At 2159 Kane held the warrant up to the Gyeonggi front gate camera and read the code aloud.
The guard in the booth stared at him, then at the paper, then at the four vehicles stacked behind him with bodycams rolling and legal observer lights on.
"Open," Kane said.
The guard hesitated long enough to be memorable, then hit the switch.
Gate rolled wide.
Too easy.
Caden felt the first warning as a gap in [Ground Sense], not a signal. Big facility, concrete slab, lots of machinery, and almost no foot traffic.
"Light occupancy," he said quietly to Kane as they crossed the threshold. "Way lower than daytime logs."
Kane didn't break stride.
"Noted."
Public lane entered in textbook order: Kane and Min up front with warrant camera, two loyal officers flanking, Caden in visible restraint with chest cam attached, legal observer two steps back narrating each action for record.
"Time 2201," observer said. "Entry under anti-corruption provisional warrant, code confirmed."
Shadow lane checked in over encrypted channel at same moment.
Ryu: "Approaching rail bypass point Bravo. No visual compromise yet."
Shin from command: "Both lanes live. Keep feeds clean."
Inside main lobby, reception desks sat unmanned. Security monitors showed static on half the channels and looping hallway footage on the rest.
Min cursed under her breath.
"They prepped for us."
Kane raised voice for camera.
"This facility is now under legal seizure. All personnel remain in place and submit for identification. Interference will be charged as obstruction."
No response.
Caden looked down the left corridor.
"Archive and server rooms should be below this wing," he said. "Look for reinforced door and redundant cooling."
They moved.
Halfway down corridor they passed a glass conference room where whiteboards still held meeting notes:
`Public Messaging Sync`
`Containment Vocabulary`
`Do not use term extraction in external email`
Min photographed every board as she walked.
"They left in a hurry but not panic," she murmured. "This is curated abandonment."
Legal observer narrated into bodycam with steady voice. "2203. Facility appears partially evacuated before entry. Potential premeditated evidence staging."
Kane stopped at a side office and lifted a framed certificate from the wall.
Department seal.
Official partnership grant.
"They built this under my own letterhead," he said, almost to himself.
Caden glanced at him. "You still surprised?"
"No." Kane set the frame down carefully. "But I am still offended."
At a junction, one of Kane's loyal officers called out.
"Fresh coffee in break room. Cups still warm."
Min checked temperature with back of hand. "Less than ten minutes old."
Ryu came over comms from shadow lane, voice tight. "Bravo approach confirms two lookout scooters abandoned with engines hot. We may be in chase geometry."
"Acknowledge," Kane said. "Do not overcommit if baited."
"Copy, though bait is getting louder."
First resistance came at stairwell B: two private security contractors with shock batons and panic in their eyes.
"Drop it," Min said.
They dropped instantly.
Second resistance was worse: a locked blast door requiring biometric and code.
Kane held warrant to the scanner and read seizure statute.
Nothing.
Min stepped forward with override wedge and portable injector.
"Thirty seconds," she said.
Caden listened through the floor.
Five signatures below them. Running. Not toward exits. Toward interior core.
"They're not fleeing," he said. "They're going to destroy something."
"Faster," Kane said.
Min forced port access and bypassed lock in twenty-three seconds.
Door opened to a descending service ramp and cold air that smelled like refrigerant and burnt plastic.
Basement level looked like a datacenter married to an operating theater.
Server racks along one wall. Procedure bays along the other. Half the equipment disconnected. Cables cut. Labels ripped.
Five technicians in gray coats were at the far end loading drives into a thermal shred unit.
"Stop!" Kane roared.
Two froze.
Three kept moving.
One reached for a red deadman switch mounted beside shredder.
Kane fired warning shot into ceiling.
Technician slammed switch anyway.
Nothing happened.
Na-young's voice hit comms, grimly satisfied.
"I just killed their remote trigger path from command side. Deadman disconnected."
Caden ran forward, shoulder protesting, and kicked the shredder access tray closed before the next drive dropped.
Technician swung at him with metal clipboard. Caden ducked, slammed him into rack, and cuffed him to ladder rung with Kane's spare ties.
Min and officers secured the room in under a minute.
Legal observer kept speaking for camera with a voice that trembled once then steadied.
"2208. Evidence destruction attempt observed. Five personnel detained."
Kane turned to one of the techs.
"Who ordered purge?"
"No comment."
Kane didn't raise voice.
"Name."
"No comment."
Min leaned to Kane. "We can compel under warrant extension but that'll take hours."
"We do not have hours." Kane looked at Caden. "What are we missing?"
Caden scanned room.
No cryo pods.
No patients.
No intact subject files on visible terminals.
Just wiped racks and staging carts.
Decoy with real data fragment.
Then [Ground Sense] picked up a faint rhythmic vibration behind the back wall: rail wheel resonance, close and moving slow.
"There is a track directly behind this level," he said. "Hidden bay."
Min checked blueprint overlay and swore.
"Original plans show utility tunnel. Not rail."
"Because someone redacted," Kane said.
He pointed to two officers.
"Find wall seam."
They found it behind a movable reagent cabinet: magnetic panel, disguised.
Beyond it, a narrow tunnel with fresh wheel marks and cold vapor residue.
Fresh departure.
Caden keyed comms.
"Ryu, update. Any movement on your rail target?"
Static. Then Ryu breathing hard.
"Contact at Bravo. Rail car arrived on schedule. We boarded. It was empty at first glance."
Before Caden could answer, Glass cut in from shadow lane channel, words tumbling.
"I have active spoof traffic on local freight control. Someone is injecting fake maintenance alarms to hold civilian rail two kilometers out. They cleared the tracks for this one car."
Ryu's voice again, farther from mic now, likely moving. "Rear coupling had fresh weld marks. Vera popped plate and found lower compartment hatch."
Vera came on next, clipped and cold. "Lower bay had two pods, one body bag, and one timed thermite pack wired to door contact. Dae-ho froze it with coolant spray."
Dae-ho added, "We also found paper manifest in conductor sleeve. Lists transfer authority as Kane, Solomon, code K-Alpha-Three."
Kane's jaw tightened. "Of course it does."
Ryu kept reporting between exertion breaths. "One hostile attempted escape along embankment in civilian raincoat. Non-lethal stop by Vera. He's alive, says he's contract driver and has no idea what he moved. Might be true."
Glass again: "I cloned onboard route logger. Last waypoint before Bravo was not Gyeonggi proper. It was DoA Annex service spur."
Caden and Kane spoke at the same time.
"Annex."
Ryu finished the sequence. "Occupant in pod alive but unstable. Serial tag STX-032."
"At first glance?"
"Hidden lower compartment. We found two cryo pods and one body bag. One pod occupied, one empty. Body bag contains male technician, dead maybe twelve hours." Ryu paused. "Occupant in pod alive but unstable. Serial tag STX-032."
Every head in basement turned toward Caden.
STX-032. One of the frozen lab subjects from V-7.
"Can you move them?" Caden asked.
Eun-ji came on line from command where she'd linked into shadow feed.
"If pod integrity holds, yes. But we need controlled transfer within forty minutes."
Kane keyed in.
"Ryu, extraction priority on STX-032. Secure car manifests and any physical logs."
"Copy."
Not total loss.
But still wrong.
Caden looked at the technician tied to rack.
"Where did the main convoy go?"
No answer.
He stepped closer, voice low.
"Your own people left you here to burn evidence and take charges. They are not coming back for you."
Technician's eyes flicked once toward a ceiling camera.
Caden followed the glance.
Camera light was on.
Live.
"They're watching," Caden said.
As if on cue, every monitor in the room flashed.
Black.
Then a woman appeared on all screens.
Long hair pulled back, plain lab coat, eyes calm as winter.
Chae Yun-seo.
She smiled like she was greeting colleagues at a conference.
"Director Kane. Mr. Mercer. What a surprise to find you in my abandoned workplace."
Kane stepped into camera frame.
"You are under warrant. Surrender your location now."
Chae tilted her head.
"You finally read your own budgets. Good. Growth is beautiful at any age." Her eyes shifted to Caden. "And you. Still alive. Section 9's predictive model gave you 31 percent survival by this point."
"Sorry to ruin your chart," Caden said.
Chae's smile didn't move.
"You have seized noise, not signal. Five technicians, partial drives, one rail fragment we were willing to lose. Congratulations." She tapped something off-screen. New data appeared beside her face: timestamps, route maps, transfer IDs. "Primary assets left this facility at 1950 under lawful transfer orders signed by Director Kane's authenticated key."
Kane's jaw set.
"Forgery."
"Documentation disagrees," Chae said. "And in bureaucracy, documentation is truth until someone with higher letterhead says otherwise."
Min stepped toward monitor.
"Where are they?"
Chae laughed softly.
"If I were inclined to teach, Ms. Min, I would tell you to stop chasing buildings and start chasing signatures." She looked back at Caden. "Your people think in places. We think in permissions."
Caden felt cold climb his spine.
Permissions.
Fake orders.
Transfer wing.
Not lab-centric. Command-centric.
He spoke before he fully had it.
"Epsilon Custody Wing isn't in Gyeonggi. It's piggybacked inside official Hunt detention infrastructure."
Kane turned sharply toward him.
Chae's smile widened one degree.
"There you are, Mr. Mercer. That's why we liked you. You eventually arrive at the right answer." She glanced at something off-screen, then back. "Unfortunately, eventually is not a useful time unit in operations."
Shin's voice came in hot over comms.
"Command post under attempted breach! Unknowns at outer gate with municipal IDs!"
Eun-ji shouting in background. Metal clanging.
Hana's voice, clear and furious: "I have release trigger in my hand!"
Kane keyed hard.
"Shin, status!"
Static swallowed half the reply.
"...holding first gate... second team on roof..."
Chae watched them scramble with open curiosity.
"You see the pattern now," she said. "Force here, force there, signatures everywhere. You can save one lane at a time. Choose well."
She leaned toward camera, close enough that Caden could see fatigue lines under her eyes.
"By the way, Director. Undersecretary Park has just signed your suspension for collaboration with a known thief. The arrest warrant has your own seal." She looked at Caden and her voice softened, almost kind. "And Mr. Mercer, Priority Zero has been upgraded."
Screen glitched once.
For a second another label flashed behind her shoulder before feed cut.
`SQUAD EPSILON - ACTIVE INTERCEPT`
Then black.
Basement hummed with server fans and distant rail vibration.
Kane turned to his team.
"We exfil now. All evidence and detainees."
He looked at Caden.
"You were right. Wrong building."
Caden stared at the dead screen where Chae had been and felt the shape of the next disaster sliding into place.
If Section 9 owned permissions and signatures, then every door in the Hunt could already be open to them.
Min was already moving, barking logistics as officers zip-tied detainees and bagged drives.
"Evidence packet alpha with Kane. Packet beta with me. If one vehicle goes down, other reaches command."
Ryu's shadow lane feed crackled back in. "Bravo extraction rolling. STX-032 still viable. We took one hostile alive and one rail manifest binder."
Kane answered, "Bring both. No detours."
Min shoved a spare sidearm into Caden's hand. "Backup. Safety on until vehicle."
Caden checked chamber by reflex, then remembered [Quick Draw] was still active for now and holstered.
"Don't drop that one too," Min said.
"No promises," Caden replied.
She rolled her eyes and kept moving.
The basement lights flickered once overhead.
He keyed comms to Shin one more time.
"Hold until we reach you. Five minutes minimum."
Shin's response came through bursts of gunfire and breaking glass.
"You don't have five minutes."
