The Bound Researcher
I froze for a moment with the cloth in my hand, then offered an awkward greeting.
"Thank you."
Looking back on what I'd been doing, I had to admit I'd thrown myself at everything without the slightest restraint. Even so, I didn't feel like I was pushing too hard. If anything... I was almost enjoying myself.
A peaceful everyday life without a single incident would still have been best, of course. But even this wasn't half bad. Maybe it was because I was exploring a world from a game I loved — only now it was real.
I'm even learning things I never knew from the game...
I would have been having even more fun if it weren't for the whole limb-severing quest. Saying any of that out loud would only make Mo Hae-in look at me even more like I was insane, so I kept it to myself. Instead of voicing my honest thoughts, I scrubbed my face vigorously with the scrap of cloth she'd handed me.
Seeing the red soak into the fabric, I could understand why she'd been treating me like I wasn't in my right mind.
While I cleaned myself up from a state that had been worse than a zombie's, Mo Hae-in and Gwak Han-muk took in a bit of food as well. Well — Mo Hae-in had a little. Gwak Han-muk had quite a lot.
Gwak Han-muk shoveled snack after snack into his stomach without end, then smacked his lips. For someone who'd eaten that much, he didn't look particularly full.
"You can have more. There are plenty of places to find food."
"Nah... I gotta watch my figure..."
Muttering something that barely counted as a reply, Gwak Han-muk crunched through a lollipop for his last bite. I glanced away for a second, and when I looked back, only a bare stick remained.
Squatting there, staring blankly at the candy stick pinched between his fingers, Gwak Han-muk met my eyes, flashed a grin, and stood up. Then he tossed the stick on the floor and ground it under his heel. It wasn't a cigarette — I had no idea what he thought he was doing with a lollipop stick.
While the three of us topped off our hunger and thirst gauges, Je Hyeon-o sat on top of the jeep. Already a carrier of the BT-Z virus, he often fell outside the Trial's rules. In Dead Zone Deal, he didn't need to fill hunger or thirst, and he couldn't be infected even if a zombie bit him. If he'd entered Haspack, he probably wouldn't have been able to equip the toy limbs either.
That was why Je Hyeon-o was waiting for us to finish eating. Watching him look down at us from above, I felt a little like an animal in a zoo.
Hope the show's entertaining for you, sir.
Having already enjoyed the convenience of having Je Hyeon-o around, I very much wanted to stay on his good side. But the moment our eyes met, he clacked his metal fingers like he was playing a piano, so I dropped my gaze at once. Best to stay out of his sight as much as possible.
After a brief meal and recovery, I packed only the essentials we'd need right away into a backpack. Once I slung it on, I checked the rooftop HVAC system. Fortunately, it hadn't been destroyed and was still running fine on emergency power.
I began the briefing for our entry into the Research Institute.
"Our first objective is to find the surviving researchers."
The Research Institute here in Dead Zone Deal was a long, low building — two basement levels and five floors above ground. Unlike the National Institute of Infectious Diseases where the Trial had hatched, everything was gathered in a single structure rather than split across multiple research wings.
The fifth floor was the most important. That was where the high-risk pathogen lab was located. The Biosafety Level 4 — BSL-4 — laboratory was the critical site for researching a vaccine against Dead Zone Deal's zombie virus.
"Under normal circumstances, the surviving researcher would be hiding on the third floor. But the situation's changed, so they're likely somewhere else."
In the game, the institute's last surviving researcher is found hiding in a janitor's closet on the third floor. The player gives food to the dying researcher and clears out the zombies so they can reach the fifth-floor lab. The researcher unlocks the sealed laboratory and begins work on the vaccine. That's when the delivery quests kick into high gear.
But now there were four surviving researchers. They weren't all going to fit in a cramped janitor's closet.
"My guess is... they're probably already in the lab. Fifth floor."
Je Hyeon-o had swept the zombies early on, so they would have gathered supplies then and built barricades to protect the most important laboratory. They'd likely run into a hidden zombie in the process and taken a casualty. But that was all speculation.
"So if we don't find them on the fifth floor, we check the third as well?"
Mo Hae-in added her thoughts immediately.
"Yes. Just in case. And confirming the researchers is important, but we also need to check quickly whether the True Ending conditions are lining up..."
That was something I had to verify myself, so I offered the most efficient suggestion.
"What if we split into two teams and run the operations simultaneously?"
"Yeah. We'd better listen to Goyo hyung-nim."
Mo Hae-in nodded after Gwak Han-muk, equally on board. I tried to ride the momentum and quietly settle the team assignments as well.
Me and Captain Mo on one team!
I had a perfectly reasonable justification — we'd already synced up in Haspack. And Gwak Han-muk had the means to restrain Je Hyeon-o if he tried anything, which made them a good pair.
"Then for the teams..."
But I never finished the sentence.
Screeeech.
A hideous sound of metal scraping metal. Je Hyeon-o dragging his metal hand across the jeep.
The black wings shifted, slow and deliberate. Feathers folded with a rustling clatter, and the wings vanished from Je Hyeon-o's back. He hopped down from the jeep, walked over, and stood beside me.
That seemed to mean he wanted to go together...
I looked at Gwak Han-muk and Mo Hae-in. The two of them were already discussing how they'd search on their own. They seemed convinced that now that Je Hyeon-o had come to his senses and accepted me as a teammate, he wouldn't attack anymore. Unlike them, with their stamina depleted, he'd also be well-suited to protecting me.
There was something the Captains didn't know. I had brought up Zero to Je Hyeon-o. I'd carelessly touched the one nerve he would never forgive — and I couldn't exactly confess that to Mo Hae-in and Gwak Han-muk.
I was already standing out enough, talking about Trial strategies and items. If I stood out any more, the tacit permission I currently enjoyed might shatter.
The one silver lining was that I didn't need to worry about Je Hyeon-o telling them about Zero or the system windows. He was the kind of person who didn't even say the things that needed saying. He wasn't going to go out of his way to announce that Han Goyo was something other than human.
The moment he decides I'm a threat, he'll just handle it himself.
He'd recognized me as a teammate, so he'd probably let most things slide — but if I did something that grated on him beyond a certain point, he'd deal with me on the spot. The fact that he didn't even bother hiding how much he wanted to kill me made that abundantly clear. For all I knew, he was coming along now just to find an opening.
I really hope I never have to use Execution on Lieutenant Colonel Je...
Carrying all that worry with me, I ended up on a team with Je Hyeon-o. We set the rally point as the fifth-floor laboratory.
Oblivious to what I was feeling, Mo Hae-in and Gwak Han-muk opened the rooftop door and vanished down the emergency stairs to carry out the operation. Now only Je Hyeon-o and I remained on the roof.
I turned to look at him. Je Hyeon-o still had the wide-eyed emoticon up on his goggles. He did seem like he'd follow my lead.
"...We, uh, need to go to the second floor."
Fighting our way through Dead Zombies from the roof down to the second floor would take a fair amount of time. But with Je Hyeon-o here, there was no reason to walk. I hadn't even said anything, but he seemed to have had the same thought.
He pulled a leather glove from his inventory. The moment he laid the black glove over his left metal hand, a bright light flared and it transformed into the shape of a human hand.
So those are the Crow Gloves.
With a Crow Glove on one hand, Je Hyeon-o looked a little less threatening.
A sudden grip. He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck without warning, then sprinted across the rooftop... and jumped off, with no notice whatsoever.
The sensation of falling was dizzying. Je Hyeon-o dropped fast and drove his metal hand into the wall at precisely the second floor. In the same motion, he kicked the window in and flung me inside.
"Ugh...!"
I nearly tumbled across the floor with the shards of glass, but managed to catch my balance and stand. One human hand, one metal hand hanging at his sides, Je Hyeon-o climbed through the window into the corridor as if nothing had happened. Emergency lights glowed here and there along the hallway. A long shadow stretched from Je Hyeon-o's feet.
"Graaah!"
Dead Zombies that had heard the window shatter came charging, eyes gleaming. He gestured at me with the human hand wearing the leather glove. Stay back. You're in the way. The instant I flattened myself against the wall, Je Hyeon-o swept his metal hand sideways.
A whoosh as the air split, and five lines carved across the zombies' bodies. Then came a wet, slapping sound. The zombies that had rushed us collapsed in pieces.
Whatever uncharitable thoughts I'd been harboring when he threw me on the floor vanished on the spot.
"Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Je."
His strengths and weaknesses were extremely clear. Personality-wise he was a bit much, but his competence meant you got to clock out early — that kind of superior officer. I attended to the man who'd cleared the zombies in a matter of seconds with genuine, cheerful devotion.
"This way, sir."
Our destination was the Research Director's Office. On the way there, I paused briefly in an office.
"Would it be all right if I asked you for a very small, extremely minor errand?"
Je Hyeon-o looked at me as if to say, go on. I beamed at my superior officer.
"Farming food."
From the third floor up it was mostly research facilities — analysis rooms, labs — so food was usually most plentiful on the first and second floors. The number of researcher mouths had gone from one to four, so as long as we were already on the second floor, it made sense to secure supplies for delivery.
Light flickered across Je Hyeon-o's goggles.
He can display actual letters too...?
I'd never known that — in the game, Je Hyeon-o almost never spoke. Wondering privately whether he could display longer text as well, I headed into the office with him.
Unlike the hallway, the emergency lights weren't on inside the office, leaving it pitch dark — but that wasn't a real problem. I knew where all the food was, and Je Hyeon-o could see in the dark.
"Third desk from the left, bottom drawer — chocolate bars. And on the desk next to it, move the plant pot and there's a bag of gummies."
I just called out the coordinates, and Je Hyeon-o farmed them in a blur, tossing everything into the backpack. All I had to do was follow him through the dark with the bag held open.
This is easy. This is so easy.
I'd been uneasy when it was just the two of us, but he was far more cooperative than I'd expected, and things were going smoothly. I made the most of Je Hyeon-o's convenience.
We finished looting the office, and we were nearly at the Research Director's Office when it happened. A faint zombie sound drifted through the dark — grrk, grrrk. It must have woken at the window shattering, but strangely, it sounded muffled, like something trapped.
But there shouldn't be any trapped zombies on the second floor.
There was no telling what had gone sideways. The sound was coming from the direction of the Research Director's Office, so I picked up the pace. The closer we got, the more the zombie noises mixed with a dull thudding — something slamming into something — and the sound of a person crying.
And when I reached the Research Director's Office...
"......"
"Goyo."
Je Hyeon-o called my name. His voice was thick and rough, like a beast's, with a thread of amused laughter running through it.
I should have said yes immediately, to prove I was still useful. But this time, I couldn't answer.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
A zombie kept slamming its head into the reinforced glass door. Both arms and both legs were bound, and a gag was clenched in its mouth. The only thing still free was its head, which it used to ram the glass over and over. A researcher ID card swung from its neck.
I stared at the zombie, dazed, then slowly lowered my gaze. The ID card, stamped with a name and a photograph, came into sharp focus.
There was no mistake. He was the researcher who was supposed to develop the vaccine.