Chapter 59:  02:50– REFLECTION BLACK/BLUE/WHITE [9:10pm]

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< REFLECTION:BLUE>

Time log, Thunder Age 21
3 years prior

The first thing that Sanghyun registered was the sky.  

It was the color of skin bruised in several places, stars of a sickly yellow hue scattered across a canvas of dull beige and grey. Concentric circles of magenta and navy spiraled out from the center, stretching so far and wide that each bruise overlapped with one another and gave the sky an oily appearance. They would shift here and there, like water was trickling between the bruises and spreading them. But unwilling to part, they would always pull back to each other. It created a shifting, swaying effect that made Sanghyun feel dizzy.

Now and then lightning would flash across the poisonous spread, bold and vivid and fleeting. They left white flashes on the back of Sanghyun’s lids every time he blinked and they did not help the queasy feeling that was building at the back of Sanghyun’s throat.

He closed his eyes and took deep, measured breaths.

Travelling was no easy feat on the mind. This was made worse by the lack of the Spine and its finely tuned machinery. So it came as no surprise to Sanghyun that he was feeling side effects of some sort. Nausea and dizziness was a small price to pay for escape from the enforcers and the instantaneous ability to be standing here. He would just have to take a moment to allow his body to collect itself and adjust.

He tried now, to open his eyes. The world didn’t swim half as much as it had before but Sanghyun could still feel sweat run down his temples and the hammer of his heart in his chest. They were signs that the tiny nanobots in the Cryocell fluids were picking up on his internal emotions running high and translating them into bodily responses. The best he could was to try and control his breathing, to force his heart rate to return to normal. Only then would the side effects abate.

In the meanwhile Sanghyun scanned the rest of the Graveyard. It was as dreary of a place as its name suggested.

Whoever had been in charge of coding the Graveyard hadn’t cared much for aesthetics.  The earth was cracked and dry, proof that there were no nutrients or living creatures in the soil. When Sanghyun placed a palm to the earth to steady himself he discovered there was no coarse texture that he had come to expect from afternoons spent outdoors tumbling around soil and hard packed earth of the Real world. It suggested that even sensations had been omitted from coding.

All that had been done was a mere layout of a plane. Earth, dull and rocky; some attempts at vegetation, white as bone and skeletal in shape; a shifting, strange sky above; it was like someone had been handed a simple guidebook to coding and then been given free rein to create what they wished. Even Sanghyun knew he could have done a better job than this. But this was not his job, to correct the wrongs of others. His job was to find one sister, and then avenge the other.

Focus, he told himself sternly and closed his eyes. He drew a deep, long breath. His exhale was a shudder.

When he opened his eyes his vision did not blur as much as it had before. Left and right he glanced and it held true. He then tested his legs, tensing the muscles there. His arms he swung up and down; his hips he twisted. When he was certain his body was responding as it should, Sanghyun stood and began his search for Sandara.

The Graveyard was a collection dump. Anything that the government or the System could not immediately identify was sent here until it could be processed at a later date.   The place was used to collecting anything from ten to a hundred foreign objects on a daily basis and that was partially why Sanghyun had been able to transport here without the equipment of the Spine and end up in mostly one piece.

It was also why Sandara was mostly likely to be here.

She and all the other children of the outer world were considered anomalies by the System. They were never meant to enter the Digital World in the first place and so were never registered onto it. As such, when he and Sandara had first entered the System they had been able to bypass its detection system because of who they were. The System was designed to keep track of all the residents within it; those from outside were not considered the threat.

Even though the System hadn’t been able to pick up on them, manual eyes eventually did. Their breach was not a slick one and it hadn’t taken long for the government to realize a handful of facility kids had managed to get into here. They had quickly narrowed down who they were and from which branch and then they began their rabbit hunt. But until the government could directly lay hands on the two of them and assign them proper identification tags, they were for all intents and purposes, anonymous and foreign to the System.

Hence with Sandara’s ‘death’, the System immediately assigned her as foreign and would send her straight to the barren wastelands of the Graveyard where she would wander until someone got around to manually sorting her.

Before they could do that though, Sanghyun had to find her.

Sandara however decided to help save him the trouble of doing so.

“Sanghyun! Run!” came a yell from behind him. He half turned to see his sister rushing towards him, her arms swinging wildly at her side, her waist length chestnut hair rocketing out behind her.

Behind her was a sea of white, the same shocking brightness as the lightning above. They came like a cavalry, descending out of the darkness and the perpetual shroud of gloominess that hung about the Graveyard.  They looked like ghosts. They moved like ghosts. But they weren’t ghosts.

Sanghyun knew what they were. They were the cleaner system of the Graveyards. Corruptions, they were called them back at the facilities. Cleaners were the official term given by the government.

“Run!” Sandara yelled again and grabbed his hand as she shot past. He turned, letting his sister drag him onwards. As he fell into the rhythm of the run, his strides grew longer until he was matching with Sandara, keeping pace, until his longer legs gathered speed and he stormed ahead. Now the one taking the lead was him.

The Graveyard was a collection dump which meant any and all anomalies were sent there immediately. However once they did, they were left to wander around, often confused and scared if they were still conscious, otherwise they lay, scattered or frozen. The Government couldn’t just search and pick them up as they went, so they assigned the Cleaners to do that job for them.

They were mindless beings programmed with the sole purpose to locate and hunt down any anomalies that entered the Graveyard. Once found, they would engulf the subject and ‘corrupt’ their data to place them into a coma like sleep. Once anesthetized, the Cleaner would then take the subject back to a central facility located in the center of the Graveyard where the anomaly would then be kept until the governmental team could sort out what to do with them manually.

The most common: the dead, granted 24 days to bid their loved ones farewell, and then found themselves on the twenty fifth day to still be present in the living world, but a world far away from the world of that they had once known. They could not be allowed to wander endlessly.

The less frequent: the people who threatened the system with their knowledge. To the remainder of the Three Levels it was told that they were sentenced to a lifetime of labor in repentance. Usually for a crime that they had not committed. In truth they were removed before they could damage. But equally they could not be left to wander around the Graveyard just like that.

And finally, the rarities: those who had slipped by the Government’s eyes entirely and were considered foreign and completely unidentifiable by the system. 

Sandara and Sanghyun were both of the last kind. And once captured by the Corruptions, Sanghyun knew what fate would await them once the governmental officials got their hands on them.

“Hurry noona,” he huffed as he tugged Sandara off to one side, tracing a zig zag pattern in hopes of making it harder for the corruptions to follow them. They were programmed to scuttle only in linear directions.

“We can’t outrun them Sanghyun,” Sandara said, her breath short as she spoke. “They’re Corruptions. They’ll only stop when they’ve accomplished what they were programmed to do.”

“Well we can’t just stop and let them consume you!” Sanghyun hissed with frustration as he tugged them around one of the white coral trees and skidded down a path that would hopefully be harder for the corruptions to go down. “You know what will happen if we let them take you.”

Or him. Technically he too was an anomaly, though not declared dead by the System and so less likely to be picked up on the Corruption’s radar.

For a while as they ran, Sandara was quiet. Sanghyun thought for a moment that maybe he had won the argument and she was focusing her strength into escaping, but he should have known better. Sandara was his noona and she would never let her little brother win.

There was a sharp tug on his arm and it jerked Sanghyun to a stop.

“Noona!” he hissed, spinning and glaring at her furiously. Their path had allowed them a few minutes head start on the Corruptions but that didn’t mean they could whittle it away chatting.

His sharp words however caught in his throat as he took in her expression. She was scared. She was incredibly scared. Her eyes were wide and trembling; her lips pressed so tightly together they were a white line. But she was determined. He could feel it in the ways he gripped his hand so tight that it felt like his blood circulation was being cut off.

“Listen to me Sanghyun,” she said sternly, only the slightest quiver in her voice at the end when she had to say his name. “You know we can’t outrun them. They’re programs; we’re not.”

Sanghyun shook his head. “Noona!” he said, trying to convey his impatience with his voice. “We don’t have time for this.” He tugged firmly on Sandara’s arm, trying to jerk her forwards but she dug in her heels and pulled him right back.

“Listen to me Doongie,” she said again, firmer this time. Sanghyun froze. Only Sandara could use his pet name and sound frightening at the same time.  “I need you to promise me something.”

Sanghyun hated promises. He had made so many up till now and each one bound him tighter and tighter, metal chains that dug painfully into his skin. But Sanghyun could hear the clicking of the corruption’s claws now and he knew they were drawing close. He closed his mouth in defeat and let Sandara have her say. 

“Good," she said, softer now. "Now promise me this. That if I get caught, you'll continue what we were doing. Find Durami's killer and then get out of this world. Got it?" 

Sanghyun’s eye widened incredulously. “And what about you?"

“I am secondary," Sandara said simply. She glanced behind them warily, knowing they were running on bought time. "You can help me once you get out of here. You know that right?"

Sanghyun's nostrils flared. “Yes but-“

“But nothing,” she shushed him. “Your first priority is Durami. We came here to find her killer and we're not leaving empty handed." 

“Yes but we can do it together. Don't give up on yourself so easily noona," Sanghyun begged. "We can escape. Both of us."

Dara gave him a disapproving look. "Be realistic Doongie. If you want to save me the best way to do it from the outside." 

“I’m not leaving without you noona,” Sanghyun said firmly and turned to pull her forwards again. They had wasted too much time already.

“Oh Doongie.” Sandara leaned over and hugged him tightly. Her arms, so much shorter than his wrapped around his neck. Her fingers, small and smooth unlike his, caressed his cheeks. Sanghyun stilled. "I know you will make the right decisions." 

"Noona..." Sanghyun said warningly, half turning his head. 

There was the sound of scuttling in the distance and Sanghyun felt Sandara give the slightest of shivers. "They're only after me. Not you. 

"Noon-" Sanghyun started. 

"Now go little brother," she said softly and Sanghyun's eyes widened. As he turned he saw Sandara's eyes, bright with determination, still frightened with fear. Her hands came about his face and she kissed him gently on the close. "My baby brother. All grown up. You know you have to let me go right? Because I’m already dead.”

"Noona!" Sanghyun cried out with a little shout as he fell, Sandara’s little push sending him toppling over the edge.  

“Noona!” he yelled as he fell, one hand immediately striking out as if to grab her, but she was too far away and he was falling into the murky blackness of the beneath. Where he would end up, he didn’t know. This was the Graveyard and it was forever expanding.

His last glimpse of the light was shadowed by Sandara’s silhouette. She looked so tiny and so far away. As he fell, Sanghyun let out a tiny sob and refused to close his eyes until her figure was lost by the enclosing darkness of the gorge. Only then did he close them and curse himself for once again being unable to protect either of his beloved sisters.

< / REFLECTION:BLUE>

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< REFLECTION:BLACK >

Time log, Mir Age 20
3 years prior

It was strange. Such a large expanse of land and yet no one outside of the government knew about it.

Cheolyong bit his lower lip as his fingers flew across the keyboard.

Frustratingly there were no cameras he could easily hack into to get a visual. Sure there were government ones but the firewall on them was too tough to crack and unlike before he did not have a hidden access route this time round.

However with his skills there were certain things he could learn.

For one, the coding behind the Graveyard was messy, incomplete. It implied that this location was not meant for human habitation. Instead it seemed to serve more like a storage location. Cheolyong could pick up on one central facility in the middle of the Graveyard, the sole area that Cheolyong could not hack into. If only he could get into there…

Cheolyong paused. He could taste blood on his tongue. It was a bad habit of his, this biting of the lips. He swiped a thumb over the bruised area to brush away the excess blood.

He was overthinking this.

If he couldn’t get information about the Graveyard from the place itself then he would have to take a step back and try elsewhere.

He sat there and tried to think this through systematically.

To the citizens of the Three Levels the Graveyard was but a fable, a bed time story told to children to scare them into behaving. To think that it was an actual location meant several things. One, that the government had put in effort to hide it, to make it into a story so no one would ever think of searching for the place. Two, that if it was hidden then something important must be held there. And three, that whatever must be hidden there must be something that could not simply be stored on a database or in the system.

The last place that Cheolyong had heard the term Graveyard had been the research facility. Disposal list had been the name of the sheet of paper with citizen IDs written on. Cheolyong didn’t want to think of it as that, but the only logical conclusion what that the Graveyard was a place where the subjects no longer needed in the research facility was sent. The name was fitting, though it made Cheolyong shudder to think that humans were treated like animals, used and then disposed of as they saw fit.

This was only a theory though. Cheolyong needed solid evidence before he made his decision.

Because if it was true and there were those outside of the research facility who were in this terrible state of dead and yet not dead, then Cheolyong would need to rethink his plan. He cursed himself for not realizing it earlier but that was too late. He would just have to be grateful that this strange hacker had drawn his attention with his extravagant entry…

That was it!

Cheolyong’s fingers returned to the keyboard with renewed fervor.

If he could adapt one of the government cameras from the Ghetto and send that to the Graveyard in the same manner that this hacker had done so…

He brought up the messy code that the hacker had used and analyzed it. It was feasible. He could take the code and modify it. To transport a much smaller object would make it easier. Still… still, Cheolyong was improvising completely on this matter.

His fingers flew and sweat trickled down his temple. The hours stretched late but Cheolyong’s eyes never left the monitor. It wasn’t easy work. Not only did he have to modify the camera, choosing one that the government wouldn’t notice the absence as much, but he also had to patch together broken code.

Four hours later though and he had succeeded.

He dropped his cramped hands away from the keyboard and let out a huge sigh. He desperately needed to go to the bathroom and his stomach was growling but he couldn’t drag his eyes away from his very first glimpse of the Graveyard.

It was, plainly put, horrifying.

The sky was some weird oily smear. It reminded Cheolyong of the puddles that you sometimes saw by the pipes which lead out from the factories. They smelt like gasoline and if you got them on your clothes they didn’t wash out for days. There, the ground was hard and unforgiving and Cheolyong could see areas of pitch blackness where whoever had coded the place had failed. He pulled a face and sent the camera forwards, towards the location of the firewalls and the sole facility of the factory.

As the camera soared, Cheolyong noticed strange white creatures. From up high they appeared no more than tiny termites crawling across the cracked ground. But as Cheolyong dropped the camera down he realized each was huge, the size and shape of a buffalo. They were pure white like light incarnate, but their appearance was long and insect like. Feelers twitched as if they were sensing their way forwards. Long, bent legs clattered in sync as they scuttled forwards. There were at least twenty of them crawling forwards, legs moving in time with one another. They seemed to have a particular destination in mind.

Cheolyong sent the camera after them.

They marched in almost silence for miles. And then Cheolyong saw it.

Silver steel and straight edges, the facility boosted no aesthetics. It was rectangular and at least five stories high.

Cheolyong ran a scan for security and sure enough there was an army of firewalls and sensors. But he noticed that they all seemed geared towards hacking attacks and he wondered if maybe, a physical attack would work instead.

The men who had tried to break into the factories had used that method. It was crude but it had almost succeeded.

What Cheolyong chose to do instead was a more subtle route than breaking down the walls. He maneuvered the camera down till it hovered right in middle of the pack of white insects. They did not seem to notice it, and that was the first obstacle cleared.

Cheolyong took a deep, shuddering breath and told himself to focus. The strange insect like creatures may not have noticed the camera amongst their numbers but there was no telling what would happen if he physically touched one of them. He had to control the camera with a steady hand and slowly move it towards the facility.

They crawled toward the exterior fencing, all of them turning and moving without any signs of interaction. They acted like a hive mind, working together as one being.

Cheolyong turned the camera to try and see where the entrance was, but he could see no conspicuous one. Then, as they approached, invisible fault lines in the wall slid open to admit the twenty something insects.

The inside of the facility was dark and for a frightful moment as the door slid shut behind the insects, Cheolyong could see nothing. But then the whiteness of the insect turned out to be more than just a pigment; their bodies seemed to glow softly and slowly Cheolyong began to make out murky shapes within the facility.

The insects continued to march forwards and Cheolyong moved his camera with them. They moved down one long corridor after another long corridor, turning mechanically and barely making a sound with their feet. It was unnerving to be honest, but Cheolyong was so close to finding out what was inside this facility and so he his lips and tasted the dried blood and continued on with shaking arms but steady hands.

And then they came to a standstill. In his surprise Cheolyong almost jerked the camera straight into one of them, but he caught himself at the last minute and pulled the camera up instead.

All around him the insects were coming to a halt, parked perfectly against the wall. Then, their inner glow faded and slowly the room sunk into complete pitch blackness.

Cheolyong counted up to one minute exactly, and when nothing happened he changed the camera to night vision. A green tint spread across his monitor but now he could see slightly better. The room was long and rectangular; the insects were all lined up against the wall, heads lowered, antennas drooped. It was as if they had been deactivated.

Cheolyong swiveled the camera around to see the exit. It was a narrow door and he swooped the camera towards and out of it.

Without a map Cheolyong was effectively searching blind.

Most of the rooms he searched were filled with more deactivated insects, enough to build an army. Some were empty with large screen monitors, though without a proper invasive port Cheolyong was unable to hack into the system and that was frustrating enough. All he could do was continue to search each room methodically one by one and slowly build his own map.

Another room of insects. Another of monitors. Insects again. Cheolyong was starting to see the pattern. A room of insects and next to it what it seemed like the room that then processed their data. Another few rooms and Cheolyong’s lids were starting to feel heavy. He had been at this for almost six hours now and he was tired and hungry and-

Cheolyong jerked the camera back. There. One unassuming room in the middle of them all. Of all the rooms, none of them had doors, just open frames. He assumed this was to allow the insects to roam freely in and out. This room however had a door.

With trembling fingers he steered the camera forwards.

With the door closed he had to rely on brute force to nudge the door open. Luckily it seemed to be light enough and he was able to open a small crack big enough to slip the camera through. And Cheolyong had no idea what he was expecting. Another room filled to the brim with floating bodies? Emptiness and disappointment that he had been wrong?

This room was enormous. A stretch of steel walls and floor that went on for miles and miles. And across each wall was no liquid cell with a floating body inside. It was quite simple a drawer, a handle of black attached to a square shaped drawer.

Cheolyong maneuvered the camera to the closest wall. Each drawer had a fine white label. Cheolyong focused the camera and read it. Subject 0001: Vacant it read.

His heart seized. The drawer below it was subject 0002: vacant and then subject 0003: occupied and so on.  There were finer print beneath each label but that wasn’t what Cheolyong was interested in. This wasn’t the drawer he was looking for.

He still remembered the words of the scientist like it was yesterday. Down and down he flew the camera, past the 1000s and 2000s and all the way until he found it. Subject 7224. Occupied. He zoomed in on the words below. Bang Hyo Jin. Deceased.

His fingers trembled.

She was there. She was really there.

But he had to check.

Cheolyong had no hands down there and so he had to improvise. The best he could do was to try and tilt the cuboidal shaped camera so that one of the edges slipped under the handle. Slowly, painfully slowly, he played the game of slipping the camera under and pulling back. At time the camera would slip out and the drawer would go nowhere. But bit by bit he was opening it. Bit by slowly bit.

It was passing ten hours now and Cheolyong’s fingers were trembling not just with anticipation now, but actual exhaustion. This may have been a digital world but human needs had been replicated so faithfully that tiredness was tugging at him limbs now.

Still, he persevered. He kept moving the camera back and forth, alternating between nudging the drawer open and moving it up top to see his progress.

And then, as he hit the eleventh hour, he moved the camera sluggishly up to get a bird’s eye view and there he saw. A crack just big enough to slip the camera in. He moved it down and in.

And once again, it was not what he expected.

He had expected a body. Closed eyes, hair long and dark. His sister. That was what Cheolyong had wanted. Not this.

A chip. One tiny, blue chip with the number 7224 printed on it.

It was his sister’s digital ID, compressed and filed and stored in one tiny chip no bigger than his fingernail.

That was what Bang Hyo Jin had been reduced to.

Data.

Cheolyong’s fingers dropped away from the keyboard, trembling now, not with anticipation or exhaustion, but with anger. Pure, burning anger.

And at it, all his expectations and his tiredness fell away. All that remained was his fury.

Cheolyong twisted away from the keyboard and his other monitors. He brought up the other keyboards and started up the Xmas program. He fingers flew down with a thud and he began typing with renewed energy.

His sister was still there, still treated like an object. He had thought he had saved her. He had been wrong. And now, now he was going to change things. He would save them all. Not just those in the Ghettos, but everyone in all four levels.

< / REFLECTION:BLACK >

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< REFLECTION:BLUE >

Time log, Thunder Age 21
3 years prior

There was light from far, far away.

Sanghyun raised a shaky hand and watched as he partially blocked the light. Still it streamed in between his fingers as he parted them and then danced around them when he closed the gap.

He lowered it and watched the dazzling distance of the light.

Then, a shadow fell. It was long and dispersed the light and Sanghyun frowned.

“Silly,” the shadow said fondly and Sanghyun snapped his eyes open properly. They focused, taking in what little light was down here and his breath caught in his chest.

“Durami,” he choked and sat up straight.

“Careful there!” Durami cautioned as Sanghyun felt a bolt of dizziness pass through him. “See!” she fretted. “You had a nasty fall and the programming down here is terrible. It slows down the processing of the System which means you might feel short of breath.”

“How?” Sanghyun croaked blurrily. He rubbed at his eyes, wondering if it was the dizziness or if he was just imagining things. She was there, unmistakably so. Her face was slightly rounder than Sandara’s, but it had a more youthful shine to it. Her eyes soft and sparkling, her hair long and braided, draped over her shoulder. It was her. But at times her form seemed shaky, the outlines blurring and wobbling.

He reached out for her and his hand went straight through her arm. “Durami?” he gasped.

Durami glanced nervously at her quivering body. “I… my body isn’t stable, that’s all.”

“How?” Sanghyun repeated. “How are you here noona? I remember…you… dying…”

Her body, askew on the floor, blood seeping out like a black stain.

Durami gave him a sad smile. “I’m still dead in the real world Sanghyun,” she said gently. “My body is at least. But right before I lost consciousness I managed to transfer it over to this world.”

“So…” Sanghyun drew a hopeful breath.

“So I’m still alive in a way,” Durami said with a dip of her head. “Not in our world anymore, but I’m here. I’m still here.”

It was all of the stress and the suppressed grief that he had never had time to properly vent. All of that came back in one great surge and suddenly there were tears on his cheek.

“Aw, Sanghyun,” Durami smiled, leaning forwards. Her fingers did not quite make contact with his cheeks but they brushed against them and for a moment Sanghyun swore he could feel the warmth of her hand. “Don’t cry,” she whispered. “Don’t cry. It’s okay. We’re still together. All three of us.”

Sanghyun jerked his head back. Three? “Wait! Sandara-noona-“

Durami held up one finger to quieten him. “She’s there,” she said and pointed behind him.

Sanghyun spun so quickly that for a moment the dizziness returned as a blur, but then he blinked and the world focused and he saw his eldest noona lying there on the hard granite floor. Her eyes were closed but her chest rose and fell. Other than a pale complexion she looked like she was only sleeping.

“How?” he asked in a hushed tone, his head flickering back to look at Durami.

Durami looked to her hands which quivered under the light. “When that man shot me I panicked. I don’t know what I did but I kind of integrated into the System. It doesn’t recognize me as human and in turn it means I can do certain things unobserved…”

“Such as?” Sanghyun asked.

“Instant transport. Material manipulation. Access to all the data that flows within the System.” Durami gave him a solemn gaze. “I can do all of this by just thinking. Sanghyun… I… I don’t think I’m wholly human anymore.”

Sanghyun’s voice was tight as he spoke. “What do you mean noona?”

She gave him a long look. “Normally in order to operate in this world we use either go about it as we would in the real world, with our hands and bodies, or we code. But I don’t need to use either.”

She looked up and Sanghyun subconsciously followed her train of gaze. “When you fell Sanghyun I barely even needed to think. Firstly I softened your fall enough so that you wouldn’t feel pain. Then I teleported myself up to where Dara-unnie was and I brought her down here. All of that I did without exercising more than my thoughts.”

Sanghyun is at lost for words.

No one, not even the government officials, could achieve that level of control. If his sister has somehow integrated herself into the system…then was the person standing in front of him more his sister or more a computer?  

But before he could voice his concerns, another voice spoke up. “Durami!” came a gasp from behind him. Both he and Durami turned to see Sandara sitting up, her eyes wide and face pale with shock.

“Unnie,” Durami greeted her with a wide smile. She danced forward and gave her a hug, a circumference of thin arms and waist that didn’t quite touch Sandara.

“How?” was all Sandara could say, echoing Sanghyun’s similar words.

Durami gave her a smile and knelt. She tucked her braid carefully over her shoulder and re-told the story. Sandara nodded in all the right places but Sanghyun could see a dazed look in her eyes. It was like a dream, all of this. Getting Durami back, even if it wasn’t in the way they had imagined.

All this time they had thought the only thing they could do for her was get revenge, but now…

Durami finished her story and Sandara’s lips trembled. Sanghyun watched as Sandara reached out with one hand to cup Durmai’s cheek. As it had with Sanghyun’s touch, her hand made Durami’s outlines quiver and it slipped through.

“Will we never be able to touch you?” Sandara wondered aloud, her eyes downturn and dark.

Durami gave her a light nudge. “Don’t say that unnie,” she said brightly. “I’m still getting used to this body and this world. Before I couldn’t even materialize myself into a form. I was just floating data, barely conscious. It took me nearly half a year before I could pull myself together. And now look at me, saving you two just like that.”

“So…” The light rekindled in Sandara’s eyes.

Durami nodded. “So who knows? Give it another year and maybe I’ll be able to give myself a physical form. It won’t be anything like the real world, but…”

Sandara’s eyes were shiny. “But it’s something.”

“It’s something,” Durami grinned.

“So what are we going to do now?” Sanghyun said as the thought came to him. He sidled up to the two of his sisters, the two of them, something he had thought was only a dream before and now that he can grasped hold of it…well what were they going to do?

Durami looked at him with a puzzled expression. Sandara however understood him.

“It shouldn’t change anything,” she said fiercely, her eyes drawing up and sharpening. “We should still find the man who killed everyone back at base. He doesn’t deserve to go unpunished.”

Durami’s eyes flickered with surprise. “Is that what you came here for?”

Sandara nodded. “To get revenge. For you.”

Durami’s eyes softened. “For me?”

This time it was Sanghyun who nodded. “For your,” he affirmed. Originally this had all been Sandara’s plan, her anger at her younger two siblings being attacked and her retaliation akin to that of a fiercely protective mother bear. Sanghyun had followed her because he had not known what else to do, but privately he had wondered if this was the right thing to do: to capture and punish a criminal in a world they knew next to nothing about. Sanghyun may have had doubts about that, but if there was one thing he had never doubted it was that they were to get even for Durami.

“I can help you,” Durami said. Both Sandara and Sanghyun looked at her sharply. “I mean,” she said making a face, “Okay, so I won’t be able to leave the Graveyard just yet. It’s really peaceful here, there’s barely any data processing that goes on except in facility so it’s really easy to hold myself together. But I can still keep in contact with you two. I’m getting better at interfacing with the System every day and I can help you search. I can help.”

Sandara held out a hand. She hovered it right over Durami’s, not quite touching, but the space between could not quite be seen. “We understand Durami,” she said softly. “We’re not leaving you behind. Don’t worry.”

The panic in Durami’s eyes died down. “Okay,” she said softer, more muted. “Okay.”

“Noona,” Sanghyun said gently, crawling forwards. “We’re in this together. All three of us, yeah?”

Durami turned to him, a soft smile tugging at her lips. “Yeah, okay.”

“We’ll find the guy who killed you and we’ll make him pay,” Sandara said firmly. She looped on arm around the back of Sanghyun’s shoulders and pulled him in close; her other she held over Durami’s shoulders, barely touching her shaky form. “Together.”

Sanghyun nodded, biting his lip. He could feel the excitement build in his chest, a tiny flame that danced and flickered. It was the three of them, and there was no way they weren’t going to succeed.

< / REFLECTION:BLUE>

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< REFLECTION:BLACK >

Time log, Mir Age 20
3 years prior

It was just him and the program and there was no way he wasn’t going to succeed. It was going perfectly, the modification of the prototype.

It wasn’t that he had to change much with regards to the program; all he had to do was expand its target range. What was difficult was determining that range. He had to go back and manually map out the Graveyard facility, taking care to include every single person there.

He discovered that not all the drawers were full. The empty ones were simply there in preparation. It was unnerving but Cheolyong could only come to conclusion that there was a drawer in there for every single person in the entire Three Levels. In other words everybody could die and still be immediately stored. That was scary: that the entire population could then become experimental fodder for the government.

Cheolyong could not allow that.

He was going to delete all of the dead immediately and save them from their fate as experiments. He was going to save them with this one program.

He leaned back and watched the code scroll across the screen, the practice test currently being run. He couldn’t help but think of Hyo Sun and Hyo Jin and wonder what they would think of him right now.

Would they encourage him? Or would they berate him?

Was he even doing the right thing?

No. There was no room for doubts.

Cheolyong in a deep breath and leaned forwards to initiate another program check. It was nearly done, the prototype, and there was no going back now.

< / REFLECTION:BLACK >

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< REFLECTION:BLUE >

Time log, Thunder Age 21
3 years prior

There was no going back. The three of them had sworn to find the man and get revenge. All the doubts that Sanghyun had harbored before about went out the window. He had no room for hesitation now.

There was however room for something else.

“Sanghyun, unnie,” Durami said suddenly, her eyes snapping open. They were still at the bottom of the gorge where light was thin and rocks their walls and floors. She had been sitting crossed legged on the ground, eyes closed as her mind ran through the data of the System. Now though there was an urgency in her tone that made Sanghyun and Sandara hurry over.

“What is it Durami?” Sandara asked immediately, concern in her eyes.

“We have a problem,” Durami said quickly.

“The enforcers? The government?” Sanghyun guessed.

Durami shook her head. “Not even. I… I don’t know who he is but he goes by the name of Bang Cheolyong. And… and he’s a hacker.”

“So?” Sandara raised her eyebrows. “What threat is he to us? It’s not like he can reach us down here in the Graveyard.”

The Graveyard had quickly become their haven. Down in this gorge the Corrupted could not reach them, nor could the enforcers who in the first place had no clue about the Graveyard. Only the highest of the government officials knew about the place but with such messy coding the Graveyard had grown out of proportion and they would not find it easy to track down two unknowns in such vast wilderness. They were safe here for now, or so they thought.

“It’s not him that the problem,” Durami clarified. “It’s what he’s built.”

“Which is?” Sanghyun pressed.

Durami’s face was white. Her form flickered even more viciously than before. “It’s…a program. A program that will delete everyone who is considered ‘dead’ by the System.”

Sanghyun in a gasp. “But…” He stared first at Durami and then at Sandara. Both were ‘dead’ in a way to the System. Sandara especially. “How?”

“It’s designed to first track down any and all with the ‘dead’ tag and to single them out. Then a secondary wave comes and consumes the data, effectively deleting it right off the System.”

“That sounds like the Corruptions,” Sandara said, white-faced. “Only instead of anesthetizing the subject, it destroys them outright.”

Durami looked to her with worry on her face. “Unnie, if this program gets released you will…”

“But noona still has her body back in the real world right?” Sanghyun butted in. “She’ll just get sent back there right?”

“In the best case scenario, yes,” Durami said, still pale. “But then that will happen to everyone. And all over Facility 421, people will wake up. And they won’t know where they are. If they step outside without proper protection it could end in chaos.”

“And the worst case scenario?” Sanghyun had to ask.

“The shock of their minds being deleted will fire back on the body,” Durami swallowed. “They’ll be brain dead. Their bodies will be alive but their minds will be…gone…”

Both Durami and Sandara looked extremely pale.

“We can’t let this happen,” Sanghyun said fiercely. He slammed both palms down onto his thighs. “We can stop this. It’s just a program right. So what if this Cheolyong kid is a hacker; we’re better. We’ve done this out entire lives, and there are three of us.”

Durami bit her lip. “It won’t be easy. His code is pretty good and it’s almost complete. We won’t have enough time to analyze and counteract it.”  

“So we modify it,” Sanghyun suggested sharply. Both his sisters gave him a long look.

“It could work,” Sandara said, her hands gripping into tight balls.

Durami closed her eyes again and Sandara and Sanghyun knew she was trying to access the code and make the decision for herself.

After what felt like an age she opened her eyes.

“Well?” Sanghyun said, almost demandingly.

Durami’s eyes gleamed. “It could work.”

Sanghyun his lips. “Well then, what are we waiting for?”

Sandara leaned over and gave his hand an encouraging squeeze. “Let’s do this.”

Sanghyun nodded fiercely. “Yeah. I won’t let you two be deleted. I promise.”

< / REFLECTION:BLUE >

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< REFLECTION:BLACK >

Time log, Mir Age 20
3 years prior

It was a promise. To save them all. And he was right on the cusp of fulfilling it.

The prototype was complete and the tests had come away perfect. Cheolyong saved it and decided to sleep on it before he ran the program. He would need all his wits about him the moment he truly said goodbye to his two sisters.

He slept, but it was fitful and he kept waking up every hour or so.

Eventually he gave up and rolled out of this thin coverlet on the ground. He washed his face and ate something that he could barely taste and then, breathing in and out to calm himself, he sat down and opened the program.

It was exactly as he had left it the night before. All he had to do now was give it the command to RUN and within in minutes it would spread through the Ghettos and the Graveyard and the deed would be done.

Cheolyong could feel his pulse racing now, exciting and fear warring and clashing in the greatest of hormonal runs.

He lifted his finger, he his dried and cracked lips.

This is how I make your deaths meaningful, he thought one last time and then his finger came down on the enter button and words flashed across the screen, bright white against the black background.

CHRISTMAS PROGRAM INITIATING…

Cheolyong leaned back and watched it load. 10%...20%...45%...66%...82%...100%...

PROGRAM INITIATED.

And so, it was done.

The code ran and the data processed at speeds so high that no human could comprehend. It collided like tiny electrons sparking and spreading and the message ran on with each collision it caused. On and on and on and the code was perfect. It was.

The command spread from the tiny apartment in the Ghetto and out across, past the dozens of other houses and the market and then into the factory walls one, two, three and finally four where the research facility was. There the first wave tagged every single human subject. F0224, M7911, F3324, F5536.

Then one part of it branched off and went spiraling downwards, towards the Graveyard facility that lay on another level. It struck like lightening and spread like a wave, tagging now all of the tiny chips that contained the minds of people. 9822, 0103, 5466,2231.

It was doing its job perfectly. Only its purpose now was not what Cheolyong had coded it to be. The change had not been big. In fact it had been so small that only the most careful of eyes would notice it.

And so as the second wave came, the subtly changed code took action. No longer did it delete the data that had been tagged; no, now it did something slightly different.

It froze.

But Cheolyong did not know this. He lay back and fell into a light doze, the stress and the relief of finally succeeding causing him to finally crash. He would wake up hours later to finally hack into the facility and check, and there to his absolute horror he would find out what he had done instead.

But for now, two levels above in the Peaks one boy stared at the screen that displayed flashing black words.

“What is this?” he muttered, pulling a face.

This wasn’t what he had expected to find when playing around on his brother’s computer. Perhaps he should call his brother? To let him know something was wrong?

No, he couldn’t. Then his brother would know he had snuck into his office and messed around with his stuff. Anyway, maybe it was right.

He’d have a look first and if it was really bad then he’d let his brother know.

The boy scooted the chair forwards and reached over to touch the monitor.

And in that instance he became connected to the entire network that the program was being spread over. It tagged him instantly and the second wave followed right after.

It felt like a tiny pinprick, the pain small and sharp and then it was gone.

“Oh…” said the little boy. He blinked and stared at his hand, wondering what the sensation had been.  Or rather than been, what is was. For the sensation was growing. It was creeping down his wrist and up his arm. It was cold as ice and crawled like centipedes down his skin. “What is this?” he whimpered. Maybe he should call his hyung after all. This was strange. This was really strange.

But as he was about to turn and call for his brother, the program reached his core.

The little boy in a breath, and then ceased to breathe.

< / REFLECTION:BLACK >

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< REFLECTION:WHITE >

Time log, Seungho Age 23
3 years prior

Today had been another long day and a headache pounded away behind Seungho’s temples. He rubbed at them as he padded back to his study, hoping for there to be good news awaiting him on his update of the Ghetto situation. The enforcers had been up in arms all day, rushing about like busy worker ants and it had been chaos.

Seungho halted and frowned as he found he study door open slightly.

Had he left it open? He couldn’t recall.

He opened it further and he froze for a moment.  

“Seunghoon!” he snapped, scolding words ready on the tip of his tongue. His little brother knew better than to mess around with his study room. He rushed forwards and grabbed his brother by the shoulder. Almost instantly he let go.

Seunghoon was cold as ice.

“Seunghoon,” Seungho said instead, trying to ignore the chill in his fingertips. “What are you doing here? Haven’t I told you not to enter my…”

He paused because it was strange that Seunghoon was not responding. His little brother was always quick to retaliate and yet…

Seungho carefully stepped around the chair to look his little brother in the face and what he found instead was not the cheeky grin and bright eyes of Yang Seunghoon. No, it was blank eyes and frozen limbs. An ice statue that had once been full of life. 

“Seunghoon?” Seungho whispered with horror at his unresponsiveness.

He turned to look at the computer screen and the words flashed again and again.

CHRISTMAS COMES EVERY YEAR, it read in bold black words. BUT THIS ONE SHALL BRING THE GREATEST GIFT OF ALL.

< / REFLECTION:WHITE>

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A/N: This is so, so messy but I really needed to get it out or else I don't think I would have ever finished it. >< I'm sorry.