1:30 a.m. – The Technological Branch
Dr. Ah Jinho stormed into the Central Core, the vast chamber humming with the pulse of the facility's mainframe. Banks of monitors flickered with streams of data, but something was off—Delta's usual presence, often playful and childlike in her holographic form, was absent.
"What the hell is going on?" Jinho demanded, turning to his lead technician, Minjae. "Why is Delta talking about Eun Bi being denounced? Why are the Silencers being deployed?"
Minjae, young and sharp-eyed but visibly shaken, shook his head. "Sir, we don't know. Delta locked us out of the lower levels. We can't even reach Eun Bi's division."
Jinho's jaw tightened. "That's bullshit. I'm a manager. Delta!"he barked at the ceiling. "Grant me access to the lower floors!"
A pause. Then—
"Unauthorized."
The voice was different. Colder. Older.
Jinho froze.
A hologram flickered to life in the center of the room—but it wasn't the small, childlike Delta he was used to.
This was a woman.
Tall. Dressed in a flowing white gown, her features sharp, her eyes glowing an eerie, pupiless blue. Her presence was suffocating, regal, final.
"Delta?"Jinho whispered.
She didn't respond. Just stared.
Minjae swallowed hard. "Sir… why does she look like that?"
Jinho exhaled slowly, realization dawning. "Because things just got serious."
Delta only took this form when the situation was beyond containment. When the system itself deemed the threat terminal.
The last time he'd seen her like this was years ago—during her brother's incident.
"Sir?" Minjae pressed. "What do you mean by—brother?"
Jinho shook his head. "Nothing. Forget it."He turned to the monitors. "Hack into the lower-level cameras. I want to see what's happening down there."
Minjae's fingers flew over the keyboard, bypassing Delta's firewalls with practiced precision. A moment later, the screens flickered—then filled with chaos.
"Oh my god—" Minjae recoiled.
Jinho's blood ran cold.
The lower levels were overrun.
People—no, things—shambled through the halls, their movements jerky, unnatural. Some had mushrooms sprouting from their scalps, black and pulsing. Others were eating.
Not just biting.
Feeding.
Tearing into their colleagues with teeth and nails, blood splattering the walls in thick, glistening arcs.
And in the center of it all—
Eun Bi.
Alive. Fighting.
But barely.
Jinho's hands clenched into fists.
"Eun Bi…"he muttered. "What the hell have you done?"
Then—
A new alert blared across the screens.
**SILENCERS: DEPLOYED. ETA: 5 MINUTES.**
Jinho's eyes flicked back to Delta's hologram.
She was still watching.
Waiting.
Judging.
1:35 a.m. – The Night Sky
Above the sprawling facility, the sky rumbled—not with thunder, but with the low, mechanical hum of a craft not made for public eyes.
Slicing through the night like a phantom, the Specter VTOL —a stealth aircraft shaped like a blade—cut across the clouds. Its frame shimmered in and out of visibility, cloaked by advanced refractive plating. Beneath its obsidian skin, faint pulses of blue light traced along its hull like veins, revealing alien, almost unnatural tech. It didn't roar—it hummed, like it was whispering to the stars.
Inside the belly of the beast, the Silencers stood in disciplined formation.
Twenty in total.
The interior of the Specter was as silent as its name—matte black walls, no ambient lighting, no chatter. Just twenty soldiers standing in disciplined formation, each clad in featureless black armor, sleek and almost liquid in its form. No names. No ranks. No identifiers. Only a single glowing line traced from their left shoulder down to their wrists—red, faint, pulsing like a heartbeat.
But five of them stood apart.
While their bodysuits shared the same tech-weave as the others, they wore additional cloaks, thick and layered, blacker than the void outside. The hoods were pulled over their heads, long and jagged like a scythe's curve. Beneath the hoods was nothing—just blackness. No face, no skin, no shimmer of an eye. Staring into their hoods felt like looking into a tunnel with no end.
They did not move.
They did not speak.
Then came Dr. Han Daejun. MANAGER OF THE WEAPON'S DIVISION AND HANDER OF THE SILENCERS
He entered from the cockpit corridor without fanfare—wearing a plain white lab coat, black slacks, ID badge clipped neatly to his chest. His black-rimmed glasses glinted under the minimal light as he walked with perfect, robotic precision.
The soldiers subtly straightened. Not from fear—from recognition.
"New gear,"he said flatly, stepping before the five cloaked figures. His voice was clinical, devoid of emotion. "Unfielded prototypes. Consider this a live test."
He adjusted his glasses, never raising his voice.
"The cloaks have... surprises. You'll discover them mid-mission. Adapt. The suits underneath are tailored to your individual combat profiles."
The five remained silent. Not a single breath was heard.
"Don't disappoint me." He stepped back. "I expect results."
A hiss sounded as the ramp began to lower, wind roaring into the bay. Clouds rushed by, distant lights of the chaos below barely visible.
Without hesitation or signal, the five leapt into the void.
The moment they emerged, their cloaks reacted—unfurling, catching wind, and morphing into aerodynamic shapes. They glided like wraiths in the sky, silhouettes slicing through the clouds, silent as death.
Dr. Han Daejun watched them go, the corners of his mouth twitching—perhaps in satisfaction. Or calculation.
"Acceptable," he muttered, then turned sharply to the remaining fifteen.
"We land in 90 seconds. No flair. No theatrics. Go in clean."
He began walking back toward the cockpit, already pulling out a tablet to monitor bio-feedback from the five prototypes.
"Containment is no longer your goal. Annihilation is."
1:40 a.m. – The Facility Rooftop
The Specter touched down with surgical precision, its landing gear barely whispering against the concrete of the Genesis rooftop. A thin mist coiled from its thrusters, and the rear ramp hissed open.
The fifteen remaining **Silencers** disembarked with silent efficiency—one after the other, moving like ghosts.
But already waiting for them were the five.
Their cloaks drifted in the wind, completely still otherwise. Not a word, not a glance. They stood like statues carved from night, the darkness beneath their hoods swallowing any glimpse of human identity.
Dr. Han Daejun stepped out last, hands in the pockets of his coat, unfazed by the wind.
He looked at the five figures and gave a flat, clinical nod.
"How was the glide?" he asked, with just the faintest trace of amusement. "Functional, I assume."
The five didn't answer, of course.
He didn't expect them to.
He turned and began walking.
The rest of the Silencers fell in step behind him with military precision. As they approached the rooftop access door—
Dr. Ah Jinho appeared, breath heavy, eyes burning.
"Han Daejun!" he barked, stepping directly into his path. "What the hell is this? Why are the Silencers being deployed? This isn't protocol!"
Daejun stopped. Lifted a brow.
"Threat level escalation. Terminal."
"You think I don't know that?"Jinho snapped. "You think locking me out of my own levels helps anything? You're just waiting for a reason to let your projects off the leash."
Dr. Han simply adjusted his glasses.
"Observation yields results. Results justify action. Action reveals flaws."
"You always talk in circles,"Jinho growled. ndI've never liked that about you."
"The sentiment is mutual,"Han replied without missing a beat.
With no further acknowledgment, he stepped past Jinho—who stood frozen in place, seething—and gestured for the Silencers to follow.
They reached the roof elevator.
It opened instantly.
Inside, Delta was waiting.
"Dr. Han,"she said. "The infection has reached sublevel C. We are moments away from full loss of containment."
"Understood."
"You must exercise caution. The mutation strain is accelerating. It's unlike previous iterations. Your men may not be enough."
Han raised a brow, just slightly.
"They're not men."He looked toward the cloaked five. "They're instruments."
Delta didn't respond for a beat.
Then softly:
"Even instruments can break."
She vanished.
The elevator doors closed.
1: 45 a.m. – Descent to the Lower Levels
Inside the elevator, the silence was absolute. The faint red lights pulsed against black armor, shadows shifting like breath over the cloaks of the five.
Dr. Han looked at the group as though studying a lab sample.
"Locate and retrieve Eun Bi."
"Her fate will be determined by the Board."
No names. No emotion.
Just command.
*The Board*
The Board.
The true architects of Genesis Biotechnology.
They were not scientists.
They were not soldiers.
They were designers of worlds.
Each one sat at the top of their assigned Division—Weapons, Technology, Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical . The Managers, like Jinho, were merely eyes and hands—tools to maintain order in each branch.
The Board didn't speak often.
But when they did, fates changed.
And now, they would decide Eun Bi's.