Shackles
A shackle.
Inside the hastily assembled autopsy tent, Sang-goo pulled on surgical gloves amid heavy silence, the particular squeak of rubber cutting through the taut tension in the air.
"Everyone, clear out."
At Team Leader Baek's low voice, the personnel who had been hovering around quietly withdrew.
Only Baek Sang-jin, Sang-goo, and Colonel Oh Sang-shik's body on the cold steel table remained inside the tent.
Then it happened.
Just as they were about to examine the Colonel's body in earnest, movement was sensed outside. Before Sang-goo could step forward, Team Leader Baek drew his pistol and checked the entrance.
"Dr. Jang?"
The visitor to the makeshift morgue was Jang Sun-woo. Uncharacteristically, he was wearing his round gold-rimmed glasses today. And as if part of a matching set, his hulking son Jang Seok-woo stood dumbly behind him, carrying a medic box.
"We heard that Colonel Oh had met with misfortune…."
His face dripped with regret, as though he'd come to help with anything he could.
"Ah, that is…."
Just as Team Leader Baek began to stumble over an explanation, Sang-goo cut in.
"Please come back another time. I'd rather not be disturbed right now."
Sang-goo's tone was plain yet razor-edged. Jang Sun-woo had every right to take offense, yet he simply bowed his head twice with that same sorrowful expression.
"My apologies. I got ahead of myself. Then… do call for us whenever you need anything."
"Yes, Dr. Jang."
Father and son withdrew without a hint of protest. Only after watching them retreat completely did Team Leader Baek instruct two soldiers to let no one else in, then returned to Sang-goo's side.
Sang-goo had already unzipped the body bag and was examining Colonel Oh's body, whose life had ended so horrifically.
"Do we really… have to confirm it? The cause of death seems obvious enough."
Team Leader Baek asked in a trembling voice. Instead of answering, Sang-goo adjusted the angle of the work lamp toward the body. The harsh white light laid bare the gruesome scene without mercy.
"The Big Cow was hit by an EMP?"
"Hoo… that's what it looked like."
"There are no bite marks at all. Even variants and Zombie Lords instinctively open their jaws. Which means someone besides us was inside the carrier—"
And it absolutely wasn't human.
Sang-goo's hands carefully examined the head of the body. The skull was caved in as though crushed under a massive industrial press. The eyeballs had ruptured, and the jawbone was shattered beyond recognition.
Sang-goo picked up a ziplock bag resting beside the corpse. Inside were the five pistol casings and mangled bullet heads that Team Leader Baek had collected from the scene.
"This is the strangest part of the whole incident. These were lying right next to the body?"
"Hoo… that's right."
Sang-goo lifted one of the bullet heads with a pair of tweezers and held it up to the light.
"Five rounds, all landed at close range. Look at how the heads are deformed. They didn't strike concrete or steel plate. They lodged in some extremely tough rubbery tissue—or muscle of comparable density—and then… there are traces of them being pushed back out."
"Pushed out? What on earth— you're saying the body spat out the bullets?"
"Otherwise there's no way the rounds would be rolling around this cleanly right beside the corpse. That thing isn't an ordinary zombie, and it isn't human. It's a monster with regeneration powerful enough to force bullets out of its own muscle. It's only a hypothesis, but nothing else explains it. Frankly… the timeline was far too short as well."
"You can deduce all that just from crushed bullets? I mean, the shape of—"
When Team Leader Baek refused to let the question go, Sang-goo gave a wry smile.
"I've seen it a few times before."
"Seen it… don't tell me, Sang-goo?"
Sang-goo knew that he'd grown stronger after battling the variant and receiving the serum from a man named Charles Lee. But surely not. He'd reached the point where his muscles could spit out bullets?!
What the hell?! He's straight-up superhuman!
Team Leader Baek's mouth hung wide open, but Sang-goo simply turned his gaze back to the body.
And what did that look mean? Don't go talking about my condition.
Even under Team Leader Baek's awestruck stare, Sang-goo's sharp eyes caught an abnormal swelling at the throat. He picked up a scalpel and carefully incised the Colonel's esophagus.
Snip—
"Ugh…."
Team Leader Baek turned his head away. Whether he watched or not, Sang-goo's hands never hesitated. From between the cold, congealed blood, a hard metallic object emerged.
Caught at Sang-goo's fingertips was a tiny micro SD card.
"Wh-what is that?! A memory card…? Did Colonel Oh swallow it?"
"Looks like he swallowed it right before dying so the monsters couldn't take it from him."
Sang-goo extracted the card and gently wiped it clean with an alcohol swab. But its condition was poor. Perhaps from the impact of the blow to the head, a fine crack ran through one corner of the card, and the chip's contact pins were scratched up.
"The damage is severe. The pressure from his head rupturing seems to have transmitted down into the card inside his throat. The camp's equipment won't be able to read this right away."
Sang-goo tucked the memory card deep into his coat. This would be the final record that Colonel Oh had traded his life to preserve.
Team Leader Baek's lips twitched. No equipment in the whole camp? Even without searching carefully, it seemed like a run-of-the-mill memory card should be recoverable somehow. But Sang-goo clearly didn't want to hand it over, and Baek wrestled with what to do.
"Was there anything unusual among his personal effects?"
"Already checked. Nothing particularly special. Damn shame, too… every one of the men who served with him died as well."
"Team Leader Baek."
"Yeah?"
"Something occurred to me in there. The deeper we went toward the lower decks, the more dangerous it got—so why did Colonel Oh push himself so hard? Might there have been some other intention beyond securing supplies?"
"Well…."
"How did the Colonel come to know the interior layout in the first place?"
"He said he worked on the carrier before the Zombie Break. As security chief for Decks 7 and 8. Beyond that… I'm sorry, but I really don't know."
He didn't seem to be lying. Then again, even if Team Leader Baek set his mind to lying, Sang-goo had no way to catch him at it.
The most important witness, Colonel Oh, had already gone stone cold.
"Thank you for your efforts. I'll handle the rest."
Sang-goo murmured quietly as he covered the cold body. Team Leader Baek couldn't bring himself to leave right away.
Boo Sang-goo. He'd owe this man so much that reciting the debt would make his mouth ache. But this was, unmistakably, a government-run survival camp with discipline, principles, and a chain of command.
Sharing the memory card's contents with Sang-goo afterward was one thing; surrendering it outright beforehand was another matter entirely.
"Sang-goo. I'm sorry, but I need you to hand over the memory card."
"……I think it would be safer if I examined it myself. If Colonel Oh was searching for something with a particular intent in mind—and if that something involved someone inside this camp—"
"Even so. I'm asking."
For the first time, Team Leader Baek Sang-jin had interrupted Boo Sang-goo.
The old man was right. Stuffed-shirt bureaucrat.
Old Hwang Sang-chul, with his unerring eye for people, had been right again.
"Above me there are exactly two people—the Prime Minister and the Director. Counting the technician friend who can check the card, plus me, that's four. I need you to understand that my position requires me to report up first."
"There may be things in it you can't handle."
"We'll worry about that when it happens. In exchange, I promise—whatever's on it, you'll be told everything, Sang-goo."
When Team Leader Baek pressed this far, there was nothing to be done. Helping him was helping him, and they were, after all, living as part of a community inside the camp now.
"You're right, sir. I wasn't thinking it through."
Sang-goo readily produced the memory card and handed it over. If you were giving something up anyway, saying it nicely made things better for everyone.
"Thank you for understanding, Sang-goo."
As he watched Team Leader Baek exhale in relief, Sang-goo zipped the body bag shut. Then he offered a silent prayer for the departed.
You worked hard, sir. Rest now.
The medical staff quarters at the center of Yeongdo Camp.
Dr. Jang Sun-woo drew a translucent ampoule tinged with red from a worn leather bag. Behind him stood his hulking son, Jang Seok-woo, expressionless as a shadow.
"Seok-woo, it seems your little brothers made a bit of a scene on the carrier today. From what the soldiers say, Colonel Oh's head… that has to be their handiwork, no? Worthless failures, the lot of them."
Jang Sun-woo spoke in a low voice as he filled a syringe with the crimson serum. His tone was that of a benevolent father, yet threaded through it was the cold, detached gaze of an observer handling lab specimens.
"It was my mistake for not putting down those dim-witted ones before they escaped."
"……I'm sorry, Father."
Jang Seok-woo's voice was low and dry. Jang Sun-woo drove the needle into his son's forearm and continued.
"What have you to apologize for? They had more raw physical strength than you, granted. But from the start, those things were disposable—six months to ten months of lifespan, no more—so leaving them be was the unlucky break for Team Leader Baek and Colonel Oh. They should have come aboard a few months later. Tsk tsk. Who knows if they fished anything out of there. We cleaned it all up, of course."
Jang Sun-woo slowly pressed down the plunger. The red liquid seeped into Jang Seok-woo's veins.
Seok-woo closed his eyes against the cold shiver spreading up his arm.
"How are you finding it? You've been here over two weeks now."
"It's fine… it's fine, Father. Thanks to you, every day is a good one."
"You certainly know how to say the right things. As expected—I chose well."
Jang Seok-woo knew the truth.
He was nothing more than an 'exquisitely crafted creation,' molded by Jang Sun-woo with Holton's backing. And Jang Sun-woo used the schedule of this very serum to hold Seok-woo's leash.
There had been a time when he needed injections every single day, but as the research advanced, he could now endure for up to ten days.
Yet past seven or eight days, the collapse began from within. The explosively swollen muscle would drain away in a rush, his skin would wrinkle like an old man's, and a brutal agony would set in as his organs liquefied.
Jang Seok-woo's total remaining lifespan was barely two years.
But Jang Sun-woo needed Seok-woo just as much. Seok-woo, with his human healing factor—it was only the serum produced by his body that could restore Jang Sun-woo's dying organs.
"Seok-woo."
"Yes."
"This man, Boo Sang-goo. If you went up against him, could you win?"
"……"
"Are you afraid?"
Jang Sun-woo's lenses glinted.
"I can win."
At the blunt answer, Jang Sun-woo allowed himself a thin smile.
"You've clearly gotten help from Charles Lee. The way I see it, you still can't beat Boo Sang-goo. Your idiot little brothers, maybe."
"……"
"Go outside and hunt down those worthless brothers of yours, and you may yet extend your own lifespan."
Jang Seok-woo's eyes snapped wide open.
"You can extend my lifespan?"
"Yes. Your body, at ninety percent complete—it can become whole. Naturally, you'd live past those two years, and then some."
The throat of the always-stoic Jang Seok-woo trembled.
Jang Seok-woo had lived like a great beast locked in a cage. With a single outstretched hand he could smash his father's skull to pieces—but there was a reason he did not. Part of it was that the man held his lifeline. But the greater reason was fear.
He had watched, again and again, how many prototypes just like himself had died horrific deaths. The fear implanted in him from the moment of his birth had taught him to recognize Jang Sun-woo as the perfect predator.
"Curious about the method?"
"I want to know."
"Heh heh heh heh. First we have to learn about Boo Sang-goo. We need to locate Charles as well. Yes—come to think of it, this might be a fine chance for you two to get acquainted, no?"
"Me, speak with Boo Sang-goo?"
"Even if he's a natural-born one, you two have a fair bit in common. There's plenty to be gained through him. Let's watch for the right moment."
Jang Sun-woo's fishy laughter filled the room. Jang Seok-woo bowed his head and clenched his fists, the veins in his bulging forearms writhing.
I want to break free.
There was only that one thought in Jang Seok-woo's mind.