Prologue: Observation Room B
Seoul. Elite Medical Research Wing, Private Annex. 03:41 A.M.
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, harsh against the sterile silence. Behind a glass-paneled lab partition, the research wing slept—except for one back cubicle, tucked beneath rows of suspended specimen trays and clouded centrifuge tubes.
A recorder clicked on.
“Phase III trial log—subject set 004A to 004F. Mutated cell line HN-Σ2 shows atypical response under stress-induced variables. Accelerated clotting in high-resilience hosts. Fatal arrhythmia onset: 72 hours post-injection. Most severe deterioration in subject 004D. Prognosis—terminal within five days if left untreated. Cross-referencing Singaporean gene pool... anomaly consistent.”
Kim Yae Ji paused, staring at the flickering results monitor. Heart rates dipping too soon. Brain scans fraying at the edges. Whatever HN-Σ2 was mutating into, it wasn’t hypertension relief anymore—it was a silent death sentence with a timer that couldn’t be read.
Her fingers hovered over the recorder. Her gut twisted. Not out of fear. Not yet. Out of instinct.
Voices.
Behind the partition, two lead researchers had entered Observation Room A without noticing her presence. The soundproof glass muted the tone but not the fury. Their Mandarin was fast, clipped—meant to be private. Meant to fly past anyone not supposed to understand.
Too bad Yae Ji understood every damn word.
“We report this. We go to ethics now. You heard what happened to 004D—”
“Do you want to die broke?” the other snapped. “I know exactly who’ll pay top dollar for this strain. The Japanese won’t know what hit them. Singapore? Please. A quiet wave of heart failure and the whole region folds.”
Yae Ji froze. Her heart slammed against her ribs, hard enough to feel in her throat.
“It’s perfect. Undetectable. They’ll blame genetics, lifestyle, anything but us. We don’t sell this? Someone else will.”
Yae Ji backed away from the glass, one quiet footfall at a time. The digital recorder was still running in her palm, her thumb pressing into the “REC” button like her life depended on it. It probably did. Her hands had begun to shake, adrenaline pumping through her like an IV line opened wide.
She ducked behind the supply cabinet in the narrow cubicle, wedging herself between sealed crates of cold storage chemicals and a file drawer that hadn’t been opened in months. She couldn’t breathe—no, she wouldn’t breathe. Not loudly. Not with the bastard in the lab coat pacing just feet away from the glass partition, his voice slicing the air like a bone saw.
There was a crack of bone. A thud. Something metal hit the tiled floor.
Yae Ji forced herself to look.
Through a sliver in the cabinet door, she saw the taller man collapse. The blood spread fast—arterial spray was a bitch like that. A clean, practiced strike to the carotid. The kind you don’t survive.
No yelling. No panic. Just the silence of a clean kill and the hum of fluorescent light. The man with the blade—Doctor Xu, she realized now—stood over the body like he was measuring vitals. Checking for twitching. Confirming a successful termination.
He reached down. Took the flash drive from the inside pocket of the dead man’s coat.
Then he smiled.
Yae Ji didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Not until the lab went dark and silent again.
She waited.
Hours passed. She counted them by the shift change of the nurses, the muffled sounds of carts rolling down the corridor, and the way her knees stopped aching from crouching. The only thing she allowed herself to do was rewind the recorder, listen once, then again. She had everything. Voices. Data. Argument. The implications.
And now—murder.
She grabbed the recorder. Shoved it into the inside pocket of her lab coat. Picked up the yellow legal pad from her desk, pages of it filled with cross-checks, notes, and printouts from the trial subjects. Her name was on every page. Her signature. Her research.
She slipped out the back corridor, the emergency exit that was always left cracked for late-night smokers. No security badge needed.
But just before she left, she glanced back—because she had to.
Blood had pooled across the tile, a thick halo crawling outward from the dead researcher’s neck. One of his sneakers—pristine white, the kind you wear when you’re proud of your lab—was now soaked red.
It was the last thing she saw before she disappeared.
