SOG Ch 162

*

“Stop! Agh, hot! Hey, you bastard! How many times do I have to tell you not to shoot him!”

Just catch him! Catch him! Seon Jae-chan was running, ignoring Seon Eun-soo’s shouts from behind.

Seon Eun-soo had just gotten burned while trying to stop another colleague from firing his gun. On one side of the corridor, the bald-head man who fired the first shot was clutching his shoulder with his eyes rolled back. Behind him, Chae Seong-hwan was running out.

To summarize the previous events:

Two gunshots from different guns rang out almost simultaneously. As Seon Jae-chan discovered the gun aimed at him and threw himself sideways, an “Agh!” erupted from the terrorist who had fired.

It was because another bullet had flown in from elsewhere with split-second timing. A bullet fired by Chae Seong-hwan, who had somehow taken cover at the corridor corner, lodged in the terrorist’s shoulder.

While Jae-chan was stunned, bang! Bang bang! Indiscriminate gunfire poured towards Chae Seong-hwan, who was hiding inside the wall. Seon Jae-chan didn’t know it, but Seon Eun-soo had recognized Chae Seong-hwan and held a grudge. Previously, when Seon Eun-soo had approached a drugged Seon Jae-chan, he had been subdued by Chae Seong-hwan.

Anyway, in that situation, Jae-chan had only one choice.

Bang!

Seon Jae-chan fired his rifle too at the ceiling. He wanted to shoot them all, but with them holding his aunt hostage, he couldn’t recklessly injure them.

The threat seemed to work, as the firepower focused on Chae Seong-hwan hesitated. Meanwhile, Seon Jae-chan sprinted blindly towards Chae Seong-hwan. He used his own body as a shield. It was a move based on trusting Seon Eun-soo’s obsession with not hitting him, but running with his back to the gun muzzle made the nape of his neck tingle.

The quick-witted Chae Seong-hwan also ran. The two instantly joined up and leaped down the stairs.

“I told you to go! Why on earth didn’t you leave!”

Ignoring Seon Eun-soo’s angry shouts from behind, Seon Jae-chan bounded down the stairs three steps at a time. He yelled at Chae Seong-hwan, who was sticking close behind.

“Ah, it’s because of you!”

Chae Seong-hwan raised his voice, not backing down.

“Isn’t that bastard the one! The one who tried to take you when you were drugged!”

Chae Seong-hwan had previously overturned Seon Eun-soo’s trunk, which was full of strange objects. It didn’t seem likely that someone with such hobbies, who was bizarrely obsessed with his younger brother, would do anything good by taking Seon Jae-chan.

Plus, that damn post-it note. Again trying to lessen the burden on this side, acting like an adult child.

“What frustrated me in the deep sea wasn’t the plutonium explosive that could blow up a city! It was ‘me’ becoming the explosive! This time too, I can’t bear becoming the coward who abandons a child and runs away. My mind is already muddled, and I don’t want to add another PTSD on top of that!”

Seon Jae-chan was dumbfounded by this sudden lengthy speech, even as he ran.

Chae Seong-hwan was also bewildered by the kid who kept pushing him away without asking for help. Of course, to a third party, they would just look like two identical characters.

Before they knew it, they were on the second floor. Seon Eun-soo, chasing madly behind, shouted vehemently.

“You bastard, stop right there! What about your aunt!”

Seon Jae-chan inwardly retorted, ‘Yeah, I’m relieved you’re there, asshole. Take good care of my aunt.’ It seemed he needed to hide Chae Seong-hwan first and then deal with the other side. If he gave up here, Chae Seong-hwan would surely die.

It took only a moment to reach the first floor. Seon Jae-chan and Chae Seong-hwan, about to dash out of the building, caught their breath.

“Oh shit…”

Chae Seong-hwan cursed under his breath. A group of over ten terrorists was rushing towards the building entrance. Coincidentally, it seemed to be the timing when the personnel who had gone out for gunfire support were returning.

They immediately turned towards the side exit, but it was already too late. Whether by radio contact or some other means, more terrorists were approaching from that direction as well.

There was no time to think. Bang! Bang bang! The two threw themselves into the basement, dodging incoming bullets. They each used breakfall techniques to roll and land, but bullets immediately followed.

“Don’t shoot! Fvck, I said don’t shoot! Did you forget the contract terms! There’s only one thing I want!”

Seon Eun-soo, belatedly reaching the first floor, barked warnings at his temporary colleagues. “Hit them instead! Chase them with batons!” While he nonsensically restrained his colleagues, Seon Jae-chan and Chae Seong-hwan ran down the seemingly endless long staircase.

Even as he ran, Seon Jae-chan mentally retraced the basement structure of Research Building 2. The locations and layouts of the animal experiment lab, immunology lab, cell culture room, UPS room, and waste disposal room seemed to unfold before his eyes.

Finally reaching the basement. The two calmed their frantically racing heartbeats and breaths, each raising their rifles to guard the pitch-black space.

“…We’re trapped.”

Chae Seong-hwan muttered. Seon Jae-chan agreed. In trying to escape the immediate crisis, they had rolled right into the enemy’s lair.

Just then, a commotion was heard from the stairway they had descended. The terrorists, having reached an agreement, were chasing after them. We’ve got them! We’ve got them! Seon Eun-soo’s elated voice echoed loudly through the sealed emergency exit. It was only a matter of time before the terrorists stationed throughout the basement would rush out.

What to do.

Seon Jae-chan bit his lip and led Chae Seong-hwan as they ran. The bright red lights of the IEDs attached everywhere seemed to chase after him as he sprinted.

Then, by pure chance, Jae-chan noticed something.

He casually glanced at an ordinary wall because he suddenly recognized something out of place. A picture illuminated by the red light of an IED. Creepy veins stretching out on the shadowy wall, no…

Branches.

Thousands of thin, faint branches stretch throughout the entire underground cavity.

As Jae-chan stood frozen, staring at the image on the wall, a sudden sense of déjà vu washed over him. Without hesitation, he grabbed Chae Seong-hwan and bolted forward, following the spreading branches, driven by an instinctive feeling. As if approaching the core, the branches gradually thickened. The thousands of branches were reduced to hundreds, then dozens, and finally became one.

Seon Jae-chan and Chae Seong-hwan arrived in front of a wall where numerous IEDs were particularly installed. It was a space recessed into the corridor. Like the lobby upstairs, it seemed an ordinary place with a water purifier and potted plants.

But there, on the wall, was a massive tree carved into the surface.

“Huff, huff, Guide Seon Jae-chan?”

Chae Seong-hwan found the sudden stop puzzling, but Jae-chan had no time to answer.

Just half an hour ago, he had been endlessly blaming himself. Was I too lazy? Was I not prepared enough? But it seems he wasn’t completely unprepared. Given that he encountered such an unexpected opportunity.

“……”

It was an ancient tree. A form with creepily detailed branches, stretching out as if dominating the entire underground research building.

The giant old tree was firmly rooted above a lake surface that reflected its shadow like a mirror. The shape above ground and the shape in the lake’s shadow overlapped like a decalcomania, centered on the horizon.

Over there! They went that way! Turn left! The commotion of the approaching pursuers faded into the background. Jae-chan, as if entranced, touched the center of the tree trunk.

Instead of a number pad or fingerprint recognition button, an English keyboard appeared, but he didn’t panic. Hey! As footsteps drew near, Chae Seong-hwan urged him, but Jae-chan kept his gaze fixed and moved his hand without hesitation. Recalling keywords like ‘self-replication’ and ‘circulation’, he entered the password that his intelligence agency colleagues had worked hard to discover.

[fractal]

The faintly blinking keypad stopped. Like a lie, the wall split open.

The two were sucked into the tree’s shadow and disappeared, and shortly after, Seon Eun-soo and his group of pursuers arrived. They passed by the tree picture, not even dreaming that Seon Jae-chan and Chae Seong-hwan were right there.

And Seon Jae-chan and Chae Seong-hwan were facing a fairly spacious area.

“……”

It was a stark white laboratory. Not only the computers stationed everywhere, but also countless unknown devices besides spectrophotometers, mass spectrometers, and large centrifuges were all emitting a pale white light in the darkness. Even the thousands of post-it notes aligned on the wall like a paranoid’s work were colorless.

And the dozens of warning lights emitted by the group of improvised explosives installed in between.

Facing the lights like the red eyes of a white snake, Seon Jae-chan couldn’t move. It wasn’t because he was overwhelmed by the alien space. It was because of the meaning of the password he had just entered to come in.

‘Fractal’. The Technician’s password that they had barely solved just before his regression, based on the sacrifices of numerous intelligence team members.

In other words, this was the Technician’s hideout that they hadn’t discovered before his regression.

Seon Jae-chan’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he reflexively shouldered his rifle. The Technician was hiding somewhere in District 5. One of the top leaders of Black Swan, the cunning black leader with an immortal body.

SECTION 11. District 5 (2)

‘Sunbae, have you heard that rumor? They say the Technician was originally a researcher.’

It was probably not long after they had cracked the Technician’s code. Kang Eun-ho, a junior at the Intelligence Agency, approached him. Perhaps because he was born and raised abroad, Seon Jae-chan was the only one in the office who would entertain the words of this particularly free-spirited guy.

‘That creepily physical old man is supposed to be an intelligent Esper.’

Seon Jae-chan responded indifferently. It wasn’t just idle gossip—what researcher could he be talking about? However, Kang Eun-ho didn’t mind.