SOG Ch 153

“Yes, I understand.”

Fortunately, the reply came in agreement.

A low, monotone voice. It sounded obedient at first glance.

‘Well… that’s typically how he is.’

Jin Dae-ho, although still nervous, understood Go Woo-jin’s attitude. This guy was the one who overturned the assessment that S-class Espers were as arrogant as they were skilled.

He glanced at the most handsome face. The epitome of the perfect Esper – good-looking, gentlemanly, and gentle. The only time he had disobeyed orders to the extent of being exposed outside the unit was during the Mentosa Island incident two years ago. The reason for that was still unknown

“Did Esper Chae Seong-hwan come along?”

At that moment, Han Tae-hoon cut through the ambiguous atmosphere and interjected.

It was a question that had been on his mind since Go Woo-jin walked in. The person who always stuck close to Go Woo-jin like thread to a needle during missions was nowhere to be seen.

“He’s on leave.”

Han Tae-hoon frowned at Team Leader Jin Dae-ho’s answer.

He hoped it wasn’t because of another illness relapse. But in any case, it wasn’t something he could afford to dwell on at this moment. Han Tae-hoon maintained a brief silence before giving a nod to the team leaders and leaving the meeting room.

As soon as Guide Bureau Director Han Tae-hoon left, Team Leader Lee Hyo-hee stood up the tablet she had covered on the table. She turned up the volume of the news she had been listening to.

-It appears the culprits are using GPS jammers… communication with the missing persons has also been cut off due to signal interference…

“When we landed. Didn’t you all see that thing shaped like a giant funnel? The one near the police barricade, not the Center.”

Jin Dae-ho clicked his tongue at Lee Hyo-hee’s inquiry. He figured she still had some novice tendencies as she had recently been appointed to replace Heo Gyu-shik, who had stepped down due to controversy.

“Didn’t it look exactly like a GPS jammer?”

The fact that she was revealing her thoughts so easily made it clear.

“Well, to me it looked more like a signal amplifier.”

Lim Jeong-wook, the leader of Guide Team 5, subtly objected. He continued to argue that it looked like an anti-jamming device to counter the enemy’s GPS disruption, but even to Jin Dae-ho, the advanced machine in the allied camp did look like a GPS jammer.

In other words, the military was actively blocking communication for those isolated inside.

“…Even if it is a GPS jammer, there’s nothing strange about it. Internal hostages might unnecessarily incite the media. It would be an unnecessary provocation to the terrorists.”

Gong Yoonjin explained in a calm voice, but the uneasy atmosphere in the conference room didn’t dissipate.

Jin Dae-ho exhaled briefly. What could it be? At a time when terrorists are committing massacres and even threatening the nuclear power plant, what is the higher-ups hesitating about?

As everyone was deep in thought, Go Woo-jin turned and silently left the conference room.

“…”

The corridor was sunk in pitch-black silence. It seemed that when anxiety reached its peak, it became a form of torment. Woo-jin pressed his broad palm against his tightening chest and took out his phone. There were messages from unit members who hadn’t been dispatched to Zone Z and were on leave like Chae Seong-hwan.

[Arriving in about 10 minutes.]

[Me too.]

[Roger.]

His colleagues must have come as quickly as possible, but his heart felt like it was burning up.

Unable to bear it any longer, he checked his chat with Jae-chan with a long, shadowed gaze. Even though he knew no messages were coming, he found himself checking every five minutes.

[There’s been an accident. Sorry, I don’t think I can keep our promise today]

Please don’t be sorry. He didn’t need to keep promises like that.

[I’m fine]

As long as he was safe.

[I’ll come to see you as soon as I get out of here]

He really wanted to see him. If only he could hug him tightly, he’d have no other wishes. He wanted to pull Seon Jae-chan close so their chests would touch, to feel the heartbeat pulsating against him, and to truly know that he was alive.

His pitch-black eyes, retracing the unanswered words, wavered darkly. He sent another message, but it only added to the pile of messages with no recipient. Knowing it was pointless, this time he checked his GPS device. Until he got off the helicopter, he could see the red dot representing Jae-chan moving busily within the Center, but now, there was nothing but a motionless blank screen.

His already anxious heart grew more restless. Finally, exhaling a sigh that seemed to scrape his vocal cords, Woo-jin raised his head.

The Center, tightly nestled against the nuclear power plant, was visible through the window. After watching the ominously rising black smoke, unable to stay still any longer, he took large strides forward. He quickly headed towards the heliport where his colleagues would arrive.

*

Why on earth were there corpses here…

Seon Jae-chan recalled Investigator Kwon Joon-young’s warning as he looked at the cold, stiff, and heavy bodies like wooden blocks. The words that ‘the serial killer is in the Center’.

He remembered the medical examiner who worked here. She seemed deeply loyal to the Center. Was she an accomplice of the murderer, or another victim? The bodies were found crammed into the narrow space without even being arranged on the autopsy tables. As if they had been hastily hidden away.

After finishing all the cleanup, the smell of disinfectant was intense in the autopsy room. Even though they had been hidden in low temperatures, the bodies hadn’t even been put in body bags, so bodily fluids had leaked onto the floor. They used the disinfectant available in the room to sanitize as much as possible.

Park Yu-ram was crouched in a corner, sobbing uncontrollably. Gu Ji-young was absentmindedly patting Yu-ram’s shoulder, but stopped abruptly due to a sudden stabbing pain in her arm.

At that moment, the door opened with the agreed-upon signal. Chae Seong-hwan entered with a grim expression after visiting another autopsy room.

“The other morgues are the same. They’re full of bodies.”

“The characteristics are the same too,” Chae Seong-hwan added in a low voice. It meant that the bodies in the other morgues also had strange smiling expressions and chest wounds.

A shadow fell over Seon Jae-chan’s face. Originally, the morgue wasn’t very large as it was used for temporary storage of bodies for autopsy. They had found six bodies in this autopsy room alone, so assuming the others were similar, there were about 24 corpses with gaping chest wounds just in Research Building 3.

Was it really possible for one killer to do this?

There was a high possibility that this was an organized series of murders. Whether it was related to the terrorists was also a key question.

“Esper.”

To break the oppressive atmosphere of fear, Jae-chan spoke up. Sitting next to Yu-ram, who was gradually swallowing her sobs, he asked Chae Seong-hwan.

“On the way here, I saw places where the floor was wet. Was that you?”

Esper Chae Seong-hwan could manipulate water as part of his elemental abilities. While coming from the emergency guiding Center to Research Building 2, Seon Jae-chan had tried to gather as much situational information as possible, including noticing patches of wet, dark cement floor.

“Yes, it was a bit of work,” Chae Seong-hwan answered.

“I kept tracking your location based on the GPS signal, but the terrorists were so persistent. I couldn’t take them with me, you know. It was a struggle to shake them off. That’s when I met Ms. Gyeong Hye-in too.”

His muttering fell into the cold air.

The body temperature that had risen due to constant fleeing and handling of corpses was now cooling down as a counteraction. It was late at night in February. Until now, they hadn’t felt the cold, but whether it was due to seeing the bodies or staying in one place, a chill was creeping up.

It was too risky to turn on the wall heating switch. Since it was a central heating system, it might reveal their location to the terrorists. In the end, Seon Jae-chan and Chae Seong-hwan quietly went out and rummaged through what had been office spaces just hours ago, returning with a small electric heater.

The heater cord was connected next to the phone charger Yu-ram had plugged in. Jae-chan, his mother, Yu-ram, Esper Chae Seong-hwan, and Gyeong Hye-in gathered and sat under the autopsy table where Jung Hana was lying. As they thawed at least their toes in front of the dry, warm air, they finally felt a bit of warmth.

“Yu-ram, you mentioned that many seniors have been taking sick leave lately.”

In the silence permeated only by the pungent smell of disinfectant, Seon Jae-chan, who had been gazing somewhere into the void with his eyelashes lowered, finally spoke. It was something he had been putting off, but now that they had discovered the bodies, it was a matter that had to be confirmed.

“Were any of them among those?”

Most of the murdered people were wearing gowns. Judging by their ID cards and name tags, they appeared to be Espers from the research wing.

If they were really Yu-ram’s colleagues, they must have been killed inside the Center. Without even having a chance to change out of their work clothes.

Suddenly, Jae-chan recalled a similar incident. Right after Black Swan’s inception, there was an incident where research Espers from certain areas went missing. It was one of dozens of cases that had been glossed over, as thousands of deaths and disappearances occurred nationwide in that one year when Black Swan was rampant.

And one more thing.

Jae-chan also recalled how he had met Yu-ram, his classmate, after regressing, and had looked at her anew. He had thought it was just because she had moved to the research department in District 5, and they hadn’t seen each other in a long time…

What if she had been caught up in the disappearance of the research Espers?

“You don’t have to ask so carefully. I’m fine, and I’m not a child.”

Yu-ram wiped her bloodshot eyes with her sleeve. She put her glasses back on properly and spoke.

“You’re right.”

Yu-ram answered, composing her tear-choked voice.

“I did my best to learn new skills when I came here. One of them was a senior who taught me that.”

This was the reason why she, who had been barely enduring the situation, finally broke down. She never expected that the senior, whom she had once complained about as being stubborn and overly meticulous, would appear as a corpse. Even though they had only known each other for about a month, it was still shocking.

She tried to maintain her composure, but her voice trembled at the end. There was no way to prevent the overwhelming sense of grief and horror from washing over her.

Seeing Yu-ram’s eyes welling up again, Jae-chan silently patted her small shoulder. He had become numb to terrorism and death after living through the era of Black Swan, but Yu-ram’s reaction, living in the current era, was perfectly normal.

“What’s so important about identifying the corpses right now?”

Gyeong Hye-in interjected at that moment.

“There are more bodies scattered outside than inside there.”

With her muttering, the group fell back into silence. Jae-chan sighed inwardly and looked only at the wall with its paint peeling off. He still found Gyeong Hye-in as unsettling as a shard of glass in his shoe.