White Blood (2)
Before anyone realized it, the first episode had ended. In the darkened student lounge, the only sound was the collective gulp of throats as everyone stared at the black screen.
"…This is freaking awesome."
One student's voice broke the silence, and heads nodded all around.
"Honestly I was on the fence because I thought it'd be cringey, but at this level? Yeah, I can keep watching the next one."
"Did you see that action scene early on where Ryu Yeon-woo fights the machines?"
His friends nodded in agreement.
"Korea's production values have gone way up."
Someone smacked their lips like they still wanted more, just sitting there, until the others turned to stare.
"…Ji-woo, what are you doing? Hit next episode already."
"Ah, damn. We can watch the next one right away. Thank god."
He'd completely forgotten it was a Netflix series—next episode available instantly.
The friend closest to the computer grabbed the mouse, clicked "Play Next," and episode two began.
A massive jolt flipped every space upside down.
Kuuung—.
Kiiiiiik—.
"Uwaaaah!"
"Kyaaak!"
The screams of the red blood cells inside the elevator reached Dojin's ears as he clung to the ceiling.
The elevator body, which had been cruising smoothly through the light pillar, rocked violently left and right. The red blood cells inside tangled with one another, slamming into walls and ricocheting every which way.
What the hell? Why is this happening?!
"It seems to be because of the major tremor. Sometimes the orbital elevators fail to fully receive the power of the Femoral Vein and veer off course. It's extremely dangerous."
Even without the Narrator's words, Dojin could feel the danger firsthand through the elevator thrashing like a mad thing.
Damn it! Is the vein not doing its job properly?!
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is a type of blood cancer that originates in lymphocyte-lineage cells.
Multiple complications had already robbed the body of a fair amount of function.
In the outside world this would only be a problem lasting microseconds—nothing that threatened his little brother's life right this second—but inside the body even that tiny glitch was a catastrophe. The orbital elevator, receiving force in the wrong direction, shook in every direction at once.
Worse, other orbital elevators that had launched later streaked past at tremendous speed, grazing them.
The one Ella and Dojin rode had already fallen out of formation and seemed to have lost all function.
The elevator twisted and deformed; the doors, unable to withstand the force, tore free. Through the gaping hole, red blood cells poured out exactly like passengers being sucked from a breached airplane.
"Mister!"
Amid the red blood cells flying into open space, Dojin spotted a pair of twin-tails fluttering and thrashing.
He kicked off the elevator's side wall and launched himself toward Ella.
"Hey, cell! Look this way!"
"It's Ella!"
He was flying toward her, yet the speed at which she'd been flung was so great that the distance barely closed.
"Mister! Behind you!"
He looked where Ella pointed. A massive fragment of the orbital elevator was hurtling straight at him.
"Damn."
No choice.
It was already on the verge of breaking, but he drew the sword from his waist.
I'll just have to find a new sword somewhere.
It was the blade that had been lying right in front of him the moment he regained consciousness after entering his brother's body six years ago.
From the soles of the feet all the way up to the thighs, that sword had done him countless favors…
"Still, I can't die here."
He swung the blade horizontally with everything he had at the incoming fragment.
Kung—.
Pashssst—.
A fierce impact rang out; the fragment was deflected—but the sword shattered into pieces.
"Huh? Mister!"
Ella's voice came from behind him.
Dojin spun around. The brooch Ella wore was pouring out an intense blue light that overwhelmed even the purple pillar of the femoral artery.
Then Ella, clinging to the brooch, flew to his side. The blue gem that had been set in it popped free with a soft tuk and began drawing in the sword fragments scattering through zero gravity.
Jiiing—.
In no time the gathered shards and the gem fused as if they had always been one, forming a new sword: a black blade with a blue gem embedded in it.
"Eeeh! My brooch!"
"Is that what matters right now?! Hold on tight."
Getting out of this space was the priority.
Even now other orbital elevators were streaking past them at terrifying speed; a direct hit would leave nothing but dust.
Ella stared at the empty setting of her golden brooch, eyes welling up.
Dojin gripped her firmly with one hand and swung the sword toward the edge of the Femoral Vein's purple light pillar.
Jjeook—.
The black blade sliced open the surface of the light pillar; through the gaping wound Dojin and Ella were violently sucked in.
"Kyaaaak!"
Meanwhile, the internet was flooding with speculation posts about the sword Yeon-woo held and the gem that had fused with it.
The speed at which posts regenerated only grew faster, and people drawn by the buzz began clicking on White Blood one after another.
Tuuung—.
An object tore through the atmosphere, plummeting at tremendous speed.
Not a meteor—Dojin and Ella.
"Ueee! I'm so dizzy!"
Ella, clutched in Dojin's arms as they spun through the sky, screamed.
After being sucked through the gash in the light pillar, they had emerged into the atmosphere of a remote planet.
They punched through the atmosphere and free-fell at high speed, the ground rushing up fast.
"Narrator! We're gonna die like this! Calculate some way out!"
"To reduce your current freefall velocity, you need to apply reverse thrust."
Dojin shot back with an incredulous look.
"What am I, a robot? How the hell am I supposed to reverse-thrust?!"
"You'll just have to figure it out somehow."
Dojin racked his brain, then remembered the miniaturized bike hanging at his waist.
"Narrator! What happens if I summon the bike in this situation?"
"You and the bike are currently in uniform motion, so mounting it mid-air is feasible. You'll take a bit more instantaneous air resistance, but mass doesn't affect freefall."
Dojin of course knew Galileo Galilei's freefall experiment.
He only wondered whether that absurd over-technology called "miniaturization" still obeyed the same rules.
There was no time to leisurely watch the ground approach.
He yanked the bike from his waist and summoned it in mid-air.
"Ella! Hold on tight."
"Wueeeng! I think I'm gonna throw up."
"If you puke on my back I'll erase you! For real!"
He quickly settled into position, mounted the summoned bike, and applied reverse thrust.
Giiing—.
He yanked the accelerator all the way; the magnetic levitation engine overheated as it fought the enormous speed.
Velocity gradually dropped.
But the ground was already too close—this alone wouldn't be enough.
Dojin stood up on the saddle of the falling bike and grabbed Ella.
At this speed I can still manage it.
He poured every scrap of energy into his legs, clutched Ella, and leapt skyward.
The bike he had kicked shot toward the ground like a cannonball; the reaction force hurled Dojin's body hard in the opposite direction.
Kung—.
After the impact came a long rolling sound as Dojin and Ella tumbled over and over across a sand field, soft-landing on the surface.
Ella, sprawled on the ground, jerked her upper body up and spat clear vomit onto the sand.
"Kueeeng."
Dojin, still lying there, watched her out of the corner of his eye.
They only eat oxygen, so… is that her throwing up oxygen?
He entertained the absurd thought while gazing at the high sky.
A faint purple streak of light skimmed across the blue heavens.
He shook his head at the Femoral Vein visible in the far, far distance.
We fell from all the way up there and somehow still lived.
Dojin forced himself upright.
There wasn't a single place on his body that didn't ache.
"Huu. Where the hell are we? Narrator."
"This is the Liver region."
Hearing the Narrator's explanation, Dojin looked around.
Further explanation was unnecessary.
Liver. In other words, the liver.
"So that's why it's this hot."
Everywhere he looked was nothing but sand.
It was commonly believed that the brain consumed the most energy of any organ in the human body, but in truth the liver's energy expenditure was the greatest.
Naturally its temperature ran far higher than other organs.
Having apparently finished vomiting all her oxygen, Ella rose from the sand with tears welling in her eyes.
"Hic, I lost my brooch and I lost my oxygen toooo."
Hearing her, Dojin looked down at the sword still gripped in one hand.
"Come to think of it, why did the sword and the gem suddenly fuse? Do you know, Narrator?"
"That information is unknown even to me."
At the base of the jet-black blade, a luminous blue gem was set as if it had always belonged there, and the cracks that had covered the sword were gone—it looked brand new.
No—it's in far better condition than when I first got it. Sharper and harder.
What you gain, you also lose.
Losing the bike is a shame. Level 3 Leukocyte Army units don't show up easily.
It had been the vehicle he had barely managed to seize from a Level 3 Leukocyte Army unit that had chased him when his wanted level was at its peak.
"Still, we made it all the way to the liver. It took six years just to get from the soles of the feet to the thighs."
What was the point of fretting over what was already gone?
Thanks to it they had kept their lives, and they had finally reached the torso.
And though the reason for the fusion with the gem remained a mystery, he had obtained a stronger sword either way.
"Ella. When we get the chance I'll get you a new brooch."
"Really? You promise! Mister. But what's that?"
Ella pointed behind them; Dojin turned.
Far off, a black speck flapped its wings across the sky.
"That's a bird."
"A bird? What's that?"
"A bird is an animal with wings, but…"
Wait. In the six years he'd spent inside this body, had he ever seen a bird—or any animal at all?
Dojin turned again.
The number of birds had already multiplied, and they were drawing quite close.
"…Hmm?"
He thought he could hear the flapping even from here.
The birds approached steadily.
"…Those aren't birds."
Kkiruk—!
They made bird-like cries, yet they were rather large.
"They're pretty big."
Kkiruk—.
Kkiruruk—.
The winged things closing in with gleaming eyes were not birds.
Ashen-white skin and pointed beaks. Their wings were membrane like a bat's, yet sparsely feathered in an awkward way.
How to put it… like oversized chickens with half their feathers plucked.
Dojin searched for the right word to describe them.
"…Pterosaurs?"
Why was his little brother raising pterosaurs in his liver?
The sudden appearance of pterosaurs made the Netflix viewers watching burst into laughter.
The creatures that had closed to near range began descending all at once.
The clear sky that had still shown the purple Femoral Vein streaking through outer space was now blacked out by their swarm.
"…Ella."
"Yes?"
"I think we need to run."
Dojin grabbed the back of Ella's neck and shoved her forward.
"Run!"
Dojin and Ella sprinted madly across the desert.
Swaeaek—.
From the sky came the sound of them slicing air; eyes gleaming like seagulls eyeing shrimp chips, they dove.
The problem was that the shrimp chips were Dojin and Ella.
Dojin raised his sword and swung with full force toward the sky.
Kkiririk—.
A powerful sword wind shoved back the ones that had come close; deciding this prey was not easy to snatch, they climbed again and began circling above Dojin and Ella.
"Damn, right in the middle of a desert."
He had no idea where to go while dragging these nuisances along.
Just then the sand-covered desert floor beside Dojin and Ella trembled, and something suddenly burst upward from the sand.
Looking closer, it was a wooden hatch that had opened from the ground, shaped almost like a manhole cover.
Through the open hole a man's head in red clothing popped up.
A red blood cell.
"Come in here! Quickly!"
Seeing the red blood cell urgently beckoning toward Ella and Dojin, Dojin pushed her.
"Hurry, get in there."
He had no idea what waited below, but in this world there weren't many things that could truly put Dojin in danger.
Unless a Level 4 or higher Leukocyte Army unit was down there.
Dojin and Ella leapt into the wooden manhole that had opened in the middle of the desert, and the screen went black.