The wind at the summit of the Lotte World Tower didn't just blow; it roared, a predatory beast of the upper atmosphere that threatened to peel the very skin from my bones. I stood on the edge of the shattered window in the security hub, glass shards crunching beneath my tactical boots like frozen diamonds. Below me, Seoul was a glittering, chaotic motherboard of light, the Han River a vein of liquid mercury cutting through the dark heart of the city.
I looked at the timer on my wrist.
13:58:12.
Thirteen hours. It sounded like an eternity, but for Min-ah, Zhao, and Kenji, it was a death sentence. They were trapped in the vacuum-sealed tomb of the 120th floor. The oxygen scrubbers in their tactical suits would give them maybe four hours of breathable air. If I didn't reach the Director's carrier vessel—the Acheron—and override the magnetic seals from his private terminal, they would be dead before the sun even cleared the horizon.
"Jun-ho... do you copy?" Min-ah's voice was a ghost in my ear, distorted by the vacuum's interference. "The pressure... it's dropping. My internal sensors are red-lining. Zhao is trying to breach the inner bulkhead with a thermal charge, but there's no oxygen to feed the reaction. We're stuck, Jun-ho. We're stuck in the dark."
"Stay calm, Min-ah," I whispered, though my own heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. "I'm moving. I have the coordinates for the Acheron. It's forty miles off the coast of Incheon, moving at thirty knots toward the Sea of Japan. I'm coming for the terminal."
"How?" she rasped, her breath sounding heavy, labored. "You're two hundred floors up. By the time you get to the street and find a transport—"
"I'm not going to the street," I interrupted.
I looked up. A mile above the tower, the Director's automated "Supply Drone"—a massive, four-rotor VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) craft—was hovering in a holding pattern, waiting for the all-clear signal that would never come. It was a heavy-lift vehicle, built to carry tons of equipment, but more importantly, it was equipped with a long-range ion-thruster.
Pattern: The Kinetic Arc. Variable: The 15-meter gap between the tower's spire and the drone's landing skids. Solution: The Ghost's Leap.
"You're going to jump for the drone, aren't you?" Kenji's voice broke through the static, sounding uncharacteristically grim. "Jun-ho, the wind shear alone will snap your spine. Even if you catch it, the automated defense turrets will shred you before you reach the cockpit."
"Then don't let them," I said. "Min-ah, I need you to use the last of your suit's power. Hack the drone's IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) receiver. Make it think I'm a registered maintenance technician. Just for ten seconds."
"I... I can try," she whispered. "But Jun-ho... if you miss... there is no '15 Chapters' for you. It ends at thirty-four."
"It's a good number to die on," I growled.
I backed up to the far wall of the hub, my eyes locked on the blinking lights of the drone's underbelly. I checked my gear one last time. My pulse-pistol was holstered, my mag-gloves were primed to 100% magnetic intensity, and my resolve was a cold, hard stone in my gut.
I ran.
My boots hit the edge of the window frame, and I launched myself into the void.
For a heartbeat, the world stopped. There was no sound, no wind, no fear. There was only the sensation of infinite weightlessness as I soared through the midnight sky. I saw the lights of Seoul spinning beneath me—a billion lives, a billion stories, all of them tiny and insignificant compared to the three souls I was carrying in my heart.
Then, gravity reclaimed its prize.
The wind hit me like a physical wall, tumbling me through the air. I saw the drone's landing skid—a thick bar of reinforced titanium—screaming toward me. I reached out, my mag-gloves humming with blue energy.
CLANG.
The impact vibrated through my teeth. My shoulders felt like they had been ripped from their sockets, but I held on. I was dangling six hundred meters above the city, my body whipping in the turbulent wake of the drone's rotors.
"I'm on!" I screamed into the comms, my voice swallowed by the roar of the engines.
"Hacking the turrets now!" Min-ah's voice was strained, the sound of her rapid breathing filling my ears. "Ten seconds, Jun-ho! Ten... nine..."
I hauled myself up the skid, my fingers clawing at the cold metal. I reached the service hatch on the drone's belly just as the twin 20mm cannons on the nose began to swivel toward me.
"Eight... seven... six..."
I jammed my specialized "Sloane Key"—the digital lockpick the Director had given us—into the hatch's data-port.
"Five... four..."
The hatch hissed open. I rolled inside, kicking the door shut just as a burst of pulse-fire scorched the air where I had been hanging. I lay on the floor of the cargo bay, gasping for air, the drone banking sharply as it detected a "malfunction" in its navigation.
"I'm in," I panted. "Min-ah, I've got control of the internal bus. I'm overriding the flight path. Destination: The Acheron."
"Good," she whispered, her voice fading into a low, static-filled moan. "Because the oxygen... it just hit 15%. We're... we're going to sleep now, Jun-ho. Don't be late."
The comms went silent.
I stood up, the cargo bay tilting as the drone's engines transitioned from hover to forward flight. I walked to the cockpit, staring out at the dark expanse of the Yellow Sea. Somewhere out there was a ship. Somewhere out there was a terminal. And somewhere out there was the Director, waiting to see if his "Assets" were as resilient as he designed them to be.
I looked at the timer on my wrist.
13:45:22.
"I won't be late," I whispered to the empty cockpit.
I slammed the throttle forward. The drone's ion-thrusters ignited with a brilliant blue flare, and we screamed into the night, leaving the Lotte Tower behind like a lonely, glass grave.
The 34th Chapter was about the jump. The 35th would be about the crash.