Chapter 235

“Yeah. Most of the men locked up on the island were homeless.”

“Why were homeless people there...?”

“They cherry-picked the useful ones from those ordered to relocate to other states, then locked them up on the island to turn them into Etas. Drifters no one pays attention to—homeless people are convenient in every way. Hah. I was the one managing them.”

Ted licked his lower lip with relish and snickered. Lewis watched the thick, sticky excitement saturating his voice—then suddenly grinned and asked:

“Sounds like you had your fun on the island?”

“I did. Even those horrific rut cycles, if you spend them there...”

A sudden crack ran across Ted’s broadly smiling face. He ducked his head, mumbling as if ashamed.

“I went too far. I did things against the common good. If I could go back, I wouldn’t recklessly ruin Hybris property.”

“It’s fine. You’ve atoned enough.”

Dylan offered the comfort in a dry voice without a trace of feeling. Buoyed, Ted quickly recovered his mood and asked:

“Then who’s the homeless guy who became an omega?”

“Rowoon Kim. From the Baggers City Homeless Support Center.”

“That name means nothing to me. Give me his inmate number.”

“Hmm. 3543. Yes, that was it.”

“3543? Forty-three... Ah! I remember! The face covered in bruises!”

Listening closely, Lewis turned his head and rested his cheek against the window. Some part of him had expected to hear Yoon Siron’s name, and his interest dipped. But then he remembered: when Siron infiltrated the Homeless Support Center as a homeless man, he hadn’t used his real name.

Rowoon Kim—the alias Lewis and Anna had carefully crafted with Siron.

At that moment Dylan adjusted the rearview mirror, angling it so that Lewis’s face was reflected. Glancing at him, he said:

“Bruised? I don’t know about that, but he was a very handsome East Asian.”

“A very handsome East Asian? ...Was he?”

“Yeah. There’s CCTV of him nearly being raped by a social worker, and he looked quite good-looking in it.”

Dylan stared at Lewis for a dangerously long time before turning his attention back to the road, gauging whether Lewis was still stuck in the moment he killed Joseph Miller. But to his mild surprise, the Lewis McCarthy who had dug into the homeless disappearances and come close to becoming a threat to Hybris wasn’t here now.

Lewis wondered what face Dylan was seeing when he looked at him.

Before long the car left the riverside road and entered the Manuels District. It was Baggers City’s upscale commercial zone, where a single square yard of land went for hundreds of thousands of dollars and low-rise three- and four-story buildings were lined with luxury shops and restaurants you couldn’t enter without a reservation, all beyond rows of palm trees. Seen from a moving car, the night scenery blurred into sameness, like an endless still life sliding backward.

The car slowed in front of a building that didn’t match the city’s aesthetic—something like a warehouse-style store. Judging by the windows it was a low-rise three-story structure, but the ceiling height on each floor was generous, giving it an airy feel. A curious sign on the outer wall read: “Baggers City Integrated Mental Health Center.”

Dylan drove down into the building’s underground entrance. The car turned toward the loading dock on B3. Dylan pulled up before the far-left of three freight-only elevators—the only one with its light off.

He got out and pressed the up button on the call panel. Nothing changed on the device, but when he leaned toward it, the tightly shut elevator doors opened.

Dylan got back in and drove the car into the massive freight car.

“The elevator buttons only go down to B3. We’re going lower, right?”

When Ted asked, Dylan answered,

“Yes.”

The display still read “B3,” but the elevator kept descending. A monotonous mechanical hum filled the cab, and a faint vibration rose from the floor. The deeper they went, the more it felt like the air was thinning.

Lewis quietly curled his hand, rubbing sweat-slick index finger and thumb together. The elevator was big enough to take a large van, yet his breath grew tight, as if the walls were closing in from every direction.

“Fuck, what is this place?”

Ted flapped his T-shirt as if it were hot, griping in a voice frayed by impatience. Lewis focused on the sensation of finger to thumb. The feeling of being crushed to death in an extremely confined space. He knew how to run from that familiar terror: if he fixated on rubbing his fingertips together until his prints wore off—until blood and ichor soaked them—then the urge to suck even a torturing alpha’s toe to escape hell would recede, little by little.

Panic crept in, like being buried in a coffin underground. He rubbed finger and thumb so hard it seemed he might snap them, dragging in thin breaths.

“Lewis!”

A flash burst across his vision as if he’d been slapped.

“Pheromones! Hah—fuck, that hurts!”

As if his muddied mind had been vacuumed clean, his head went abruptly clear. The elevator had already stopped.

Ted stared at Lewis, frightened. Lewis realized he’d briefly lost his reason and sunk deep into fear. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, spreading both hands to show he had no will to fight.

“Damn. Sorry about that.”

“Do that one more time and you’re dead, asshole!”

Tears of anger glinted in Ted’s eyes. Lewis gave him a friendly smile and tapped his chest lightly with a fist.

“Cut me some slack. A face like mine needs a few flaws. Too perfect gets boring.”

Dylan shot Lewis a cold look at the swagger, snorted, and cranked the window all the way down.

“Careful. Your pheromones make everyone uncomfortable—keep them in check.”

Damp underground air poured in through the open window and diluted Lewis’s pheromones. The trainers who’d handled him used to say he gave off pheromones hostile and aggressive to most alphas. More than mere discomfort—an oppressive pheromonal force that made people feel fear. Most avoided Lewis because of it.

But Baekgyeong... hadn’t felt fear at my pheromones.

While he was thinking about pheromones, the car rolled out of the open elevator and moved forward. Like a subway station, two lanes were flanked by waiting areas. After they’d gone about twenty meters, another security gate appeared—biometric access only. Once he’d input his biometrics and gotten back behind the wheel, Ted asked Dylan:

“What kind of facility is this that needs security this tight?”

Dylan glanced back with a sly smile.

“This is where the greatest turn in human history will take place.”

“Yeah? Looking forward to it.”

When Ted rubbed his palms together in anticipation, Dylan knit his brows, almost regretful.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but you’re waiting here.”

“What?”

“You don’t have the clearance to pass this door yet. But wait. You’ll witness everything soon enough.”

A thin smile flickered across Dylan’s lips.

“So stay put for now.”

At the order, Ted climbed out of the car, stung by the sense of being rejected in his very existence. Lewis, mood sinking, started to get out with him—but Dylan said:

“You stay.”

Ted gaped, then snapped in irritation:

“He gets to stay?”

Lewis cut him a sideways glance with a vacant look, then shrugged. The moment Lewis slammed the door, the blast door opened to reveal a semicircular tunnel about ten meters in diameter. The car entered without hesitation. Through the slowly closing door, Lewis looked back at Ted—left behind and crushed like an abandoned child.

“Don’t play favorites. He’s going to cry.”

“But you’re special.”

“I’ve always known that, but coming from someone stingy with praise, it actually goes to my head.”

The headlights slid coldly over the tunnel’s rounded walls, like in a military air-raid shelter. Metal reinforcement ribs ran at even intervals along the reinforced-concrete walls, and faint marks showed where warning placards had once been stuck and peeled away.

There was a notable temperature difference between the entrance and the passage beyond; a hard wind was being sucked inward at the mouth. The flow must always pull the other way—the pheromones of alphas who’d passed through were left only as hazy impressions.

That a subterranean space of this scale lay beneath the very center of Baggers City strained belief. Lewis fought to steady his breathing, feeling as if he were walking into the viscera of some colossal monster no human strength could ever oppose.