Chapter 327

"I'm fucking dying."

Baekgyeong hitched up Lewis McCarthy’s body on his back with a grimace and thought that all he wanted in the world was a warm shower and a soft bed.

Trying to walk what felt like a thousand miles with a man as heavy as he was—maybe even heavier—made it feel like he was being punished in hell for sins from a past life.

They’d been freed from the Alphas chasing them, but the path back up to the surface was no joke. Unlike when they first went down into the drainage tunnel, every one of them now had a physical handicap.

Lewis had taken a bullet to the spine and was paralyzed from the waist down. Baekgyeong, running on a body that felt one step away from sudden death, had to carry him anyway. Anna must have been shot while they were running—she was limping on her left leg and had no choice but to lean on Yoon Siron for support.

Thankfully, the warning signs of Siron’s Heat Cycle had calmed down. Baekgyeong couldn’t tell if it was the stillness before the storm or if it was fading for good, but either way it was a relief. The last thing he wanted was to lose his mind in this shitty underground tunnel and roll around with Siron like an animal.

Baekgyeong hitched Lewis up again as the dead weight kept sliding down his back. Lewis didn’t even twitch. The man who’d cried himself hollow like he’d lost his whole family right in front of them was now draped over Baekgyeong’s back without a sound, limp and compliant as they moved. The longer it went on, the stranger he seemed—like he was turning into a vegetable, no, like a plant that had been ripped out by the roots.

After hauling themselves up an impossibly tall vertical concrete passage, they finally emerged through the Water Level Monitoring Station they’d used at the very beginning. There were more corpses than there had been the first time they stepped inside. It looked like remnants of Hybris who’d been lying in wait by the entrance to catch escapees had been attacked by Isaac—who’d come up first—and wiped out to the last man.

As the four of them arrived, Isaac was pulling a rifle out of one corpse’s hand. He ditched his own weapon—its ammo completely spent—slung the dead man’s gun instead, and then checked them one by one: Anna, Siron, Baekgyeong, and Lewis.

"We move now. I left a car parked under the elevated road."

When they came out, the sky that had been black was slowly brightening, the horizon barely washed with the faint light of dawn. The riverbank was quiet and sparsely trafficked, but if they waited until it got properly light, they could end up being seen.

They climbed up the embankment and approached the roadside. When Isaac drove the Ford Van out from the parking area beneath the elevated road and stopped on the shoulder, the four of them—who had been hiding in the riverside brush—scrambled into the vehicle.

The rear seats had been removed and converted into cargo space, so there were only the front seats to sit in. Aside from Isaac at the wheel and Anna taking the passenger seat, the rest of them pressed themselves down onto the floor of the cargo area without even a seat belt. The moment the van started moving, Baekgyeong, wearing a severe expression, began frantically digging through Isaac’s duffel bag.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for the suppressant."

After tearing through every bag in the back searching for Rut Suppressant, Baekgyeong snapped at Isaac with his patience worn raw.

"Bazelli. Where is it?"

"None. I used it."

"Fuck, what? Your Rut isn’t even close!"

"Severe stress disrupts hormones. I suppressed the possibility of early onset."

Baekgyeong’s gaze shook violently. No matter how much he liked having sex with Siron, he knew this wasn’t the time to spend three straight days and nights doing nothing but that. The thought that some bastard had stolen the suppressant and that Rut could hit in a situation like this made rage surge up hard enough to turn his stomach.

"Taking it early doesn’t even work!"

"I know."

"Then why the hell did you take it!"

As if resurfacing from deep thought, Isaac wet his split lips with the tip of his tongue.

"I needed to confirm whether it could act through a different mechanism."

Baekgyeong’s emotion blew past anger and landed in pure awe.

"Hah. I’ve never seen someone be this fucking useless to my life. You were going to die anyway—what were you trying to confirm!"

Baekgyeong felt Siron flinch beside him. Siron was pressed close to him, listening to the exchange with an expression and an air Baekgyeong had never seen on him before. Then Anna cut in.

"I still have tranquilizer rounds. We’ll deal with your Rut with that. Anyway, that’s not the important thing."

Turning around, Anna stared worriedly at Lewis, who was sprawled on the floor like a corpse.

"Lewis is in bad shape. We have to go to a hospital right now."

Isaac refused instantly.

"I can’t allow that. Any hospital with an emergency room will be under surveillance."

"Then what the hell are we supposed to do! He’s going to die!"

Lewis’s condition was only getting worse. His pulse was normal, but he showed no response at all, like he’d slipped into a coma. And Anna wasn’t fine either. The bullet had hit the outer muscle of her thigh, sparing her a fatal wound, but the risk of bleeding and infection was high—she needed urgent treatment.

"If you want, I’ll do emergency surgery."

"You’re not even a real doctor!"

"I’m more competent than some hack who does nothing but inject Botox."

At Isaac’s flat certainty, Anna’s face crumpled as if she might cry.

"You shot Lewis. How am I supposed to trust you with him?"

"Then refuse. I’m not eager to grant mercy, either."

Anna wanted to reject him and insult him, but unfortunately she couldn’t think of any other option.

"How are you even going to do surgery? You going to rob a veterinary clinic?"

"There’s trauma gear in the car. First, we get out of Baggers City."

"What are you talking about? We don’t have time to wait—this needs to happen now."

Isaac answered with a snort.

"Unfortunately, an Alpha doesn’t die from a pathetic wound like that."

Anna turned her head and demanded of Baekgyeong in a heated voice.

"Is that true?"

Baekgyeong nodded.

"If he spends a month in a wheelchair, even paralysis below the waist will stand up. That bastard did it."

"Fuck. What is he, a salamander?"

Still not fully convinced, Anna couldn’t suppress her blunt admiration as she glared at Isaac. She didn’t want anyone to catch the relief in her chest, so she asked in a deliberately sharp voice.

"If we leave Baggers City, where are we going?"

"New York."

Anna and Baekgyeong shouted almost at the same time.

"What?"

"What did you say?"

Baekgyeong demanded, incredulous.

"You’ve got to be kidding me. Why are we going there?"

"Jackson Cliff has materials there. I heard he gathered information that could become Hybris’s disgrace onto memory cards and collected them in a Manhattan post office box."

"Why would Jackson Cliff collect dirt on Hybris? Wasn’t he the Designer?"

Isaac answered.

"He wasn’t. The Designer was someone else."

Turning Isaac’s words over, Anna asked, unable to believe it.

"Wait. You met Jackson in the tunnel?"

"Yeah. He was locked in a Cell."

Isaac briefly explained how Jackson had been abandoned by the Designer and imprisoned in an underground Cell because he’d been preparing to blow the whistle. He did not mention that he had killed him. The moment he said that, he would have no choice but to expose his intent to kill Siron along with it.

"Then Jackson is probably drowned by now."

"Yeah."

Isaac wore a faint smile as he studied Anna’s rigid face. Jackson’s death didn’t seem to register for her as the ordinary death of a villain. Baekgyeong, who had been listening in silence, asked.

"If Jackson wasn’t the leader, then who the hell was it?"

"I haven’t identified him yet, but I did obtain the vehicle license plate of the person presumed to be the Designer. Rachel, was it?"

As if she’d been struck in the back of the head without warning, Anna jolted.

"Rachel? Why Rachel?"

"You said she works at a traffic violations processing center. I want you to ask her to look up the license plate."

Anxiety made Anna grind her teeth. Maybe it was because she’d witnessed too many deaths today, but everywhere her feet touched felt like hell. She didn’t want to drag Rachel—whose greatest adventure in life was safely experiencing danger through mystery novels—into this hell any further. But she couldn’t deny how badly they needed her help.Books & Literature

Then a voice came from behind her.

"I know who the Designer is."

Siron’s single sentence dropped a sudden silence over them. While everyone stared at him, no one rushed to press him for more. After a long stretch of quiet, he tossed out one blunt line.

"He was seriously not right in the head."

Siron fell silent again. Everyone waited for him to continue. Time passed, and Siron, still looking lost in thought, spoke with worry.

"But I don’t know his name."

"What about his face?"

"That’s... I don’t know his face either. It was dark, so I couldn’t really see. Ah! His voice sounded like he’d be handsome."

So you don’t know him at all. Everyone swallowed the words that rose to their throats. Isaac switched targets without missing a beat.

"Call Rachel."

"I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like a good idea. There has to be a way to find out without Rachel’s help."

Siron suddenly cut into their exchange and asked.

"I’ve been curious—who’s Rachel?"

"There’s this tacky woman who’s obsessed with knitting. You don’t need to know."

If every place Anna went for the last few days had been hell, Yoon Siron was a man who carried hell around with him—like a generator that produced disaster on an industrial scale. Anna answered coldly, wary of him taking an unnecessary interest. Before her insult had even finished landing, her phone vibrated. A bad feeling washed over her as she pulled it out. An incoming call from Rachel. Anna swallowed hard, hesitated, then carefully hit accept.

"Rach—"

Anna winced and pulled the phone slightly away from her ear as Rachel’s words poured out like a bombardment. As she listened in silence to Rachel’s long stream, Anna’s expression began to change by degrees. Staring into empty space with a drifting, disbelieving gaze, she then turned her eyes to Isaac, who had been focused on their conversation, and spoke.

"So, Rachel. You’re saying you’re with the Hostages right now?"