[South Busan – Warehouse perimeter, Drift-splinter zone -2:48 AM]
The pier groaned beneath Samuel's steps like it remembered every fight it had ever witnessed.
Old dock warehouses loomed around him—brick and rust, broken glass, chain-link fences that curled like old scars. The night air smelled like sea-salt and motor oil. He moved through it like breath through ribs—measured, silent, close to collapse.
Ji Yun was here.
The warehouse perimeter was quiet. Too quiet.
Samuel crouched near a busted floodlight and watched from the dark. A crew of six loitered near the loading doors. Too untrained to be CTRL9, but too confident to be ordinary punks.
They wore cheap knockoff gloves, one held a bat with chipped nails stuck in the head. The tag on their jackets was new: PGR — probably one of the ghost crews CTRL9 subsidized.
He didn't waste time.
He didn't ask questions.
He moved.
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Samuel dropped the first one before they even turned. Knee to the ribs, elbow behind the ear. No noise.
The second lunged and got caught in the full counter. Samuel slammed him shoulder-first into the container wall and used the rebound to clock the third with a broken plank.
The fourth had time to scream.
Samuel broke his jaw for it.
By the time the fifth pulled a knife, the sixth had run.
Samuel let him.
Someone always had to spread the rumor.
He stood in the silence afterward, panting. Blood on his shirt, none of it his. Yet.
He looked down at the fourth guy, still twitching.
"Who paid you?"
"...Nobody I saw," the guy spat. "They just dropped a black envelope at our corner. Said: slow down the ghost."
Samuel stepped back. Then forward. Heel pressed gently into the man's collarbone.
"They sent you to be blood. Not fighters."
Crack.
Not lethal.
But it wouldn't heal clean.
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The main warehouse door was unlocked. That was the first message.
Inside, metal walls and wet footprints. Ji Yun's data pad sat shattered under a folding chair. A bag of tools lay untouched.
There was no fight here.
There was no resistance.
Just precision.
A voice echoed from a hidden speaker.
"You trained with strategy."
"They trained with patterns."
"Let's see which one matters."
Samuel didn't speak.
He just listened to the sound of a vent fan overhead.
Listened for timing. Distance.
Footsteps moved above him.
Not pacing.
Circling.
[Flashback – Ji Yun's Voice]
In his head, she was laughing.
Not mocking. Just remembering.
"You're not built for punishment, Samuel. You're built to outlive it."
That was two years ago. Before CTRL9 tried to reset her too.
He remembered the day he left her behind the first time.
He wasn't going to do it again.
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Behind a half-closed blast door was a final corridor. The walls had been painted with something black. Marker ink, maybe. Maybe something else.
Words scratched in Korean:
"Mapmakers should not bleed."
Ji Yun's shoe lay beside it.
No body. No blood trail.
Just a camera mounted above, blinking slowly.
It tracked him as he moved.
Samuel stared straight into it.
"You should've buried me the first time."
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[Elsewhere]
Rooftop overlooking the pier
Taejin crouched at the edge of the building. He watched the aftermath below—bodies, blood, movement like a chess piece being slid too far forward.
Behind him, Instructor Lee stood in a long coat, not hiding.
"You're following the wrong ghost," Lee said.
Taejin didn't look back.
"Ghosts don't leave bruises."