The dry goods store's third floor smelled like sesame oil and old wood and had twelve square meters of open floor space if you moved the rice sacks to the walls. They moved the rice sacks to the walls.
Min's Namsan contact had been accurate about the owner being in Busan. Less accurate about the floor's readiness for twelve people. Three overhead light fixtures had bulbs out. One window had a crack sealed with electrical tape that let in a thin draft. The bathroom had a lock that didn't fully catch.
Nobody complained.
Ji-soo sat on a rice sack with a cold pack on her head and ran comm checks on the new frequency set. Eun-ji made Dae-ho horizontal on the cleanest section of floor she could find, covered him with two coats, and told him to stay that way for six hours. He fell asleep in four minutes.
Hana found a wall to lean against and started drawing the Namsan archive floor plan from memory with a marker and the back of a paper bag.
Kane set up at the kitchen tableâa card table with two folding chairs, one of which had a leg that needed shimming with a folded napkinâand opened the seized evidence binders again with the patient focus of a man who'd already been through them twice and suspected he'd missed something.
At 1600, Na-young said, "I have everything from the data drives processed."
Everyone not actively working stopped what they were doing.
She turned her laptop to face the room.
"What we grabbed from Gyeonggi's second rack is mostly movement records. Transfer timestamps, facility codes, routing identifiers. Most of it matches what we've already establishedâSection 9 using Hunt infrastructure for unauthorized asset movement." She paused. "Except for one folder. It was partially corrupted because the technician hit the shredder before Na-young's intercept killed the remote trigger. But not fully. About forty percent of one file set survived."
Na-young pointed at a highlighted row near the top of the screen.
PROJECT CODE: ECHO-PATTERN
STATUS: ACTIVE
SUBJECT REGISTRY: COMPLETE
ACTIVE SUBJECTS: 24
"Twenty-four," Kane said.
"Twenty-four active subjects in a project registry that uses numbered identifiers. Subject seven is listed with the notation 'mobile-volatile, priority containment.' The notation matches what Chae used during the Gyeonggi broadcastâshe described a predictive model that gave subject seven a 31 percent survival probability."
Subject seven. Caden.
"The other twenty-three," Ryu said.
"Listed by number and skill classification only. No names in the surviving fragment." Na-young pulled up a secondary file. "But there's a status column. Of the twenty-four active subjects, eleven are marked as 'custody secured.' Nine are marked 'surveillance active.' Four are marked 'pending acquisition.'"
"Eleven in custody," Min said.
"Yes."
"How long has ECHO-PATTERN been running," Kane asked.
"Earliest timestamp in the surviving records is three years ago." Na-young looked at him. "Predates my assignment to your division by two years."
Kane did not look away from the screen. "What does 'custody secured' mean in Section 9 classification."
"I don't have a classification manual. But given Shin's EC tag, the transfer to an unregistered facility, the prisoner transport markingsâI would interpret 'custody secured' as Section 9's own detention. Not Hunt's official intake."
"So eleven people with skill-related abilities have been moved into Section 9's private detention structure," Min said. "Possibly over a three-year span."
"Eleven at minimum," Yoon said from the corner where she'd been quietly reading the evidence binder for the last hour. "I want to note that the project registry marks them as active subjects, which in a research context typically means they are still alive and being observed."
"Research context," Caden said.
Yoon looked at him. "Section 9 is not a law enforcement operation. It is a research-adjacent collection program. They are not detaining skill-holders to prosecute them. They are detaining them to study them." She set the binder down. "Hana and I have been providing testimonial evidence about that program. What we have seenâthe containment protocols, the physiological monitoring, the skill-activation testingâis consistent with what I would design if I were attempting to understand skill mechanics in a controlled human population."
She said it flat, like reading a diagnostic out loud.
"They're running experiments," Na-young said.
"They are doing systematic study of awakened physiology and skill interaction. Whether that qualifies as experiments under existing law is a semantic question. Whether it constitutes harm to the subjects is not."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Kane closed the binder.
"I have been operating," he said slowly, "under the assumption that Section 9's primary goal was to use or eliminate Caden's specific ability. The ECHO-PATTERN registry suggests that Mercer is seven of twenty-four. Not the primary subject. Perhaps not even the most valuable."
"Subject one through six were acquired first," Caden said. "What were their skill classifications?"
Na-young pulled the fragment. Read off the entries.
"One: [Force Multiplication]. Two: [Biological Acceleration]. Three: [Sensory Link]. Four: [Memory Imprint]. Five: [Cellular Regeneration]. Six: [Predictive Echo]."
"[Predictive Echo]," Caden said.
"Listed as 'custody secured.'"
"[Probability Vision] is a known variant of predictive ability types." He worked through it. "If Section 9 was already running ECHO-PATTERN for three years before they tagged me, they may have found a [Probability Vision] user beforeâ"
"Before Luna," he'd almost said. He stopped.
Luna wasn't in the story yet. He didn't know Luna. He knew only that [Predictive Echo] sounded like the kind of thing someone with probability-reading ability might manifest.
He filed it.
"What Section 9 wants from twenty-four skill-holders tells us something about what they're trying to build," Min said. "Cellular regeneration. Biological acceleration. Sensory linking. Memory imprinting. If you could map the interaction between those abilitiesâ"
"You'd understand the underlying system," Kane said.
"Or create someone who could replicate it," Yoon said. "A single subject with access to combined skill-type data might theoretically develop a synthesized understanding of how skill mechanics work at a fundamental level." She paused. "Which would be worth considerably more than any single stolen ability."
Nobody spoke for a moment.
"They're not just collecting," Caden said. "They're building a picture."
"Yes," Yoon said. "And they need living subjects who continue to manifest the skills in order to gather data. Which is why their custody is secured rather than terminated."
"And why the EC tags have no oversight," Vera said. "They can't have official medical or legal personnel in contact with subjects."
Numbers in a fragment file. People in rooms somewhere. Two different things to know.
Caden looked at Kane.
"After we get Shin out," he said. "The other eleven. That's part of this."
Kane looked back at him. "Yes."
Not instantly. He'd had to find it, the way you found a necessary truth after sorting through a few inconvenient ones.
"Yes," he said again. "That is now part of this."
---
At 1730, Kane's phone rang.
He checked the number and took it into the bathroomâthe one with the lock that didn't catchâand stood there for nine minutes with the door held closed manually.
When he came out, his expression was the particular blank it went when something had shifted significantly and he was still processing whether it shifted good or bad.
Min looked at him.
"Chief Inspector Yeo Sang-mi," Kane said. "Internal Affairs Division. She has been reviewing the suspension bulletin and the Epsilon classification activities as part of a separate IA inquiry that was opened two weeks ago."
"She already had an inquiry open," Na-young said.
"Two weeks before my suspension. Which means she was investigating Section 9's use of department infrastructure independent of our operation." He sat down at the card table. "She cannot act publicly. The suspension makes any formal association with me radioactive. But she can provide something unofficially."
"What," Min said.
"Namsan Archive's sub-basement schematic. IA division received a copy during the security audit review she was conducting. She cannot share it through official channels. But she says there is a city maintenance coordination office one block from this location that has an open work order terminal." He looked at Na-young. "She can push a document to that terminal from an untracked IA device if Na-young can intercept the terminal output remotely."
Na-young was already pulling up city infrastructure access protocols.
"I need fifteen minutes and one physical visit to the coordination office to place a relay."
"Ryu," Kane said.
Ryu stood up without being asked.
"Fifteen minutes of errand running," he said. "I've done worse."
He left.
Kane sat at the card table and looked at the partial ECHO-PATTERN file on Na-young's screen.
"I should have found this two years ago," he said. Not to the room. Just into the air.
Min said, "You were given false intelligence about the scope of the program."
"I should have looked harder."
"You were looking at skill thieves," Caden said. "That's what your entire mandate was structured to do. Looking at your own department would have required a different kind of suspicion."
Kane looked at him.
"I am aware that you are attempting to be generous," he said. "I would prefer you didn't."
Caden shrugged. "Fair."
They sat with the silence for a moment. The kind that came after bad math landed.
"When this is over," Kane said finally, "and by over I mean when there is a path to something that resembles lawful procedure againâI will need testimony."
"Yes."
"From you specifically. What you saw in Section 9's operations. What was done to the subjects we have evidence of. The ECHO-PATTERN program."
"I know."
"This will require you to formally identify yourself. Name, ability, full history of skill acquisitions and actions."
"I know that too."
Kane looked at him steadily.
"The process that follows that testimony would normally end with your execution," he said. "Skill thieves who admit to kills in formal proceedings have not historically had positive outcomes."
"I know."
"I want to be clear that I cannot promise any particular outcome. I can promise that the evidence record will be complete and that my testimony will accurately describe your cooperation."
"You're telling me my best-case scenario for helping you is still probably death," Caden said.
"Yes."
"And the alternative is Shin in a black site and eleven other people in rooms we don't know the locations of."
"Yes."
Caden looked at the cracked window with its electrical tape seal. The draft came through in a thin cold line.
He'd sat at a lot of tables and weighed a lot of hands. Some of them were objectively bad and the only question was which bad outcome to choose.
"All right," he said.
"You understand what you're agreeing to."
"I understand what I'm agreeing to."
Kane nodded once.
From the bathroom, Ryu's voice carried through the bad door seal: "Seventeen minutes. Document's at the terminal."
"Fifteen minutes?" Na-young said.
"The terminal required an extra step," Ryu said, coming out of wherever he'd been standing. "I moved the timeline two minutes. This is within tolerance."
Na-young started intercepting the output.
Caden looked at the list of skill types on the ECHO-PATTERN fragment.
[Force Multiplication]. [Biological Acceleration]. [Sensory Link]. [Memory Imprint]. [Cellular Regeneration]. [Predictive Echo].
Then: [Skill Theft].
Seven of twenty-four. Not special. Not the primary target. Just one node in a collection program that had been running for three years longer than he'd been awake.
He'd thought this game was about him.
It was about something bigger and considerably worse.
The sub-basement schematic started printing from Na-young's laptop.
He pulled his chair over to look at it.
The hand was still garbage. But at least now he knew the full size of the table.
