Chapter 320

Even after the scandal with Baekgyeong, Siron had never once talked to anyone about what was tormenting him. But this time was different. If he got out of this place, he swore he would get counseling.

From the very first memory of his life—his mother and father fighting—to the one night he’d been trapped in an underground tunnel with a corpse. If he tried to tell the whole story of his twisted life, he could strap a motor to his mouth and talk for three days and four nights and still not be done.

And that wasn’t all. He would absolutely write an autobiography, turn his life into a movie, play the lead himself, and win Best Actor at the Academy Awards.

That was, if he could make it out alive. He let out a long sigh and wiped a hand over his dry face.

Siron sat on a mattress so thin it made his ass go numb, staring blankly at the back of the man who had died miserably after spewing blood and every kind of waste. If the day ever came when he escaped this place and regained the peace of ordinary life, he had a feeling he would sometimes remember this moment like a nightmare.

Since becoming an Omega, he’d witnessed countless deaths, but other people’s deaths hadn’t affected him much—like extras dying in a movie. But this man’s death was different.

The man had died in Siron’s place.

Because Jackson Cliff had tried to kill him. He hadn’t lived a chaste life, but he’d never even spat out a piece of chewed gum on the street—and someone had tried to murder him with poison.

Because he was an Omega?

Siron had only ever imagined dying after being used miserably as an object of desire by Alphas. He’d never even imagined being targeted for elimination by people who weren’t Alphas. It felt like the moment he became an Omega, he stopped being treated as human for that reason alone. And all he’d done was agree to a clinical trial to earn three thousand dollars.

He glared hard at the man who had died in his place. The image of the man taking the Capsule and dying in agony kept resurfacing, so much that the fact Siron was still alive felt strange.

How much time had passed? Siron jerked his head up at gunfire echoing from far away. As if he’d never been sunk in lethargy at all, he rushed to the door and pressed his face to the viewing window. The thick steel door kept him from seeing clearly to either side, but he could still grasp the situation outside, faintly.

Isaac—the one who had thrown Siron’s life into the abyss—had come to save him.

It had to be him. There was no way it wasn’t Isaac. Rage and euphoria churned inside him at the same time. Even as hope made him tremble, it was almost baffling how his heart could feel this much like a living hell.

"Get it together. Only think about escaping."

Even knowing it was pointless, Siron grabbed the door handle and shook it with all his strength. The locked door didn’t budge.

"Come on. Hurry. Please, hurry up!"

His heart felt like it was about to leap into his throat. Maybe the tension was too much, because his body reacted without permission. The space between his ass cheeks turned damp, and every time he moved there was an unpleasant friction.

I’m going crazy. What is this.

Siron shoved a hand into his pants and pulled it back out, checking the sticky fluid running between his thighs. No doubt about it—there was the scent of pheromones.

"No. Please. Not now—there’s no way it’s happening right now."

Memories of Rut, when he’d been sex-crazed and stuck to Baekgyeong, came back in vivid flashes. Siron took a deep breath, despairing. He was just about to open his mouth to scream for Isaac—the one who’d gifted him this fucked-up body—when footsteps suddenly poured down the corridor like torrential rain. Dozens of Alphas in combat boots were running together.

Siron instinctively backed away from the door and hid himself in a blind corner the viewing window couldn’t reach. The Alphas rushed past the cell where Siron was held, but he felt a few of them break off and slow down. They stopped right in front of the door to Siron’s cell.

"There’s a corpse here."

"What?"

"Is it the smell from the corpse? ...No, this is more like pheromones."

But the man’s suspicion was cut off by the urgency of the situation.

"What are you doing standing around? Move, now!"

"There’s a corpse here. And the pheromones are weird. Didn’t that rumor go around that there was an Omega on Basement Level 1?"

"If you don’t want to die by my hand, shut up and move!"

Outside the door, an Alpha stared into the darkness beyond the viewing window while sucking in ragged breaths, then—begrudgingly—stepped away. Only after they finally retreated did Siron let out the breath he’d been holding. Dozens of men were sprinting down the corridor to put down the intruder.

Soon, a fierce battle erupted. Gunfire cracked hard enough to make his eardrums sting, and screams and explosions shook the walls. They were slaughtered, then new Alphas were thrown in—again and again. Siron judged his position by the direction and distance of the sounds.

He was between the two points where Hybris and Isaac were facing off.

Then, all at once, the corridor lights that had been dimly illuminating the interior cut out. The siren and the gunfire vanished into silence. Even the ventilation fan noise—something that had always grated on his nerves—disappeared. As if someone had yanked the power cord, the entire massive facility froze in a single instant.

The fans weren’t turning. When he imagined pheromones piling up layer on layer in unventilated air, gooseflesh ran over his whole body. And in the middle of that, Isaac and Baekgyeong—who felt like they might smash the door down at any moment to save him—couldn’t even get close to him, locked in a standoff with Hybris.

If they can’t come to me, I have to go.

The only escape method he could attempt was moving through the ceiling ventilation passage in the direction they were. More than anything, he needed to close the distance.

Siron didn’t want to, but he rummaged through the corpse, searching for anything that could light the darkness. After feeling around the blood-soaked, lukewarm body for a long time, he finally found a digital watch. When he pressed the side button, a green light came on in the display.

Using the watch’s faint glow to pinpoint the vent opening in the ceiling, Siron looked around. He remembered there had been a half-installed toilet and sink somewhere in the room. He dragged them and set them directly beneath the vent. He braced the toilet firmly against the wall, then stacked the smaller sink on top, making a height he could more or less climb up to reach the vent.

He put one foot on the toilet. Metal creaked under his weight. It wobbled and felt unstable, but he didn’t have the luxury of hesitation. Bracing himself against the wall, Siron carefully set his other foot onto the sink. Once he barely managed to balance, he jumped in one motion and grabbed the ceiling grille.

Below him came the sound of the sink and toilet collapsing, but gunfire bursting in the corridor thundered over it, swallowing the noise.

After a short breath, Siron let go with one hand still gripping the grille and painstakingly loosened one of the four bolts holding the bars in place.

That was when it happened. His perineum throbbed, and something surged out of the hole again. His tailbone whined, and the hole clenched tight on its own.

"...Fuck."

It was obvious now. The unwelcome enemy was coming back.

"Your shooting’s pretty damn usable."

Even at Baekgyeong’s praise, the shadow on Anna’s face didn’t lift. They had just subdued four Alphas with tranquilizer darts in front of the right-side door leading into Basement Level 1. Anna said in a gloomy voice,

"If we leave them like this, they’ll drown, right?"

Baekgyeong glared in her direction with the look of someone about to lose patience.

"Archangel Anna McCarthy. Keep spending your heart that freely and you’ll be going back to heaven soon, too."

"Don’t get cute. It makes me want to beat you."

Shrugging, Baekgyeong tossed the unconscious Alphas aside like luggage, dusted off his hands, and walked up to the security gate. The gate bore the full imprint of Alphas’ grueling efforts to force open the locked door.

Judging by how many bullets had hit it, heat had pooled on the steel door until it was more than warm—it was hot. Baekgyeong grabbed the crushed door handle and pulled with all the strength in his body, but instead of swinging open, it only jolted and rattled, like something on the other side was holding it shut.

"Feels like something’s caught behind it."

"Want to do it together?"

"No. I’d rather borrow a cat’s p—"

Baekgyeong cut himself off mid-scoff and turned to Anna, struck by a sudden thought. On the thermal display, she was a muscular figure over one-eighty.

"Yeah. You might actually be able to."

"That’s a uniquely disgusting thing to say."

With her patience already sanded down to nothing by exhaustion, Anna didn’t even have the energy to get mad at every word. She ignored him and was just about to grab the handle with him.

Then light flared behind her.

"What’s a woman doing here, huh? What are you?"

At the unfamiliar voice, Anna spun around. An Alpha was standing there with a gun. Anna and Baekgyeong tried belatedly to fire the tranquilizer gun, but before either of them could even reach for it, warning shots hammered into the floor at their feet.

"Hands up. Kneel."

Baekgyeong and Anna traded a look. Even that tiny motion made the man fire in bursts at Baekgyeong’s feet. With no choice, they raised both hands and dropped to their knees. A thick wave of regret crossed their faces at being ambushed by a moment’s carelessness.

Keeping his finger on the trigger, the man pulled out a radio with the hand that had been holding the flashlight. It was the moment he flicked the switch and opened the channel—

Before he could speak, someone lunged in from nowhere, hooked an arm around the man’s neck, and wrenched his whole body backward, bending him like a snapped branch. The strength was so monstrous the man’s toes lifted off the floor.

A moment later, the struggling drained out of him. Whoever it was lowered the unconscious man carefully, then strode one step toward Anna and Baekgyeong. While the unknown figure had been choking the man out, the two of them had already drawn their guns and were aiming at the newcomer.

The fallen flashlight shone on the concrete wall, and the wall kicked the light back like a reflector. Through the haze of scattered glare, a man approached them with a hunched posture.

It was Lewis.