The Creature That Spoke
The elevator shaft behind the equipment room gaped like a wound laid bare, exposing the building's raw innards. Yu-jin stepped back with her radio in hand.
"Special Response Team Two, you are cleared to enter the equipment floor. Seal the entrance. Team Three, block the lower shaft and the adjacent stairwell. If any mutants break through to the upper levels, engage them but do not pursue. Research division and specimen collection unit, remain on standby until I authorize otherwise."
Crisp, precise acknowledgments crackled back through the radio. In moments like these, Yu-jin became the perfect soldier.
Ha Yul swept her flashlight beam across the shaft. Yu-jin finished her transmission and moved to her side.
"What do you see?"
"Judging from the traces left behind, it's at least bigger than the one we killed below."
The thing below had been a failure. Something more stable waited above it. Whether it qualified as a success or not, it was almost certainly stronger than the mutant they had just put down.
Ha Yul studied the outer rails again. The scratch marks along the wall were nearly uniform. These were not human fingernails but the trails of something harder, longer, inhuman. The spacing was consistent. A creature that had fully devolved into a beast could not have kept such rhythm. Human habits still lingered in the pattern—step, pull, pause, climb again.
"It definitely went upward," Ha Yul said quietly. "Not fleeing. Moving as if following a predetermined route."
Yu-jin gave a short nod. "Then we go up."
The emergency steel ladder beside the shaft looked long abandoned, yet it still held the weight of two people. They climbed with their lights dialed to the bare minimum. The radio chatter and footsteps of the special response teams below gradually faded, replaced by the heavy silence pressing down from above.
Between the fourth and fifth floors, Ha Yul froze. Yu-jin instantly dropped into a lower stance. A half-open inspection hatch appeared beside the shaft. The door had been torn outward from within, its edges twisted, the corner still smeared with blood that had not fully dried.
They emerged from the hatch into a much wider space. The ceiling soared high overhead, thick ventilation pipes and steel support beams running like corridors. Sections of the wall had been ripped away, allowing slanted daylight to cut through the gaps in the exposed concrete framework. For an upper floor of an abandoned building, the strange brightness felt ominous. A monster might hide in darkness, but a mutant basking in sunlight? This was no ordinary creature.
Blood trails continued across the floor. Unlike the dragging smears below, these looked closer to footprints. Irregular, yet clearly made by something moving on two legs. A palm print marked one wall. The fingers were elongated and unnaturally splayed, but the gesture of gripping was still recognizably human.
Ha Yul paused in front of it. "It's walking like a person."
At that moment, a faint metallic clang echoed from above. Both women looked up at once. A black silhouette was slowly shifting among the pipes and equipment clusters near the ceiling. Slightly larger than a human. Its arms and legs had lengthened, but it had not fully transformed into a monster. Abnormal muscle and alien tissue bulged around its back and shoulders, while its neck appeared far more stable than the failure they had seen below. Half its face remained. The mouth was torn open, revealing fang-like teeth, yet the nose, forehead, and eye sockets stubbornly clung to human bone structure.
Most importantly, it was clearly looking at them. Yet it did not attack first. Crouched atop the pipe, it tilted its head as though evaluating them. The half-dried blood beneath its chin shifted slowly.
"You're late," it said.
The voice was hoarse, the vocal cords shredded, but the words were unmistakable. It was not mere mimicry. If the mutant below had only parroted human speech, this one still possessed language.
Ha Yul offered no reply. Her gaze had already mapped the creature's shoulders, pelvis, ankles, and the distribution of weight along the pipe. It would be fast. It was also preparing to run. Escape mattered more to it than a direct fight.
The mutant spoke again. "Down there… it's dead, isn't it?"
It sounded like a question, but the tone was that of someone confirming a prediction. It recognized the lower creature as kin, yet clearly separated itself from the failure.
Yu-jin moved first. The gunshot cracked through the upper equipment bay like a whip. The first round targeted the shoulder, meant to throw off its balance. But the creature was astonishingly quick. It twisted on the pipe, dodged the bullet, then slid sideways with eerie smoothness. Far cleaner than the one below. Less awkwardness meant greater stabilization.
"It's fast," Ha Yul said. Before the words had even left her mouth, Yu-jin fired twice more. The mutant was already retreating deeper into the maze of steel.
Ha Yul sprang forward without hesitation, karambit adjusted in her grip. She closed the distance by leaping from one structural beam to another. The mutant countered with a sweeping arm. Elongated fingertips raked across a steel pipe, spraying sparks like embers. Ha Yul dropped low, slipped beneath the strike, and drove her blade toward its flank. The cut felt shallow. The muscle density was on another level even before regeneration. The skin beneath was impossibly dense, the fascia reinforced like armor.
"Harder than the one below!"
"Its regeneration will be faster too!" Yu-jin shouted, drawing her sword. The pistol returned to its holster as the reinforced blade gleamed in her hand. At the same time, a thin layer of her blood qi coiled around the edge. The transition was quicker than it had been downstairs. They could not afford to lose this one.
The mutant let out a strange, gurgling laugh. "Still… too early."
Then it fled, cutting diagonally through the steel framework. Had it fully become a beast, it would have charged in bloodlust. This one was different. It possessed a fierce will to survive and escape, and it judged the situation with human-like calculation.
"It's running! Cut off the right side!" Yu-jin barked.
Accelerated by her blood qi, Yu-jin blocked its path while Ha Yul sealed the gap from the side. The instant the mutant planted its foot on a concrete pillar to stop, Yu-jin's sword rose from below. The blood qi-infused slash carved deeply through both the pillar and the outside of the mutant's thigh. Blood sprayed.
Yet the creature swallowed its scream and spun, slamming itself against the wall. The wound was already writhing, beginning to regenerate.
Ha Yul pressed the advantage. The karambit flipped from right hand to left, targeting not the throat but the back of the knee. Stopping its escape came first. The curved blade grazed the popliteal tendon. The mutant staggered but did not collapse. It was noticeably tougher than the one downstairs.
"Ha Yul!" Yu-jin's warning sliced through the air. The mutant's other arm was already whipping in from the side.
Ha Yul twisted, but the claws still tore through her coat at the shoulder and arm. Burning pain flared, yet she refused to retreat. Instead she pressed even closer. At this range, the opponent could not make large movements either. She slipped beneath its flank and drove the karambit in once more—this time beneath the ribs. The mutant made a choked, wet sound.
"Why… go this far…"
It wore an expression of genuine incomprehension at her tenacity. Yu-jin would probably feel the same. This was not how the usual Ha Yul fought.
In that moment, a voice brushed through Ha Yul's mind like a fleeting breeze.
Morning light. A glass of water. Wet hair. The loose warmth lingering on the bed. Yoon Chaewon had smiled softly as she spoke those words.
The thing before her now was exactly what she could not afford to let slip away.
Ha Yul's breathing deepened. The distance was reckless. Normally she would have stepped back to reset, but she did not. The instant she withdrew the karambit, her left hand went to her waist. The axe. The moment the heavy hand axe filled her palm, her movement changed. Where the karambit hooked, pulled, and tore, the axe chopped and severed.
As the mutant twisted to flee again, Ha Yul swung the axe in a throwing arc. The blade sank precisely into the clustered alien tissue between shoulder and neck. A heavy, wet thud rang out. The mutant staggered and crashed against the steel railing.
Yu-jin did not miss the opening. Her sword flashed horizontally. Blood qi wrapped the edge as it carved from the mutant's left flank all the way across to its right arm. A mortal wound. The creature's right arm lost all strength and dangled uselessly.
Even so, it did not stop. Bleeding heavily, it twisted over the railing and leaped deeper inside. Its escape route was not random. At the end lay another passage—a pre-prepared exit. As a being designed for this exact movement, it knew the way out.
That knowledge made Ha Yul even more desperate. "We can't lose it," she muttered. She drew her final weapon. A hammer. Short-handled but brutally heavy.
The instant the mutant tried to kick through the half-torn machine-room doorframe, Ha Yul closed in and brought the hammer down like a thunderbolt. The crunch of flesh and bone being pulverized echoed. The strike landed exactly above the pelvis, where spine met hip joint. The mutant's lower body collapsed. Its fleeing form pitched forward, blood smearing a long trail across the steel-plate floor.
It screamed. Not the roar of a monster, but a horribly mangled cry that sounded as if it had been torn from a human throat.
Yu-jin switched back to her pistol. At this range the sword was less practical. Rounds slammed into the mutant's back, shoulders, and waist, pinning it in place.
Ha Yul retrieved her karambit. The axe remained buried in its shoulder. The hammer-shattered pelvis twitched, attempting to regenerate, but the process was slow. Too many wounds had been opened. No matter how powerful the healing factor, the cost remained. And it had spent even more energy trying to flee.
The mutant clawed at the floor and turned. Its eyes were still alive, bright with terror and frantic urgency.
"No… I have to… go up…"
Again those words. This time they did not sound like an implanted command. Whatever waited above, the creature wanted to reach it. Trapped between human and monster, it thrashed in the space between.
Ha Yul stared down at that face for a brief moment. Then she drove the karambit deep into the side of its neck, severing the carotid artery and the surrounding fascia—the most critical and urgent pathways for regeneration—in one vicious pull. Hot blood erupted. The mutant's body convulsed violently. The wound writhed, trying to knit itself closed, but Yu-jin's sword plunged in beside it. The blood qi blade sliced deeper beneath the gaping injury.
The mutant's mouth opened and closed. Its pupils trembled. Its jaw shook as though trying to speak one final time, but only bloody foam bubbled out. After one last massive spasm, the elongated fingers scraped across the floor and went still. Its breath ended.
Morning sunlight continued to pour through the torn outer wall, dust drifting like white motes within the beams. Black blood and red blood mingled with the sharp smell of gunpowder.
The monster that had spoken in human language could speak no more. Yet even in death, enough of its human face remained to make the corpse far more disturbing than any beast's remains.
Ha Yul exhaled roughly, breathing deeper than usual. A single misstep could have cost her an arm or her throat. Yu-jin knew it too. She sheathed her bloodied sword and said shortly, "You overdid it this time."
Ha Yul shook the blood from her karambit without answering. Yoon Chaewon's voice still echoed faintly inside her. Go and make sure you don't miss the strange ones. Even if she explained that those words were why she had pushed so hard, Yu-jin would not fully understand. Or perhaps she would, but some things lost their weight the moment they were spoken aloud.
Instead, Ha Yul checked the back of the dead mutant's neck. A similar insertion scar near the cervical vertebrae as the one below, only deeper and more precise. The blood crystal inside had likely been embedded with far greater stability.
Yu-jin crouched beside her and examined the wound. "We need to recover it. The remaining corpse and all blood crystals will be turned over to the Murim Agency Cooperative Research Institute. This is no longer something we can handle alone."
Ha Yul asked, "Can we trust that institute?"
"There's a capable woman there named Han Seia," Yu-jin replied, eyes still on the wound. "At the very least, if we want to learn how far this has spread, we need to gather more evidence."
Yu-jin lifted her radio. "One additional upper-level mutant eliminated. Position secured. Dispatch the specimen collection team."
She added, "Prioritize preservation of the artificial blood crystal in the cervical vertebra. Minimize damage to the corpse as much as possible."
Acknowledgments returned through the radio. Ha Yul rose to her feet and gazed once more toward the direction the mutant had tried to flee—the torn wall, the continuing pipes, the shadows that seemed to lead somewhere further. She could not yet say with certainty that it was over. But at least she had seized what she could not allow to escape.
Soon the sound of support personnel climbing the metal stairs rose from below. Listening to their approach, Ha Yul closed her eyes, then opened them again. The morning bed, the scenery she had seen there, the words she had heard—all of it came back to her. Because she could still remember those things, she remained able to speak in human language and hunt monsters that resembled people. And that truth lingered far longer than the corpse of the mutant she had just killed.