Phoenix

20. Intrusion

The heavy silence in the security office was broken only by the distant, rhythmic thrum of the facility's life-support systems. Outside, the Arctic gale shrieked against the reinforced glass of the dome, but inside, a different kind of storm was brewing.

Jin and Arya stood frozen, the weight of Dr. Donnen's revelation pressing down on them like the depths of the ocean.

​An eleventh Uno.

​The very idea defied the established history of the Singular Code. It was like discovering a hidden apostle or an unrecorded planet in a well-mapped solar system. Arya's mind raced through the archives she had memorized-ten names, ten lives, ten creators. There was no room for an eleventh.

​"I am sorry, young man," Dr. Donnen said, his voice brittle and weary as he looked at Jin's hardening expression. "I can't tell you much about the eleventh Uno. I don't know anything at all about it actually to tell!"

​Jin's eyes narrowed, his tactical mind immediately searching for inconsistencies. He didn't like mysteries he couldn't solve with logic or force.

"If you don't know anything," Jin countered, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous register, "then how come you know that there is an eleventh Uno?"

​Donnen leaned back, the shadows of the room playing across the deep lines of his face. He looked every bit the aged scholar, haunted by a ghost he couldn't exorcise. "Yes, Mr. Kim. We have another one. I have no doubt about that. Although I couldn't make others believe my theory."

​"If nobody believed it, why do you?" Jin stepped closer, his presence commanding the small space.

​"Because I got proof of that," Donnen whispered, his eyes unfocused, as if staring into a digital past.

​"Didn't you try showing that proof to everyone else?" Arya asked, her voice filled with a mixture of professional curiosity and personal dread.

​Donnen let out a short, hollow laugh that lacked any mirth. "I couldn't make it clear, Mr. Kim. There was evidence when I saw it. But when I went to show it to the rest, the evidence disappeared. It was like chasing a phantom that only appeared when I was alone."

​Jin's patience was fraying. They were in a high-security facility with an unconscious chief in the bathroom and a global crisis unfolding outside. He didn't have time for academic ghost stories.

"Speak clearly, Doctor. What is the proof? How did it disappear?"

​Donnen held up a hand, a gesture for patience. "It will be difficult for you to understand the technicalities, so for your understanding, let me make it easy. Four years ago, I found evidence of the presence of an external user in our cyberspace. That user was using Uno-code."

​The air seemed to leave the room. Uno-code was not a public language. It was a secret language, a digital dialect known only to a closed circle of ten people who had sworn an oath of silence. An external user utilizing the code was a breach of cosmic proportions.

​"No one else noticed?" Arya pressed, her brow furrowed.

​"No," Donnen said, shaking his head slowly. "I wouldn't either. The thing is when I went to check the security of our internet connection at the end of our meeting, I accidentally discovered it. There was one more entry outside of the eight of us in the digital log. A ninth ghost in an eight-man room."

​"You didn't show that to everyone else?" Jin asked.

​"I went to show them, but that user deleted all the records even before I could. By the time the others looked at the logs, the trail was as clean as freshly fallen snow. They looked at me as if I were senile, imagining ghosts in the circuitry."