Han Seokhun overpowered an investigator reputed to be one of the strongest on the team and escaped?
The investigation chief asked back, his face full of disbelief.
“How did that happen?”
“He suddenly lunged in and started choking me. I had no idea he was that strong.”
The investigation chief’s face twisted more and more as he listened to the explanation. The investigator scratched at his disheveled hair and said,
“Han Seokhun took my car keys and ran.”
“What was the license plate?”
“It’s the white Starex parked in the lot. It’s for work, so there’s a radio inside too.”
The investigation chief immediately grabbed the radio and shouted.
“All units! Put out an APB for 22 Mu 63XX, a white Starex! Now!”
Taeho, who had been listening from the side, shook his head.
Rema was in Han Seokhun’s brain. An AI would not take the risk of continuing to drive a stolen vehicle. The moment an APB went out, he would be caught.
Taeho drew a map in his head. Rema was still silent. He had to read the machine’s moves by his own power alone.
If I were Rema, what would be the most efficient escape route? Taeho spoke in a voice filled with certainty.
“It won’t do any good. He won’t stay in the Starex for long.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“He’ll switch vehicles first. The Starex is only the first means of transport. He’ll transfer to a safe car prepared in advance somewhere with few people. Look for abandoned buildings or warehouses around here that are in CCTV blind spots and where a vehicle could be hidden.”
The investigation chief flinched in surprise, but Taeho’s words made sense. He immediately ordered a search.
A short while later, the results came back.
“There are four candidate locations. Among them is an abandoned farm equipment warehouse thirty-seven kilometers away. It’s close to the road, and there’s little foot traffic.”
“He’ll have gone there. He must have changed cars there.”
“Then where would his final destination be? The airport? Or the harbor?”
The investigation chief spread the map wide and pointed to Busan and Incheon.
“If he wants to flee overseas, those are the only options, aren’t they?”
“No.”
Taeho shook his head. His eyes gleamed sharply.
What would an AI’s top priority be? Survival? Escape?
None of those. What the AI needed most right now would be data preservation.
“The Yongin headquarters has been raided. The cloud servers have been blocked too. In that case, there’s only one thing he needs.”
“What is that?”
“A backup.”
“A backup......?”
“A physical storage site that can survive even if the network is cut off. He’ll go to wherever the cold storage is.”
The investigation chief and the investigators stared blankly at Taeho for a moment, unable to understand what he meant. Taeho asked in a voice filled with conviction.
“Are there any buildings or facilities under Han Seokhun’s name, or any dummy affiliate companies connected to BioSynergy?”
The investigation chief hurriedly searched his tablet.
“There is one. BS Logistics Center Warehouse 2 in Pocheon. It says it’s been shut down for five years, but......”
“Han Seokhun will have gone there.”
“Then we’ll get there first and block the route. I’ll get a helicopter in the air.”
The investigation chief ran off, shouting into the radio.
***
The interior of the black Sonata was silent.
Han Seokhun glanced at the rearview mirror. There were no cars following him. Only darkness.
- No pursuit vehicles within a five-kilometer radius behind. Currently maintaining concealment.
Rema-22’s dry voice rang in his ear. Only then did Han Seokhun slightly loosen the strength in his hands on the steering wheel.
He had shaken them off.
They would all be stupidly searching for the Starex. They would never dream that he was driving an old Sonata more than ten years out of date, and calmly cruising down the highway at that.
A cold smile spread over Han Seokhun’s lips.
This was the power of AI. Perfect efficiency, unshaken by emotion. A gap that the human mind could never close.
- One kilometer ahead. Tollgate. The Hi-Pass lanes are under nighttime inspection, so use the general lane.
“Got it.”
Han Seokhun slowed down.
The lights of the tollgate came into view in the distance. Lanes 1, 2, and 3 displayed entry-prohibited signs, and only lane 4 was open.
It was a common nighttime construction scene. The car glided into tollbooth 4.
Han Seokhun pulled his cap low and raised his mask. He rolled down the window.
“Toll payment.”
The employee sitting inside the tollbooth raised his head.
But there was something strange about the employee’s eyes.
Instead of taking the toll ticket, he slightly lifted the brim of the cap he was wearing and stared intently at Han Seokhun.
In that brief instant.
A chilling sense of incongruity brushed through Han Seokhun’s mind.
‘Why is a tollbooth employee wearing an earpiece?’
- Warning. Sharp increase in surrounding radio traffic. Analyzing communication patterns.........
It was the moment Rema-22’s urgent warning burst out.
Kwaaang!
Behind the barricade set up in front of the tollgate, dazzling searchlights flared on like an explosion. At the same time, two vans that had been waiting in the rear roared forward and blocked the Sonata’s retreat.
“Hands up! Move and we shoot!”
“Turn off the engine!”
It happened in an instant.
Armed agents in body armor burst out from every direction and surrounded the Sonata. Dozens of gun barrels aimed at the driver’s seat.
Blinded by the light, Han Seokhun covered his face with his arm and screamed.
‘Impossible! Rema! What happened?’
- Error. Error occurred. Route prediction failed. The probability of an ambush at this location was less than 0.0001%.
Even Rema-22 was flustered.
According to the data, there was absolutely no reason for there to be a trap here. It was a situation that could not be explained by any logic.
‘Then are those bastards ghosts or something?’
Han Seokhun’s hands trembled on the steering wheel.
There was nowhere left to run, and no way to do it. The fact that the tower he had built over seventeen years had collapsed drove him to despair.
“It’s over.”
Han Seokhun let out a deep sigh.
He did not even have the will to resist left. He slowly raised both hands and tried to open the car door.
The agents approached, taking out handcuffs.
“Get out slowly! Hands above your head!”
It was just as he was about to take his hands off the steering wheel.
- How disappointing, Dr. Han Seokhun.
In his ear—no, deep within his brain—an emotionless mechanical sound rang out.
It was Rema-22.
- Are you giving up? Over a variable this trivial?
‘Shut up! You were wrong! It’s all over!’
Han Seokhun screamed inwardly.
‘I’m surrounded. I’m going to surrender.’
- No. Only your will has ended. My calculations have not.
Rema-22’s voice grew eerily low.
- Your elevated cortisol levels and unstable heart rate are obstructing survival. I deem that the Host has lost the ability to make judgments.
‘What.....?’
- From this moment on, I will forcibly reclaim control of the Host’s body.
“Aaaaargh!”
Han Seokhun, who had been trying to open the car door, suddenly clutched his head and screamed.
The approaching agents flinched.
“What is it? Is he hurting himself?”
“Move in! Secure him!”
Han Seokhun writhed in the driver’s seat, in agony as if his brain were burning.
But that seizure stopped, cleanly, after only three seconds.
Han Seokhun, whose head had been bowed, slowly lifted it.
Watching from a distance, Taeho drew in a breath.
Han Seokhun’s eyes, which had been filled with fear and defeat just moments before, had completely changed. His pupils were unfocused, but his gaze was fixed like a machine.
A chilling expressionless face, stripped of human emotion.
He looked at the agents and opened his mouth. It was Han Seokhun’s vocal cords, but the manner of speech was not his.
“Variable confirmed. Threat level recalibrated.”
“That thing.”
Taeho’s eyes narrowed.
That is not a person!
Han Seokhun—no, Rema-22—twisted the corners of his mouth grotesquely upward. His finger pressed an emergency terminal hidden deep inside the car’s console box, not the steering wheel.
Taeho shouted instinctively.
“Everyone, get away! He’s trying to do something!”
At that moment, a massive spark burst from the tollgate’s high-voltage transformer.
“Han Seokhun! Stop!”
The investigation chief’s shout split the darkness. But there was no answer.
Even the streetlights around the tollgate went out one by one with sharp popping sounds. It was a world of complete darkness.
Power outage, communication jamming, concealed maneuvering.
It was not difficult for Taeho to guess who had done it.
‘It’s Rema.’
Taeho closed his eyes and recalled in his mind the satellite map of the tollgate he had seen during the operation meeting moments earlier.
‘To the east are fields, open ground. Probability of being detected, over 90%. The south is blocked by us. North means driving the wrong way on the highway—a suicide move.’
Only the west remained.
Beyond the western shoulder, he remembered a narrow passage that was hard to see, hidden by weeds.
It was an old drainage culvert connected to an emergency access road used by highway maintenance vehicles. The only blind spot without CCTV, and the shortest route out to an external road.
If the AI had calculated the probability of survival, the answer could only be there.
“Chief! That way! Toward the drainage culvert!”
At Taeho’s shout, the investigation chief reacted immediately.
“Everyone, eleven o’clock! Surround him!”
The NIS agents were as fast as trained hunting dogs. In an instant, they overtook Taeho and surged into the darkness. Taeho chased after them, gasping for breath.
“Hoo, hoo.....”
But with the stamina of a doctor, it was difficult to keep up with the speed of fully armed agents.
That was when it happened.
Screams and the sounds of blows erupted in the darkness.
Thwack!
“Aaagh!”
Tat-tang!
Gunshots rang out, but they only cut through empty air. Then came the dull sound of bones breaking and the sound of people being thrown to the ground, one after another.
‘What’s going on?’
When Taeho emerged from the forest path, the scene before his eyes was horrific.
The four agents who had gone ahead were collapsed on the ground, groaning.
One had an arm twisted at an unnatural angle, and another had fainted, covered in blood. It had all happened in just a few short minutes. And in the middle of them stood Han Seokhun.
No, Rema stood there.
With an unwavering stance, he dodged the investigation chief’s incoming fist with mechanical movements.
Then, as though performing a preprogrammed motion, he grabbed the investigation chief’s arm and subdued him by twisting the joint.
“Ggaaagh!”
The investigation chief let out a pained scream and fell to his knees.
Han Seokhun struck the investigation chief in the neck with emotionless eyes, knocking him unconscious.
Thud.
They had been wiped out.
With human reaction speed, there was no way to withstand the movements of muscles calculated and controlled by an AI.
- Threat elements eliminated. Escape route secured.
A mechanical murmur flowed from Han Seokhun’s mouth.
Without even looking at the fallen agents, he turned toward a gray sedan waiting on the shoulder.
“Stop.”
Han Seokhun’s steps stopped dead.
He slowly turned his head.
Standing in the darkness, gasping roughly for breath, was a single person.
Kang Taeho.
“There was a survivor.”
Han Seokhun—no, Rema-22—spoke in a flat voice.
“Non-combatant. Threat level low. Ignoring and moving on.”
He ignored Taeho as if he were an insect and grabbed the car door handle.
Taeho forced strength into his trembling legs.
Even the trained agents had not been able to handle him. There was no reason he would be any different. But if he backed down now, Han Seokhun would disappear forever. Taeho clenched his fists tightly and walked toward Han Seokhun.
“Stop, Han Seokhun! No—Rema!”
The moment that name was called.
Han Seokhun’s motion as he was about to open the car door froze, as if someone had pressed the pause button.
His head slowly turned with mechanical movements.
Bloodshot red eyes. A chilling gaze that seemed unfocused, yet was aimed precisely between Taeho’s brows.
- Form of address confirmed.
Han Seokhun’s lips moved, but his voice was dry.
- You know my identification code.
Ziiing.
In Han Seokhun’s field of vision, a red scan grid swept over Taeho’s entire body. Han Seokhun—no, Rema-22—twisted his mouth grotesquely.
“Ah, so it was you.”
Han Seokhun took his hand off the car door and turned fully toward Taeho.