Chapter 296

If he held himself very still and kept his nerves tuned, he could feel a dull vibration running along the walls. It sounded like a river flowing far away, or like a crowd of thousands gathered in one place, sobbing. Or maybe it was nothing but a ventilation fan turning.

Yoon Siron lay on his stomach on the hard bed, killing time, trying to identify the sound. He analyzed it without pause until he felt like he was going mad and hearing things.

“No. Not yet. I can’t snap now.”

He thought he finally understood why they throw the most vicious convicts into solitary cells where there’s no one to talk to. He almost wished even for the governor’s youngest son—Dylan Brown—to show up, the one who goaded him and injured his body.

No. Not him. Not that bastard, no matter what.

The man had gouged into Siron’s back and cut away a piece of flesh. Maybe because he hadn’t moved a muscle, the throbbing had eased a little, but the anxiety inside him hadn’t. In the hole Dylan carved out, there had been an electronic chip Siron hadn’t even realized existed. At first he’d thought it was the work of one of those organizations from conspiracy theories—the kind dreaming of a single world government.

But the more he chewed on it, the less it made sense. The U.S. government wouldn’t have implanted a microchip in him without his knowledge just to monitor some curry delivery guy. The chip in his back had been put there by Isaac. No one else around Siron could have done it.

Around the time he’d been abducted to the hideout near the Secreta Marsh, Isaac had jabbed a needle into the area around his deltoid hard enough to make him see stars. For a while, every time he moved his arm, a vicious pain had flared.

“A tracking chip.”

No other use came to mind. Thinking back, Isaac had tracked him with uncanny ease through multiple escapes—enough to make you wonder how he found him. When Siron pictured Isaac’s face at those completely unexpected reunions, the heart that had sunk deep rose slowly, as if buoyed up.

He’ll find me again.

As much as Isaac needed him, Siron was sure Isaac would track him down. A man who’d broken into Somora Prison wouldn’t fail to find this strange detention facility. And if they met again, Siron would make him pay dearly for letting him slip away into the pitch-black sea outside the prison.

And there was one more person who must be desperately looking for him: Baekgyeong. Thinking of that guy brought an ache of pity and worry first. Raised like a hothouse flower among people forced to put up with his filthy temperament, Baekgyeong didn’t strike him as someone who could do anything to get Siron back. If he managed to trail after Isaac like a keyring and arrive in one piece where Siron was, that would be lucky enough.

When Siron pictured Baekgyeong’s pathetic face, he could, for the first time since being locked here, form the faintest smile. And then a thought struck him out of nowhere.

Could he give that man his affection again?

Recalling the feelings he’d once held for Baekgyeong, Siron absently rubbed the pit of his stomach with his palm like someone nursing heartache. It had been so long he’d assumed there wasn’t a fingernail’s worth left of that fondness, but apparently enough remained to prick his chest like a needle.

Without even knowing exactly what he was hoping for or worrying over, he stopped thinking deeply about Baekgyeong. He pushed the relationship back beyond the door of his mind and threw the bolt tight.

He had started by thinking about the two men who might be searching for him, and before he knew it he was thinking of the new entanglement that had knotted itself in Baggers City.

It was true Lewis had helped drag him into Hybris’s lair, but that didn’t make him feel entirely on their side. Sometimes ice-cold, sometimes heating up the way he used to—Lewis’s swings confused him. Above all, Siron couldn’t forget the answer Lewis had thrown at Dylan, who’d asked whether he would be prey or repent and become their brother.

“I’ll hunt you.” ...The way he said it had been fucking cool.

Siron had felt his heart pound again, forgetting where he was, falling for Lewis’s feral pull. He couldn’t shake the atmosphere and expression of Lewis as he’d roared like a beast.

And that sound—how could a human throat growl like that? If it had been a movie, it was a scene he would have rewound dozens of times.

“I’ll hunt... you—” He coughed—“hunt... you.”

In a low, pressed voice, Siron mimicked the raspy growl from Lewis’s larynx. But with his light tenor there was no way to imitate a voice that came from so deep in the throat. After trying different placements a few times to catch Lewis’s scratch, he suddenly rapped his head with his fist.

“God, I’m an idiot. This is not the time. Get a grip, Yoon Siron.”

He had to escape this place somehow. Since gouging a hole in his back and drawing his blood, they’d been quiet for days, but it was obvious that wouldn’t last.

He stood in the middle of the room and surveyed it again—something he’d done dozens of times already. In the ceiling, a rectangular wire grille, just big enough for an adult to squeeze through, was screwed in place, and behind it he could feel the faint movement of air. In movies, the protagonist in this situation would escape a restricted area by crawling through the ventilation duct in the ceiling, but in reality the ceiling was too high; no matter how hard he stretched or jumped, he couldn’t get his fingertips to the grille.

He was glaring at the unreachable ceiling and trying to think of another way when he heard footsteps in the hall. His face tightened with tension.

Locks disengaged, the door opened, and two men appeared through the gap. At the first, a blond who stepped in, Siron almost shouted with relief—then checked himself. It wasn’t Lewis. It was an unfamiliar man, tall and blond and muscular like Lewis. Backing toward the corner where the walls met, Siron looked at the face of the man who entered after him.

A familiar face. A middle-aged man with very soft, nearly colorless silver hair. Dressed sharp in a vintage trench coat with a thin checked scarf draped just so—Jackson Cliff, the psychological counselor who led the Baggers City group therapy circle Those Who Overcame Grief.

Siron was at a loss for words. It was almost a relief he didn’t blurt something trite like What are you doing here. The moment he saw the man’s face, the disturbing incidents from the places where they’d crossed paths by chance leapt through his head.

Only now did he fully grasp that none of it had been coincidence. He let out a laugh at himself.

“You know me. We’ve met before?”

Jackson’s voice struck his ears with unusual clarity. It was a voice that inspired trust to an unpleasant degree. When he thought of how many people must have been fooled by the handsome package and the voice, Siron felt something inside him scorch black.

“We’ve crossed paths a few times.”

“If you know me, then you must also know I deal with dozens, hundreds of people in a day. I don’t remember every single one. I only learned who you are recently.”

“Are you Joseph Elliott?”

Jackson’s eyebrows lifted, as if surprised, the shallow wrinkles on his forehead deepening a notch.

“You know quite a lot. Then I won’t have to tire myself explaining alphas and omegas.”

“You’re the Designer?”

This time Jackson didn’t look surprised. Smiling gently, he asked,

“The Designer... Everything did begin with me. Did you hear that term from Gezar Bazelli?”

Siron slid his gaze away instead of answering.

“Gezar was a striking man. Excessively self-pitying, but he had a mythic poise worthy of the title ‘first alpha.’ Come to think of it, his execution was carried out just yesterday.”

At the mention of Gezar’s execution, Siron fell quiet. At the same time he worked out what day it was. The execution had been on the 16th, which made today the 17th. Four days had passed since his escape from Somora Prison on the 13th.

“As his last words he said only a single phrase: ‘Love one another.’”

Staring blankly at the floor as if moved by Gezar’s will, Jackson suddenly gave a start, as if something had occurred to him, and checked his watch.

Even as anger flared at the discourtesy of the man checking the time in front of him, Siron coolly took stock of Jackson and the alpha at his side. If Jackson had come alone he would have tried something, but with a hulking alpha guarding him, any plan to rough Jackson up and force him to help an escape had to be shelved.

Without bothering to hide his disgust, Siron asked,

“Where is this?”

“Inside the Baggers City Deep Drainage Tunnel.”

“Deep... what?”

“A major underground drainage tunnel built to prepare for floods. It runs east–west under Baggers City at a depth of eighty meters.”

“...Huh?”

“You have a bad habit of repeating the end of every sentence back at me. Don’t. If you don’t understand something, you’ll have to make the effort to chew on it yourself.”

In the calm tone of a silver-haired gentleman, he scolded Siron as if he had no intention of expending the irksome effort of kindly explaining.

Siron burned. Look who’s talking. After doing something unfathomable to him, Jackson had the gall to treat him like an idiot—politely. Siron wanted to spit in his face. But he reminded himself that provoking Jackson here would only harm him, and forced his temper down.

If the man was telling the truth, Siron was imprisoned eighty meters under the surface in a tunnel for channeling stormwater. Now the distant sound of water he’d heard, and the ventilation drone that had seemed so loud, finally made sense.

“Doesn’t the whole place go under when it rains?”

He asked, crooked.

“Don’t worry yourself. Not a drop has flowed through here in the past three years.”

A tunnel meant to drain rainwater where not a single drop had run—Siron pictured a side branch growing off the trunk of a thick tree. If the man was telling the truth, Siron was locked in a place like a branch cut off from the main tunnel.

He focused on the sound of the ventilation fan spinning twenty-four hours a day above his head. This deep underground, somewhere there had to be a device pulling surface air down. If he got the chance to use his wits, escape didn’t feel impossible.

“First, take this.”

Jackson held out a small, clear plastic packet to him. Inside the translucent sachet was a capsule.

Siron didn’t move. He only stared at the packet with suspicion.

“What is it?”

At his question, Jackson’s decorous face shifted to something impish. Then he said something that froze Siron’s thoughts.

“A heat-cycle suppressant.”