ep9. Flushing Out the Fakes (11)
Short hair. And a true-gray combat uniform.
Because of those two foreign elements, I recognized Cha Si-eon's face a beat too late.
And the moment I did recognize it, realization struck me like a bolt of lightning.
That was the National Theater's special hazard entity, Alpha.
Cha Si-eon—no, Alpha—charged at Baek Sa-ra.
Closing the distance in an instant, Alpha twisted its body and kicked her.
BOOM—!
Baek Sa-ra guarded with her arm, but it was useless.
She was flung backward as if she'd been thrown.
Before she hit the ground, she caught the armrest of an audience seat.
Then she pulled herself in and dodged the attack of Alpha as it came flying at her again.
Shwik—!
Baek Sa-ra raked her knife across its shoulder.
But it didn't so much as flinch.
Alpha pressed her again, and Baek Sa-ra retreated, keeping it at bay with her knife.
That was when it happened.
Thud—!
Another special entity dropped down behind the stage.
And it was wearing a true-gray combat uniform too.
Jet-black hair. Gwak Jae-gyeom's face, utterly devoid of a smile.
Delta.
And that thing—Delta—also came barreling toward Baek Sa-ra.
"Baek Sa-ra, behind you!"
I shouted, but Baek Sa-ra didn't turn around.
No—she seemed to have already known Delta had appeared.
But with Alpha in front of her, there was no room to spare a glance elsewhere.
Just as Delta finally moved to take Baek Sa-ra from behind—
BANG—!
With the crack of a single shot, Delta stopped dead.
A thin wisp of smoke rose from the muzzle of the pistol in my hand.
They did say this was target practice.
Unfortunately, I hadn't hit Delta.
Still, I seemed to have succeeded in splitting their attention.
The bullet that had missed and lodged itself in the wall.
"……"
"……"
Sure enough.
Delta began charging at me with every intention of killing me.
Aaagh, Jae-gyeom, it's me, your hyung……!
"You idiot……!"
The moment I found myself being chased by Delta, Baek Sa-ra lamented.
Then, as if venting her frustration, she drove her knife straight into Alpha.
"Get behind the stage!"
Having barely shaken off Alpha, Baek Sa-ra shouted as she sprinted toward the stage.
I ran toward the stage from the entrance I'd been standing at the bottom of, too.
Just before Delta pounced on me, Baek Sa-ra and I met up in front of the stage.
She yanked the gun out of my hands.
And shot Delta square in the chest.
BANG—!
Jae-gyeom got shot……!
Baek Sa-ra spun around and fed a bullet to Alpha, which had chased us down without my even noticing.
BANG—!
Nice, a headshot.
Having landed one hit each on Alpha and Delta, Baek Sa-ra dragged me over the back of the stage.
There was no need to ask where we were going.
The National Theater's special hazard entities, Alpha and Delta.
They'd been assigned individual codes because of how dangerous they were, but their essence was, in the end, Fake Humans.
Which meant we had to get to the outdoor terrace where the one wearing the old-style uniform was.
Because that entity was the natural predator of the Fake Humans.
But getting there was no small feat either.
Just as we slipped behind the stage curtain—
rattle-rattle-rattle—!
The unfinished Fake Humans hanging from the steel beams were thrashing, their limbs spasming wildly.
The steel structure swayed violently under the struggling of hundreds of bodies.
A few of them finally snapped the lines they hung from.
Then they ran on all fours and hurled themselves at us.
Ugh, these bastards too……!
Right—from their perspective, we were the thugs who shot their mother and set her on fire.
Baek Sa-ra leveled her gun at them, then seemed to change her mind and aimed upward instead.
BANG! CLANG! SCREEEE—!
There was a shriek of metal, and the steel beams—unable to bear the weight and thrashing of the Fake Humans—tilted.
CRASH—! CRUUUSH—!
The collapsing steel crushed the Fake Humans beneath it.
Baek Sa-ra didn't stop there. She opened fire on the stage curtain and set the whole thing ablaze.
Click. WHUMP—!
……Right. It's already a marked target—no point being careful about it.
Besides, as the flames roared up, the Fake Humans abandoned us and scrambled toward the fire.
Then they began smothering the flames with their own bodies.
Maybe this theater wasn't their 'mother' so much as their 'main body.'
We left that chaos behind and ran on.
We were climbing the stairs to reach the third floor when—
Screeeech—
"Dodge!"
A sharp shriek of friction, and Baek Sa-ra's scream cut through it.
BOOM—!
The next instant, something like a massive beast slammed into me.
It was Gwak Jae-gyeom with black hair—Delta.
"Ghk!"
Delta, descending along a rope, pinned me flat, and I slid across the top of the stairs like a sled.
My whole body felt like it had shattered; my vision went white.
But that lasted only a moment.
CRUNCH—!
The sensation of something driving into the nape of my neck jolted me awake in horror.
"Aa—AAAGH!"
Delta had bitten me.
No—it was trying to eat me.
Teeth boring in without mercy, hot liquid gushing out all at once.
Whether that was its saliva or my blood, I couldn't tell, and it was driving me insane.
With one huge bite clamped down, its jaws crushing, I couldn't breathe.
The sensation of being strangled was, in my desperation, almost cozy—and on that razor-thin tightrope, for some reason, I remembered.
A hanged man, made of white rose petals.
Did it feel like this for you, back then?
If so, maybe this ending of mine is just history repeating itself, father to son.
Feeling consciousness slip away, I let the strength drain from my flailing arms.
The next moment.
SLAM—!
My body spun, and in an instant, my line of sight had completely reversed.
And in my grip—the hair of Delta, smashed face-down into the floor.
"Hah, hahk……. Hah……."
I gulped down air, not understanding any of it.
I'd nearly died.
Did I do that?
I was dazed, but this was no time to wonder.
Delta was still moving.
Dammit, this monster…….
I'd barely flipped it over, but going head-to-head in raw strength was hopeless.
Running was the only option—but where was Baek Sa-ra?
Just as I glanced around looking for her—
CRUUUSH—!
Something dropped hard right in front of me.
……It was Baek Sa-ra.
"Ughk……."
Baek Sa-ra was writhing in pain.
Looking up, I saw Alpha staring down at us from above.
Just then, an order flashed across my smartwatch.
The voice sounded a bit strange, but for now I hauled Baek Sa-ra up and moved toward ten o'clock.
Over there was a passage leading down to the basement.
THUD—!
Alpha had finally made it down to the first floor.
I had no idea where the dressing room was, but I ran anyway.
Then I shut a door at random and locked it.
Only then did I realize this door wasn't steel—it was wood.
The lock was nothing more than a cheap push button on the handle.
Something like Alpha or Delta could twist it off and smash through without breaking a sweat.
Which would leave us as rats trapped in a cage.
Click—!
Outside, I heard a hand close around the door handle.
It would be Alpha.
Click. Click. Clickclickclickclick—!
Every time the handle rattled, my knees shook with it.
I glared at that door and prayed desperately to anyone who would listen.
Please, please……!
A short while later.
The noise stopped—and the door stayed closed.
"Hahh……."
I let out a long sigh and sank to the floor.
This dressing room was part of the theater too.
So I suppose they can't destroy it.
Thank god. I'm alive…….
Just as I was exhaling another long breath, a voice came from my smartphone.
By now I had a good idea whose voice that was.
It was Kwon Mu-seop, Head of Field Operations.
I turned to Baek Sa-ra beside me.
She answered calmly.
"I was struck on the head by Alpha. My focus is a little blurred, but it's recovering. It seems to be temporary."
"Right. Both of you—steady yourselves for now."
"Yes, sir."
I cut into the tail end of their conversation.
"Manager, can we actually hold out behind this door?"
"Unless it's some special exception, they won't break it down. Those entities' primary directive is protecting the Theater."
"Then could we use this theater's structure to trap them instead?"
Right now, we were locked inside with the door shut so they couldn't get in.
So what if we just reversed the positions?
Wouldn't they be the ones trapped inside?
"No—the bastards have decent heads on their shoulders; they won't sit still in a cage. Si-eon will be there soon, so don't push it. Do-woon, you take care of your injury first."
At the word injury, I belatedly took stock of my own state.
My neck and face were smeared with blood, like the corpse of a vampire's victim.
"Otter, sit down."
Baek Sa-ra called to me.
This dressing room was lined with vanities.
When I sat down in the chair in front of one, Baek Sa-ra knelt on the floor and examined the wound on the back of my neck.
"Ghhk……!"
"I have to disinfect it, so bear with it just a moment."
Baek Sa-ra poured a stinging liquid onto my neck as she spoke.
I'd wondered why someone here to fight was wearing a long, flowing skirt—
but from inside it she was producing everything from miniature explosives to antiseptic.
Once she'd finished pouring, Baek Sa-ra wiped my neck with a handkerchief.
As the blood came away, a vivid set of teeth marks was revealed.
……I won't be able to eat next to Jae-gyeom for a while.
Just looking at that kid's molars makes my nape sting.
The National Theater's special hazard entities, which I'd only ever heard about, were far more brutal than I'd imagined.
Their true nature was Fake Humans built from the memories of the agents who had been sacrificed here—that is, devoured.
These things had first appeared about a year ago.
Even by the Bureau's assessment, they were a grave threat.
They'd launched several suppression operations, all for nothing.
They had succeeded in capturing and destroying the previous entities modeled on Gwak Jae-gyeom, Beta and Gamma, but before long, new ones were generated.
That's how the identification codes had climbed all the way to today's Delta.
The conclusion drawn back then was that the National Theater had already acquired the personal data of Cha Si-eon and Gwak Jae-gyeom.
And that it was quite fond of the two of them, regenerating the copies the moment they were destroyed.
The one mercy was that it couldn't produce multiple copies of the same entity at once.
Just imagining a dozen-odd Alphas swarming around was genuinely beyond foul play…….
Their ability to regenerate copies was a headache in itself, but the bigger problem was that they were occasionally spotted in other Special Zones too.
So the Bureau had taken its own extraordinary measures.
Those were Cha Si-eon's long hair and Gwak Jae-gyeom's bleached hair.
In a place where lives hung on split-second judgments, mistaking an enemy for an ally was nothing short of fatal.
So, to provoke even a flicker of visual dissonance—of wrongness—the two men's styles had been pushed wildly off standard.
……When Jae-gyeom explained this to me, I'd thought, what kind of nonsense is that.
But having lived through it myself, I could suddenly see the logic.
Anyway—I'd been bitten by those things and survived.
Going by what Kwon Mu-seop said, we had performed remarkably.
Just as I was deep in this bout of self-consolation, Baek Sa-ra let out a soft sigh.
Then she drew back from me and murmured,
"I forgot you were the kind of person who uses a gun like that."
A gun? Ah—come to think of it, this was a lot like the Hospital.
The part where I fired a gun I couldn't hit anything with and got tangled up in her fight.
……Hmm. Am I about to get chewed out again?
I stole a cautious glance at her—and an unexpected word slipped out of Baek Sa-ra's mouth.
"I'm sorry."