Chapter 306

Anna’s desperate gaze shifted to Isaac, seated across from her. When she saw him in person for the first time—after only ever seeing him through the blurry quality of CCTV footage—Anna felt a little short of breath. He was the kind of man who seemed to wear a dark halo. The moment their eyes met, it felt as if the surroundings dimmed, as though light itself were being absorbed. If she’d met him out in society, he was the sort of man she would have avoided getting tangled up with, but if it meant finding Lewis, she was in a position where she had to take the devil’s hand, too.

“And you? You haven’t seen Lewis?”

Isaac answered without even lifting his eyes from the blueprint he was looking at.

“He wasn’t on the island.”

He flipped to the next page and asked,

“Rachel and Daniel—the ones you pulled in. How much do they know about Hybris and Alphas and Omegas?”

As if something pricked at the corner of her heart, Anna hesitated as she answered.

“I told them everything I know.”

Isaac shifted his gaze from the blueprint to Anna.

“Even that Siron is an Omega?”

“...Yeah.”

Leaning back and crossing his legs, Isaac stared at her coldly, irritation laid bare.

“If a rumor goes around that Yoon Siron is an Omega, it’s going to cause a lot of trouble.”

“They won’t spread rumors. And in the first place, you’re the one who created the trouble.”

Anna glared at Isaac with an accusation that he had made Siron into an Omega. None of this would have happened if Isaac hadn’t done that to him from the start. But Isaac only watched her with a gaze that held neither remorse nor regret. As Anna met those vivid blue eyes, she asked with a sneer,

“Do you feel sorry at all?”

“Of course it’s regrettable.”

“Hah. Regrettable?”

“If I could go back to the past, I wouldn’t have made Yoon Siron into an Omega.”

Anna’s eyes widened at the unexpected answer. Baekgyeong cut in, his voice sharp.

“Because you can’t Imprint with Siron, so he’s useless to you now.”

Anna’s gaze darted back and forth between Baekgyeong and Isaac. She pressed her back hard into the chair and folded her arms, trying to put distance between herself and the two of them.

“So what are the conditions for Imprint?”

As if they’d agreed beforehand, neither man answered. After waiting a long time for them to open their mouths, Anna pressed her fingertips into her dry eye corners and spoke in a tired, flat tone.

“Weren’t we going to tell everything today? If you keep doing this, I won’t tell you what CellGuard is researching either.”

Baekgyeong recalled the CellGuard records he had seen on the journalist Spencer’s USB. Through the record Spencer left behind, he had learned there were suspicious signs that CellGuard was entangled with the state government, but what was happening there was still unknown.

“Love,” Isaac said.

He stated the condition for Imprint in a detached voice. Baekgyeong and Anna’s eyes both snapped to Isaac’s face.

As if she’d heard something horrific, Anna asked again,

“Love?”

When Isaac didn’t answer, Anna turned to Baekgyeong. That the method to extend an Alpha’s lifespan could be something as trivial as love. She reacted as if she’d heard an absurd joke, then fell silent, thinking as she studied the two men’s serious faces. Regathering herself around the discomfort, she accepted Isaac’s words.

“When Lewis comes back... I should make him get married first.”

Anna said it solemnly.

“I support Lewis and Siron. Both of them.”

Baekgyeong’s face twisted as he glared at her with eyes like drawn blades. Anna ignored him and continued, as if making a proclamation.

“If Lewis wants something, I’ll give him anything.”

“Yoon Siron doesn’t like Yankees.”

Baekgyeong mocked her, tugging his nose in a gesture that insulted “Yankees.” Anna looked at him without a trace of damage, then said with the expression of a victor,

“Siron told me. He said he had the best sex of his life with Lewis.”

A look crossed Baekgyeong’s face, as if he doubted he’d understood Anna correctly. Then he kicked the table toward her and shouted,

“Fuck, you’ve lost it. You expect me to believe a lie like that? Do you think I’m insane? Why the hell would Yoon Siron tell you something like that?”

“When I heard it, I felt like shit too.”

Anna held her head high, as though she hadn’t spoken a single lie. Baekgyeong glared at her, his mood in turmoil, then dragged a hand roughly through his hair and sighed.

If it was Yoon Siron—someone who could go any direction at any moment—he could absolutely have said something that crazy.

“Lewis is someone special to you?”

“Yeah. Not some passing brush of fate.”

Baekgyeong remembered what Siron had said back when Baekgyeong had questioned him like a rabid dog over his confession that he’d had sex with Lewis. Not some passing brush of fate. The thought that Yoon Siron could fling the word “fate” around so recklessly, with Baekgyeong right there, made his mood sink. Instead of getting angry, he was falling into depression. That wasn’t like him.

“If it was your first sex after becoming an Omega, fine—maybe you had some stupid delusion. But it’s not that. I know Yoon Siron’s body better than anyone. I’m a few levels above him.”

“Oh, is that so?”

As if to provoke him, Anna let a small smile slide onto her face.

In the past, he would have reacted to every word like this and acted like a madman, but now he didn’t want to waste his mental strength on something this petty. Instead, Baekgyeong asked Anna about CellGuard’s purpose. Since there was no need to weigh each other’s information and put a price on it, Anna explained without resistance what she had found about CellGuard’s founding mission.

CellGuard was a laboratory that researched immune rejection phenomena that Surrogates experienced toward embryos during pregnancy. To increase the odds of embryo survival, researchers repeated animal trials that finely adjusted immune responses, looking for standards that could be applied to humans.

Reading down the report, Baekgyeong shook his head. Specialized terms were thrown around so heavily that he couldn’t even understand half of it, but he understood more than enough that something horrific was being done there to prepare the next generation of Alphas.

CellGuard’s ultimate goal was to create a technology that could safely maintain pregnancies even between different species and different genotypes. Using advanced technology to increase the number of individuals by having Surrogates give birth to embryos fertilized between Alphas and Omegas. Now that Hybris’s purpose had been revealed so clearly, Baekgyeong felt nothing but a growing unease.

“Do you think they’re really only doing animal trials?”

Anna shuddered as she replied.

“Whether it’s animal trials or experiments on real people, it’s disgusting. I don’t even want to imagine it.”

“You said the place Callie Welch was abducted to is CellGuard?”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you trying to find her instead of Lewis? Did you give up on Lewis already?”

“Lewis went missing while tailing a homeless man. Callie Welch is that homeless man’s younger sister. The guys who abducted Callie Welch and Lewis’s disappearance are connected. ...I can’t be one hundred percent certain. And I can’t ignore someone who sent a message begging for help. Callie Welch is definitely in the underground tunnel.”

Baekgyeong turned to Isaac. Isaac was taking photos of the Deep Drainage Tunnel blueprint with his phone.

“Did you get everything from the blueprints?”

“Yeah.”

Isaac slid the blueprints to the center of the table. According to the as-built drawings, there were five total entry points into the drainage tunnel that Hybris had occupied. The first was the main approach route connected to the Psychological Health Center. The second and third were auxiliary entry routes connected to ventilation vents. The remaining ones were a dedicated drainage conduit for maintenance, and an inspection passage where power cables were installed.

All of them were concealed behind disguised facilities, but if they could just get inside the drainage tunnel, it looked like they could approach the target point smoothly enough. The variable was the scale of manpower controlling the area.

The section Hybris occupied was an auxiliary tunnel connected to the main tunnel, spanning Basement Level 1 to Basement Level 2. Because it was a multi-stage drainage system designed for heavy rain, water from above would pass through an intermediate collection zone and then flow back into the main tunnel.

But after Hybris seized the auxiliary tunnel, both segments were sealed: the upper passage leading to storm drains, and the lower passage leading to the main tunnel. The blueprint showed traces suggesting they had closed drainage outlets so rainwater from storm drains couldn’t pour inside, and reinforced the segment connected to the main tunnel with concrete.

“There’ll be guys guarding the entry routes too, right?”

Baekgyeong pointed out the practical problem. Other than Isaac, neither Anna nor Baekgyeong had experience with firefights. With no way to know the number of guards at the entry routes, they couldn’t just charge in without any plan.