Chapter 309

"Well, Bazelli looks more capable than you. If he told you to do it, he must’ve needed it."

Anna shoved Baekgyeong aside as he grimaced and took the seat he’d been in. As she skimmed the material Baekgyeong had pulled up with a sleepy face, life gradually returned to her eyes. Reading the article carefully, she said,

"The guy who got abducted ten days ago. He was taken in Sundel?"

"Sundel?"

"The southernmost port city in Helso State. Both our parents are buried in Sundel. It’s their hometown. Our family yacht is docked there."

Baekgyeong let Anna’s talk about Lewis having a yacht license go in one ear and out the other as he checked the time.

7:34.

There weren’t even thirty minutes left until the eight o’clock Isaac had named. Uneasy, Baekgyeong called—only to get a short answer that he’d arrive within thirty minutes before the line cut.

Baekgyeong stared at the black screen of his phone with a face sunk in thought.

"The abduction of the scientist in Sundel—this even made the news?"

At the time, news coverage had aired CCTV footage capturing the scientist being abducted by two assailants. The news link had since been deleted, but an edited copy of the CCTV clip remained on a video site.

Baekgyeong stuffed his phone into his pocket and stood behind Anna, watching the footage play. But his mind drifted elsewhere—back to Isaac, who had traveled with them in the quest to get Siron back.

He couldn’t Imprint with Siron because he didn’t love Siron. Baekgyeong didn’t believe Isaac—cold-blooded, without a trace of warmth—would take part in this journey out of mere responsibility. It had to mean there was another purpose he hadn’t told Baekgyeong about. Even so, the reason Baekgyeong had saved Isaac’s life—going so far as to commit crimes—was simple: if he wanted Siron back, he needed Isaac’s help.

"Oh!"

Watching the video, Anna suddenly shouted.

"This bastard!"

On the screen, a thug in a bucket hat grabbed the scientist’s arm. In that instant, the scientist swung his arm and the hat flew off. The CCTV caught the thug’s face. The image quality was garbage, but even in the blurry footage, there was no mistaking the jagged scar tissue where an ear looked like it had been torn away, the unusually protruding brow ridge, and the thick-boned profile.

Anna hurriedly paused the video.

"Ted Stone?"

At Anna’s gasp, Baekgyeong asked,

"Who the hell is that."

"The Baggers City police commissioner’s son."

Arms folded, Baekgyeong bent slightly at the waist and stared into the face on the laptop screen.

"I saw this bastard on the island."

"Island? The island where you were kidnapped?"

"Yeah."

Baekgyeong shoved Anna’s upper body aside and hit the space bar. The frozen video resumed, showing the middle-aged white scientist being dragged away in raw, unfiltered detail. The scientist fought like his life depended on it, thrashing all four limbs and resisting to the death. Ted Stone couldn’t subdue him easily, and the two stayed tangled up, grappling for several seconds—then a man stepped out of a car that had been waiting nearby.

The man wore a plain black ball cap pulled low. In one swift move, he clamped down on the struggling scientist’s neck until he lost consciousness, then slung the limp body over his shoulder like a sack. After tossing the scientist into the back seat, he climbed into the driver’s seat again and left the alley with Ted Stone.

"Wait—rewind ten seconds."

Anna’s voice suddenly trembled. Baekgyeong, who had been eyeing her profile with suspicion, hit rewind and replayed from where she said.

The man with the black cap pulled low moved into the center of the frame. His eyes were hidden by the cap and shadow, but the camera angle showed his nose and jaw clearly. The moment the man turned his head, Anna’s breathing broke apart.

Even in the blurry light, the shape of his lips was distinct, the jawline cut into sharp angles, and blond hair stuck out from under the cap. Without thinking, Baekgyeong leaned toward the screen. After watching the man lightly choke the scientist unconscious, load him into the car, and disappear to the end, Baekgyeong rewound again, lowered the playback speed, and played it one more time.

There was no way to mistake that face.

It was Lewis McCarthy.

Baekgyeong perched on the edge of the table and faced Anna. If someone dumped a cesspool of emotions all over a person—ecstasy and shock, rage and grief—they would probably make the same expression Anna was making.

"What the hell is that crazy bastard doing there?"

"Haah—just shut up for a second."

Anna shoved her open palm at Baekgyeong’s mouth, forced him silent, then clutched her head and dropped her forehead onto the table. For a long time she shook, groaning, trembling through aftershocks—then she lifted her face, drenched with tears.

"He was alive. ...I knew he’d be alive."

"Yeah. Alive. He’ll be dead in my hands soon enough."

"Fuck! I said shut up!"

"I’m not touched like you are. I don’t give a damn whether your shitty brother’s alive or not. I just want to know why he’s there. You got any guess?"

Dragged out of the storm of emotion by force, Anna wiped the tears running down with the back of her hand and glared at Baekgyeong.

"No! How the hell would I know!"

"Your brother—did he know the police commissioner’s son?"

"Not at all!"

"Then what is it?"

In Baekgyeong’s head, puzzle pieces clicked together at a slow, ugly pace. The scientist Lewis and Ted Stone had kidnapped was a reproductive-medicine researcher who worked on artificial fertilization and implantation technology. If young women—including Callie Welch—were truly being held in the underground tunnel, then that place wasn’t a hideout. It was closer to a laboratory. Research into cross-species breeding that had been stuck at the level of animal trials might have entered a phase where human beings were being used as test subjects.

"That insane bastard. What the hell is he doing."

Lewis had stood on Hybris’s side and abducted a scientist. If he was deeply involved in those experiments, then the place he stayed most often was likely the underground drainage tunnel. And, fucking hell—there was a high chance Siron was being held down there.

If Lewis had done something vile to Siron, Baekgyeong would kill him without sparing a thought for Anna McCarthy.

Baekgyeong drew a deep breath. He remembered the countless firearms crammed into the Ford van Isaac had driven off in. Suddenly his heart started pounding with a pain that felt wrong. Anna McCarthy rattled off multiple hypotheses about why Lewis would take part in a scientist’s abduction, but none of it reached Baekgyeong’s ears.

8:27. The promised time was already long past.

The moment he checked the clock, his pulse thundered in his skull. Each tick of the second hand felt like someone hammering nails into the inside of his temples. Something was going badly, seriously wrong.

Staring at the clock as if it had to die, Baekgyeong called Isaac’s phone. The ring tone went on and on, but the bastard didn’t pick up. Baekgyeong shoved off the table and stood up roughly.

"Could Lewis have been threatened? Using the captives as hostages—"

"That bastard backstabbed us."

Baekgyeong cut Anna off through clenched teeth.

"Eight o’clock passed and he’s not answering."

Anna’s expression—so intent on defending Lewis—went cold.

"...What?"

"That son of a bitch ran off with everything."

Baekgyeong rushed to the couch. He flipped over the backpack on the coffee table and dumped out everything inside. There were only two handguns and a small amount of ammo—what he’d packed in case of an emergency. Without meaning to, Baekgyeong let out a hollow laugh with a blank face.

Watching him with a grave expression, Anna asked in a tense voice,

"Why would Bazelli run? Do you have any idea at all?"

"An idea?"

"Is he trying to take Yoon Siron for himself?"

Baekgyeong stared straight through Anna’s face. The moment he realized Isaac had betrayed them, Baekgyeong had made the same guess.

But somehow, it felt wrong.

Isaac wouldn’t be risking his life for months out of loyalty or affection just to save Siron. There had been another purpose, something he’d never told Baekgyeong. And even knowing that, Baekgyeong had deliberately ignored the cold warning signs because of his own incompetence—because he needed Isaac.

"Ha. No wonder his face felt vaguely nasty from the first time I saw him—turns out he really was a fucking bastard. If you’re about to die, you should be quietly picking out your grave plot!"

Anna shouted as she paced around Baekgyeong, who stood rigid as stone. The instant he heard it, a cold wind blew through Baekgyeong’s mind.

Isaac didn’t have much time left. He was carrying a time bomb that could go off at any moment. Now that the possibility of an Imprint was gone, there was nothing Isaac could want from Siron. What, then, was the thing he had to accomplish—staking what little life he had left on it? He wouldn’t waste his remaining time satisfying some dirty appetite through Siron.

The extinction of Alphas. It was something Isaac Bazelli had said once.

That was what he wanted—the extinction of Alphas. For that obsession, to extend his worthless lifespan, he had created an Omega. But the moment “love” became the condition for Imprint, Siron’s usefulness to him vanished. No—Siron became an obstacle in his path. Siron’s existence left open the possibility of reproduction.

“There’s a forecast for torrential rain at dawn on the 20th. You’d get swept away and everything would be wiped clean.”

The words Anna had said—when she opposed Baekgyeong’s suggestion to blast through the concrete-sealed drainage tunnel access route—came back with a sickening clarity. What had Isaac’s face looked like as he listened? Isaac had stared at Anna as if her story had left a deep impression on him.

Like the flash flood that filled the mine passage, terror swallowed Baekgyeong’s mind in an instant. His face drained paper-white as he choked out,

"That bastard... he’s going to erase Yoon Siron."