Chapter 313

Anna shoved her face in front of Baekgyeong with a look that demanded an explanation. In her vivid blue eyes, flame-like anger slowly swelled.

“Isaac did that to Lewis?”

Baekgyeong recalled the day he had dragged Lewis—beaten to the edge of death with a cast-iron frying pan—to Isaac’s urology clinic. Naturally, he didn’t consider it especially meaningful that the one who had swung that very frying pan hard enough to nearly kill Lewis had been him.

What a mess that had been.

Baekgyeong frowned and let out a sigh first.

“There was a reason.”

“What reason?”

Too lazy to explain it all, Baekgyeong brushed Anna’s face out of his way like he was shooing a gnat.

“What the hell was it that made that bastard do that to Lewis....”

“Rut.”

“Ru—.”

Anna repeated the word without thinking, then realized what it meant and clapped a palm over her mouth. The incident came back to her—Lewis, swallowed by rut, escaping the Panic Room and chasing Siron, who had been delivering curry. She couldn’t continue.

“Let’s just do what we came to do.”

Anna said it in a resigned tone, then turned toward the corpse in front of her and forced herself to take in the traces of the brutal torture it must have suffered. It hit her again with fresh shock that the man they had invited into their home last night was a ruthless murderer. Anna had to swallow bitter spit several times to keep her churning stomach down.

She quietly set her fingers on the skin of the body whose neck had been twisted.

“It’s cold. If what I learned from forensic textbooks is right, this man died about ten hours ago.”

She jerked her chin toward the half-naked body slumped in the chair.

“Isaac took his clothes. Is he planning to disguise himself as a recon team and sneak in?”

“Yeah. Looks like it.”

Baekgyeong nodded and slowly scanned the area. Beyond the wide-open front door, bloody footprints led to the stairs. He stared into the darkness that thickened the farther down it went. Thanks to Isaac clearing the path ahead of them, they could move without any obstruction, but there was no way to know what variables he had left behind. Still, there was no reason—and no room—to waste more time.

“Let’s go.”

At Baekgyeong’s blunt urging, Anna nodded with a stiff face. Avoiding the broad pool of blood, they stepped onto the stairs. By the time they reached the second basement level, the space that had felt like an ordinary emergency stairwell turned bleak, like a concrete bomb shelter.

Right beside them were two metal plate ducts. Whether mechanical fans were installed inside or not, a low roar echoed as air was forced in and expelled. Only then did they realize they were stepping into a savage world. Tight with tension, they adjusted their grips on their guns and moved.

“Stop.”

Baekgyeong, walking in front, raised one hand. The moment the stairs ended, the horizontal space vanished, replaced by a vertical shaft that dropped straight down. A bleak wind rushed up from the shaft’s dizzying depth, lifting his sweat-damp bangs.

Anna stood beside him and craned her head out to look down, drawing a short breath. D-shaped rebar rungs were embedded into the tunnel wall at regular intervals, stretching down without end. It was the only way to descend.

“I know it’s late to say this, but... I really don’t want to go.”

“I’ll go first, so follow behind me. You look pretty heavy, but if you fall, I’ll try to grab you and hang on somehow.”

“Shut up before I drop you.”

Baekgyeong shrugged and rolled his eyes playfully, then snatched the duffel bag off Anna’s shoulder like he was stealing it and slung it on himself.

“What are you doing? Give it back.”

“Even if you look like a Terminator, you’re still no match for an Alpha, are you?”

Anna ignored him like she was sick of him and tried to push past. At that moment, a faint vibration tone cut through the silence and echoed in the huge cavity. She’d been going to ignore the call no matter who it was, but she abruptly changed her mind and pulled out her phone.

“It’s Daniel. I’ll just take this and go.”

“Forget it, ignore—”

Baekgyeong started to object, but Anna pressed a finger to her lips to warn him to be quiet.

“Daniel, what is it? ...What? ...Your voice keeps cutting out.”

Holding the phone tight to her ear, Anna’s face creased as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Why are you going there? ...What? I don’t think you can do that.”

She listened while watching Baekgyeong’s reaction, then suddenly raised her voice.

“No. Don’t go! Not there. Don’t go, seriously—don’t!”

After shouting in panic, Anna stared down at the phone in her hand with a hollow expression. Baekgyeong, feeling a bad premonition, asked her.

“What is it.”

“He says he’s going to New York.”

Baekgyeong went blank, like he didn’t trust his own ears.

“New York? Why would he go there?”

“He says he’s going to your brother.”

Baekgyeong squeezed his eyes shut, inhaled deep, then exhaled in a rough burst. When he opened them wide again, he spoke with irritation thick in his voice.

“What does he think he’s going to do by going to my brother?”

“How would I know.”

A sudden headache stabbed at Baekgyeong. He clutched his throbbing head.

“Did you tell Daniel I’m with you?”

“Yeah. Is that bad?”

Stunned speechless, Baekgyeong sank his teeth into his lip. He snatched the phone from Anna and called the number that had just come in. Daniel didn’t answer. Baekgyeong spat curses and kicked the wall for no reason, and at the same time a nasty cracking sound came from his grip as the phone case splintered.

Anna hurriedly ripped the phone back out of his hand, checked whether it was broken, then let out a relieved breath.

“Let me ask too. Do you have any idea why Daniel would suddenly go to New York to meet your brother?”

Baekgyeong remembered the email he had sent Daniel just yesterday. It was practically Final Words—loaded with °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° ominous meaning, written with Baekgyeong’s own death in mind.

“I left him something like a will in an email.”

Anna’s expression darkened immediately.

“Don’t say crap like that. It’s bad luck.”

Normally, Baekgyeong would have snapped back at her for saying jinx-worthy nonsense, but no retort came. This time, he was serious.

Anna hadn’t shown it, but she understood the danger well enough. And she understood what it meant that Baekgyeong was uneasy enough to leave Final Words. Her face stiffened further as she asked.

“What did you say?”

“I told him that if I don’t contact him by the twentieth, he should release the Rut Suppressant manufacturing method to the world. It needed to happen anyway.”

Anna nodded, accepting it. With a hint of relief, she asked casually.

“You could sell the suppressant for a fortune. Aren’t you going to regret it?”

“Not at all. I’m sick of Alpha bastards and their rut.”

As if someone’s face had just flashed through Anna’s, Baekgyeong stared at her for a long moment, then looked away.

He should just do what he’s told. What does he think he’s going to do by going to Baeksang?

If it were up to Baekgyeong, he’d smack Daniel in the back of the head and force him to wake up. If Daniel told his brother about Alphas and Omegas, Hybris and suppressants, it would only be a matter of time before Baeksang uncovered the truth tied to their mother’s death.

But right now, Baekgyeong worried more about Siron than about the shock his remaining family would take, or the danger they might get dragged into. The thought of Siron trapped somewhere in the underground tunnel made his heart pound with urgency. Now he had to save time, no matter what it cost.

Without hesitating, Baekgyeong stepped first into the dizzying vertical shaft. Following him, Anna moved one rung at a time, carefully.

The concrete passage dropping straight down was so narrow the two of them could barely pass. Every time the rebar ladder creaked under their weight, Anna’s heart lurched. It was only about sixty meters, but it felt as endless as walking six kilometers. Breathing the damp mold smell and dust carried upward on the wind, they kept going for a long time before they finally managed to step onto flat ground.

“From here, it’s about another 1.8 kilometers on foot until we reach the Electrical Room.”

“Fuck, I’m going insane. It’s endless.”

Wiping sweat off her forehead, Anna braced her trembling legs. Baekgyeong—the one she’d always thought of as inferior and pathetic—was looking down at her without the slightest sign of fatigue.

“Haa... being an Alpha really is nice. Why is it that only men can become Alphas? It’s unfair.”

“If you’ve got the energy to yap, you must’ve gotten your stamina back.”

Baekgyeong started walking without even looking back. Gritting her teeth, Anna hurried after him.

The as-built plan matched reality almost perfectly. In the silence, they moved forward relying only on the sound of each other’s footsteps. The lights illuminating the tunnel were sporadically out, and their view grew darker by the minute.

Then they ran into an unexpected obstacle.

“What is this now?”

Anna let out a humorless laugh as she stared at the massive debris blocking the tunnel.

The entire ceiling ahead of them had collapsed. Concrete rubble packed tight between twisted rebar made it look hopeless to climb over the wreckage. Whose interference it was couldn’t have been clearer.

It was Isaac.