Day 5.

  The air on the 108th floor had transformed into a tangible predator. As the oxygen concentration plummeted below fifteen percent, collective hallucinations began to

  rise like a toxic mist.

  Yuna shrieked, clawing at the wall, convinced her own shadow was trying to throttle her. Director Jo flailed his arms in the empty air, his fingers twitching as they

  grasped at a non-existent mountain of cash.

  Then, a piercing, digital shriek erupted from Team Leader Park’s tablet, stabbing through the thin atmosphere.

  “I’m in! The backdoor... it’s open!”

  Park hammered the Enter key, his eyes gleaming with a feverish, manic triumph.

  But the victory lasted only a heartbeat. Instead of Chairman Kang’s visage, a colossal, blood-red skull ignited on the wall display. A countdown began to

  tick—a digital reaper. Professor Park’s warning had been a prophecy; they had stepped straight into the heart of a Honeypot.

  Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss—

  The sound was a violent hiss. The air conditioning system had reversed its flow, turning into a vacuum pump that began to siphon the remaining atmosphere from

  the room. The cabin pressure dropped with brutal speed.

  Min-ho felt an agonizing pressure behind his eyes and ears, as if his skull were about to implode from within. Team Leader Park collapsed, thrashing on the marble, foam bubbling at his lips—the unmistakable, wretched onset of acute altitude sickness.

  “Min-ho... my... my code... it was a lure!”

  Park gasped, his voice a broken rattle.

  Min-ho crawled toward him, his vision blooming with a painful, bruised red. His lungs felt like shriveled, empty balloons, rasping against his ribs. Instead of seizing

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  the tablet, Min-ho gripped Park’s trembling hand, his voice a forced rasp.

  “Snap out of it! Park! Use your skills—don't look at the interface, look at the system logs! Read the raw data behind the hint!”

  Min-ho’s mind flashed back to the cryptic words etched into the obsidian wall, the letters burning in his memory:

  [The two greatest solitudes shall join hands and guard the end of the six digits.]

  The Twin Prime Theorem flashed through Min-ho’s mind like a bolt of lightning. In the infinite desert of numbers, only Twin Primes faced each other across a frozen gap of exactly two. It was the only distance by which two lonely souls could confirm each other’s existence without collapsing into one.

  "Park, calculate!"

  Min-ho roared over the hiss of the vacuum.

  "We start from 999,999 and count down. I’ll provide the candidates—you run them through the Sieve of Eratosthenes! Filter every divisor!"

  At the threshold of death, the rivals became a single, desperate processor. When Min-ho screamed,

  “999,959!”

  Park’s bloodied fingers hammered the keys to dismantle the number.

  “999,959… It’s clean! No divisors! It’s a prime!”

  Park wheezed, his lungs rattling.

  “Now add two! Check 999,961!”

  The split second the system analyzed the second number felt like an eternity. Finally, the screen flickered, and neon green letters burned into their retinas:

  [PRIME CONFIRMED]

  “They’re twins...”

  Park’s voice was a ghost of a whisper. “999,959 and 999,961... the largest twin primes in the six-digit realm.”

  Blood seeped from Min-ho’s nose and ears as the pressure difference clawed at his brain, but his mind had never been clearer. He understood now.

  Chairman Kang hadn't designed this room for a mindless massacre; he had built it to demand a proof—a proof of cooperation born from extreme solitude, achievable only by two minds separated by the 'Gap of 2.'

  Min-ho hauled Park toward the dual-security keypad. Their trembling hands met at the interface. Together, they pressed:

  9-9-9-9-5-9

  In that instant, the violent roar of the vacuum ceased. Cool, crystalline oxygen surged into the chamber like a silent waterfall. Yuna and Director Jo, who had been seconds from the end, clawed at the floor, gulping down the life-giving air in desperate, ragged sobs.

  But the door didn't open. Instead, a hidden wall panel slid back with a soft, hydraulic hiss. Inside lay a hard drive—the "Black Box" containing Chairman Kang’s double-entry ledgers and real-time bribery logs. Beside it, a recorded message in Kang’s chilling, porcelain voice began to play.

  “Congratulations. To the twins who survived my human prime factorization.”

  Min-ho and Park slumped against the wall, staring at each other’s battered, unrecognizable faces. They were broken, bleeding, and exhausted—but in their hands, they now held the guillotine blade that would end Chairman Kang’s empire.

  tangible predator."

  Honeypot" trap even more devastating. Using the air conditioning system as a vacuum pump was intended to shift the threat from a psychological one to a brutal, physical reality.