Reversal Algorithm

Jin-Woo didn't sleep that night. The hum of the USB drive plugged into his laptop was the only sound filling the dark room, save for the occasional distant horn from the street. The red LED blinked like a pulse, mirroring the tension coiled in his chest.

Yoon Mi-Ra.

The woman in the message.

She had spoken his name—calm, certain, like she'd been expecting him. But the timestamp was impossible: two days in the future.

Jin-Woo clicked through the copied files again. Logs of neural signatures. Temporal mapping charts. Something called the Cognitive Entanglement Loop Model. All the files were heavily encrypted. Not just password protected — locked behind levels of compression and obfuscation that looked military-grade.

"You're not supposed to have this yet," he muttered.

A ping broke the silence.

A new folder appeared: REVERSE_CHAIN://01

Inside was a video.

He hesitated.

Then pressed play.

Message from the Future

The video opened on static before resolving into Yoon Mi-Ra. Same dark braid. Same black eyes.

"Song Jin-Woo," she said. "If you're watching this, you broke protocol. Or perhaps—someone broke it for you. Either way, it means the Chain is destabilizing."

She sat in a sparse room—concrete walls, harsh lighting, a single timer ticking down in the background.

"I don't have much time. By now, you've likely uncovered fragments of Project Janus. The truth is worse than what you've seen."

She leaned forward, eyes piercing the camera. "You're not the only one who returned. You're not even the first. But you are the variable. The one who wasn't supposed to change."

The timer behind her hit zero. The screen went black.

Jin-Woo stared, breath caught in his throat. "What the hell am I?"

Unwelcome Visitor

His phone buzzed.

A private number.

He answered cautiously. "Yeah?"

"Jin-Woo." Seo-Yeon's voice was breathless. "Someone's following me."

He was already grabbing his coat. "Where are you?"

"Back alley near the convenience store by the station. I took the long route home to be safe. I don't think he's normal."

Jin-Woo bolted out of his apartment. The cool night air slapped his face as he sprinted down the empty streets, mind racing. Not normal?

He reached the alley in under ten minutes. It was quiet — too quiet.

Then he heard it: the distinct sound of a blade scraping against brick.

"Seo-Yeon?" he called.

A figure stepped out of the shadows.

But it wasn't her.

It was a man — tall, broad-shouldered, but unnaturally still. His eyes gleamed unnervingly in the dim light.

"You've touched something you shouldn't have," the man said. "The timeline is bleeding."

"What?"

The man lunged.

Jin-Woo dodged barely in time. A curved blade missed his shoulder by inches. He ducked and rolled, grabbing a broken pipe from the ground.

Clang! Sparks flew as steel met metal.

But something was wrong. The man didn't move like a person. His reflexes were inhuman. Jin-Woo was strong, trained — but this wasn't a fight he could win.

"Seo-Yeon!" he shouted.

A crash from above.

She dropped from a fire escape with a steel baton in hand, striking the man across the head. He staggered, then twitched unnaturally before retreating into the darkness.

Breathing hard, they both leaned against the alley wall.

"That wasn't just a hitman," she said.

"No," Jin-Woo agreed. "He was something else. And he knew about the Chain."

The Reversal Protocol

Back at Jin-Woo's apartment, Seo-Yeon clutched a cup of tea while he brought her up to speed.

She tapped the table. "The Chain — it's a failsafe. A tether linking your consciousness across timelines. If you break it, you risk unraveling everything."

"But what if it's already breaking?" Jin-Woo asked.

She looked up. "Then Project Janus will activate its final protocol."

Jin-Woo leaned forward. "What protocol?"

"The Reversal Algorithm."

He stared. "That's what that assassin meant. Bleeding timelines… rollback."

"If the Chain destabilizes too far," Seo-Yeon said, "Janus doesn't try to fix it. It erases the outliers. Anyone who's diverged too far from their origin path."

"Me," he whispered.

"And probably me too."

New Mission

"We need to find the origin server," Seo-Yeon said. "If we can shut it down or sever your link before the Algorithm executes—"

"We stop the rollback," Jin-Woo finished.

She nodded. "But it won't be easy. The main server is in Sector 0. Off-grid, buried under old records from the early simulations. Only a few returnees even know it exists."

"Who does?"

Seo-Yeon hesitated. "Lee Sang-Hyun."

Jin-Woo's fists clenched.

Of course it was him.

A Call to the Enemy

He sent the message at 3:12 AM.

Meet me. We both know what's coming. —J

The reply came ten minutes later.

I was wondering when you'd crawl out from under your second chance. Tomorrow. Noon. The Tower.

Jin-Woo stared at the screen.

Lee Sang-Hyun. The man who had risen faster, brighter—and fallen just as hard. If he knew about Sector 0, he'd demand something in return. That's how he always played the game.

"Time to face the past," Jin-Woo muttered.