The School
Han Mir left Park A-yeong behind as she seized and suffered, calmly taking stock of the situation. The monster that had been latched onto her was already dead — he'd dispatched it without breaking a sweat. With no more alien presence lingering anywhere in the building, he'd figured the rest of the day would be peaceful.
Then, in a single instant, an ominous energy coiled around the entire school.
It was a power that made the cheap monster clinging to Park A-yeong look like a joke.
Yeah. This was about on par with an officer-class.
He'd been so sure he was about to start a peaceful day. And yet ever since coming back to the real world, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was getting endlessly dragged into one bizarre mess after another. Han Mir was in a thoroughly foul mood.
Next break, he'd been planning to lift Kim Gwang-cheol's wallet and hit the school store.
"Tsk."
Han Mir clicked his tongue, making no effort to hide his irritation. He wasn't the only one keeping a cool head, though.
HQ, respond. This is 004. Repeat. This is 004. Currently entering a danger level exceeding 100H. Location: Tteoknip High School, Class 2-4. Location: Tteoknip High School, Class 2-4.
Lee Si-a tried to raise them on the radio clipped to her ear. Unlike the last Anomalous Event, they were still in real-world space this time — communications ought to go through.
Static hissed.
HQ answered, just as she'd expected.
"HQ?"
A sharp pop cracked through the air.
"Kyah!"
Black smoke curled from Lee Si-a's ear as the fried comm unit tumbled to the floor.
She didn't panic. She dug through her bag at once and pulled out a small cube, then hurled the colorless thing at Park A-yeong without a second's hesitation — the girl was thrashing as if she'd gone berserk.
The cube cut through the air. The instant it touched Park A-yeong's body, it swelled — and swallowed her whole.
Every civilian in the room had collapsed, except for Lee Si-a in her anti-mental-contamination suit and Han Mir with the power of a Hero. Park A-yeong remaining conscious was, in Lee Si-a's experience, never a good sign. Isolating her came first.
Sealed inside the cube, Park A-yeong no longer screamed. She lay with her eyes closed in perfect stillness, like a princess imprisoned in a giant crystal orb. The cube contracted again, shrinking until it fit in the palm of a hand.
Lee Si-a's eyes flicked rapidly over the danger reading.
The number was falling. Isolating Park A-yeong had been the right call. Hoping it would keep dropping, Lee Si-a stowed the cube and started digging through her bag again.
Jammed communications meant something was doing the jamming. She pulled out a portable isolation device capable of reaching HQ even from inside an Anomalous Event. At a glance it was nothing but an ordinary black rod, but section off a zone at the proper intervals and you could talk to headquarters from inside it — a useful piece of kit.
Lee Si-a shoved desks aside and began setting the device up, then flicked a glance over her shoulder.
The students looked bad. She wanted to help them — of course she did — but they were under the influence of an Anomaly, and there was no telling how they'd been contaminated. Making contact on a guess was no different from sliding a knife into her own throat.
If she'd ever let a flicker of pity override basic protocol, she would have been dead a long time ago.
She started to turn back to the device — and something snagged at the edge of her vision.
"Hmm. This is gonna be a pain."
Han Mir. Unpredictable as ever, he was putting on another one of his stunts — leaning over the unconscious students, checking them. He caught wrists and felt for pulses, peered at their eyes, moving from one to the next with a doctor's brisk efficiency.
"Han Mir! What do you think you're doing? You cannot make contact like that!"
"Why do you keep flipping between formal and casual? Just talk normally."
"Ugh — fine. Just please don't do anything reckless. Running around with no plan like that is dangerous!"
"Yeah. We're screwed."
Han Mir stood up all at once and waved a hand through empty air. Lee Si-a scowled at the way he ignored her and just kept doing whatever he wanted — but what he'd just said lodged under her skin, and she couldn't let it go.
"Screwed? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Wanna know?"
Lee Si-a nodded, slowly. His mouth started to open.
A flash ripped through the air — and Han Mir's body punched straight through the floor.
"H-Han Mir!"
Lee Si-a lurched toward the spot where he'd been standing, but he was already gone, punched down through several stories, nowhere in sight.
A wet crack sounded behind her.
Lee Si-a's heart slammed against her ribs. She turned her head, slowly.
Every person she'd taken for unconscious was standing up at once, moving with the grotesque, broken rhythm of bodies possessed in a horror film.
Were they awake? Their eyes were still rolled back, nothing showing but the whites, and that limp, dangling, doll-like slackness hadn't gone anywhere.
They were moving while still unconscious.
Why?
The question had barely formed before the students were on her.
"Kh—!"
Lee Si-a kicked the nearest desk into them, buying a sliver of space. They'd been waiting for it. More students rushed her from both sides.
Arms tore through her uniform. Nails raked her skin and drew blood. She moved anyway — sliding, fluid — driving a kick into one gut, a strike into another jaw, dropping them one after another.
She didn't plant her feet and weather what came. She struck first, darting in like a snake, going for the joints in their legs so they couldn't get back up.
"Hah— hah—"
Lee Si-a dragged in ragged breaths. Every student in her class was sprawled across the floor. She'd pulled her punches the whole way, trying not to hurt them more than she had to, and the fatigue sat heavy in her limbs.
What the hell is going on?
No. Don't think. This wasn't a problem thinking would solve. Getting a support request through to the Management Bureau came first.
She steadied her breathing and moved to gather the portable isolation device scattered across the floor.
Another wet crack.
"No."
Lee Si-a swallowed hard.
The students she'd already put down were moving again.
"Th-that's impossible. They shouldn't be able to get up—!"
Their legs were already beyond use. They didn't care. Joints folded the wrong way — directions no human joint should ever bend — and still they came.
Then something caught her eye. A glint, flashing where sunlight from the window struck it.
It was impossibly thin, impossibly faint. Without the light, she never would have seen it.
Transparent threads, descending from the ceiling. Countless strings, stuck fast to the joints of every unconscious person in the room, working them like marionettes.
As if someone were playing with dolls.
She ran the Anomaly catalog in her head, every entry and every known trait. Nothing matched.
A new Anomaly. Same as last time.
She made the call in a heartbeat. She burst out of the classroom and sprinted down the hall.
Glass exploded.
The window of the next classroom blew inward, and controlled students poured through it like a tsunami, a flood of arms reaching for her all at once. Lee Si-a twisted, barely, slipping those grasping hands by a hair.
She yanked the ballpoint pen from her shirt pocket and clicked the switch. The pen came apart and reassembled itself, and in a breath it was a pistol.
If the situation required putting civilians down, an agent acted. No hesitation. That was the first rule.
Lee Si-a bit down on her lower lip and took aim.
The gunshot cracked down the hallway. Nobody bled.
She'd severed the string on one of the boys charging her. He went down face-first into the floor.
That'll work. Cut the strings and there's nothing left to hold them.
The thought had barely landed before a fresh thread dropped from the ceiling and burrowed into the fallen boy's joints. In less than three seconds he was under control again, legs twisted into a shape that wasn't a shape at all, coming at her on his knees.
"Kh—!"
Lee Si-a smashed the pistol down on the crown of his skull as he shoved his face and arms at her.
She ran, mind racing.
How do I break this?
If Han Mir were here, they might actually have a shot at getting out of the school. He'd already broken out of the Management Bureau once, and he swatted Anomalies like they were nothing.
But he'd been dragged off somewhere. Gone.
Which left waiting for Bureau support.
She hadn't gotten a call through, but the school's danger level had blown past 100H. The Bureau would have noticed. They would move.
So force an escape? Get out of the school first?
If she didn't act now, though, there was no telling what this would become. There were case files — Anomalous Events, Anomalies, it didn't matter — where someone left the scene to get a better read on the situation, and an incident that could have been shut down early with zero casualties turned into a catastrophe instead.
In the end, there was only one answer.
Investigate. Resolve it. Hold the line until HQ support arrived. That was the destiny of an agent who had to give everything for peace.
Lee Si-a fled without a thought to spare, and the longer it went on the more the wounds told on her. Blood ran through the tears in her clothes. Her breath sat so high in her chest it felt like her lungs were burning, and a flush had climbed into her face. The pistol in her grip was slick with sweat; one wrong move and she'd drop it.
Everywhere she turned, no matter how far she ran, the controlled were waiting. Behind her they had already packed the hallway nearly to the ceiling, a dense, relentless pursuit.
If she stopped for even a second, they would have her — and what came after that would not be a death anyone would want.
Then she saw it. The thick door to the gymnasium.
No other way out. That was the only option left.
And if the gym is packed?
Even if it wasn't, she'd be trapping herself in there. That much was certain.
Plenty of space. Nowhere to run. A giant sealed box.
She gritted her teeth and reached.
She wrenched the heavy door open and slammed it shut behind her. Controlled hands shoved into the gap, clawing to force it back—
A thunderous crash. The door sealed.
Lee Si-a locked it at once.
The door shuddered under the barrage, hard enough that it seemed ready to splinter. It held. She didn't give herself a second to feel relief. She swept the gymnasium fast.
Empty. Not a single person.
Then Lee Si-a's body flinched.
In one corner of the gymnasium stood a row of statues, heads bowed toward the floor — statues that had no business being there at all.
A thought cut through her, clean and cold.
Do not close your eyes.