Kane moved before anyone else.
He took Caden by the elbow, hard enough to bruise, and pulled him toward the side aisle as the first siren rose outside the chapel. Not police sirens. Hunt tactical vans used a two-tone pulse tuned to cut through city traffic and human panic.
"Min," Kane snapped. "Confirm command source for this alert."
Min was already on her phone. "Route stamp says central operations. Signature valid."
"I did not authorize central operations." Kane's voice stayed perfectly level. "That means command chain is compromised."
Outside, boots hit stone. Shouts. Someone on loudspeaker ordering civilians to clear the road due to chemical threat containment.
Chemical threat.
Section 9 had built a lie designed to skip warrants and trigger immediate isolation protocols. Nobody asked questions when people said *biohazard*.
Shin stepped through the door from the courtyard, wet hair stuck to her forehead, one hand inside her jacket.
"Back exit is gone," she said. "Four-man stack in respirators, Hunt patches, no district police support."
Kane looked at her for the first time.
"You are Shin So-ra. Station 4 chief."
"And you're late," Shin said.
No handshake. No introductions.
Kane turned to a narrow door behind the memorial wall.
"Crypt stairs," he said. "Service tunnel to rear maintenance lane. Move."
"You know this building?" Caden asked.
"I buried my wife here." Kane opened the door. "Move."
---
The stairs were steep and smelled like wet stone and old incense.
Min went first with phone light. Kane pushed Caden ahead of him. Shin took rear, checking every landing before she let the group descend. Above them, chapel doors slammed open and voices spread through the hall.
"Thermal contact north wing!"
"Mask up!"
"Find Mercer!"
Caden felt the vibrations through the stairs, boots multiplying, patterns converging where he'd stood two minutes earlier.
They reached the bottom into a low tunnel lined with memorial storage lockers and maintenance pipes. Water dripped from one valve in a steady tap-tap-tap that sounded like a clock.
Min swore at her phone. "No outbound signal. They jammed local band."
"Of course they did," Shin said.
Kane moved fast for a man in dress shoes, cutting through the tunnel without hesitation.
"Forty meters to steel hatch," he said. "After that, service alley."
A bang echoed from behind. Another. Someone had found the crypt door and started forcing it.
Shin looked back once, then at Caden.
"You wanted Kane's attention," she said. "Congratulations."
"Not exactly this flavor."
"Table doesn't care what flavor you ordered."
They hit the hatch. Locked with an old wheel latch and rusted chain.
Kane didn't slow. He pulled a compact pry tool from inside his jacket, jammed it under the chain bracket, and leveraged his full weight. Metal screamed, then snapped.
"Out."
Min climbed first, then Caden, then Shin. Kane came last and spun the hatch shut behind them.
Alley rain smelled like diesel and frying oil from a restaurant vent three doors down. No tactical units in immediate visual range. Sirens still front-side.
Min finally got signal and checked her secure app. Her face went rigid.
"Director. Central command just transmitted an execution hold for you pending decontamination compliance."
"Execution hold?" Shin repeated.
Min nodded. "Your biometric key was used to issue field authority, then your key was flagged as potentially compromised. They are freezing your command privileges."
Kane stared at the screen, jaw a hard line.
"Who signed?"
"Acting Undersecretary Park."
Kane spoke like he was reciting law.
"Undersecretary Park cannot freeze director authority without oversight concurrence."
"Oversight concurrence has been filed," Min said. "Two minutes ago."
"Forged or coerced," Kane said. "Either way, we are out of institutional channel."
Shin looked at Caden.
"Hear that? We aren't the only fugitives now."
Kane turned to her.
"Where are Yoon and Hana?"
"Mobile. Site Echo." Shin kept her voice neutral. "Why?"
"Because they are primary witnesses and Section 9 will prioritize witness elimination before data recovery." Kane took Min's phone, typed rapidly, and returned it. "I just issued one lawful order before lockout completed. Protective transfer unit K-12 is moving to your coordinates now. They answer to Min personally."
"If K-12 is real," Shin said.
"It is real." Kane met her eyes. "Trust is optional. Speed is not."
Caden's burner vibrated with Dae-ho's emergency code.
He answered.
Dae-ho spoke without breathing between words.
"Echo compromised. Two vans with forged utility markings tried gate access. Vera flagged mismatch in plate screws. We relocated by route Delta. Took fire once, no hits. Yoon and Hana intact."
Caden closed his eyes once. "Current position?"
"Moving. No fixed location on open channel."
"Good. Keep moving."
He hung up and relayed fast.
Kane gave one sharp nod.
"Section 9 is running simultaneous lanes. Chapel capture was decapitation attempt. Echo strike was witness removal. Next is your station infrastructure." He looked at Shin. "How quickly can you erase?"
"Thirty minutes for core, fifty for deep burn," Shin said.
"You have twenty," Kane replied. "They will push your known addresses while we are still in motion."
Shin didn't argue.
"Then we run twenty."
Kane pulled a pocket notebook and tore out a page.
"Priority list," he said. "You erase these first: witness names, transfer schedules, and any metadata connecting Dr. Yoon to your station. Everything else is secondary."
Shin took the page, scanned it, and raised an eyebrow. "You keep paper notes?"
"Paper does not accept remote overwrite."
Min added, "I can spoof one district patrol alert to pull street cameras thirty seconds off real time near your entrance. After that, they resync."
"Thirty seconds is a fortune," Shin said.
Caden keyed Ji-soo through secure channel. "Prep misdirection burst. Push fake telemetry showing station traffic at old warehouse in Seongdong."
Ji-soo answered immediately. "Already drafting. I'll make it look like heavy outbound data so Section 9 commits at least one unit there."
Na-young cut in from the same line. "And I'll leave a poisoned breadcrumb in the fake packet. If they ingest it, their forensic parser burns CPU for fifteen minutes."
Kane glanced back. "Your analysts are effective."
"They're alive because they're paranoid," Shin said.
Min looked from one to the other. "If this works, you buy maybe twenty-five minutes total before they correct."
"Then we spend all twenty-five," Shin replied.
Caden checked his watch and did the ugly math out loud. "If we enter at 1908 and exfil by 1928, the hostile teams moving from chapel perimeter can still catch us at major intersections."
"Not if we split in threes and kill headlights on first turns," Kane said.
"That gets civilians hurt if we're wrong," Min said.
"Civilians get hurt if Section 9 captures those drives," Kane answered.
No one argued after that.
---
By 1905 they were back in a moving car heading toward Station 4's main site.
Min drove. Kane sat front passenger, phone dark, his official channel now a liability. Shin and Caden rode back seat with Ji-soo on encrypted earbud feeding route updates from Na-young.
"Main approach has two unmarked sedans parked since 1839," Ji-soo said. "No movement. Likely surveillance anchor."
"Any thermal inside building above station entrance?" Shin asked.
"Three on first floor, one rooftop. Could be tenants. Could be eyes."
Shin tapped Caden's knee.
"You and I go in. Kane and Min stay mobile one block out."
Kane turned around.
"No. I go in."
"Absolutely not," Shin said. "If Section 9 confirms you're physically aligned with us, they accelerate to overt purge."
"They are already in overt purge," Kane said.
Shin gave him a thin smile with no warmth. "You still have one thing we don't. A badge that can open doors. Keep it unburned until we need it."
Kane held her gaze, then faced forward again.
"Twenty minutes," he said. "No more."
---
Station 4 smelled like coffee, printer heat, and fear when they came through the service tunnel.
Na-young was already running wipe scripts across all live drives.
"Primary mirrors complete. Cold drops dispatched," she said without looking up. "I left decoy traffic on for twenty-five minutes so outside observers think we're still indexing."
"Good," Shin said. "Ji-soo, kill external and go black in five."
"Copy."
Caden moved desk to desk with Dae-ho's backup checklist on screen: destroy call logs, burn alias table, wipe dead-drop maps, pull personal photos from shared drives before purge if possible.
He found one photo in his folder he didn't remember keeping: Station 4 kitchen, everyone half-blurred, Vera mid-eye-roll, Shin holding instant noodles like they were a tactical object. He almost deleted without copying, then shoved it onto a thumb drive and pocketed it.
Na-young shouted, "I have inbound ping on old channel from Marcus."
"Audio," Shin said.
Marcus came through in static.
"No time for qualifiers. I just caught internal memo chain. Section 9 activated legal frame package naming Station 4 as bioterror support cell. They're using your own metadata as evidence."
"Can they tie it?" Na-young asked.
"Only if they seize your hardware before full wipe."
Shin looked at the timer on the wall.
Twelve minutes left.
From above, [Ground Sense] caught new footsteps in the building's main stairwell. Heavy boots, six at least, spread pattern, tactical spacing.
"They're in the upper structure," Caden said.
"How many?"
"Six minimum. Probably more outside."
Shin didn't look up. "Keep wiping."
At eight minutes, Ji-soo cut final outbound and yanked the physical antenna cable from the wall.
At six, Na-young started thermite on two storage arrays they couldn't carry.
At four, Dae-ho called from moving convoy.
"We are two kilometers out with Hana and Yoon. K-12 made contact. They are clean so far."
"Keep distance from K-12 until Kane confirms phrase," Shin said.
"Phrase?"
Shin looked at Kane on the secure line.
"Give him one."
Kane answered immediately.
"`Regulation 14 has no footnote.`"
Shin relayed it to Dae-ho. "Any unit that can't answer with `Only cowards fake appendix text` is hostile."
"Copy."
At two minutes, a thud shook dust from the tunnel ceiling.
Upper entry breach.
Shin stood.
"Walk."
Na-young grabbed the encrypted laptop, Ji-soo the comms case, Caden the remaining drives. They filed into the service corridor and moved fast.
Behind them, thermite hissed through metal and plastic, bright white cutting lines through years of data.
At the first turn, Caden felt two sets of vibrations above them tracking parallel. Section 9 wasn't random-sweeping. They had structural blueprints.
"They're matching tunnel direction," he said.
"Then give them a gift," Shin said.
She keyed a dead switch on the corridor wall. A half-second later, three shaped charges in the old utility conduit detonated in sequence. The tunnel behind them collapsed with a concrete roar that shoved hot air up their backs.
Na-young stumbled. Caden caught her by the sleeve and kept her moving.
They emerged into an underground parking shell two blocks away where Kane and Min waited in a second car.
Shin shoved Na-young and Ji-soo into the back seat.
"Go with Min. Route west. No radio unless burn code."
"What about you?" Ji-soo asked.
"I have unfinished logistics," Shin said.
Caden stepped toward her. "Don't split now."
"I'm not splitting. I'm adding route confusion." She looked at him, hard. "Get in Kane's car."
For one dangerous second Caden thought about disobeying.
Then he saw the look in her eyes and didn't.
He got in.
Convoy split at the first light, one car north, one west, one south with no headlights for two blocks before joining traffic.
Through the rear window, Caden watched the block containing Station 4 disappear behind rain and distance.
Thirty seconds later, a deep muffled boom rolled through the street grid.
Not enough to level the structure. Enough to finish the hardware and make entry expensive.
Kane didn't turn around. "You destroyed your own station."
"No," Caden said, tasting concrete dust and copper at the back of his throat. "We denied a seizure."
He closed his eyes.
Behind his eyelids he could still see thermite light burning through drives, white and final, while rain tapped the windshield in tiny uneven beats that sounded like cards being dealt to a table nobody could leave.
