Lilac Ward (1)
The Lilac Ward—one of the Red Cross's ridiculously numerous sub-bases. They gave it a pretty name like a flower, but what went on inside was anything but.
Outside the ward, where gray dust whipped viciously through the air, Claude Ban leaned his massive custom bike against a concrete wall stripped down to its bare skeleton and clicked his tongue.
The wind carried a disgusting cocktail straight to his nose: the stench of burning rotten flesh mixed with the sickening reek of disinfectant. On the surface, it was a medical organization. In reality, it was a den of elite psychopaths who did whatever the hell they wanted with human experimentation. That was the true nature of the bastards in those white coats.
"Hellooo~? Can you hear me, dear customer~~?"
Ban drawled lazily into Haze's smart terminal as he made the call. His hand habitually dug into his pants pocket, only for his brow to furrow deeply. Ah, fuck. He'd tossed the empty pack onto the floor of that abandoned building earlier. Of all the times to run out of cigarettes—right when he was heading into this low-tension shithole like it was just another casual house raid. Annoyance surged through him.
[I can hear you, Mr. Ban. Have you secured the location?]
Haze's voice through the earpiece was razor-sharp. The usual ice witch—calm enough that it seemed not a single drop of blood would spill from her—was completely gone. Her only blood relative, her little sister who had just barely crossed twenty, might be getting dissected alive. That terror made her voice tremble faintly.
"Yeah, yeah~ I'm roughly by the outer wall. But looking at this dump... Hey, forget the front gate—the perimeter's already a complete shitshow. If I just charge in, both me and my baby bike are gonna get shredded. Don't you have anything from the Intelli side?"
[I already told you. It's not a place one person can break through. Cameras are the baseline, and without the security codes you can't even press the elevator buttons. Even Aegis doesn't touch this place lightly.]
"So. Where's the kid?"
[Probably at the very bottom... the special isolation zone. I heard the dissection labs are down there... Mr. Ban, please hurry...!]
"The very bottom? Oh my god... Jesus Christ!! You're telling me to dig a tunnel and crawl in there right now? Hey, customer. I'm getting a migraine. At this rate, shouldn't you be adding hazard pay and joint therapy fees?"
God, this crazy bastard is making a fuss even at a time like this.
[Mr. Ban, this is hardly the time for jokes...!]
"Alright, alright. Our dear customer is gonna cry. I'll head in and pick up someone who knows the way. Who knows, maybe I'll even snag a pretty doctor lady if I'm lucky? Right?"
[Mr. Ban, please be careful! That place isn't a normal hospital—it's crawling with monsters...]
Ban abruptly cut the transmission and irritably scratched at his messy black hair. No matter how absurdly lucky he had been since birth, even he wasn't stupid enough to charge the front gate head-on—where automated turrets spat thousands of rounds per minute and security cameras blanketed every inch.
He narrowed his dull red eyes and slowly scanned the massive concrete bunker’s outer wall.
"Hmm... that should work."
The high-tech camera heads sweeping the wall crossed paths, leaving a single second of blind spot that was hell to exploit. Ban ghosted through that exact instant, ripping open the rusted iron hatch used for large-scale waste disposal with his bare hands and slipping through the narrow gap like a shadow.
"Ugh... fucking disgusting."
The inside of the ward was a hundred times worse than the outside. The ceiling and tiled floors were stained with blood that hadn't been fully cleaned, and the heavy smell of iron and decay vibrated through the ventilation shafts. On top of that, the corridors twisted like an ant nest—perfect for setting off emergency alarms if you wandered aimlessly.
"Agh... I can't just tear through this shitty maze looking for one little kid. I need to grab one useful brain and put a leash on it first."
Ban was gliding silently along the cold corridor, hugging the wall to avoid the CCTV lenses, when it happened.
In a deserted outer hallway, from inside one of the labs, a woman's piercing scream and the snickering of several men leaked through a thin metal door.
"Don't!! Hic... please!! Let go! I said stop, you crazy bastards!!"
Peering through the gap, Ban saw a woman with pink hair scattered across the cold tile floor, trembling as she sat there. Her half-torn white lab coat revealed a tight underboob top and short skirt that were shredded to rags. Her pale skin and watermelon-sized breasts—how the hell did she even carry those things—were exposed, and her heart-shaped pupils were flooded with terror.
"Eve. You still think you're a full professor? Acting all noble and pure, saying you wouldn't manipulate data—look at you now."
"That was... you people stole my project...!"
"Yeah, fuck. We took it all. You're just a washed-up failure who got caught messing with data, and we're getting promoted. Pissed off?"
The bastard talking excitedly slapped Eve's pale cheek without mercy.
Smack!
"You're nothing but a toy here now. Otherwise, we'll throw you into the dissection room alive tomorrow."
"And you fucking bitch. Isn't the way you dress already proof something's wrong with you? Filthy slut."
One guy was pulling down his pants while another held down the woman called Eve. The slightly ajar door creaked fully open.
Ban strolled in slowly with both hands in his pockets, yawning widely. His usual cheerful face was replaced by a cold expression mixed with annoyance and cynicism.
"Ah~ Nice to meet you. Ta-da. The handsome problem solver has arrived. I was just gonna pass by... but seeing this live after you bastards crawled into someone else's workplace really grinds my gears."
The sudden appearance of an uninvited guest froze the men in place.
"Hey assholes, got a cigarette?"
"You... who the hell are you?! This area is restricted to outsiders..."
The guy with his pants down panicked and lunged for the self-defense pistol on the desk. But before his fingers could even touch the grip, the toe of Ban's combat boot swung in a full arc and smashed his face to pieces.
Crack—!!
His jaw caved in, he spun once through the air, and slammed into the wall. He didn't even manage a final scream—only the sound of breaking bones.
"Y-you crazy fuck...! Security! Security team!!"
The remaining bastard pissed himself and tried to run for the door, but Ban easily grabbed him by the scruff. He lifted the man bodily and slammed his head straight into the corner of a heavy steel cabinet.
Crunch!
A dull sound like a tomato being crushed rang out as the skull split open. Bright red blood and pale brain matter oozed down the cabinet.
End of situation.
"Filthy bastards. Oh, that guy's dick is out."
Ban stomped on the fallen man's chest, rummaged through the bloodied pockets, and finally fished out a half-empty cigarette pack.
"Ooh, Greenhouse. Fucking thanks."
Ban stuck a cigarette in his mouth, lit it with an oil lighter, and looked over at Eve, who was still sitting in the corner completely out of it. The sudden arrival of a insane killing machine who had turned two grown men into bloody pulp with his bare hands filled her with extreme terror, and she shook violently.
"W-who... who are you...? Please save me... I beg you... don't kill me..."
Ban exhaled a long stream of thick gray smoke from the cigarette between his lips. He gave her trembling pale skin and the violent curves visible through her torn clothes a lazy once-over with indifferent eyes before replying nonchalantly.
"Name's Claude Ban. Handsome problem solver. Sorry, but I have zero intention of killing you. I just cleaned up some trash 'cause they were disgusting. Why are you so scared?"
Then, as if something suddenly occurred to him.
"Ah, wait. Perfect timing. Do you happen to know your way around here? The inside of this building is such a fucking mess I'm about to die of boredom. You know a girl named Yui? Supposedly the top Intelli hacker. I'm here to find that little kid."
At Ban's blunt question, Eve's bloodshot eyes shook violently like an earthquake. A monster who had infiltrated the impenetrable Lilac Ward alone and killed people as easily as breathing. Even in her terror, Eve's brilliant mind—the same one that had once earned her the title of Red Cross full professor and the label of genius—began spinning at full speed, fused with raw survival instinct.
If she let this man go now? She'd be dragged back as a plaything for more garbage and either rot away as a slave for the rest of her life or get dissected alive. She had to survive. She had to grab onto the pants of this ridiculously strong male and do whatever it took to escape this hell.
"Yui...? Ah...! That Intelli Master who came in as a test subject!!! I know her, I know her very well!"
Eve crawled across the floor on all fours and desperately clutched Ban's blood-stained combat boots and pant leg with both hands. Her pale body was completely exposed, but shame had been discarded long ago. The heart-shaped pupils looking up at him no longer held the despair of a woman reduced to a toy for horny males. Instead, they burned with a fierce determination to survive no matter what.
"Please... please take me out of here with you! I may not look it, but I was a full professor at the Red Cross! I have every single CCTV blind spot in this shitty bunker, the guard rotation schedules, and the master security codes for each floor memorized in my head!"
Eve shouted with frantic intensity as she reached under her half-torn tight underboob top and lifted her massive breasts with both hands.
"And this! It's the master keycard I secretly copied before they stole my project and demoted me!"
A single thin security card, hidden and crushed beneath those heavy missile ports. The card she pulled out, panting, was soaked with her hot body heat and the sticky sweat pooled under her breasts.
Ban exhaled thick smoke from his cigarette, glanced down at the sticky, warm-looking card, and let out a small laugh.
"Jackpot."
A breast wallet. Wow. Never seen or heard of a biological wallet like this in my life.
"Without me, you'll never make it there safely! Please take me with you!"
"You're volunteering to be the navigator? And you've even got a master key? This is straight-up lucky, isn't it?"
She was pretty good at using her head in a cunning way. In this complicated ant-hill hell, there couldn't be a more perfect find. Ban reached out, grabbed her slender wrist, and pulled her to her feet.
"Let's go, Miss Navigator. Guide me properly and we'll find the kid and get out alive as a bonus. Try any funny business and I'll blow your head off and leave. Got it?"
Eve nodded frantically while roughly fixing her lab coat. The formation of an otherworldly killing weapon capable of breaking through defenses and a brain that perfectly understood the structure of this hell.
"I'll tell you all the routes that avoid the CCTV. There's a waste disposal passage next to the emergency stairs over there that only researchers use. If we go through there, we can bypass the biometric scanners and head straight to the lower levels. Just follow me!"
Eve swallowed hard and carefully opened the closed lab door, taking the lead.