Yes, I am uh....man! (2)

A little way back in time—before I had posted to the survivor sub-channel.

"Fortunately, the thing left a trail of blood behind it."

I said it while collecting the pool of blood sitting in front of the laboratory. "With this, we should be able to track it."

"You're going to run a genetic test? It mimics a human voice—what if it can alter its genes too?"

I nodded at her objection. In the game, there had been mimic entities you could screen out with a genetic test—but there were also ones you couldn't. With no way of knowing which kind the thing we'd shot was, I couldn't say whether genetics would catch it, either.

But I had already factored that possibility in.

"We'll run the genetic test, sure, but I have no intention of distinguishing it that way."

I spun the blood-filled tube across the back of my hand ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like a pen. "There was a man named John Schneeberger. A doctor who fooled a blood test by inserting a plastic tube into his own vein."

After sexually assaulting his stepdaughter, he'd slipped a tube containing someone else's blood into his arm to slip the dragnet. It was a trick only a physician could pull—someone who knew exactly which vein a standard blood draw would come from.

"Blood tests, in other words, are never absolute. Someone, someday, may dream up a clever way to defeat every method we currently have."

"You think the entity would use a trick like that?"

"No. To be precise, I'm going to make it use that trick."

The tube spinning on my hand stopped. "It's certain the entities are checking the sub-channel. So we use that."

Entities are clever. Their efforts to preserve their own narratives are not something you can afford to underestimate.

"I'll post a notice. A notice saying we'll be conducting blood tests tomorrow."

Shiho and I shared the draft of the announcement.

"Jeong-uk. This isn't actually true, is it?"

"No. It's a lie. But the truth doesn't matter here anyway."

The entity wouldn't know whether it was true or not. An Echo is something you're infected by, but the memories it inherits belong to the host from before the infection. The people of this world, encountering Echoes and entities for the very first time, had no way of knowing that—and so neither would the entity.

"The goal is to make it wary of the blood test."

A desperate entity, trying to avoid being caught, would hunt for a way to fake its own blood. And it would most likely land on the most universally known method there was: inserting a plastic tube of someone else's blood into its vein.

"The entity will get that tube into its vein somehow before the test. This is a thing that ran away after taking a shotgun blast—slipping in a tube overnight won't be any trouble for it."

The problem was the blood to fill the tube with.

"Right now, everyone in this hospital is locked in. Getting blood isn't easy. Even if it tried to steal from someone, there are too many eyes around—not many people could manage it."

Under those conditions, the avenues to blood were sharply limited.

"So, Shiho—if you were in this situation, where would you get blood?"

"Uh... blood packs?"

"Correct."

The entity would steal blood from the blood bank. Too hard, you say? Well. Just as I'd siphoned blood packs out by leaning on my friendship with a colleague, in a situation like this the ways to slip blood out of a blood bank were lying around everywhere.

"That is exactly what I intend to exploit."

With high probability, the entity would steal its blood from the blood bank. And so—

"We make it prove that it's an entity, using the very blood it stole."

I photographed the tube holding the entity's blood and posted it to the sub-channel alongside the notice.

Back in the present.

I looked ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at the pathologist staggering in the testing room. "Wearing a pathologist's shell makes reaching the blood bank easy. Normally that would be another matter, but with the hospital's network down, siphoning blood happens constantly."

People were smuggling out medication to survive in here—was blood supposed to be off-limits?

"The real problem is that there isn't all that much blood left to steal from our hospital."

Not a single transfusion pack remained anywhere in the building. Orthopedics had been diligently performing amputations all the way to Friday, and the blood had simply run out.

All of it, exactly as I had foreseen.

"And in that situation—if, by pure coincidence, an AB-type pack happened to be the only one left in the blood bank—what choice would the entity be forced to make?"

Its options were few. Take even that pack, and pass itself off with it.

"Pathologist Jeong Gitaek. The blood type registered from your employee health screening was AB. You wore this man's shell with even that calculated in advance, didn't you?"

"..."

"A person who was suddenly A-type turning up AB would look suspicious. So by its own logic, it may have been a fairly reasonable choice."

It had used its head, in its way. The stolen blood was AB—so it had to disguise itself as someone originally AB. That was why it had chosen this particular pathologist.

"But here's the thing. You should have double-checked—thoroughly—before you swapped the blood."

I held up the test results the pathologist had submitted in advance, before the six o'clock and seven o'clock tests had begun. "That's not AB. It's Cis-AB. Blood I borrowed from the patient currently in our ICU."

A pathologist registered as AB had now tested as Cis-AB. To put it simply: the test result read as type A.

"Care to explain, pathologist? Is there some acquired factor I'm unaware of that changes a person's blood type?"

At my question, the pathologist spoke, its voice gone heavy. "I definitely tested it before I put it in my arm... So this is how I get played."

"And I prepared for exactly that."

If the enemy had been thorough, it might have tested the pack in advance. So I'd twisted the trap one more loop. I'd made certain it could believe, without a flicker of doubt, that the blood it stole was AB—by deliberately using this difficult-to-obtain blood. My blood, Shiho's, another professor's—any of them would have served. This blood was used for this reason alone.

"We won't be needing this anymore, I suppose."

I took out the tube containing the entity's blood and threw it, clotted solid after a full day, into the trash. It had only ever been a prop—a bluff, photographed and posted to the sub-channel. I wanted the entity to believe its blood was in my hands, to make it afraid. Now that the thing had been flushed out, the tube had served its purpose.

"Shiho."

I backed away, quietly, step by step. In opposite motion, Shiho strode straight toward the pathologist—toward the thing now revealed as a mimic.

"First, let's confirm what kind of Echo you are."

Watching her advance, the entity waved its hands in frantic denial and pleaded. "W... wait! I'm a victim ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠here! I never wanted to resonate with an Echo like this! I... I want Narrative Therapy too!"

Its eyes found mine. "That's why I came to the laboratory! And then you just open fire without so much as a—"

"Lee Sanghoon."

"...Yes?"

"When you came to my laboratory, that was the name of the professor you were impersonating. Where is he now?"

"..."

"You can't answer, can you?"

I knew how impersonated people usually ended. Every entity is avaricious—it's in their nature to want to establish themselves in the world as independent beings. And even setting that aside, disposing of the original is simply the convenient way to avoid suspicion.

"That professor was a pulmonologist. The youngest in the department, too."

That was why we'd been assigned to the same laboratory. For the senior professors to have their spacious, private research rooms, the lower-ranked professors had to be sacrificed. Different subspecialties, perhaps, but internal medicine was one family—and in practice, he'd been no different from a classmate of mine.

"He looked after me a great deal. I'd become a professor after barely a year as a fellow—fast-tracked, parachuted in—and he taught me everything I needed to survive at the hospital."

Back when I was at my greenest and clumsiest, he'd even handled my sloppy follow-ups for me.

The mimic's lips quivered as it listened. "I... I..."

"Where is he?"

The mimic's mouth clamped shut. It couldn't answer—of course it couldn't. The means of inheriting an impersonated person's memories were limited, and every one of them required giving up on the human being.

"What I treat is people. Not beasts."

Complete resonance or an earlier stage—it made no difference. The moment that thing had discarded its humanity, I owed it nothing further. I was not so brimming with the milk of human kindness that I would extend it the courtesy of a diminished-capacity defense.

"Besides, the fact that you resonated with a story of that particular kind suggests the human you used to be wasn't exactly a promising specimen either."

Click.

As if those words had been a trigger, the mimic lost its reason entirely and lunged. Shiho was not about to let that stand.

"Whoa, whoa. Settle down, now."

Bang! Tataang—!

The shotgun roared twice. The lunging mimic buckled, blood fountaining from its knees—but the wounds sealed over in an instant, and it swung the syringe needle clutched in its hand at Shiho.

"You're seriously swinging a syringe as a weapon?"

Wham!

Slipping past the needle, Shiho drove her elbow deep into its solar plexus. Using the recoil, she rammed fresh shells into the shotgun's open chamber.

"For now, transformation and regeneration seem to be all it has."

Not a flicker of color left her face as she began hammering the mimic into the floor.

"Kurgh!"

"Hey, hey—guard's down. I'm going to break something."

The mimic staggered, groping at its caved-in face. From inside the face sunken into the shape of an asterisk, its voice leaked out.

"It was never your face to begin ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with. What's with the wounded act?"

"Hm?"

Shiho glanced my way. I, too, had grasped it the instant I heard the line—that it was a hint pointing at the Echo.

At some point, its wounds had healed. And it was wearing my face.

"Ugh."

Seeing my own face reflected in something that was no mirror was, frankly, not a pleasant experience.

Ah.

I knew, now, what Echo it was.

"Jeong-uk! You figured it out?"

"I did. The Beggar Royal. Ever heard of it?"

"The Beggar Royal?"

Shiho twisted the entity's arm with an easy tilt of her head. "Sorry. It's a rare Echo in Korea, so I don't know it."

I explained the Echo's motif. "The Prince and the Pauper—you know the story? This Echo is tied to it."

"If you've identified it, then the disposal method is in the records too, right?"

"Yes."

I scrolled down and checked the entity observation record. The countermeasures only appeared at administrator access level 4.

I read through the contents, then raised my phone and began photographing the entity.

"It seems I'll have to expose this friend's true identity to the whole world."

It looked as though I'd be needing the help of the cyber wreckers after all.