Chapter 323

Isaac fired grenades at the enemy and hurriedly ducked back inside through the doorway. With only a wall between them, the escape route was in the Cell right next door. But in a rash decision, he had locked the steel door—and now, the only way to reclaim the escape route was to blow the door apart with a bomb.

The problem was that he’d lost the bomb and the detonator remote in Lewis’s attack a moment ago. It had to be nearby, but it was a small inorganic object, so it didn’t show up on the thermal imaging display.

“Where’s the escape route?”

Anna’s shout cut through the ear-numbing gunfire. Isaac answered.

“Beyond the door you’re standing at, there’s an escape route connected to the storm drain.”

Anna yanked on the closed door with all her strength.

“It won’t open.”

“It’s locked. I got the hostages out and then sabotaged it.”

Stunned, Anna raised her voice.

“Why the hell would you—? Aren’t you escaping too?”

Beside her, Baekgyeong snarled as if he had a guess.

“Looks like he was planning to die.”

A belated realization hit Anna and she swallowed a harsh breath. Baekgyeong was convinced Isaac meant to use the torrential rain on the morning of the twentieth to drown the Designer, Siron, and even the Alphas inside. Anna hadn’t doubted it, either, but things were unfolding differently. She looked at Siron.

“He’s alive. Aren’t you trying to escape with him?”

“Maybe he got scared once it was time to actually die.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

The frantic back-and-forth across Siron froze at Siron’s single question. Right then, the spray of fire from the front made the steel door quake with a roaring vibration. Seizing a short lull, Isaac fired off grenades in quick succession. Coldly, as if barking an order, he said,

“Escape first. We need to find the remote.”

“Remote?”

“The bomb is already attached to the door, but I lost the detonator remote. Because your brother jumped me.”

“Then blow the door with gunfire.”

Isaac shook his head at Anna’s suggestion.

“The range is too short. Ricochets off the steel door will kill someone.”

More than anything, they had no time. There were less than twenty minutes left until the bomb Isaac had planted at the detonation point went off. Once the scheduled time passed, the Nathan River would pour in through the Deep Drainage Tunnel entry like a dam breaking, and this place would become a massive tank. It was all a result Isaac himself had set in motion.

“There’s only one way. Move to the entry route connected to the Water Level Monitoring Station.”

Baekgyeong spoke with biting sarcasm.

“That entry route you made us dig at all day, thanks to you collapsing the tunnel.”

With the memory of endless digging, Baekgyeong added coldly. Isaac stayed silent—like Baekgyeong’s words had handed him something he needed to seriously weigh.

“I’ll buy time. Find the remote.”

Before Isaac even finished, automatic fire burst again from deeper down the corridor. Rounds shattered concrete, throwing up clouds of dust. Everyone instinctively ducked back into the Cell to avoid the line of fire—everyone except Siron, who lowered himself and felt along the floor.

“Wait. I found it! Th-This—this looks like it!”

Siron shouted and thrust his hand up. Unlike the other four, who had the thermal imaging camera giving them a view, he was trapped in total darkness. Isaac stepped toward Siron, snatched the remote from his hand as Siron looked around, unsure who to pass it to.

“It’ll explode. Get behind the wall.”

Isaac shoved Siron behind the Cell’s wall, checked the corridor, then crouched beside Siron, tucking in close to avoid the blast’s reflected shockwave.

“Cover your ears.”

The moment Siron clapped his hands over his ears, Isaac pressed the remote and detonated the bomb. Heat blasted through the opened doorway, and a dull vibration that numbed the ears shook the air.

“It’s open. Let’s go.”

At Baekgyeong’s words, Isaac answered with hard finality.

“No. We’re going down.”

“Are you insane?”

“We can’t keep getting chased like this. We have to make them believe we escaped through the storm drain.”

As if there wasn’t time to explain, Isaac seized Siron’s wrist and ran. Not far from the escape route was a Security Gate. After waiting for everyone to get through, Isaac closed the gate and cut off the airflow. It was to keep Siron’s pheromones from spilling to the other side and drawing pursuit.

Isaac slid the latch fixed to the doorframe into the steel door’s groove so it wouldn’t open, listened to the presence outside, then hurried onward.

That was when something in his view snagged unpleasantly. Lewis McCarthy had broken from the group. He passed Isaac—and then did something unexpected. Lewis suddenly bent at the waist and inhaled the body scent of a man collapsed on the floor.

“What are you doing? Hurry up!”

Anna McCarthy snapped, tense with impatience at Lewis’s abrupt move.

“Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”

“What are you doing.”

“Someone I know. ...Thank God he’s alive.”

The question Lewis’s strange behavior left behind was answered a moment later. He dragged the Alpha, dumped like baggage on the floor, into a corner. It looked like he was trying to keep anyone passing through from stepping on him.

Rejoining the group, Lewis spoke without a trace of humor.

“He was kind. ...Said he enjoyed watching my drama. If we’d met outside, I think we could’ve been friends.”

Anna stopped dead, as if her feet had fused to the floor. The man Lewis had moved was one of the men Anna had knocked out with the tranquilizer gun when they’d passed through here the first time. The tranquilizer’s effect lasted at least eight hours. If Isaac’s plan happened the way Baekgyeong suspected, there was a high chance those Alphas would drown before they even woke up.

Baekgyeong, who had been watching Anna’s guilt-wavering reaction with sharp eyes, warned her.

“Anna. We don’t have time to stall.”

“I know.”

As if forcing herself back into order, Anna drew a deep breath and started walking again. Lewis immediately reacted to the subtle tension running between Baekgyeong and Anna.

“What was that just now?”

“What was what?”

With a shrug, Anna acted like it was nothing and closed the widening distance to the people ahead. She felt Lewis’s gaze probing insistently, sharp enough to sting her back, but she ignored it.

She wanted to ask Lewis what Hybris meant to him. He’d grown numb enough to conscience to kidnap an innocent researcher without hesitation, yet he still cared about an unconscious Alpha enough to stop even in the middle of an emergency—had he become that used to the people here? And Lewis had even tried to kill Isaac, hating him for piling up Alpha corpses into a mountain of bodies. Part of Lewis was clearly filled with Hybris, yet she couldn’t ask anything. Anna McCarthy, who once feared nothing, had become a coward after Lewis went missing.

In silence, they went down the stairs and reached Basement Level 2, then moved into the right-side passage. It was so narrow only two people could barely squeeze through, and it reeked with a musty stench, but the right-side passage connected to the facility rooms—including the Electrical Room—and the Alphas’ sleeping quarters.

With a horrifying tension, Anna listened as hard as she could. Only their own footsteps and rough breathing scrambled her eardrums; she didn’t sense anyone following. But it wasn’t time to relax. They’d faked an escape through the storm drain route, but at any moment they could still die to a single strike from Alphas who caught up.

Anna measured the remaining distance in her head. About five hundred meters ahead was the second Security Gate—the place where she and Baekgyeong had split roles and committed murder. After the gate, another 1.2 kilometers would bring them to the section Isaac had collapsed with an explosion. After that, the path ran for a while in steps spaced far apart, and finally, after a vertical passage, their destination would appear: the Nathan River Water Level Monitoring Station. They would finally leave this hateful underground world.

But the thermal imaging camera battery was draining faster than she’d expected. The display slowly washed into gray, the boundaries dividing heat sources growing blunt.

“Three hours minimum, my ass.”

Could she get out safely with Lewis before the battery died completely? Anna kept checking if Lewis was still behind them. Lewis didn’t seem particularly invested in escaping. He didn’t look like he’d been shot—if he had, he would’ve fallen behind the escape line long ago. And it didn’t seem to be the hyperaroused symptoms, either; with Siron nearby, his condition should have eased. It was as if a deep darkness had taken root inside him. The light was gone from the brother who used to feel like sunlight.

“You’re too slow. From here on, we run.”

Anna, lost in thoughts of Lewis, snapped at the voice behind her.

“My battery’s almost dead, so I can’t see well. It’s as dark as the deep sea in here.”

At her complaint, Isaac rummaged in the bag behind him, pulled something out, and handed it over.

“What is this?”

Instead of answering, Isaac clicked on the flashlight behind Anna.

“If you turn on a flashlight, we’ll give away our position.”

“The passage here bends.”

When Isaac shone the flashlight ahead, the shadows of the people in front spilled across the whole tunnel. The merged silhouettes looked like one enormous monster. Startled by the sudden light, Siron and Baekgyeong turned back.

“Are you insane? Turn it off, now!”

Baekgyeong shouted from farther ahead, but Isaac ignored him and kept shining forward. Anna understood what Isaac meant. The path sloped gently upward, curving in gradual corners, and long-distance sightlines were blocked by the walls.

Anna looked down at what Isaac had handed her. It was a stick about fifteen centimeters long with a strap. She recognized it at once. A glow stick.

If the flashlight wasn’t broken, why would they need glow sticks? As Anna opened her mouth to voice the question, Isaac brushed past her and said,

“No time to waste. From here on out, full sprint.”

“I’m already running myself to death!”

Anna snapped, panting.

“If we move this slowly, we’ll drown.”

As he spoke, Isaac handed glow sticks to Lewis and Siron.

“Drown?” Siron asked, staring in confusion at the stick in his hand.

“Did the weather forecast change?”

Baekgyeong glared at Isaac, grinding his teeth.

“Something worse happened than that.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. What else is there?”

Before Baekgyeong even finished, the floor trembled faintly, and metal parts in the tunnel ceiling gave a soft shiver. It wasn’t a huge vibration, but it was strong enough to clearly transmit through the soles of their feet. Then, after a slight delay, a deafening roar thundered through the tunnel as if it meant to swallow everything whole, echoing like a storm.