crown.
On the white rooms.
The needles.
The tests no one explained.
And slowly… things surfaced.
Not scenes.
Sensations.
Cold metal against skin.
Voices behind glass.
The way certain machines in B9 had felt familiar before he ever saw them.
The way his body had never reacted like other bodies.
He opened his eyes.
Stared at his hands.
So even before he became CEO…
he had been owned.
The thought did not enrage him.
It clarified him.
On the fourth night, he returned her call.
She answered on the first ring.
"Where have you been?" she asked.
Not angry.
Not professional.
Relieved.
"I needed to know who I was before I decided who to become."
Silence.
Then, softly, "And?"
"I was never free," he said. "I was just useful."
She didn't respond immediately.
When she did, her voice was steadier than he felt.
"Come to the hospital. Not Helix. Here. There's something you need to see."
They met in a records room beneath the public wing.
Old cases.
Archived files.
The kind no one digitized because no one cared anymore.
She stood at a table when he entered.
There were papers spread before her.
Folders.
Dates.
He recognized one immediately.
Seven years ago.
She looked up.
"You said your life changed the night you died," she said.
He nodded.
She slid a thin file toward him.
"This is when mine changed."
He opened it.
Patient intake.
Experimental immunotherapy trial.
Subject number.
Age: 16.
Status: transferred.
No further records.
"I was an intern then," she said. "Assigned to assist. We were told these trials were for treatment-resistant conditions. Autoimmune disorders. Degenerative syndromes."
He scanned the page.
Stopped.
His jaw tightened.
The donor compatibility chart.
The baseline template.
It wasn't blank.
It was his.
Not his name.
His biology.
Even then.
"I saw what happened to the ones who weren't compatible," she continued quietly. "And I also saw the one they were measuring everyone against."
He looked up slowly.
"You saw me."
"Yes."
Silence filled the small room.
"You were older than me," she said. "Already different. Already not reacting like the others. I remember thinking… if he survives this place, he'll never belong to anywhere else."
Her fingers curled slightly against the table.
"I didn't know they were building something around you. I didn't know they would turn it into an empire."
He closed the file.
"So you joined Helix."
"I joined to understand it," she said. "And maybe… to undo it."
Their eyes met.
Two people who had walked into the same darkness from opposite ends.
"Yoon Jae-Sung oversaw the medical division back then," she added. "Before Helix was public. Before the towers."
He exhaled slowly.
"He didn't save me," Tae-Hyun said.
"He patented me."
She watched him carefully.
"What are you going to do now?"
The question was simple.
The answer was not.
He thought of the girl in C-21.
Of the word donor.
Of Yoon standing at his grave.
Of Dr. Seo's hand on his wrist.
Of the way his body quieted around her.
"I'm going to take back what he built," he said.
"And then?"
He met her gaze.
"And then I'm going to burn the part of it that should never have existed."
She didn't look away.
"Even if you're part of it?"
He was quiet for a moment.
Then, honestly, "Especially if I am."
The room was still.
Outside, a trolley rattled past.
Life, ordinary and unknowing.
Dr. Seo straightened slowly.
"Then," she said, "you're not doing this without me."
That wasn't a promise.
It was a decision.
And somehow… that scared him more than any enemy he had left.