(ONE WEEK BEFORE THE STORM)
Elsewhere in the base, a door creaked open—just a sliver. Then silence, not the empty kind.
It was the kind of silence that prickled across your skin like static before a storm.
A woman slipped through the gap.
Purple-streaked hair tied in a lazy, messy bun—side locks curtaining her face, brushing against the cold curve of her cheekbones. Her eyes, sharp as obsidian, gave away nothing. The purple contact lenses only added to the mask she wore—a human specter with no past, no name that mattered. Just one: Harin.
No camera caught her. No guard clocked her exit.
Only a subtle shift in the air. Like a room exhaling.
That's how they knew Harin, the shadow assassin, had left.
Outside, she stood with her back to the abandoned Ferris wheel's rusting ticket counter, arms crossed, the moonlight tracing silver along the edge of her jawline.
But unlike Hana—brilliant and mischievous—or Areum, whose soft features cloaked a deadly mind—Harin didn't charm, didn't deceive, didn't play.
She moved like liquid shadow, spoke like absence, and wore her mask like it was carved into her skin.
The infamous Black Panther operative, no expression, no hesitation and especially no mercy.
Her gaze dropped to the blinking red dot on her phone's screen.
"Target in sight," she whispered into the comms, her voice a blade of ice.
She clicked the phone shut.
And just like that—she vanished, no footsteps and no sound.
Only silence followed her like a well-trained pet.
Then came Soyeon's voice—cutting through the comms with her usual static-laced swagger.
"Car will cross the tunnel in ninety seconds. I've got them in the scope. Window's clean."
Silence followed for a while. Then came a muttered line, low and sarcastic by Soyeon:
"Great. Just another peaceful evening of totally legal birdwatching."
Back in the base, Areum's lips twitched upward in amusement.
'Typical Soyeon,' she thought.
"No fire," Areum said, voice smooth.
A heartbeat passed.
Then Areum added, soft and certain—like prophecy:
"Yet."
~•~
Inside the control room, the tension hummed under fluorescent lights.
Hana's finger hovered over a key. She pressed it.
The surveillance feed froze mid-frame. There was a single still, sharp as a Soyeon's gaze.
Junseosat rigid in front of Helena (Haseul), hands clenched on the wheel. His knuckles were white and eyes locked forward.
On the screen: Helena was in between Taeyang and Hyunjae.
She was tied, bruised with her mask cracked like porcelain dropped from too high.
But her fingers were twitching, counting and measuring the beats of breath and time.
She wasn't sedated nor broken.
She was waiting.
Her eyes though closed, but she was listening to the echo, to the breathing pattern of her captors
She was tracking, mapping the route the car took and memorizing the way each of the three talked.
Minji stood behind Areum and Hana, arms folded. Her laugh was dry and humorless, sharp enough to cut glass.
"They're in for a reckoning."
Hana's eyes flicked to the pulse monitor—steady, unreadable—and a small smile ghosted her lips.
"Poor boys."
And Areum's voice dropped to something barely above a whisper—soft, almost fond, like watching an old memory resurface.
"They tried to cage a storm."
~•~
Outside, the rain finally broke—soft at first, then hard enough to wash blood off concrete.
Inside the Black Panther base, no one moved.
The guards in disguise were still, listening and waiting for her. Their boss.
Because every soul inside that base—rookie or legend—knew the truth:
The Queen hadn't fallen.
She'd walked straight into the lion's den…
And the entire underworld was about to remember—
Who taught them fear.
~•~
Meanwhile, far from the crackle of gunfire and heartbeat tension, the Kim mansion pulsed with its own kind of warfare.
Not the loud kind, not steel and fire.
But of diplomacy, leverage and control.
Hyunsik moved like water across a polished floor—no wasted steps, no disarray. The only Kim brother inside the mansion. The others—Seungho, Haejoon—still on their. But Hyunsik had already started the preparation to set the stage.
He was the war in a suit.
Tailored jacket immaculate, not a strand of hair out of place. His one hand held a tablet, another held his phone. A third line buzzed in his pocket and he didn't flinch nor blink. Just answered.
"Commissioner," he greeted, tone smooth as butter. "The explosion in District 7? A transformer. Local fault. No need to raise public alert levels. Let your officers stay put."
A beat followed. The faintest smile curled his lips.
"Yes, of course. The mayor's office will ensure the department's quarterly budget proposal remains untouched."
Call ended. And without a heartbeat passing a new number was dialed.
"Tell Li Cheng to pull his men back. Remind him about the favor RM did for his daughter's citizenship papers."
His voice didn't threaten.
It reminded.
And reminders from Hyunsik came with weight. The kind that turned loyalty into silence.
Across the entire city, calls were dropped. Many politicians, police officers and reporters fingers froze on triggers. Windows shut in back alleys and even rival gangs paused.
It was a kind of pause cities feel before tectonic plates shift.
In the middle of it, a new recruit—nervous, precise, her hair tied in a tight bun—stepped into Hyunsik's office.
"Sir… reporters have started asking about the convoy—"
Hyunsik didn't even glance up and cut her off.
"Tell them it's a diplomatic convoy. Foreign dignitaries. And if any journalist digs further, remind them their tax records are incomplete. We've used that file before."
Another call rang. Another voice boomed.
"Senator. I need thirty minutes of silence. No police. No interference."
It was followed with a pause.
"If you give me that, I'll forget what I know about your offshore account in Macau."
With a click, Hyunsik ended the call.
No one said no to Kim Hyunsik.
He was made for the spotlight yet he was also the reason the lights stayed on in their world and never flickered from chaos.
While guns were loaded in hidden tunnels, while shadows crept through alleyways and hackers clashed in code, Hyunsik stood at the frontlines of influence.
Of pressure.
Of silence.
He didn't shout nor did he fight.
He commanded.
And because of that—
No one saw the war coming.
Until it was already too late.