Chapter 187
Chapter 187
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 187
Chapter Title: Interrogation (2)
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There were a lot of underlings.
It felt like I’d become an animal trapped in their enclosure. Of course, they were here to subdue me.
At any rate, thanks to the convenient excuse I’d come up with, it didn’t seem like they’d kill me. There wouldn’t be another specimen like me.
The one in surgical scrubs approached with a syringe filled with Green Dream.
“Once you collect my biometric data, let me go.”
I said with a smile.
I knew full well they wouldn’t listen.
As expected, Yates ignored me.
“It’s surprising that you even think you can leave.”
The elder glanced at the underlings lined up in a row.
They were all in suits and sunglasses, ready to shoot me at a moment’s notice. Tranquilizer rounds, probably. The kind that could knock out an elephant without a problem.
The gun barrels that had been trained on me from the study showed no sign of going away.
With my limbs bound to the chair, I couldn’t move.
It wasn’t that I lacked confidence in escaping.
“My God.”
The one in surgical scrubs muttered.
“Green Dream really has no effect.”
“Amazing.”
Yates stroked his chin as he muttered to himself.
“How could this happen?”
“We believe it’s a rare variant.”
The researcher replied.
He gripped my chin with his right hand and flipped back my eyelids with his left.
I stayed still without moving. Though I had no intention of sitting here for long. I needed to get back and apologize to Ye-hyeon.
Just thinking about that document still made my stomach churn.
The researcher began drawing blood from my vein. Feeling the uncomfortable prick of the needle, I looked past his shoulder.
White walls. A small TV mounted in the corner of the ceiling.
Six underlings surrounding the restraint chair, and the door firmly locked.
How could I persuade these guys?
As I pondered, I drew in a sharp breath.
Had the researcher just jabbed some unknown drug into me?
That was part of it, but not the main reason.
I suppressed the urge to open my mouth.
A sentence appeared on the TV screen.
[Idiot]
Why did it feel like I was hearing a voice?
[You refused my lab table, but you climb onto theirs willingly?]
I never climbed on willingly.
I just blacked out in the study and got caught by the elder.
I want to refuse all kinds of lab tables!
[I can’t let them put you on a lab table before me.]
Why the “before me”?
[ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ]
Ah, it’s Jaeyeon.
[✧٩(ˊωˋ*)و✧]
I lost the will to speak.
My determination to rack my brain and escape vanished in an instant. Why bother when those lunatics would come drag me out soon enough?
Wait. I think I had a similar thought when I was kidnapped.
A nauseating queasiness made me furrow my brow.
No need to worry about escape anymore, so I might as well say what I had to while waiting for rescue.
“About the Supreme Commander’s documents.”
I swallowed bile and spoke, drawing Yates’s gaze to me.
“Shred them.”
The elder didn’t move.
Then a sneer curled his lips. Not a surprising reaction.
Well, it was proper to try persuading with words before resorting to violence.
“Rookie… Do you think you’re in a position to negotiate? Indeed. A bold idea fitting someone who dared infiltrate my study.”
“You can’t kill me. And isn’t it too sleazy to call child abuse by those bastards a weakness? It won’t even work.”
“Why not?”
Yates shrugged.
“I think it’s a perfect excuse. You must have read the perpetrators’ suspicious statements too.”
“I did, but what can you do with that? Ye-hyeon isn’t at fault anyway.”
“You really know nothing.”
The elder let out a scoff.
“The media are turning over every stone for dirt on the Supreme Commander’s past.”
“Disgusting talk.”
“And if we toss them something like that amid it all, imagine the fallout? Perfect fodder for them to tear into. Stimulating enough to hit headlines immediately. Once they have the attention, release a story about the perpetrators’ mysterious deaths, and the rest falls into place.”
This man was exactly the type to do something like that if needed.
The guilt coiled in my gut began to unwind. I’d been agonizing over whether it was right for me to barge in and wreck the place on my own whim.
But with every word he spoke, the guilt faded, leaving only rage.
“I wonder if you’ve ever heard that you should never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.”
Of course I had.
I’d seen brutal power struggles among the elite on Earth. I’d taken out plenty myself. Those who tried to turn their own kind into lab rats.
How much effort I’d poured into rooting out those who despised us minorities.
All in the past now.
What mattered was the creature before me now.
Ignoring my spinning vision, I blinked.
Kwaaang!
In that instant, the room’s door exploded.
Six gun barrels swiveling toward the door.
The researcher in panic, Patrick Yates tensing up.
The underlings fired into the thick smoke.
Tadadadang! Tadadadadang!
Tang, tang, tang, tang, tang! Tang, tang, tang, tang, tang!
Didn’t something just roll in?
A grenade?
Kwaaaaang!
My mind blanked for a moment.
Ringing in my ears drowned out all sound. My vision went white, then black.
I regained my sight amid tearing pain.
Shrapnel from a Green Dream grenade had hit me.
Throwing something like that into this cramped lab.
I looked down at two underlings reduced to unrecognizable chunks of flesh.
“It hurts.”
Tang, tang, tang!
Bullets punched into the brains of the remaining twitching underlings.
Jaeyeon stepped inside, trampling the corpses.
Clutching an urge to grab my right side, left ribs—or whichever leg it was—I grumbled.
Thanks to Yoon swiftly positioning himself in front of me at astonishing speed, I’d gotten off this lightly. Otherwise, I’d be dead too.
“Friendly fire?”
“You blocked it.”
Yoon replied as he lowered his body bunker.
He didn’t spare a glance at Yates slumped on the floor. Yates had survived. His nearby underlings had thrown themselves to shield him.
The elder stared at Jaeyeon in a daze.
Mistaking this for Colton’s assault, no doubt.
“But loading him into the car like this will cause problems.”
Yoon said after freeing me from the restraints and checking my wounds.
I let out a hollow laugh.
A bomb going off at this range—obviously there’d be problems.
“Your condition’s bad.”
“Yes. A bomb went off right in front of me. Rescue ops are tough because the responders care about the hostage’s safety.”
I spat up blood with a cough but still said my piece.
Yoon and Jaeyeon didn’t bat an eye, naturally.
Jaeyeon grinned and cupped Yates’s cheeks with both hands.
“Yates~!”
“Jaeyeon, don’t kill him yet.”
“Absorb him.”
As I hurriedly called out to Jaeyeon, Yoon spoke.
I tore my gaze from Jaeyeon and slowly looked up at Yoon.
“Like the Level 10 did.”
Is that what you want to see?
Is that why you pushed things this far without restraint? To test my abilities while you were at it.
Staring up at Yoon, I grinned.
“No thanks.”
Yoon raised one eyebrow.
“Suicidal? Or can’t remember how?”
“I have a physiological aversion to that technique.”
I rose slowly from my seat.
Luckily, the shrapnel had only grazed my leg, so walking wasn’t an issue.
“I won’t use it unless I’m one step from death.”
“That’s now.”
“I can endure it now. Patch me up.”
As I spoke, I walked toward Yates.
Jaeyeon released Yates’s cheeks and grinned at me.
“Yates.”
I spat blood and said.
“Shred the documents.”
“You crazy bastards.”
Yates growled through gritted teeth.
“Insolent fools! You think you’ll get away with this? This is my mansion. I won’t die quietly!”
“I said shred the documents.”
Eyes downcast, I repeated myself.
“I can’t stand seeing them in your hands.”
Wheeeeeeng!
Instead of answering, Yates reached into his pocket.
He’d pressed some button. Forgetting the pain amid the rage coiling around me, I raised my head.
A familiar AI voice rang out.
[Releasing all test subjects.]
“What about that test subject?”
“Dead!”
Jaeyeon said cheerfully, resting her chin on her hand.
“I cut off its head and hung it on the wall! It was a lifer criminal—paid its dues properly, so praise me.”
“Human?”
“Obviously.”
Jaeyeon laughed as if it were a ridiculous question.
“What else would it be?”
Lately, I’d been thinking often about the changes I’d brought.
Things like this.
All of it.
“Looks like more of those kinds are coming.”
Yoon approached and offered me a sword.
Blinking at the longsword, my master explained.
“We’re done letting you get shot.”
“Ah. Sorry.”
“If you lose more blood, it’ll be dangerous. Physiological aversion or not, do the absorption if it gets risky.”
Come to think of it, we didn’t even have blood packs.
We could search the underlings, but trusting anything from them was the issue. No telling what was mixed in their blood injections.
No time to check each one anyway.
After Yoon gave me emergency treatment, I looked at Yates again.
Yates clutching his phone.
“You with the Commander?”
The elder panted as he held out the phone.
A bomb detonator?
Narrowing my eyes and preparing to dodge, Yates spat out words.
“Sent it all to the media.”
What?
“All the data you were freaking out over deleting.”
My vision went white.
I stood frozen, forgetting how to react. Yates’s words didn’t compute.
Sent what? Ye-hyeon’s info?
All of it?
“By now, my subordinate’s walking out of the mansion with the documents.”
The elder flashed a venomous grin.
“Already contacted the reporters!”
Why do these creatures always thrash like this on the brink of death?
Was it because their existence was already erased from the world, leaving not even a name after death, driving them to extremes?
“They’ll run the story the moment they get it. And it’ll all go public! Every last bit! Photos too!”
Yates screamed.
“You dare touch me, knowing your place?!”
His voice rose.
“You dare touch me, not knowing your place!!”
The floor littered with corpses.
I absorbed the dead.
Half my reason was gone. I lost myself to intense emotion. Cold rage ignited into flame. My senses dulled under the flood of feeling.
I didn’t hear what Yoon or Jaeyeon said.
Naturally, I ignored Yates too.
It had been ages since I’d felt such pure rage. I’d grieved, resented, suffered—but not burned like this.
Not gotten so furious I couldn’t see straight.
The technique adhered to my body as naturally as yesterday.
The blessing I’d received.
What the World Tree had bestowed on me.
With my wounds healing, power remained.
As long as it wasn’t burned to ash, there was always something to absorb.
“Bury the whole mansion.”
I said, then drew my blade.
“You, your underlings, and the documents they’re holding—everything.”
I unleashed a sword strike.
***
“My God.”
Eric Airhart, arriving leisurely at Patrick Yates’s safehouse, let out a disbelieving chuckle at the unbelievable sight.
“Looks like a massive airstrike hit.”
“Prometheus and the scientist are heading back to HQ.”
Shashinsky reported without hiding his stunned expression.
The red-haired man tapped his tablet with long fingers.
“They seem to have gotten late word on the Black Badger raid. Falcon’s underlings who left the mansion with them have vanished again.”
“We won’t find them even if we try. Forget that captivating existence for now.”
Eric Airhart gave the order, then stared at the mansion for a long time.
More precisely, at the site where the mansion had been.
The building’s skeleton lay bare like after a bombing. No survivors, surely.
Prometheus’s wrath had wrought this.
The ace up Colton Wiseman’s sleeve, now Lee Ye-hyeon’s ace, had done it.
“And yet he hasn’t fully regained his true power.”
Airhart chuckled hollowly, then slowly shook his head.
“I get why the ancestors acted that way.”
If he’d faced the Titans back then, what attitude would he have taken?
Would he have worsened things out of fear like them? Or provided a tiny breakthrough like Colton Wiseman, now at the top?
That breakthrough that caught Hildebert Talib’s eye?
“Ifs” held no meaning in history, they said.
“But once he regains his memories, Falcon’s mansion won’t stay safe either.”
Airhart muttered with a smile.
He spent a good while longer amid the traces of fury.
Wishing he could one day meet the eyes of Prometheus, finally restored to memory, brimming with bitter regret and hatred.
***
“Ami!”
I burst into the hospital room.
“Choi Ami!”
“Hilde!”
Ami beamed at me.
“Did you bring Java Chip Frappuccino?”