Chapter 333

The man was one of the three Executors the Designer had sent to Manhattan. His mission was to retrieve the laptop containing the materials that Jackson Cliff — a traitor to the organization — had leaked outside. Whatever trap Jackson had prepared, wherever the data had flowed, when the man returned to Baggers City he could not return empty-handed.

Fortunately, the clue was clear. Manhattan, Greenwich Village, Greenbox Mail Center, P.O. Box 14821. Jackson had mailed a laptop there.

The man did not know what was inside it. The fact alone that it contained materials Jackson had leaked was enough for him to assume it held something that could determine Hybris’s fate.

The starting point was the Greenbox Mail Center. After two days of searching and analyzing hacked CCTV, he learned that an elderly employee in charge of cleaning the mailbox facility handled Jackson’s mail. Extracting information from a cleaner was easier than breathing. All he had to do was hold out an envelope thick with cash.

The cleaner was frightened at first, but after checking the amount inside the envelope she cooperated obediently. She explained in detail how she forwarded the mail that arrived at Box 14821 and where it had been sent. When her story ended, the delivery route had formed in the man’s head like a map.

The laptop had moved from the Greenbox Mail Center to a luxury residential condominium west of Central Park through a dedicated courier. Entry for visitors was difficult and security was tight with a dense surveillance system operating twenty-four hours a day. The recipient was a man named Richard Pierce who lived in the penthouse.

The man entered the lobby disguised as the courier and informed the condominium’s security chief that he had mail to deliver directly to Richard Pierce. The strongly built man who looked to be in his mid-forties scanned him with a gaze filled with subtle tension before willingly granting access.

While escorting him to the emergency elevator, the security chief quietly pulled a nylon cord from his pocket. He intended to strangle the man by wrapping it around his neck. But no matter how carefully he acted, a mere Beta could never subdue an Alpha already in a state of alert.

The information obtained after torturing the security chief did not deviate from the man’s expectations. He was one of the bodyguards Jackson Cliff had hired. The person he protected was the penthouse resident — a woman in her mid-thirties named Angela Knox and her young children.

However, when the man entered the penthouse, they had already fled. Textbooks and school supplies with the children’s names written on them, family photos fixed to the refrigerator with magnets — they had fled in haste, leaving far too much information behind.

Standing by the window overlooking Central Park at sunset, he called the Designer for an interim report. But only a long signal tone continued and the call never connected. He had been unable to reach him since that morning. It was unlike the Designer, who always spared no time for his Executors. Left with no choice, he left a voice message describing the situation so far and began tracking the traces of the escaped Angela Knox.

Travel would inevitably slow with small children. Therefore they would not have used public transportation. A personal vehicle, taxi, rental car, or someone’s assistance — there were many possibilities. Fortunately, the man had not killed the condominium’s security chief. Just as he was about to leave the penthouse to secure CCTV footage, a call came in.

It was from one of the Executors who had come to New York with him from Baggers City.

“The Hybris community has gone into temporary shutdown.”

At his colleague’s words, the man felt his mind stop briefly. The Hybris communities existing both online and offline served slightly different functions but were closely connected and focused on the same objective.

Whichever had closed, it was no ordinary matter. Thinking this might be related to why he could not reach the Designer, the man spoke.

“Online? Offline? Which one was shut down?”

“Both. And that’s not all. Something worse happened.”

The man felt his palms grow damp with tension and asked,

“Something worse?”

“Ha... you really don’t know anything.”

“What is it? Stop dragging it out and say it.”

Despite the warning, the other repeatedly tried to speak only to sigh. After a long time, the Executor on the other side spoke painfully.

“The underground drainage tunnels flooded. Everything was submerged!”

It was well past midnight. The southeastern night air was chilly. A dry wind mixed with dust brushed across the back of his neck. The car was stopped at a quiet rural gas station. Flickering fluorescent lights dimly illuminated the night.

Isaac opened the fuel cap and inserted the nozzle into the opening. At that moment, as if meaningful, sticky moaning slipped through the slightly opened car window. Holding the pump lever with an expressionless face, Isaac listened to the sound.

It was not that he felt nothing. During the time he left Helso State and crossed into another state, he had watched the two beast-like men entangle their bodies and heard the sounds enough to sicken him. Like a shadow hiding in darkness he watched them with desire, yet shut out living information as if blind and deaf.

Perhaps because he had spent long hours tense, wrapped in lust and anger, he wanted to wash clean and rest somewhere safe immediately. Even a few hours — he wanted to steal precious time from his urgent life.

Isaac checked the digital map through slow satellite internet. Fortunately, there was a hot spring thirty minutes from here. It was a small villa-style lodging that accepted families and had private open-air baths.

He drove toward the hot spring facility. Though he arrived late at night, the owner was at the counter. Because he had called in advance to confirm operation, the owner — unwilling to miss even one or two groups of guests — handed Isaac a facility map and key with a kind face.

The room he reserved was the most secluded among the lodgings marked on the guide map. A quiet place where intermittent insect cries and the faint sound of wind brushing leaves occasionally broke the silence. The building, about thirty years old, was a cement structure topped with a log framework.

After parking, Isaac got out and went to the back of the van. When he opened the trunk door, the two naked men were asleep holding each other like a single body. Following with his eyes the defenseless pair sunk in dim darkness and the filthy traces on their bodies, Isaac pulled Siron from Baekgyeong’s arms and lifted him into his own.

He opened the lodging door with the key and stepped inside. Two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Memorizing the simple interior like a blueprint, he opened the curtainless front window and went outside.

Past a wide deck carrying a faint sulfur smell lay an open-air bath filled by a natural spring erupting from the ground, with overflowing water flowing toward a geyser. The temperature was appropriate. Isaac pushed off his shoes with his heel and entered the bath holding Siron in his arms, still fully clothed.

“W-what!”

Siron, suddenly awakened, screamed in a hoarse voice. The open-air bath, where hot spring water intermittently surged from the outlet, was barely thigh-deep, but falling defenseless into water where his feet did not touch the ground terrified him. Instinctively clutching Isaac tightly, he shouted for help.

“It’s shallow. You won’t drown.”

At Isaac’s voice Siron’s body stiffened like a stone. Isaac sat Siron on the stone steps built inside the bath. When his legs and hips touched the bottom, Siron finally relaxed — but not for long.

“Where are we?”

“We’ve crossed into Georgia State. This is an open-air hot spring bath. After washing we’ll rest briefly, then leave again.”

Even after Isaac explained point by point, Siron still seemed unable to grasp the situation. He only stared blankly into the dark air, as if tracing memories ruined like a swamp muddied with debris during the Heat Cycle.

Still dressed, Isaac belatedly removed his clothes and threw them onto the deck, then sat in the bath facing Siron. Isaac sat on the bottom while Siron sat on the stone steps, placing Siron’s eye level higher.

There was no lighting bright enough to illuminate the night, but starlight alone was sufficient to observe Siron’s face. The clouds had cleared, the Milky Way carved a vast path of light across the sky, and residual starlight trembled on the water like a silver curtain. Perhaps because they had passed through countless scenes of hell to reach here, the peaceful silence felt unfamiliar and unreal.

And the most unreal thing among it was Siron. His body and face were the most specially beautiful Isaac had encountered in his life. But his appearance alone did not cause the change in Isaac’s heart.

For him the world had always been a place full of danger — a battlefield where a child approaching with innocent eyes might carry a bomb instead of a toy, where no one could be trusted and vigilance could never be lowered. Yet after encountering Yoon Siron, for the first time in his life Isaac realized the solid defenses within himself had loosened.

When he looked at Yoon Siron, a smile escaped before he calculated the danger, benefit, or loss he would bring. Perhaps he found Yoon Siron somewhat endearing.

Isaac thought that if life stopped at this moment, he might be able to stop the suspicious emotion ominously beginning to boil inside him.

Siron, staring at the water with half-opened eyes, frowned as if something displeased him.

“Doesn’t the water smell like chicken droppings?”

Isaac burst into laughter without realizing it. At the clear laughter Siron flinched and stiffened. After the laughter subsided, Isaac sighed and said,

“It’s not that terrible.”

The water smelled of heated minerals — like metal warmed in water, earth rising from wet stone, and sulfur’s characteristic bitterness mixed together. And between the honest scent of nature drifted the strong mixed pheromones of Siron and Baekgyeong.

“It’s a sulfur hot spring.”

“Ah... I thought it felt slippery.”

Siron sniffed, inhaled deeply, then scooped water with his palm and mechanically splashed his dirtied body. A strange emptiness could be felt from him. Perhaps he was still submerged in the afterglow of sex.