Chapter 262

They retraced their steps. From the isolation room to the underground cellblock, then up to ground level and out of the building. As the gusting wind, cold and grim, slid over his sweat-damp body, Siron looked up at the sky. Under the moonlight, clouds where light and shadow had gone pale and muddled were scattering fast on the hard wind.

They hadn’t even stayed an hour inside the detention wing, yet the wind brushing his whole body felt sweet, like a lifer tasting nature again after ages. Looking back at the dingy-colored building they had just slipped out of, Siron thought of the two hundred-odd inmates who would spend the rest of their lives shut in that concrete prison. Seeing the space where their years would be consumed, an inexpressible emptiness surged in him—and alongside it, a faint relief at his own comparatively better lot.

“Yoon Siron. What are you doing?”

He must have been standing there blankly, watching the moon-soaked clouds scud by without realizing it. With no seconds to spare, Baekgyeong grabbed Siron’s wrist and yanked.

Siron and Baekgyeong, Isaac and Warden Malcolm climbed into a patrol car and drove out of the high-risk inmate sector. Tension locked their faces; all kept silent.

Wrapped in a troubled mood, Siron cautiously felt out the atmosphere around Baekgyeong and Isaac. The ad-hoc alliance they’d forged until they could meet Gezar Bazelli and learn the conditions for Imprint was about to end. Yet neither man seemed to be scheming strategy to claim Yoon Siron. If anything, their minds were elsewhere.

What? Did they fail to hear the method for Imprint?

No matter how rough things got, the future Siron had envisioned for himself until now had been dazzlingly clear, like a landscape filled with sunlight. But now, it felt as if soot were slowly settling across that sharp blueprint.

Malcolm broke the silence.

“We’ve helped you get your interview with Gezar. Now do me one small favor.”

Baekgyeong, sitting idle in the passenger seat, looked over at Malcolm at the wheel. Driving one-handed, Malcolm rummaged in his coat with the other and took out a zip bag.

“Take it.”

Inside the bag Baekgyeong accepted was a USB stick.

“Spencer’s reporting files.”

“Why do you have this?”

All day breathing dust while tearing apart Malcolm’s house, Baekgyeong felt a spike of irritation. Worse, Malcolm had ignored, with stubborn thoroughness, the barrage of questions about Tessa Spencer’s interview and autobiography during the drive from the Elm Hotel to the prison.

Clenching his teeth, Baekgyeong glared at Malcolm with the zip bag gripped tight. If he no longer needed the warden’s cooperation, he would’ve raised hell on instinct—but not yet.

“Well? Talk.”

“Spencer passed a copy of her notes to me as a contingency. She was bracing for the worst that might befall her. She needed insurance.”

“And why hand it to me now?”

“I don’t know the password.”

All eyes went to Malcolm. With a sober look, he continued.

“Spencer was supposed to email me the password to the drive. She can’t do that anymore.”

“The Langford Bridge collapsed.”

At Siron’s words, Malcolm nodded.

“Right.”

“Do you really think the bridge just fell by chance?”

To Siron’s question, Malcolm answered in a weighted voice.

“Would they bring down a whole bridge just to silence one reporter? I thought long and hard, but seeing as I’m still alive, I’m inclined to think it was coincidence. In any case, I couldn’t even attempt to crack the USB. Even if I saw what’s in there, I don’t think I could shoulder it. That’s why I’m giving it to you.”

Staring down at the USB in the zip bag, Baekgyeong asked, suspicious.

“Say I crack it. Then what? You’re handing it over because you want something.”

“I don’t know... Perhaps it could help, even in a small way, to set things right. For example, tipping off the press—”

“Who’s going to risk their life to write that? And what could one article possibly do?”

“Small but meaningful change.”

Malcolm turned to Baekgyeong with steady eyes. Baekgyeong snorted.

“Sounds like something for your diary.”

He needled him, but Malcolm didn’t mind.

“Gezar wanted the world to know about alphas. Reporter Spencer wanted to expose Hybris. If it’s a record the two of them left, wouldn’t that spark meaningful change?”

His voice grew deep and earnest.

“Do you think you can run from Hybris forever? You don’t want every incident they caused to rot as secrets in victims’ diaries—unknown to the world—do you?”

Baekgyeong stared at the warden scolding him for a long time, then leaned against the window frame and fixed on the bright moon showing through the fast-slipping clouds. At length, he spoke.

“I’m no miracle worker, but I’ll try to find someone who can crack it. Don’t get your hopes up.”

He unbuttoned his shirt, slid the USB into the slim sling bag lying against his bare skin, and buttoned up again.

By then the patrol car was approaching the security gate separating the cellblocks from the administration and residential zones. From the seat directly behind the warden, Isaac leaned forward toward the front.

“Don’t go through the gate. Turn left now.”

“You’ve got the road wrong. We need to go straight.”

“Do as I say. Head toward the west watchtower.”

Malcolm snapped, exasperated.

“Nonsense! We have to clear the checkpoint by four!”

“So you plan to pass the internal gate at four and the outer checkpoint five minutes later?”

Startled by Isaac’s dead-on read, Malcolm found himself easing off the accelerator.

“Yes. That was the plan. Why?”

“Scrap it. They’re waiting outside the prison.”

“What?”

“What?”

“Seriously?”

The three who were listening all blurted out at once.

“Goddammit, I’m ruined! My pension! The pension I’d get in three months—it’s about to go up in smoke!”

Malcolm crushed the steering wheel in his grip, grinding his teeth.

“Calm down. Nothing’s happened yet.”

“How am I supposed to calm down? Forget the pension—at this rate I’ll rot in a cell for life!”

To Isaac’s even counsel, Malcolm shouted back in a near-fit.

As if drenched with a bucket of cold water, Malcolm suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. If Hybris managed to radio in an alert about an outsider breach at the prison, it would be only a matter of time before it came out that he had helped these people infiltrate.

He turned the wheel toward the west watchtower and forced himself under control. So far, their plan had gone off without a hitch. His fears proved baseless: the radio, left on receive, gave not a peep of static. As if the whole world had chosen to close its eyes and pretend not to see them.

In the hush, a held breath of relief flowed. But everyone knew it was only a brief reprieve.

“We’re nearing the west watchtower. How exactly do you plan to get out?”

Anxiety thick in his voice, Malcolm asked in a rush. Isaac swept the scene outside with a quick glance. Somora Prison, top-security classification, held not just inmate blocks and living areas like vocational training, but an array of decoy facilities inside—warehouses and buildings designed to confuse intruders’ paths and hide core structures from external assault.

“Drive three hundred meters past the tower and stop. In front of the scrap-materials warehouse.”

“Hell—you don’t miss a thing. How do you even know that place?”

“There’s a passage connected to the outside.”

“What?”

It was news to him, but there was no time for questions. The west tower loomed closer; rooflines of the disguised buildings surfaced out of the dark. Just then, the tower’s searchlight swept fast across the road ahead and slid past them. With the tension peaking to the point it was hard even to breathe, Malcolm nosed the car into the dead zone between the decoy buildings and the tower and stopped.

The doors flew open and the three men leapt out and slammed them shut.

“Thanks, Warden! I’ll come visit Bambi!”

The pretty young man tossed a cheerful farewell and sprinted after Isaac and Baekgyeong toward the scrap-materials warehouse. The door—which should have been locked—swung wide at a push and swallowed them.

For a moment Malcolm felt as if his mind had been sucked through that doorway too. He came to, stomped the accelerator. They were already five minutes past the time they were supposed to clear the checkpoint. From here on, it was Malcolm’s problem alone. He could not afford another delay.

“My pension. I am not losing it.”

With a grim face fixed straight ahead, he gripped the wheel with sweat-slick hands and gunned it back toward the checkpoint.