Chapter 258

“You clean it up. I’m not touching it.”

Siron grumbled, glaring at Baekgyeong’s profile. Baekgyeong went through the belongings one by one.

“These look pretty recent.”

The box he’d pulled from under the bed held hotel amenities from a luxury chain, an unused pregnancy test, unopened pill bottles, credit card statements, an old passport, and other odds and ends. The billing address on the credit card was the Hellsota State Department of Corrections. Judging by the dates on the statements, the eldest daughter had apparently lived with her parents up until at least three years ago.

“Antidepressants.”

Siron had searched the name on the bottle and reported the drug type. After a sidelong look at Siron’s phone screen, Baekgyeong pulled the flat folders from the bottom of the box and began skimming the papers.

“She had reasons to be depressed.”

On top was a thin file: a divorce decree. As he scanned quickly, one line caught his eye—custody of two minor children awarded to the mother. From Malcolm’s comment that his eldest daughter had been raising three kids alone, it seemed she’d lived with her parents after the divorce and then gotten pregnant again. When that worsened things with her father, she must have moved out with the children.

Malcolm had been a cop before he became a corrections officer. He’d risen fast and made rank at a relatively young age, and as a devout Christian he would surely have raised his children conservatively.

“Late thirties isn’t young. She still has to get parental permission to have a baby?”

Hearing Baekgyeong’s speculation, Siron groused and picked up another folder. There was no rhyme or reason to the contents—an employment contract, a rental car agreement, vet receipts for a pet. The last folder was far heavier than everything else combined; it was crammed with pamphlets of every kind: tourist brochures, a yoga studio schedule, current listings from a used-car dealer, bank product leaflets, old wooden-house listings, flyers for therapy groups, and handouts from fringe religious outfits.

“Maybe she’s more ambitious than she looks.”

“What is?”

“This.”

Siron grabbed a blue pamphlet and waved it in front of Baekgyeong’s eyes—a flyer introducing Baggers City’s group counseling circle, Those Who Overcame.

“I keep seeing these around lately. Must’ve been hustling hard, handing them out everywhere.”

Flipping open the pamphlet Siron handed him, Baekgyeong asked:

“That guy Jackson—you said he showed up at the charity event, right?”

“Yeah. He was in the VIP section.”

“VIP?”

“Looked like he was at the same table as the governor.”

“Same table as the governor? He’s just a therapist.”

As if testing out a thought he wasn’t sure about, Baekgyeong muttered in a low, uncertain voice:

“Hybris, maybe?”

“I don’t know. When I met him in person, he didn’t seem dangerous.”

“You can’t tell from the surface.”

“True... but did Malcolm’s daughter attend this group too?”

Baekgyeong shrugged, as if to say there was no way to know.

It wasn’t just grief-and-mourning circles; she had collected pamphlets for the clinic’s regular counseling and short-term intensives too. It looked like she meant to attend every form of therapy on offer anywhere in Hellsota State.

Baekgyeong packed the items and files back into the box and slid it under the bed again. He wasn’t looking for one person’s keepsakes or a family’s memories. He wanted anything suspicious that might hint at a link to the governor or to Joseph Elliott—notes about inmates, videos, anything that could be used as leverage on Malcolm. They had already finished the sweep of the ground floor, including the basement and garage, and come up empty.

“Let’s hit the second floor.”

It was too soon to give up. Malcolm still showed no sign of coming back, and there were two rooms upstairs—his study, and the room where Baekgyeong and Siron had slept the night before. They tore through the study, even paging through the Knox family albums they dragged from the back of the shelves, but nothing made their eyes light up. After putting everything that didn’t need examining back in its place, Baekgyeong slapped dust from his hands and said:

“There’s nothing here worth finding. Let’s go down.”

Just then, Bambi’s barking echoed from below. Siron lifted the curtain by the window and peeked out. The warden’s car was pulling into the garage.

“Gezar agreed to meet. I’ve arranged things so you can visit for thirty minutes.”

The warden arrived at the residence just as the sun was hooking itself on the horizon and the world was turning orange. He dabbed at his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief, the heavy smell of sweat rolling off him.

“Thirty minutes? That’s a bit short.”

Worried, Siron spoke carefully, watching Malcolm’s face. Thirty minutes felt far too tight to introduce themselves to Gezar, explain the situation, ask questions, and maybe, after dogged persuasion, draw answers out of him.

“No way to extend it?”

“Impossible. Not even by a minute.”

The security system was inspected in the early hours of the third Monday every month. The living areas, the two hundred double cells, and the high-risk solitary units 1 through 300 were checked section by section, fifty at a time, in thirty-minute blocks—and during those windows they would set certain surveillance feeds to loop copied footage.

Ten minutes to move Gezar Bazelli to the visitation room, ten to return him to solitary. The hard-won time left over was thirty minutes.

“Understood. Whose help are we getting?”

Malcolm answered Siron’s question.

“I couldn’t do it alone, of course.”

Those taking part were administrative staff and officers who had long been dirty. They’d pocketed cash in exchange for favors—quiet deals with inmates for creature comforts, deleting CCTV for certain blocks, smuggling in cigarettes, alcohol, even drugs.

Malcolm had been gathering circumstances and evidence to request an internal investigation by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but in the end, for today’s plan, he had to use their hands.

“One more thing: the visit is eight hours from now—Monday, 3 a.m. Miss that window and it won’t happen.”

Malcolm dropped into his designated one-seater recliner. After limping around and pushing himself too hard, it seemed his body finally settled; he let out a small groan of relief.

“They say a man with death approaching has no reason to refuse a meeting with anyone.”

Pressing his tired eyes with both hands, Malcolm went on:

“Prison work looks different from the inside than from outside. No matter how heinous the crime, there’s no sense of satisfaction when the sentence is carried out. The moment a life is erased is without exception sad and harrowing.”

Sensing the dog scratching at his knee, the warden took his hands from his eyes. He scooped Bambi up and cradled him.

“I just want to retire already. I don’t want to see any more of this.”

Muttering with a gloomy face, Malcolm said he’d grab a short rest, tossed a melatonin gummy into his mouth, and fell asleep in under a minute.

“I didn’t think we’d actually get to meet Gezar.”

Watching Malcolm snore, Siron whispered, voice pared down to a murmur.

“It’s weird going into the prison without Isaac.”

He still couldn’t believe he was inside the walls of Somora Prison as a different kind of human—an ordinary curry delivery guy turned into something else. And the man who had made him this way wasn’t here. If he hadn’t joined the man’s fake clinical trial, he would still be delivering curry and going to auditions. Compared to being hunted by Hybris, those days of dejection after failed auditions felt like an idyllic springtime.

“Forget him. It really is just the two of us now.”

Siron, struck by a sudden realization, stared at Baekgyeong in confusion.

Isaac was both the dump truck that had plowed into his life and shattered it, and the creator who remade him. He had defined Siron’s existence for him, led his future for him, because Siron still couldn’t accept himself.

Even if he had used him, Isaac was like an evil parent to Siron. But now, they couldn’t even confirm whether he was alive or dead.

“Yeah... Right. It’s just us.”

“Are you scared?”

Without even looking at him, Siron answered:

“What do you think? It’s just the two of us. Of course I’m scared.”

“I’ll protect you.”

Siron leaned back into the sofa and narrowed his eyes, as if he’d just heard something ridiculous.

“You? How?”

“At the very least, if I put my money and my life on the line, I can buy you a chance to get away from them.”

Siron’s eyes flew open. He stared at Baekgyeong, not trusting his ears. The more he turned Baekgyeong’s words over, the more his insides boiled with offense. Maybe it was being treated like some coward who’d abandon Comrade Yoon Siron and run. Maybe it was the idea of leaving him behind alone—he didn’t even want to imagine it. Either way, it made him furious.

Clueless, Baekgyeong scratched the back of his head, thick brows furrowing as if even he disliked what he’d just said.

“I don’t want to look like some lovesick sap. It’s not sexy.”

Siron let out a disbelieving breath, baring his teeth in a crooked slit of a mouth.

“Bullshit. Spare me the devotion act.”

“What?”

“Don’t you dare risk your life for me. I won’t be grateful. Use your damn head and find a way through.”

Breathing hard to choke down his anger, Siron crushed the sofa cushion in his hands. If it were Baekgyeong’s head instead of the cushion, he’d have squeezed hard enough to crack it—anything to crush that weak mindset and rebuild it. But this was Baekgyeong, king of grudges. Siron kept himself cool, laid it out, and called out the rot with plain words.

“Let’s be honest: you and me put our heads together—how great a plan are we going to come up with? Nothing but half-baked ones. So what? We just have to dodge the worst outcome together. That’s it!”

The more he spoke, the more the bottled anger surged; his voice rose. He snatched up the cushion and slammed it down on Baekgyeong’s head with all his strength.

“You fucking asshole. Stick to me like a tick. Say you’ll die in front of me one more time, and I’ll be the one to kill you.”

He delivered the threat, then shot to his feet and headed for the kitchen. Hands shaking as if his insides were burning, he gulped a glass of water, then stomped up the stairs to the second floor, pounding the steps hard enough to crack the floor.

“What, are you two fighting?”

Startled by the heavy footsteps rattling the house, Malcolm woke and asked in a drowsy voice. But Baekgyeong barely heard him. Still bent from the blow, he stared blankly at the floor, then slowly turned his head toward where Siron had vanished.

“So getting hit is my thing, huh.”

It was strange. From the instant Siron had smacked him and walked off, something hot had surged up in his chest, and his heart was thundering like it was about to burst.