Escape (3)
Jaeseong Samuel, who held the post of Armed Police Team Leader under the District General Security Team, had barely managed to climb aboard an escape shuttle.
The space city had been reduced to a sea of fire, and public order in every district had collapsed into chaos — but none of that was his problem, as far as he was concerned.
I'm just a civil servant! What the hell am I supposed to do about it?
He had even reached out to the higher authorities at the Monument, asking for instructions.
The only answer that came back was an order to focus on stabilizing public order.
As the Armed Police Team Leader, keeping the peace in the city was supposed to be his duty — but Jaeseong saw it differently.
In his eyes, the people at the top had abandoned him.
If I'm going to be thrown away, I might as well be the one to leave.
Jaeseong was the sort of man who could stomach abandoning others, but never being abandoned by them.
The amusing thing was that he wasn't the only one who thought that way.
Quite a few others aboard the shuttle had boarded for reasons much like his own.
Well, well. Familiar faces all around.
The head of Human Resources Management from the Entertainment District, the Medical Team Leader from the Monument's Central Hospital — he recognized every one of them.
When their eyes met, they exchanged awkward, guarded expressions and quickly looked away.
"Hey, why aren't we taking off?"
"Our sincerest apologies. I'll look into it right away."
Unable to bear the awkward atmosphere a moment longer, the Medical Team Leader picked a fight with one of the crew — for no real reason at all.
Since most of the passengers were upper-tier Capitals, the flight attendant bowed her head at once.
Tch. Pathetic.
Watching the scene, Jaeseong clicked his tongue. They were fleeing together, all in the same boat, but he still believed himself different from these people.
And he had good reason to think so — he had a legitimate excuse to leave the city.
Not long ago, an obituary had arrived: his younger brother, Yu Seong Samuel, was dead.
With his brother's funeral to be held back home, Jaeseong could leave the city without raising a single eyebrow.
Useless bastard. Good to know he's finally useful for something.
As a descendant of the Third Capital Samuel family of Titan, he had never gotten along with Yu Seong.
It was inevitable — the two of them had been rivals, competing for the right to inherit the family name.
But that was a fact known only to those inside the family.
No one in the T&C Special Trade Hub had the faintest idea how he truly felt about his brother.
With him dead, the family is mine now.
Feeling his heart grow lighter, Jaeseong closed his eyes.
"The passengers are asking why we haven't departed yet."
"We're departing now. There'll be an announcement shortly."
"Understood."
"Oh, and the Cargo Bay alert just came through. Please go check that out."
"Yes, ma'am."
The flight attendant who emerged from the cockpit headed for the cargo hold.
The bay was packed full — with the passengers' precious personal effects, and small containers slated for transfer elsewhere.
Beyond the stacked cargo, she spotted a door left half-closed.
She operated the terminal beside it and shut the door completely.
The moment the red light on the terminal turned green, the departure announcement began to play.
｢Our deepest gratitude to all customers aboard Trade Airline, a proud member of the T&C family...｣
True to its design as a VIP escape shuttle, the vessel lifted off with barely a tremor felt from within.
"Hm?"
The moment she thought she caught someone's voice, the flight attendant turned her head.
But all that met her eyes were the containers and cargo, motionless exactly where they should have been.
"Must've been my imagination."
Sensing nothing amiss, the flight attendant left the Cargo Bay.
"Vice Commander Jacob!"
"What in the world happened here?!"
Jacob, who had arrived late at the Port District warehouse thanks to the time it took to don his powered armor, demanded a situation report from his knights.
"You're saying His Lordship has been taken hostage?"
"Yes. So we're searching the area now—"
"Found something!"
At the shout from across the warehouse, Jacob and his men hurried inside.
But what awaited them was not Denver. Only the mangled wreckage of a powered suit.
"Given the absence of bloodstains, His Lordship must still be alive."
"Then we must find him at once—"
"Silence."
At Jacob's curt command, the knights fell quiet.
He glared at the ruined armor with cold eyes.
Jacob was a veteran among the knights — a man of long, hard experience.
He was certain that somewhere in that utterly wrecked debris, a clue lay hidden.
Examining the armor's scars with meticulous care, he soon found something suspicious.
Someone cut through the powered suit with surgical precision. This creature has considerable knowledge of machinery. And more importantly...
Only the communicator had been extracted. What did that mean?
Jaeseong turned the thought over — and a dreadful, ominous suspicion took shape.
"...Give me a communicator linked to the common channel."
"Here you are, sir."
Taking the device from one of his knights, Jacob pressed the button.
From the connected communicator came the voice of the master he served.
Something about it sounded off, but there was no mistaking Denver's voice.
And yet the instant Jacob heard it, he felt his blood run cold.
His blasphemous suspicion was becoming reality.
"...My lord. You said the creature was a Hulk Mutant created by T&C, did you not?"
｢T, h, a, t, d, o, e, s, n, t, m, a, t, t, e, r, I, m, h, o, s, t, a, g, e, c, o, m, e, h, e, l, p, m, e.｣
"You told me yourself. That T&C intended to study the creature and develop Hulk Mutants from it."
As Jacob pressed on, his knights felt the hair rise on the backs of their necks.
They understood, too, exactly where the vice commander was going with this.
"Which would mean, my lord, that the creature was never a monster made by T&C at all."
｢.......｣
"My lord — no. Whatever is on the other end of this line: are you truly His Lordship?"
｢Kzzt, kzztztzt｣
No answer came through the device. Only crackling static filled the silence of the warehouse.
The moment Jacob decided he'd heard enough and reached to cut the connection —
a sound emerged from the communicator.
｢Y, y, y, o, o, o, u, r, m, a, s, t, e, r, i, s, d, e, a, d, gogogogo, klik｣
The last thing that came through was Denver's voice — no, the chilling, broken wailing of the thing that had been Denver.
Tch. So that didn't work this time.
I squeezed my combat arm and crushed the communicator to pieces. I'd only brought it along to buy time for the escape — it had outlived its usefulness.
In case they try to track us from the other side.
I hammered down with my hand, grinding even the tiniest chip into powder.
The mysterious enemy had forced me to take a long detour, but thankfully, my kids and I had still made it aboard the escape shuttle.
That was close — someone came along right as I was about to shut the door.
The crew of this ship were all slated to become our rations, but eating them had to wait until we were well away from the city.
If we attacked too early and the pilot turned the ship around or did something stupid, it would only cause problems.
So the kids and I had hidden ourselves behind the containers, and the flight attendant — knowing nothing — simply closed the door and left the bay.
Halfway through, Denver had squirmed and thrashed in a desperate attempt to signal her, but his struggling meant nothing. She saw nothing.
And so we left behind the T&C Special Trade Hub — the crowning masterpiece of human engineering.
Through the small window in the cargo hold, I could see the space city: a hemispherical metropolis sealed beneath an enormous metal dome.
Only moments ago — before I'd received the knight's transmission — it had been nothing but a vast, featureless mass. Now it had shrunk until its whole outline was visible.
I was there a long time, wasn't I.
My original plan had been to meet every evolution condition right there in that city, but in the end I'd fallen short. Three Types required for evolution remained, and I hadn't finished the hunting conditions for the Cult or the Wolves either.
No point whining about it. And after this... hm?
I was gazing out at the space city through the window when suddenly the entire city shuddered.
From the heart of the alloy plate serving as the city's foundation, an explosion erupted, spewing out something like a cloud of black dust.
The black cloud surged toward open space — then, as if possessed of a will of its own, it clung back onto the city mid-ascent.
At once, a massive hole tore open in the alloy plate beneath the city. Everything standing above it was sucked into the breach and vomited out into the void.
That's a Gremlin Torpedo... but since when did it have that kind of range?
The Gremlin Torpedo was, as the name suggested, a missile loaded with metal-devouring nanomachines. A Star Union weapon, used mainly to strike enemy flagships.
For a moment I wondered if that was the threat my Predator Sense had warned me about back at the dock — but probably not. That looked like it had detonated in the city's reactor.
If we'd been even a little slower, it would've been a disaster.
Through the gaps the Gremlin Torpedo had chewed open, everything was spilling out of the city. If we'd been even slightly late on our escape, we'd have been flung out into the darkness of space with the rest.
Maybe it worked out for the best, actually.
Whoever committed the attack, I had left plenty of traces in that city. With damage this severe, running the place normally would be impossible.
If that city became a tomb, the marks I'd left there would vanish along with it.
I kept watching the collapsing space city.
From here I could neither see nor hear them, but countless humans were sinking, without end, into that bottomless abyss.
Perhaps a fitting end for a city built on sin.
Only after the city had shrunk to a barely visible speck did I tear my gaze from the window.
The Edgerton warships I'd been braced for were nowhere in sight.
Whether they'd been caught in the Gremlin Torpedo's sweep, or fled in the opposite direction, there was no way to know for now.
If the Edgerton fleet isn't coming after us...
I looked down at the paralyzed Denver.
This one's no longer necessary.
If the enemy used his household's genetic data to run a Bio Scanner on us, things would get complicated.
I'd just started to spread my jaws over Denver when I felt eyes on the back of my head.
I turned around to find No. 26 and Adhai staring at me.
Hm.
Come to think of it, both of them had fought like demons right up until we left the city. And all I'd ever given them was verbal praise — never so much as a gift.
Think of it as an investment in the future.
This whole affair had confirmed just how much potential No. 26 and Adhai had. The stronger they grew, the better my own odds of survival.
There's no telling what kind of crisis comes next.
Even against Code Black this time, winning would have been difficult without them.
And there was that unknown enemy I glimpsed before we left, too.
I might yet face enemies I didn't know — foes of unimaginable strength.
Until I'd evolved enough and gathered the traits I needed, they would have to fight at my side.
...Well. I can't exactly ignore the personal closeness, either.
Even as a human, I'd never had a single friend. Not in reality, and not in the game.
My relationship with my family wasn't something you could call good, even as a polite figure of speech.
Maybe that was why.
I couldn't deny that I had grown attached to the two of them as well.
Anyway — between investment in the future and personal sentiment, for once, I decided to give in on both counts.
[Zzz-zzz (eat this)]
｢Big Baby isn't eating?｣
｢Elder｣｢meal｣｢together｣
[Zz-zzz (I'm fine)]
｢If Big Baby doesn't eat, I won't eat either.｣
｢Agree｣
I had generously decided to hand over a perfectly good meal, and now they were refusing it. When we'd eaten Code Red's hand, they'd insisted on sharing — apparently they intended to do the same again.
Tch. That's not how it's supposed to work.
[Zz-zzz zzz (then we eat together)]
｢Yes!｣
｢Me｣｢happy｣
Having reached an agreement, the three of us looked down at Denver, lying sprawled on the floor.
Having guessed what was coming, Denver fixed us with a pleading look that begged us to stop.
"Mmph! Mmph!"
The paralysis garbled his words beyond recognition, but I doubted whatever he was saying mattered much.
I wonder if Denver knew.
The only thing he had left to offer.
It was nothing but fresh meat.