Chapter 314

Isaac struggled down a storm drain that tilted at an angle close to vertical. He finally made it through the tunnel—one that looked as if, the moment he misplaced his footing, he would slide and never be able to stop until he slammed into the dead end.

After emerging, Isaac reached an area where several storm drains converged and swept his flashlight around. Within the beam’s reach, a concrete surface marked “SW–B4–17” appeared, then sank back into darkness as the light passed on. It was the lower line number connected to Storm Drain 4.

He checked the as-built plan he had photographed on his phone. When the underground drainage tunnel had been designed, markings had been left on the storm drains to indicate their current position so repairs and maintenance could be done smoothly. Not all of them were recorded on the plan, but some numbers were. The letters on the plan were also “SW–B4–17.”

He had arrived.

Just as the plan showed, a dead end lay in front of him: a concrete seal with clear traces of having been artificially blocked off. The waterproofed concrete surface wasn’t damp. That was because a pipe with a diameter about the width of a palm had been connected at the side, routing the water into a different branch so it would flow into the main tunnel. It was a bypass that allowed only the minimum drainage needed so the blocked section wouldn’t flood.

But with only a pipe that narrow, drainage wouldn’t have been smooth. Isaac intended to restore the original water passage by blasting open the blocked tunnel, as the design had originally allowed for.

He took out a small explosive from his bag and drilled it into the concrete wall. The bomb was designed so the blast would direct itself only toward the side it was attached to. After confirming the position one more time, he retreated far back to avoid the reflected shockwave and pressed the button on the remote. With a dull impact, the concrete buckled inward and collapsed.

After checking the large hole blown open in the center of the wall, Isaac waited to see if anyone would come in response to the sound. Fortunately, what he feared didn’t happen, and he didn’t need to start with a firefight. He returned to the surface, moved from place to place, and blasted open two more dead-end sections.

Half a day had passed since he began detonating the tunnels. Isaac parked his car in front of a building near the storm drain he would enter last, then checked his equipment one item at a time. He fastened the buckle on the firearm that combined a rifle with a grenade launcher, tested it so the button placements were ingrained in his hand, then checked his watch.

It was already past five in the morning.

By now, Baekgyeong and Anna McCarthy would be drained of strength from clearing the debris blocking their way. The supports holding up the tunnel had collapsed, so no matter how much they removed, soil and rubble would keep spilling down.

Even if they stubbornly forced their way through the pile, a steel barrier wall would be waiting for them. It was a door that couldn’t be passed without security procedures, and the Security Key was in Isaac’s possession.

Isaac pulled out a phone from his pocket. It was the phone he had taken from the recon-team young man at the Water Level Monitoring Station south of the Nathan River. He entered the password he had obtained through torture and accessed the Hybris online community.

When he pressed the button at the top right of the app screen, a menu labeled in Roman numerals appeared. He clicked a Level 10 menu that ordinary members couldn’t access. After several tedious steps—entering a link and a password—he arrived at a screen with only three options.

ㆍMy Info

ㆍOn Traits and Thought

ㆍ1:1 Inquiry History

First, Isaac opened My Info to check the phone owner’s information.

The ID was “A_078,” and the rank displayed before it was “Dominant,” meaning a dominant line. Which meant that if there was dominant, there was also recessive.

It was a hypothesis Isaac had always considered to some degree. In the days when he drifted from battlefield to battlefield, he always concealed his pheromones, so he couldn’t know the reverberation they caused when released. Other people’s pheromones left only an impression at the level of discomfort in him, so he couldn’t be certain. But his memories from the laboratory were different.

His pheromones had been judged excessively violent. They left other Alphas with an intense disgust and a chilling sensation. Meanwhile, other people’s pheromones were little more than a limp stimulus to Isaac. The only exceptions were Baekgyeong and Lewis, and the three or four mercenaries hired to kill him.

Considering that pheromones carried subtly different scents depending on the individual, pheromones infused with an unusually savage aura were a trait that set him clearly apart from other Alphas. After becoming a fugitive, he had lived with his pheromones hidden for that very reason.

Isaac read every document titled On Traits and Thought. It was a bizarre text, closer to third-rate propaganda. If he had to compress its long, rambling content into a single sentence, it claimed that preserving the genes of flawless trait-bearers and increasing their numbers in future generations should take priority over individual desire.

It was fortunate.

Their beliefs did nothing but confirm that Isaac’s hatred for Alphas was still not rusted over.

Isaac planned to lure the Designer into the underground tunnel. The bait was already prepared there—something the Designer would have no choice but to chase, no matter the price. While the Designer and his followers, rushing to save the one-and-only Omega, were trapped inside the tunnel, violent currents would fill the interior and turn the entire space into a gigantic tank.

If Baekgyeong had even faintly read Isaac’s intent, he would have expected Isaac to make use of the torrential rain over Baggers City. But Isaac had no intention of gambling the future on an uncertain possibility. Rainwater was only a secondary means.

He was factoring the Nathan River in.

The drainage tunnel Hybris occupied cut diagonally across the Nathan River and the region south of it. If he blasted open some of the riverside storm drains connected to the auxiliary tunnels and let water in, the river would surge into the tunnel in an instant and flood the entire space at once. And the largest flow was connected to the Psychological Health Center’s ventilation passage.

There were nine hours left until the bombs installed at the detonation points ahead would explode. All Isaac needed was time to complete the plan before the tunnel flooded.

The rainwater filling the tunnel would slowly rot along with abundant organic matter, turning the tunnel into a sealed grave, and everything submerged inside would slowly lose its shape.

Just like the people Isaac had killed and dumped in the swamp.

Isaac opened his eyes right before the image of Siron floating in black water could fully form. He tried to breathe slowly against his rising heart rate and checked the rifle’s buckle one more time, even though he had already inspected it. Still, Siron’s face washed over him like an inescapable wave.

Forcing control over the writhing emotions as he loaded bullets into spare magazines, Isaac started the car. The time he had left before the detonation device went off was tight.

He had to deal with everything within it.

So that he could return to Siron before it was too late.

He wouldn’t let Siron die alone. Isaac would meet a miserable death with him.

“Hold it. Right now!”

At Anna’s shout, Baekgyeong strained until the tendon at his forehead bulged and braced a support beam beneath a half-moon-curved steel plate.

Anna and Baekgyeong panted and stared up at the ceiling. Wet soil that had been raining down was stopped by the steel plate and ceased falling. They watched for several more minutes, but there was no sign of another collapse. Swallowing dry spit from tension, Baekgyeong picked up the shovel again.

Soil and gravel, broken chunks of concrete, and rebar. Baekgyeong cleared the buried middle of the tunnel bit by bit with the shovel, setting steel reinforcements and braces as he advanced. With sixty meters’ worth of earth pressing down above their heads, simply digging forward wasn’t enough to solve the situation.

In the end, they paid a construction contractor extra under the table, bought suitable materials to restore the collapsed tunnel, and handled the process of hauling them into the tunnel at high speed. They had thought they only needed to break through a few meters of collapsed section, but they were wrong.

They had already spent half a day digging a burrow.

“Leaving a warm, cozy hole behind—haah—why the hell do I have to be digging this kind of hole right now! Fucking hell!”

Anna didn’t have the energy to answer Baekgyeong’s filthy whining. She stopped hauling the excavated earth backward and stood still to check the tunnel behind them. Up to now, they had forced their way through a passage so narrow and low they could barely pass without bending at the waist.

Nearly twenty meters of it.

Idiots, telling themselves that if they dug just a little more, the end would come into view.

Anna checked the watch on her wrist.

“We’ve lost too much time. We have to decide.”

Baekgyeong stabbed the shovel roughly into the side wall, wiped sweat pouring down like rain with the back of his hand, and asked.

“Decide? Decide what.”

“The main entry route. Let’s go to the Psychological Health Center entrance, even now.”

“Rejected.”

Baekgyeong grabbed the shovel again.

“Dig thirty more minutes. If we still don’t get an answer, we’ll talk again then.”

Dissatisfaction swelled across Anna’s face, but she reluctantly followed his decision. They only had two choices left: enter through the Psychological Health Center’s main route, or keep digging their way in like this.

That damn Isaac had triggered explosions all along the entry routes. There were five routes into the auxiliary tunnels, but when they checked too late, four of them had collapsed. The Center, the main entry route, had tightened security so much that they couldn’t even approach, and there was no way to check inside. They considered entering through storm drains, but with the plan alone they couldn’t pinpoint the exact location, and in the end they had no choice but to return to the original entry point.

When they had filled the full thirty minutes digging at the buried tunnel, Baekgyeong’s arm suddenly shot forward as if the resistance had vanished. The space ahead was empty—there was no more earth to scoop, and the shovel blade cut through air.

“Fuck. It’s over.”