ʙᴜʟʟᴇᴛᴘʀᴏᴏғ│ᴛᴋ [complete]

.4-3.

Surprisingly, getting Namjoon to agree to rehabilitate the droid did not take much convincing at all. Jungkook figured the prospect of working on something a little challenging must have been a welcome change to the otherwise dull desk job Biobotics had pushed him into. "They won't fire me because of the severance payout, so they're waiting for me to become bored and quit," the man had explained.

Jungkook had found that quite unfair, to be honest. Namjoon had talent. And whatever he did to fall into disfavour surely could not justify the treatment he was getting. He couldn't even fathom the pain of seeing your life's work being terminated or worse, refurbished. "You should just leave and start your own company," was his take on it.

Professor Kim gave him a sad smile. "One day, you'll find out what I've done."

"It won't change anything. I have too much respect for you. If it weren't for your humanoids, South Korea wouldn't be in the lead in terms of AI research and development."

"True. But that doesn't alter the fact that I failed many people. And in a way, I also failed you."

Namjoon obviously loved self-deprecation, and Jungkook vowed to get his hands on those damn top secret files one day. In the meantime, he'd assist the professor in establishing a proper diagnosis of what had gone wrong with this particular unit.

They ran tests for almost a week, until Namjoon finally looked up from his computer screen, eyes wide and jaw, slack. "Unbelievable."

Jungkook leaned over to try a make sense of the lines of code covering the screen. "What is?" he asked.

"Your droid was shut off. Remotely."

"I didn't even know that was possible."

"It's a secret backup feature that the company insisted I set up in case the units malfunctioned and we'd need to put them to sleep. Except—"

"Yes?"

"Except I never used it. Which can only mean—Oh my goodness—"

The panic-stricken professor was in did not appease the young apprentice who was unable to grasp all the ins and outs of this surprising discovery. "Are you suggesting you were hacked or something?"

"Precisely." Turning toward Jungkook, Namjoon tried to collect himself. "I have good and bad news for you."

Jungkook shrugged. "I'm afraid it doesn't matter at this point which comes first."

"Well, the good news is this: since I know how the unit was shut down, I can switch him back on no problem."

"Great. Let's do that." Jungkook feared the bad news would have him second-guess his desire to bring Taehyung back to life.

"Wait. You have to realize that if your humanoid was indeed hijacked — I'll need to run further tests to confirm — then there's no guarantee it won't happen again."

Jungkook began biting his lips, a habit he had developed over the years when faced with problems that required a lot of cogitation.

Namjoon felt compelled to nuance his words. "I'm not saying hacking a droid is easy. They'd need access to the Biobotics servers for one. That's how our units tapped into all data available online."

"But since Biobotics shut down the droid programme—"

Namjoon nodded. "That's right. All designated ports have been closed."

Jungkook let out a sigh of relief. "Then I don't see a problem. Taehyung simply won't sound like Wikipedia any longer, and I don't mind that."

"I have to ask again, just to make sure. Are you ready to face the consequences of waking him up?" Namjoon insisted.

There was no hesitation in Jungkook's voice when he replied, "positive".

—

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