SOG Ch 149

Terror swept into the emergency room in an instant.

As people retreated hesitantly, Jae-chan recalled hearing a loud explosion just moments ago. Was that the sound of the nuclear plant exploding? There was no vibration though… He was lost in thought.

Suddenly, Seon Jae-chan felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

His instincts preceded his judgment. As he instinctively drew upon his abilities and spun around, he saw the muzzle of a gun protruding from a gap in a bag. But it was already too late. The Espers had pulled out their rifles and aimed.

Bang-!

The piercing crack of gunfire ripped through the air of the center. Asbestos powder showered down from the aging ceiling, and the muzzle, which had initially been pointed upward as a warning, now shifted toward Jae-chan’s mother, Gu Ji-young.

Start with the Esper.

The terrorist’s bleak lip movements were etched into Seon Jae-chan’s eyes in slow motion. He reached out his arm just as the trigger was pulled again. Bang! Blood splattered.

*

The emergency center was a scene of utter chaos.

With every gunshot, blood and screams were everywhere. Blood spattered on the emergency sheets, walls, and rail curtains. Someone had turned off the lights, but the carnage was not hidden under the dim fluorescent light coming from the guidance bureau corridor.

Seon Jae-chan was barely maintaining his sanity while holding his mother in his left hand and Yu-ram in his right.

The screams of innocent people pierced his eardrums. Suddenly he realized his left hand was damp. It was the hand holding his mother. He desperately hoped his mother wasn’t seriously injured.

Jae-chan recalled the moment just before when the first stream of blood had spilled in the emergency center.

As soon as the terrorist aimed his gun, Jae-chan pulled his mother. Bang-! The bullet grazed past, narrowly missing its mark, and blood splattered. Seon Jae-chan cradled his mother as she collapsed, using his ability to shield them as he dropped to the floor.

After that, his memories were jumbled. Gunshots passing overhead, people’s screams, crawling haphazardly while holding his mother with one arm. The curses that seemed to fall by his ears, “Fuck, where did they go!” and finally the sudden darkness as the emergency room lights went out. He couldn’t tell what happened and in what order.

In any case, the lights in the emergency center went out.

It was February, when the sun sets early. Even though they were Espers, the sudden blackout prevented the terrorists from continuing their gunfire, wary of hitting one another.

However, they quickly adapted to the darkness. As soon as the terrorists identified friend from foe, they resumed their hunt. ‘Shoot! Just shoot!’ shouted a crude voice, and bullets were fired.

The people who fled to the emergency center entrance were the first targets. Bang! Flashes of light flickered in the darkness as bullets struck the unsuspecting backs of those trying to escape. Blood streaked the glass doors as flesh and bone were pierced.

The loud alarm stopped when one of the terrorists shot the embedded speaker. In the midst of that chaos, Seon Jae-chan forcibly moved while maintaining a concealed state, clutching his mother. Crawling on the floor to avoid stray bullets, he discovered Park Yu-ram hiding behind a trolley.

Seeing the light switch above her pale face, he realized she was the one who had turned off the lights.

Thanks to Yu-ram’s quick thinking, he and a few others were able to save their lives. Seon Jae-chan pressed himself tightly into the corner formed by the emergency bed and wall, holding his mother and Yu-ram in both hands with a pale face.

From then on, it was a scene of slaughter. It still was.

“Fuck… We should have killed all the Espers.”

The guys who had gone around to the guiding room swore repeatedly. It was common for terrorist groups to prioritize ambushing Espers first.

“Three escaped. Chase them.”

It was when the man with the stone-like face who had been leading the situation gave that order. The redhead who had been sticking close by spoke.

“…What about that one?”

Underneath his mottled, dyed hair, his pupils shone with a perverse delight. At the same time, the leader who received the question aimed his rifle at the pregnant woman. The sound of her gasping was heard, and the redhead hurriedly said, I got it, I got it, grabbing the leader’s wrist.

“Don’t shoot. She can’t move anyway… Let’s kill her slowly.”

Laughter mixed into the last sentence. At the same time, Seon Jae-chan came to his senses as if doused with cold water.

These bastards deserve to be thrown in a pit.

He wanted to punch the mouth that treated weak, ordinary people with such disregard.

Meanwhile, gunshots continued to ring out from outside. Judging by the considerable amount of gunfire heard earlier, the shooting wasn’t happening in just one place. They clearly had accomplices.

They probably targeted today when most Espers had left due to the collision accident. Maybe they rejoiced this morning when they heard the news of the accident, thinking their chance had finally come. Or perhaps they even engineered the accident.

‘Could the nuclear plant explosion also be their doing?’

If so, he thought they must be lunatics. If they blew up the nuclear plant, they’d be exposed to radiation too.

He didn’t know how much time had passed.

The terrorists soon left to chase after the escaped Espers. Seon Jae-chan, who had been crouching tightly with Yu-ram and his mother, waited for a few seconds before carefully getting up.

There were at least a dozen visible corpses. Ignoring the momentary feeling of dizziness, Jae-chan confirmed through the vertical blinds that all five terrorists had left the emergency center.

“It hurts… It hurts so much…”

Those were his mother’s first words as she pushed Jae-chan away, right after he deactivated his concealment state.

Seon Jae-chan looked at his palm that had been gripping his mother’s arm. Bright red bloodstains were spreading along the lines of his hand.

“Let me see.”

“…! It hurts! Don’t touch it. Never mind me… check on the pregnant woman over there.”

His mother insisted in a thin voice. Jae-chan had no choice but to approach the emergency bed where the pregnant woman lay motionless.

She was crying continuously.

“It’s okay now.”

It’s okay, Jae-chan repeated. She grabbed onto him with strong force, as if he were her lifeline. Just as he was about to support the pregnant woman to help her up:

“Don’t.”

Gu Ji-young, approaching while clutching her injured right arm with her left hand, advised.

“We don’t know if it’s false labor or real labor… And since she was brought in unconscious in the first place, she shouldn’t move without a doctor’s diagnosis. What if her water breaks?”

Seon Jae-chan lowered his gaze to his mother’s arm, which was still bleeding, then nodded. He quickly went to the storage room and brought a folding bed.

“I… I have a car…”

Yu-ram, who was helping load the pregnant woman onto the stretcher in place of Jae-chan’s injured mother, stammered. She meant she had a car in the Research Building 2 parking lot.

But Jae-chan shook his head.

Unlike in movies, cars absolutely cannot stop bullets. Yu-ram seemed too flustered to hear, but outside, besides gunshots, the sounds of brakes screeching and vehicles crashing into walls were frequently heard. Whether people or cars, they’d become targets the moment any movement was detected.

Why were they killing people?

Was massacre their goal? Thoughts of the unprecedented gun rampage and the perpetrators’ unfathomable motives made his head feel like it was about to split open. Jae-chan shook off these thoughts and firmly grasped the stretcher with Yu-ram. They hurriedly moved towards the guiding room.

That place was just as terrible. Seon Jae-chan warned Yu-ram and his mother not to step in the bloodstains.

“It would be troublesome if we leave footprints. Walk carefully.”

Among the corpses were naturally people he knew. People he had been talking with just moments ago about whether to call an ambulance were now lying lifeless, their unfocused eyes having lost decades of life. Jae-chan tried not to dwell on the unjust deaths of those who had lived diligently. Suddenly, he realized he hadn’t yet found the body of Lee Gal-ri, the splinter recovery Esper. He hoped she had managed to escape outside safely.

He had hoped to find Chae Seong-hwan on the way, but couldn’t spot him. They only encountered a few rooms with open windows. The only consolation was that Chae Seong-hwan, being an A-class Esper, was unlikely to be easily defeated.

Seon Jae-chan entered a guiding room that had no corpses or bloodstains.

“Urp-“

As soon as the door closed, the pregnant woman dry heaved. It was clearly due to the shocking situation. Jae-chan and Yu-ram quickly lowered the stretcher onto the bed.

Seon Jae-chan didn’t turn on the lights, but signaled to his mother in the light seeping through the vertical blinds. He was worried she might not understand, but his mother immediately approached the pregnant woman.

Whether due to the effects of her mental ability, the pregnant woman’s breathing noticeably calmed.

“What’s your name?” Seon Jae-chan asked softly.

The pregnant woman answered with a tired face.

“…Jung Hana.”

“Yes, Hana-ssi. How about the contractions? You said earlier you felt like you were going to give birth.”

“I guess it was false labor… It should have been false labor.”

Despite her seemingly stabilized complexion, a faint sob mixed with her trembling exhale. Seon Jae-chan continuously reassured her that the mother’s health and state of mind were most important.

Hana-ssi wasn’t the only one who needed attention.

“What do we do… What do we do…”

Yu-ram, who had collapsed to the floor right after putting down the stretcher, had been repeating just those words. Ironically, his mother, whom he had worried about most, seemed to be in the best condition. Unintentionally putting his mother’s turn last, Jae-chan moved close to Yu-ram.

“Yu-ram. Yu-ram.”

“Uh…”

“Look at me.”

He took off her crooked glasses. He wiped off the blood droplets on the lenses and put them back on her.

“Did the nuclear plant really explode?”