The café in Busan emptied in under a minute. No alarms, no warnings—just a quiet pullback. It was a signal, and she understood it perfectly.

The woman in the hoodie—real name Han Seo Jin—tucked the tablet into her messenger bag and walked into the misty street. Above her, a drone blinked twice, then disappeared.

She smiled again. “Phase One: ignition.”

In Seoul, Ji Woo brought the twins to an off-grid briefing center beneath an old university library. On the table: scattered blueprints, AI transcripts, and recent surveillance stills.

“Project Ember isn’t just about enhancements,” Ji Woo explained. “It’s behavioral. Emotional rewiring through environmental stimuli. They’re manipulating fear to amplify aggression.”

Rin narrowed her eyes. “They’re weaponizing trauma.”

Ji Woo nodded. “And they’re starting with controlled zones—places hit hardest during Mi Na’s chaos. Communities already frayed.”

Rae slammed a fist on the table. “We saved these people once. We’re not letting someone else turn them into lab rats.”

That night, Rae and Rin arrived in the first targeted zone—an urban district still recovering from last month’s failed satellite launch.

They posed as volunteers for an aid program and quickly found something off: people were skittish, emotionally volatile, and unusually aggressive at night.

Rae walked through a playground littered with abandoned toys. “This place feels... haunted.”

Rin scanned the surroundings. “It’s being fed something. I can feel it.”

Then she spotted it: a hidden projector embedded in a lamppost. Ultrasonic pulses.

She yanked it out. Immediately, the mood of the area shifted—subtle, but real.

“Confirmed,” she said. “They’re dosing people with subliminal cues. And this is just one block.”

Rae’s jaw clenched. “Time to smoke them out.”

Across the district, other projectors powered down. Hidden agents began to flee. And back in Busan, Seo Jin received the alert.

She didn’t panic. She only typed one line:

Phase Two: Firestarter.