Where Blood Rains (1)

I was forcing myself to turn the pages when a passage caught ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my eye, and I stopped for a while. For some reason, a sigh escaped me the moment I came across those words again after so long. So I closed the book I'd been reading and set it back down.

As I'd suspected, this kind of escapist reading wasn't going to sort out the tension that had built all the way to the top of my head.

Two days had passed since the Intensive Suppression Week ended. In that time, Team 1's dead had risen from six to seven. The condition of the wounded was vicious as well. Agents whose arms or legs had been blown apart beyond any hope of reattachment. For them, another kind of death sentence had been handed down. The stench of death was throbbing from every direction, and I was no freer of it than anyone else.

I closed the book and, out of sheer inertia, powered on my tablet. Then I reopened Team 1's operation report, uploaded the day before.

The 13th engagement, which inflicted such devastating losses on Team 1, had broken out right before the operation's end. Until that very moment, Team 1's agents had been running high on adrenaline. The reason, naturally, was the mission change handed down the previous day.

The reset of The Island Where Blood Rains was to be suspended. Instead, they were to secure a fragment of the Big Cat.

A sudden mission change like that obviously demanded an explanation, and Command had been more than willing to give one: they had observed a phenomenon in which a special zone's activity was ceasing, and the Big Cat's fragment was the most likely medium behind it.

Just like Kwon Mu-seop and Baek Sa-ra, the members of Team 1 had been electrified by the news. So they forgot their accumulated exhaustion, smashed through hazardous zones, and fought two ferocious battles against the Big Cat. In the 12th engagement they won a decisive victory and claimed its fragment. All that remained was to escape the island in one piece.

They were veterans, and morale was soaring to the heavens. So they drove forward, shattering every obstacle that blocked their path. Standing before the exit, Team 1's agents were unquestionably riding high — but that didn't mean they'd gone slack or careless. Then why did it all come to this?

The answer was simple: the enemy had been just as desperate as we were. No — more desperate than us.

Beep — clack! Late at night, I heard the front door open. I was on my feet the instant I registered the sound, sprinting for the entrance. The door swung open and Jae-gyeom stepped inside.

"Welcome back. You've been through hell."

"......"

Even though I'd come out to greet him, Gwak Jae-gyeom gave me a single glance, then dropped his gaze to the floor. It had been nearly a week since I'd last seen his face — and his expression was frozen in a way I had never seen before. He was gaunt, and his eyes were dead.

"Have you eaten?"

At my question, Jae-gyeom nodded reluctantly and came inside. Judging by his gait, nothing seemed badly wrong with him physically. He just looked exhausted — and the backs of his hands were mottled with fresh, blackened scrapes.

Gwak Jae-gyeom had spent the last two days in the Bureau's holding cell. But those scrapes still had blood beading on them, as if they'd just been made. There was no way he'd gotten them on the Island Where Blood Rains. Looked like he'd spent his time in there pounding on a wall alone.

"Are you okay?"

At my question, Jae-gyeom hesitated, then muttered at a volume that barely carried. "I'm... going to get some rest."

He went straight into his room and shut the door firmly behind him. All I could do was watch him go.

Gwak Jae-gyeom was Team 1 too, and he'd carried out his mission on the Island Where Blood Rains. Zone A, where Team 1's final engagement had unfolded, sat at the island's very threshold — and it was highly unusual for the Big Cat and the Gardener to have been lying in ambush there. The first death came a mere two seconds after entering Zone A, courtesy of the Sticky Blood the Big Cat had vomited forth.

Our people's response followed, and the Big Cat's body was half destroyed. It fled, leaving only the Gardener behind, and the Gardener was repelled soon after. Along the way, two agents had been blown apart, their blood raining down. Team 1 scrambled to deal with the wounded — but what several of them heard wasn't an order from their team leaders. It was the Voice of the Dead, spoken by the "Echo" that had appeared out of nowhere.

It was a trap, and waiting behind the trap was Alpha. It picked off the scattered agents one by one and seized their firearms. A firefight followed. One agent died instantly; three were gunned down. And in that window, the flowers the Gardener had planted came into bloom. Flowers grown from inside their own bodies tore through the agents' skin and finally bloomed in full. By that point, the death toll already stood at six.

Cha Si-eon neutralized Alpha, bringing the gunfight to an end. Response Team 2 also succeeded in repelling the Echo. That closed the engagement — but it had already blown past the deadline. The restructuring period of the Island Where Blood Rains had ended. And in that instant, the frozen zone began to stretch and stir, like a cicada shedding its husk. The space convulsed and the ground tilted.

Sensing the restructuring, the team leaders ordered their members to escape. It was then that a Response Team 4 agent, still entranced by the Voice of the Dead, mistook Response Team 3 for a hazard entity and opened fire. Lim Su-ho of Response Team 3 nearly took a bullet, and Gwak Jae-gyeom grappled with the man. And then the space warped — and swallowed them both.

The instant they were about to be dragged into the space's reconfiguration, Cha Si-eon grabbed them and hauled them out. Afterward, he apparently tried to pull himself free as well, but there wasn't enough time. The space collapsed. Two days have passed since then. Cha Si-eon was still listed as missing.

Another day slipped by. Morning had long since come and gone, and lunchtime was approaching, but Gwak Jae-gyeom still hadn't come out of his room.

Knock knock-

"Jae-gyeom, you up?"

Deciding this wasn't going to work on its own, I knocked on his door. But no answer came back. Was he still asleep? I figured I at least needed to feed him.

Just as I reached to open his door —

Ding- A message alert chimed from my tablet.

After my reply, Yu-ju's typing indicator appeared, then vanished. She seemed to be writing something and deleting it, over and over. After a dozen seconds of that, a new message arrived.

We agreed to meet in the lounge thirty minutes later.

On the way there, I passed a few staff members in the corridor. But unlike before, not a single one returned my nod. They all kept their faces rigid and their eyes fixed on the distance, drifting past like ghosts. The vending machine corner and the outside phone booths, which on a normal day would be crowded with people chatting in twos and threes, were completely deserted. All that emptiness seemed to embody just how badly the Bureau had been thrown into disarray.

I was sitting alone in the vacant lounge when a voice reached me.

"Agent."

I turned my head at the familiar voice. Ha Yu-ju was hurrying over at a half-run.

"Here, this is..."

Yu-ju held out a heavy plastic bag the moment she reached me. Inside, it was stuffed full of snacks and drinks — easy things to eat without any fuss.

"He's probably not coming out of that room. So I figured this at least..."

"You want me to just pass this to Jae-gyeom?"

"Yes. But don't tell him it's from me..."

Yu-ju trailed off mid-explanation. Then, as if something had surged up in her chest, she frowned and vented under her breath.

"He actually hates it when people fuss over him. He's secretly got a real temper... But he won't snap at you, Agent. At least I don't think he will."

Yu-ju sounded irritated at her friend's temperament, which made it impossible to even worry about him in peace. I understood that feeling all too well, and smiled a bitter smile. Normally Jae-gyeom just came across as this boisterous, goofball of a guy — but he had a surprisingly sensitive streak underneath.

Come to think of it, a pure goofball wouldn't have ended up in a holding cell in the first place. The reason Gwak Jae-gyeom had been locked up was that the moment he walked out of the Island Where Blood Rains, he'd beaten the Response Team 4 agent to a pulp. He'd lost all reason and thrown his fists, screaming that the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠man was the reason Cha Si-eon had vanished.

It wasn't an unfair accusation — but the agent in question had been in a state of delirium, and that had to be taken into account. Blaming him outright was wrong. Throwing punches was more wrong still. And on top of everything, they'd all been carrying live ammunition at the time. So detaining an agent who'd barely dragged himself back from a battlefield wasn't exactly an excessive measure.

"Jae-gyeom's got a lot churning in his head right now. Once Team Leader Cha makes it back, everything will be fine again."

I tried to comfort Yu-ju while straining to run my own hope circuit. A rescue team had, after all, been deployed to the Island Where Blood Rains just before dawn that morning. It was sixty hours since Cha Si-eon had gone isolated, so you couldn't exactly call it a rapid response. But I'd heard there was no need for premature despair. He wasn't just anyone — he was Cha Si-eon, and everyone believed he would find some way to survive.

"Ah..."

But at my words, Yu-ju flinched. When I looked up at her, sensing something off, she chewed on her lip. Then, with an expression full of helpless embarrassment, she forced the words out.

The rescue operation for Team Leader Cha... that, um, it got called off this morning...