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  "He wants to play chess in the dark? Fine. We’ll set the board on fire. If the board burns, he has to move his pieces into the light to save them."

  It was a declaration of total war.

  A war not of hacking, but of Chaos.

  At the same time, inside the Sungjin Group Headquarters.

  The Chairman's office was empty. The First Son's office was sealed with police tape.

  The employees walked with their heads down, terrified of making eye contact with anyone.

  But on the 50th floor, in a small, unmarked office that didn't appear on the building's floor plan, the air was different.

  It was sterile.

  Devoid of fear, devoid of joy, devoid of humanity.

  A man sat behind a simple metal desk.

  The Second Son.

  He didn't have a name plate. He didn't need one.

  He looked at the message on his phone.

  [ My approval is mine to give... ]

  He didn't get angry. He didn't scoff.

  He simply stared at the text as if analyzing a bug in a program.

  "Phantom," he whispered.

  His voice was dry, like rustling paper.

  "You think 'Approval' is a right."

  He tapped the desk with his index finger.

  Tap. Tap.

  "Approval is not a right. It is a design."

  He picked up the office phone.

  "Director Kim."

  — "Yes, sir." The voice on the other end was trembling.

  "The First Son's legacy. It's messy."

  — "We are... currently organizing the legal team to defend him..."

  "No," the Second Son cut him off.

  "Don't defend him. Erase him."

  — "Sir? But... he is your brother..."

  "The error has been identified. If you keep the error, the system crashes."

  The Second Son’s voice remained perfectly flat.

  "Cut off all his lines. The funds, the personnel, the records. Make it look like he did everything alone. And... initiate the 'Cleanup Protocol' for the partners."

  — "...Understood."

  The call ended.

  The Second Son turned his gaze back to the window.

  Below, the city of Seoul glittered like a circuit board.

  "You want to set the board on fire?"

  He looked at the reflection of his own eyes in the window.

  "Then burn. Let's see if you remain ash, or if you become a diamond."

  He pressed a key on his keyboard.

  [ Enter ]

  The cleanup began.

  And the silence of the monster began to devour the noise of the city.

  The next morning.

  Daon Solution was not raided by the police.

  It was raided by Silence.

  "Uh... Team Leader Park?"

  A junior employee stood up, his face pale, pointing at his screen.

  "I... I can't access the ERP."

  Team Leader Park frowned, tapping his mouse furiously.

  "What? Is the internet down again? Kick the router."

  "No, sir. The internet is fine. But..."

  The employee’s voice shook.

  "I can't log in to the company mail. Or the cloud server. It says... 'Access Denied'."

  "What?"

  Park jumped up and checked his own monitor.

  He tried to open the main project folder.

  [ Error: Unauthorized Access. ]

  [ Reason: License Revoked by Vendor (Sungjin Group) ]

  It wasn't a system crash. It wasn't a blackout.

  It was a lockout.

  The lights were on, the computers were running, but every digital door needed to do 'work' had been slammed shut.

  Sungjin Group had remotely revoked every software license, every security key, and every API token Daon Solution used to operate.

  They hadn't killed the company; they had put it in a vegetative state.

  "This... this makes no sense!"

  Park screamed, grabbing his hair.

  "We have a contract! We have a maintenance agreement until next year!"

  He picked up the phone to call the Sungjin support line.

  Beep-beep-beep.

  The number didn't exist anymore.

  Tae-yoon sat at his desk, watching the chaos.

  He adjusted his glasses, acting the part of the confused 'Manager Kang Tae-yoon'.

  "Oh no... Team Leader, is it a virus? Should I format my drive?"

  But under the desk, his hand was gripping his knee.

  ‘This is how you play, huh?’

  It wasn't an attack. It was an administrative execution.

  The Second Son didn't send hackers. He didn't send thugs.

  He simply used the "Clause" in the contract that allowed the main company to revoke access for 'security maintenance'.

  Legal. Clean. Deadly.

  It was a move that said: I don't need to fight you. I can just revoke your permission to exist.

  Park collapsed into his chair.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  "We're dead... The project files are all in the cloud... If we can't recover this by tomorrow, we breach the contract... We'll go bankrupt..."

  Tae-yoon watched his team leader's despair.

  And he felt a cold rage rising from his gut.

  This was exactly what he hated.

  The arrogance of power that treats people's livelihoods like a light switch.

  Tae-yoon stood up.

  "Team Leader."

  Park looked up, eyes teary.

  "What... Tae-yoon..."

  "I... I think I backed up the core engine on my personal USB yesterday."

  Tae-yoon lied. Smoothly.

  "What?"

  "Just... because the server seemed slow. I copied the source code to work on it at home."

  Of course, he hadn't.

  But 'Phantom' could rebuild that engine in an hour. Or better yet, he could restore the deleted data from the shadow backups he had planted months ago.

  "Really? You really have it?"

  Park grabbed Tae-yoon's hands, looking at him like a savior.

  "Yes. But... we can't use the company network. It's compromised."

  Tae-yoon looked around the office, acting innocent.

  "Why don't we... work from outside? I know a place with a secure connection."

  It was a lie to move the battlefield.

  To pull Daon out of Sungjin's grip and into Phantom's territory.

  Choi Seo-hyun sat in her car, staring at the side mirror.

  Her foundation building was reflected in it.

  It looked peaceful.

  But she knew. Underneath that building, something rotten was flowing.

  She looked down at her wrist.

  A faint bruise remained where the man had grabbed her yesterday.

  The man who called himself a "salaryman."

  The man who said he was "good with directions."

  Kang Tae-yoon.

  "Who are you really?"

  She whispered to the empty car.

  She had checked his personnel file.

  Daon Solution, Manager Kang Tae-yoon. Joined 3 years ago. Average performance. No family except a younger sister. A typical, boring life.

  But the eyes she saw yesterday were not typical.

  And the timing was impossible.

  Every time she was near a 'danger zone', he was there.

  Like a guardian angel.

  Or... a stalker.

  Or perhaps, a Ghost.

  Seo-hyun opened her laptop on the passenger seat.

  She wasn't a hacker. She didn't know code.

  But she knew Accounting.

  She knew that money leaves footprints even when people don't.

  She opened the Foundation's private ledger she had secretly copied.

  She searched for the date of the "accident" yesterday.

  And she searched for the date she first met Kang Tae-yoon.

  And then, she found it.

  A tiny, insignificant transfer record.

  On the day Tae-yoon appeared at the gala, a small donation was made to the foundation under an anonymous name.

  The amount was strange.

  10,240,000 Won.

  Most people donate in round numbers. 10 million. 5 million.

  But 10,240,000?

  Seo-hyun frowned.

  "1024..."

  It was a number familiar to anyone who worked with computers.

  1024 bytes = 1 Kilobyte.

  It was a binary number.

  "A computer person..."

  She closed the laptop.

  Her heart started beating faster. Not from fear, but from a strange anticipation.

  The heart inside her chest—Yuri's heart—thumped heavily.

  "If you are who I think you are..."

  Seo-hyun started the engine.

  "Then you are not just passing by."

  She turned the steering wheel.

  She wasn't going home.

  She was going to Daon Solution.

  Night.

  The seven members of Team Phantom gathered again.

  Not in the hideout, but in a virtual space.

  Because Daon's office was locked out, they had to move digitally.

  "Hyung, the restoration is complete," Ha-jun's voice came through the headset.

  "I patched the Daon server with our own kernel. Sungjin can't revoke the license anymore because... well, we aren't using their license."

  "Good," Tae-yoon replied, typing furiously on his laptop in a PC Bang (Internet Cafe).

  "Now, let's send them a receipt."

  "A receipt?" Min-su asked.

  "They turned off our access. We should return the favor."

  Tae-yoon opened a terminal window.

  Target: Sungjin Group's Logistics Control System.

  Not the main financial server. That was too guarded.

  But the Logistics system... the system that controlled the delivery trucks, the cargo elevators, the cafeteria supplies.

  "2F likes 'Efficiency', right?"

  Tae-yoon’s eyes narrowed.

  "Let's see how efficient he is when his own building stops feeding him."

  [ Command: Traffic Jam ]

  [ Target: Sungjin HQ, Elevator Cluster & Gate Control ]

  [ Execution: NOW ]

  Enter.

  Sungjin Headquarters. 7:00 PM.

  It was overtime hours. Thousands of employees were still working.

  Suddenly.

  Ding—!

  The elevators stopped. All of them.

  Between floors.

  The automatic gates in the lobby locked shut.

  The cooling fans in the server room revved up to maximum speed, creating a deafening noise like a jet engine taking off.

  "What? What's happening?"

  "Is it a fire?"

  "The doors won't open!"

  And on the large screen in the lobby, usually displaying the company stock price, the screen flickered.

  The stock graph disappeared.

  Instead, a simple game appeared.

  Tetris.

  But the blocks falling were not squares.

  They were documents.

  Illegal Contract. Bribe Ledger. Lobby List.

  The blocks piled up.

  And when they filled a line, they didn't disappear.

  They exploded with a pixelated sound effect.

  Bang! Bang!

  And a message scrolled across the bottom.

  [ System Error: Too much trash in the building. ]

  [ Please clean up to resume operation. ]

  [ - Your Friendly Neighborhood Janitor ]

  In the secret office on the 50th floor.

  The Second Son watched the chaos on his private monitor.

  For the first time, his expressionless face changed.

  One eyebrow twitched.

  Upward.

  "A Janitor..."

  He looked at the Tetris game mocking his empire.

  He realized.

  This wasn't just resistance.

  It was Taunting.

  "You want to play a game of efficiency?"

  The Second Son stood up.

  "Fine. I will show you what happens when you treat a predator like a toy."

  He walked to the window.

  The elevator lights in the building were blinking like a Christmas tree.

  The Second Son spoke into his phone.

  "Activate Unit 0."

  — "Sir? Unit 0 is for... physical elimination."

  "I know."

  The Second Son watched the city lights.

  "The ghost is noisy. It's time to silence the medium."

  Tae-yoon walked out of the PC Bang, pulling his hood up.

  The attack was successful.

  He had bought Daon some time and slapped 2F in the face.

  But he didn't feel triumphant.

  He felt watched.

  He turned into a narrow alleyway toward his home.

  And there, standing under a flickering streetlamp, was a silhouette.

  It wasn't an assassin.

  It was a woman.

  Choi Seo-hyun.

  She was leaning against her car, arms crossed, staring directly at him.

  In the dark alley, her eyes shone with a dangerous intelligence.

  Tae-yoon stopped.

  He adjusted his 'Manager Kang' glasses instinctively.

  "Oh? Ms. Choi? What are you doing in a shabby neighborhood like this..."

  "Stop it," Seo-hyun said.

  Her voice was tired but firm.

  She took a step forward.

  The distance between them closed.

  The distance between the 'Protector' and the 'Target'.

  "10,240,000 Won."

  She said the number like a code.

  Tae-yoon froze.

  "Donation date: May 12th. The day we met."

  She took another step.

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