Chapter 289

Baekgyeong first reviewed the materials Spencer had collected and investigated regarding Hybris and the missing persons.

Surprisingly, Spencer had gotten extremely close to uncovering the truth about alphas and Hybris. Unfortunately, most of what she compiled through field interviews and personal contacts were things Siron, Isaac, and Baekgyeong had already learned while repeatedly brushing death.

It covered homeless people disappearing through the relocation program at social welfare centers, the sexual stimulant drug NeoPeak and the victims assaulted under its influence, and the suspicious collusion between the corrupt Helso state government and private prison facilities. He had hoped for leads on Hybris leadership, but there was nothing of the sort.

Of course, there was new information. Data on the missing. The missing persons Spencer had tracked obsessively for the past two years fell largely into two categories.

The first: homeless people who disappeared from the streets.

The second: young women who vanished primarily in Baggers City, Helso.

Most were psychologically vulnerable young women or impoverished South American immigrant workers seeking employment. One day, they simply vanished without a trace.

Baekgyeong assumed they had met the same end as the homeless abducted on the island. He recalled seeing posts on the Hybris app the brown-haired man had used, where the payment in cryptocurrency °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° varied depending on the Eta’s gender and appearance. Meaning the victims abducted by Hybris were not limited to homeless men.

Realizing this for the first time as he organized the data, a heavy, sinking helplessness formed inside him. He had believed he could shut his eyes and ears to everything—so long as he could get Yoon Siron back—but apparently not.

“The bastard who smiled while driving a spike through Choi Baekhee’s chest—where the hell did he go?”

He was supposed to be the kind of man who didn’t blink at anything. He worried that if this continued, he would end up saying something righteous and pathetic about saving people. That didn’t suit Baekgyeong, who had lived twenty-seven years as a rotten bastard. He was responsible only for Yoon Siron’s well-being.

Baekgyeong powered on the laptop. For the past two days, he had been transcribing Spencer’s interviews with Gezar Bazelli. Spencer had conducted six interviews—each lasting two hours for a total of twelve.

In terms of new information extracted, they were as valuable as everything she had uncovered about Hybris and the missing. Gezar had declared to the world the inherent value of alpha and omega as new humans, and the essential differences between them and Homo sapiens.

He declared that alphas and omegas were not an extension of humanity, but a new species beyond evolution. A grand yet pitiful declaration destined to strike society like a meteor.

Baekgyeong fully understood why Malcolm Knox had extended extraordinary privileges to Gezar Bazelli and Spencer—bending prison protocol to allow these interviews in secret. Fear of the new human and hostility toward Hybris had stirred something in the seemingly unremarkable warden.

Malcolm had likely been aware, at least in part, of the bleak past of Gezar and his family. Gezar had traded the protocol to convert betas into alphas to the federal government, and in exchange had been imprisoned not in a research facility but as a newly registered death row inmate. During his long confinement, unusual visitors from the federal system must have come to see him. Given his position as the nearly sole member of his kind, special oversight was unavoidable. And for such arrangements, cooperation from the prison warden would have been indispensable.

It had been Isaac Bazelli who was locked in the research institute in Gezar’s place. Though it was Gezar who killed Yuri Berec and Isaac’s brother, Isaac bore part of the crime. A rather tragic story—but to Baekgyeong, it was no more than a curiosity.

What mattered was the third interview. The final one. It contained a clue that might help trace Siron’s whereabouts.

Spencer: Did you ever consider the possibility that Isaac was innocent?

Gezar: I did. But even if there were a one percent chance, he is still unforgivable.

Spencer: Don’t you think that’s too harsh?

Gezar: I have never once believed my anger was unjust. I paid as a death row inmate, and Isaac paid as a lab specimen. Unfortunately, Isaac set fire to the research facility and disappeared long ago.

Isaac Bazelli had clearly grown up in a wretched environment. Gezar’s influence was undeniable in shaping him into a sociopathic killer. Baekgyeong clicked his tongue lightly and continued reading.

Spencer: Do you believe Isaac was recaptured by the government, or eliminated quietly?

Gezar: (laughs) Not at all.

Spencer: So you’re certain he has not been caught. Why?

Gezar: More than ten years ago, a man came to see me. He appeared to be in his late thirties to early forties. He had previously supplied intelligence to black ops operations involving the U.S. military and CIA. He bombarded me with questions that could serve as leads to trace Isaac’s whereabouts. I assume Isaac was the target of the black ops deployment he was part of.

Spencer: Did he seem CIA? Or military?

Gezar: Defense Intelligence Agency. DIA.

Spencer: If he was DIA, given his age, he was likely at least a lieutenant colonel.

Gezar: I don’t know the details. The man visited again some years later. By then he was a civilian, and he told me the black ops mission to hunt Isaac had been suspended. After 9/11, personnel were pulled into the warfront from black ops programs.

He had retired from the DIA for reasons he did not disclose, and started a business—an altruistic recovery clinic for brain-dead patients. The idea was to apply the regenerative capacity of genetically altered individuals to restore families who had lost children overnight. I never believed it was charity. The more depraved a person is, the grander the justification they cloak themselves in.

His dilemma was deep. Alphas are inherently ruled by violence and sexual drive, have short lifespans, and cannot reproduce with betas due to genetic barriers. When he tried to use this limited group for profit, the solution he found was the emergence of an omega to pair with the alpha. He demanded I tell him how to create an omega, and promised me freedom in return.

Spencer: Did you accept his offer?

Gezar: I did not. I offered only one ambiguous piece of advice.

Spencer: Ambiguous advice? What was it?

Gezar: Yuri left research notes. A complete record of how modern human males can undergo genetic recombination to become omegas. The documents are still somewhere in the house where Yuri and I lived. If they are gone, either the U.S. government or Isaac Bazelli has taken them.

“Extinction of alphas, my ass. What nonsense.”

Suddenly finding Isaac pathetic, Baekgyeong glared at the unconscious man. Isaac had believed Gezar shared his desire to eradicate alphas. He was completely wrong.

What Gezar hated was not alphas—it was Isaac Bazelli. The only reason Gezar survived years in solitary confinement, staring at concrete walls, was because hatred of Isaac sustained him. He had cowardly shifted the guilt of killing Yuri onto Isaac and clung to that hatred as a twisted consolation.

To Gezar, alphas were something to guard against, not eliminate. As the creator of alphas, he would never wish for their extinction. Everyone knew this—except Isaac.

“You idiot. Gezar hated you far more than you ever realized.”

Clicking his tongue, Baekgyeong continued through the notes, hoping to find something of actual value.

Spencer: Do you know the man’s name?

Gezar: Joseph Elliott. Likely an alias.

Spencer: Do you believe he has acquired Yuri Berec’s research journal by now?

Gezar: I don’t know. Remember that I am a prisoner. Two hours have passed already. I am tired. Let us continue next week. Then I will tell you a new story about the man who came to see me.

Reexamining the interview, Baekgyeong folded his arms, his brow tightening.

A question he had buried without noticing now surfaced with clarity. How Isaac had evaded federal pursuit after burning down a government research facility.

By definition, Isaac was a high-tier criminal who committed an act of terrorism against the state. Federal pursuit should have been unavoidable. Yet in the months Baekgyeong traveled with him, he had not sensed even the slightest trace of active surveillance—nor had it occurred to him that Isaac should be tracked.

Now, through Gezar’s interview, he could begin to see why. If Joseph Elliott was a DIA officer, as Spencer suggested, then he would have possessed both the authority and the means to distort the intelligence grid.

Once he realized Yuri Berec’s research journal was in Isaac’s hands, Joseph likely suppressed the record and nullified the pursuit—so federal attention would not converge on Isaac before Joseph could seize the journal for himself.

And if Joseph had indeed promised Gezar freedom, then by that time he already wielded enough influence to move both state and federal systems. Meaning he was deeply connected to corrupt power at multiple levels.