Chapter 280

“Isaac? ...So Gezar was saying that if I ever meet Isaac, I should pull the trigger on myself? He’s a disaster of a man, sure—but that warning doesn’t fit the situation at all.”

He couldn’t make sense of Gezar’s cryptic words. After scrolling through dozens of search result pages without finding an answer, Baekgyeong decided to set the mystery aside for now and focus on the clues right in front of him. He narrowed his current options down to three.

First: capture a Hybris operative and torture him until he revealed everything he knew.

But while wandering across Kamti Island to find a blood donor for Isaac, the only alpha he had encountered was the brown-haired man now lying unconscious in the next room. The others had vanished like cockroaches scattering from the light.

Second: kidnap the governor, torture him for information, and threaten him into helping retrieve Yoon Siron.

But without preparation or a plan, such a kidnapping would be doomed from the start. Realizing how idiotic the idea was, Baekgyeong erased it from his notes.

Third: decrypt the journalist Spencer’s investigation records—the ones Warden Malcolm Knox had handed him—and secure usable data.

Strictly speaking, there was little Baekgyeong could do himself. At best, he could send the USB drive to Daniel and ask him to crack the password. But that too would be a problem; once Daniel got involved, he’d be drawn too deeply into something he should never know.

A fourth idea came to him just then: search the kidnapped alpha’s phone and access the “Community” he had mentioned. Hoping to find even the smallest lead, Baekgyeong pulled out the brown-haired man’s phone, which he had kept instead of discarding—planning to wipe and reuse it later.

The man had told him, vaguely, that if he ever needed alpha blood, he should visit the Community or make an appointment through an app. He had spoken as if every alpha naturally belonged to such a group, without bothering to explain further.

Baekgyeong thought he knew what that “Community” and app might be. After he had been kidnapped to the island, the McCarthy siblings and Siron had used the online Community for alphas—Hybris—to carry out all kinds of deranged schemes.

The Hybris online Community was said to be linked directly to its offline network. The “medical support” services offered online acted as the gateway; anyone using them automatically became part of the offline Hybris Community.

Under the protection of corrupt officials, every kind of illegal service thrived there. Worst among them were those catering to alphas obsessed with lust. And Yoon Siron—reckless as ever—had thrown himself into that world without a single safeguard, all to find the missing homeless men.

The shock Baekgyeong had felt when he reunited with Siron on that isolated island returned to him now—but the situation was far worse. Siron was alone this time, without Baekgyeong or Isaac, trapped as prey within the alphas’ greed.

Overwhelmed by a pressure that felt like his skull might split, Baekgyeong forced himself to his feet. Rather than imagine the worst, he needed to concentrate on getting answers.

Carrying the brown-haired man’s phone, he walked to a small park a short distance from the doctor’s house. The old fortress on the island’s cliff had long been abandoned; despite the sign calling it a historical site, grass and scrub had overrun the place.

Hoping to find some trace of Siron, Baekgyeong powered on the phone. He opened the installed apps one by one until he found something called H-Pay. It looked like an ordinary finance app, but launching it opened an internet browser and brought up an authentication page.

Fortunately, the man’s notepad contained passwords for each site, written out with ridiculous thoroughness. His login was BadboyXxXdirtymind91—a pathetic choice, translating roughly to “the lewd fantasies of a bad boy.”

Using the note, Baekgyeong logged in and read the greeting at the top of the screen:

“Welcome to the online Community for Alphas—Hybris.”

Everything was exactly as Siron had described.

In the upper-right corner, Roman-numbered menu links ran from I to X. As Siron had said, access to certain boards depended on membership rank; the brown-haired man’s account could enter boards I through IX.

Ignoring the locked X, Baekgyeong opened each menu in turn.

“Medical Support, Legal Support, Administrator Notices, General Board...”

Nothing in particular stood out. It looked like any other internet forum. Threads were displayed either by latest post order or bumped to the top when new comments appeared. There were boards about cars, finance, self-improvement, memes and trends, men’s-rights movements, and detailed discussions of sexual encounters with Etas. Explicit content was sometimes removed, but not consistently.

The most active sections were the Counseling and Free Boards. As Baekgyeong skimmed the Free Board titles, his expression twisted.

Tips on exploiting young Etas, rants about prison guards, complaints about the discomfort of electronic ankle monitors—post after post reeked of moral rot. Reading it felt like watching a collective monologue from people who no longer recognized crime as wrong.

Reaching the limit of his patience, he stopped browsing one by one and searched key terms in the board’s search bar. Nothing came up about the previous night’s incidents at Somora Prison or the waters near Kamti Island. There were a few posts discussing the attempted bombing at the Elm Hotel charity event, but no sign of Hybris involvement. The commenters’ reactions were no different from those of ordinary citizens reading the news.

“What the hell is this...”

As he poked through various menu and settings tabs, Baekgyeong found the list of posts the brown-haired man had written.

The most recent was titled “Question About Traveling While on Bail.”

Post No.: #229051

Author: x3dckt1xdiil1s

Date: 2014-10-02 14:23:54 UTC

Question About Traveling While on Bail

It’s been a week since I got out of lockup, but my bail conditions restrict travel.

One of them bans movement outside my county.

I’m not sure if that includes islands within the same state.

The stress in custody wrecked my head, and even after coming home, I can’t get back on track.

Thought a short trip to a nearby island might help.

Heard you can request an amendment through your lawyer—

if anyone’s got experience or an example, please share.

Today’s topics:

– [Why the claim that alpha pheromones have hierarchy is bullshit / #228831]

– [Why do people say my pheromones feel creepy / #219002]

Tags: #bail #travel #lawyer #Helso-ta

Comments (8):

[dlwt1k4df2lwk]: How much was the bail?

┗ [x3dckt1xdiil1s]: 300,000 dollars.

┗ [dlwt1k4df2lwk]: 300k??? o_O got fleeced lol

┗ [bn65lwk1dfkix]: 100% rape-and-assault case lmao

[n2xd56kxxlwx]: Usually they won’t grant travel just for leisure—flight risk. But Helso-ta State tends to allow it if you pay extra bail.

┗ [xksk2wldf2t6x]: Helso-ta’s restrictions are weak af. Really is “Hel-state,” huh.

┗ [dlwt1k4df2lwk]: Rumor says the governor’s kid is an alpha.

┗ [ROOTBOT]: Mentioning or speculating about specific persons is prohibited. Account suspended 28 days. Added to monitoring list automatically.

The brown-haired man had posted plenty of other messages as well. Judging from them, he’d been arrested for raping and seriously injuring a housekeeper. Yet he’d been released on bail simply because the court deemed him not a flight risk and reliable in attending hearings.

Even after causing permanent physical and psychological damage to his victim, he had paid additional bail money “to relieve stress” and gone to a resort on this island.

“...Now I feel less guilty.”

So appearances really told nothing. Some people, like Isaac, looked murderous from the first glance. Others, like Baekgyeong—maybe a little mean-faced but morally grounded—still valued life. The brown-haired man might have seemed healthy, but in truth he was a perverted sociopath who inflicted harm without hesitation.

Having found nothing useful on the Hybris Community, Baekgyeong returned to the doctor’s house. Nearly three hours had passed since the transfusion began.

Isaac looked better. His lips, once bluish like a drowned corpse’s, had regained a faint red tint, and his breathing had steadied. The brown-haired man, however, was pale as plaster. In a few more hours, he would look no different from a body stored in a morgue freezer. If Baekgyeong disposed of him quietly, everyone would assume he was a fugitive who’d vanished to escape indictment and trial.

“Won’t even know he’s dead in his sleep.”

Even as he thought that such a peaceful death was more than the man deserved, the unease wouldn’t fade. Forcing himself to ignore the guilt, Baekgyeong turned to the third plan again—unlocking the password-protected USB drive that Warden Malcolm had given him.