"WAKE UP."
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Ha Joon's name.", "Loud.", "Urgent.", "The kind of voice that doesn't wait for the body to catch up to the sound.",
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING.", "WAKE UP.",
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A vibration.", "Powerful.", "Moving through the ground beneath him.", "Like waves finding a hull.", "Like something large deciding to announce itself.",
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Ha Joon's eyes opened.
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Light first.", "Bending.", "Sparking at the edges of his vision.", "Then settling.", "Then clarity arriving all at once.",
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Blue light.", "Powerful.", "A shadow consuming most of it.", "Stretching toward him.", "Taking shape as his eyes finished waking.",
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Eun Byol.
Her face above him.", "Fear and something else on it.", "Worry wearing the shape of urgency.", "Sweat on her skin catching the blue light.", "Glowing faintly against the pearl of it.",
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"What is it.", he said.",
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"Everything.", she said.",
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The forest.", "Green and brown.", "Deep and layered.", "Giving way.",
To a white tent.", "Small rocks arranged near it.", "Black burnt wood.", "Cold smoke still finding its way upward in thin threads.",
The mud trail leading outward.", "Following itself.", "All the way to the forgotten military base.", "Beyond the old broken elevator.", "Its wood rotted.", "Its cables uncertain.",
Down a long narrow corridor.", "Gray door at the end of it.", "Darkness taking everything beyond the threshold.",
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Chi-Long.", "Barely visible in that dark.", "Holding a phone.", "Her face giving nothing away.", "Her voice giving one word.",
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"Yes."
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Then moving.", "Back through the corridor.", "Away from the green.", "Away from the forest.", "Away from all of it.",
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Tower buildings.", "Gray and black.", "Rising above a city that hadn't slept.",
The Red Phoenix headquarters.", "Glass and steel.", "The crimson bird across its face.",
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Inside.", "An office.", "A phone ringing.",
A hand finding it immediately.", "Glasses pushed down onto the desk.", "Red hair pushed back from a face that had been in the middle of something else entirely.",
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Gun-woo.", "His eyes beginning to widen.",
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Explosions.", "Somewhere.", "The sound of them shaking trees.", "Birds scattering from the canopy in every direction.", "The forest reacting to something it had no framework for.",
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A creature.", "Black.", "The size of something that shouldn't exist at ground level.", "Built like an ant but wrong in every proportion.", "Mammoth.", "Its pincers like horns.", "Its shape assembled by something that understood the concept of an ant and then ignored the limits.",
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Around it.", "Soldiers.", "Green armor.", "Close to something knightly in its construction.", "But parts of it moving differently.", "An alien quality to the fabric between the plates.", "Some carrying shields.", "Swords.", "Others with guns firing in coordinated bursts at the monstrosity.",
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The creature's arm.", "Opening.", "Not breaking.", "Opening.", "Splitting apart like a flower deciding to bloom.", "What was inside it catching the light.", "Black.", "Blade-like.", "The edges of it like teeth arranged in the shape of a mouth.",
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Gun-woo.", "Looking at all of it.", "His face going still.", "That particular stillness that wasn't calm.", "That was something being processed too fast for the face to keep up with.",
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He placed the phone down.", "Slowly.", "The table solid under his hand.",
His finger found a button.", "Pressed it.",
A beep.", "His secretary's line opening.",
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"Call everyone.", he said.", "Right now.",