The hallways of the old apartment building were stained with grease and dust. Jin Doyun stood in front of the door to unit 307, holding his breath—the same door from which blue light had been seeping just moments before. The digital door lock was dead. Thanks to Ju Idam, who had already disabled it remotely.
["Doyun, I've temporarily shut down the internal sensors too, but I don't know when they'll come back online. You've got three minutes. You need to wrap this up fast."]
Ju Idam's urgent voice crackled through his earpiece. Doyun nodded and quietly opened the door, stepping inside.
The room was surprisingly ordinary. A small studio apartment. Against one wall stood an old bookshelf, and by the window sat a withered potted plant. But strangely, there was no sense that anyone had actually lived here. Like a well-constructed stage set, everything was in its place, but the 'warmth' that would have filled the space seemed to have evaporated.
"Not a single photograph... hardly any personal belongings either."
Doyun muttered as he looked around the room. It appeared to be a space where someone had lived alone for a very long time, yet there were no objects that revealed that 'someone's' personality. As if all traces had been deliberately erased.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. 'Echo'. The faint reverberations left behind where existence had vanished. Fragments of indelible memory that only his unique neural structure could detect. As time passed, dim sensations began to surface in his mind.
Bone-chilling fear. And... deep resignation. Like the final breath of someone who had given up on everything, fragments of desperate emotion drifted through the space. And very faintly, certain words echoed through his consciousness like distant calls.
'...promise... they... broke their... promise...'
It was someone's voice, tinged with resentment. Too faint to distinguish whether it was male or female, but the sense of betrayal within it was crystal clear.
["Doyun, time's almost up! A patrol drone is heading your way! You need to get out within thirty seconds!"]
Ju Idam's warning rang out urgently. Doyun quickly scanned the room one last time. That's when his gaze stopped at a corner under the bed. Something small and glinting. He quickly crouched down and picked it up. It was a spherical data chip smaller than a fingernail—an obsolete model rarely used these days.
He stuffed the chip into his pocket and was about to leave the room when sharp mechanical sounds came from outside the window, followed by red laser light rapidly sweeping across the interior. It was a patrol drone.
"Damn it!"
Doyun pressed himself against the wall and held his breath. The drone hovered near the window for a moment before seeming to move elsewhere, its sounds fading into the distance. His heart was pounding like crazy.
["Phew... that was close. Do you have multiple hearts or something?"] Ju Idam sighed with relief while scolding him.
Having escaped the apartment building, Doyun hid in the darkness, gasping for breath. In his hand was the obsolete data chip he'd just retrieved from that room.
"What could be on this thing?"
"Well, probably not winning lottery numbers," Ju Idam said sarcastically. "Let's get back to our hideout and analyze it. That room was strange. I checked, and unit 307 is officially registered as a 'neural chip mandatory wearing exemption zone.' And that registration is very recent."
A neural chip mandatory wearing exemption zone? In this era where everything is recorded and controlled, such places actually exist? Questions multiplied endlessly.
Back at their hideout, the two immediately began analyzing the data chip. Being an obsolete model, they had trouble finding a compatible reader, but Ju Idam eventually dug up a dusty old console from somewhere and successfully connected it.
A file list slowly appeared on the screen. Most were encrypted, but there was one accessible file. An audio file named 'Last'.
Doyun swallowed hard and pressed play. Through crackling static, a low, hoarse voice began to speak.
"Whoever is listening to this... please... reveal the truth. I am not being 'erased.' This is clearly... murder. They are trying to 'eliminate' me. Because I learned too much... about what they do in the 'Memory Graveyard'..."
The voice was steeped in extreme fear and desperation.
"Memory... Graveyard?" Doyun repeated. It was a term he'd never heard before.
The audio file continued. "They seek to dominate existence using oblivion as their weapon... But memories... do not disappear. As long as someone remembers... they will surely be revived. My name is... Roh Minsu. Former Director... of the MainNet Memory Ethics Committee..."
Roh Minsu. Director of the Memory Ethics Committee. An insider from MainNet.
The audio cut off there. As if someone had forcibly stopped the recording. Doyun and Ju Idam couldn't speak for a long while. What they'd just heard was too shocking. The possibility that 'erasure' might not be a simple system error or random phenomenon. The horrifying possibility that it could be someone's intentional 'cleanup' operation.
And there was the mysterious place Roh Minsu had mentioned—the 'Memory Graveyard.' What on earth was happening there?
Doyun clenched his fists. His eyes glinted coldly. "We have to find it. Where the 'Memory Graveyard' is."
This was no longer just about remembering the disappeared. It was the beginning of a dangerous game of truth—one where they would have to uncover the reality of a massive conspiracy and fight against invisible enemies.