L*st and Death

“No. Not yet.”

“That’s bad. He really needs to be in a hospital.”

Dermot’s gaze shifted to Baekgyeong’s abdomen, tightly bound in fresh gauze. The clean white bandages showed no trace of blood, but Dermot looked at him like someone already beyond saving.

“He heals fast. He’ll be fine. A self-proclaimed expert said he wouldn’t die.”

Siron trusted Isaac’s diagnosis. He’d seen Isaac personally suture Baekgyeong’s wounds, change the bandages multiple times, and monitor his recovery. According to Isaac, Baekgyeong’s kidney had been pierced but hadn’t sustained fatal damage. There were no signs of internal bleeding—no bruising or swelling on his flank, no fever. Given Baekgyeong’s fast recovery rate, Isaac had said he’d bounce back soon enough.

“Then stop babysitting him and come outside already. You said you like movies, right? Let’s go watch something.”

“Ugh, I get motion sickness. I’ll pass. Everyone else okay?”

“We’ve been at sea for five days. You should be used to it by now. Come on. If not a movie, at least have a drink. I found some good liquor in the storage. Let’s have a little boat party.”

Siron gave Baekgyeong a worried glance before finally standing to follow Dermot. Just as he’d said—there was nothing more Siron could do for Baekgyeong right now.

After the eye of Hurricane Titanus had passed over the Alpha Island, Siron and the others had boarded a passenger vessel. It was a luxury yacht, and there were 17 people on board: Siron, Isaac, Baekgyeong, the 13 formerly imprisoned homeless men, Sonia, and Manu Singh.

The Alpha Island they’d escaped from was located in the northwestern Caribbean, about 150 kilometers off the coast of Mexico. That meant it was over 1,200 kilometers from Baggers City, where Siron had originally been kidnapped. The ship was steered in shifts by Isaac and Dermot.

Dermot was a sailor from Savannah, Georgia. He’d become homeless after losing his job to alcoholism. To avoid tracking, he and Isaac had disabled the boat’s system, using a backup GPS device to manually track coordinates and match them against physical maps.

On the first day at sea, everyone nearly died several times. The hurricane had already passed, but massive waves continued to batter the boat. Most passengers suffered from horrific motion sickness. Thankfully, by the second day, they’d exited the storm’s influence, and the seas calmed, easing their symptoms.

By the third day, they began to run low on fuel. Isaac anchored the ship near an uninhabited island deep in the Caribbean. It had now been two days since then, with the ship remaining docked at sea.

What started as a quiet drink between Dermot and Siron gradually turned into a noisy gathering as more passengers joined after finishing the movie.

“What happened to the homeless guys they kidnapped before us?”

An older man asked, and a toothless one replied:

“My guess? They’re all dead.”

With the atmosphere relaxed and giddy from newfound freedom and drinks, the topic naturally shifted to what had happened on the island.

“Huh? Why would they go through all that just to kill them?”

The old man sounded unconvinced, so the toothless one elaborated quickly:

“Why else would they kidnap homeless people? To sell our organs.”

“I think it was more like human experimentation. Remember how they gave us those weird shots at the same time every day?”

“Yeah, and none of it even worked. I’m still betting it was organ trafficking.”

A blond man nodded in agreement, but a man with pockmarked cheeks pushed back.

“If they were harvesting organs, would they have fed us so poorly? We lived on nothing but frozen burritos. That doesn’t make sense. I think it was for sex. I heard the guy with glasses and that psycho were raped.”

“Could’ve just been bad luck. It’s not like they kidnapped only men because they’re all gay.”

“Even if they were, look around at us. You think they’d go to all this trouble just to screw this crowd?”

Their raucous laughter slowly died out. One by one, the men’s heads turned in the same direction.

All of them wore different expressions, but the meaning was the same:

That guy might’ve been the exception.

“3543. You know anything?”

The blond man narrowed his eyes at Siron, scanning him head to toe.

“You said you were investigating the missing homeless cases, right?”

“You look like you know something. Don’t hog it all—spill.”

“I honestly don’t know much. I was looking for a friend who disappeared. I followed his trail and ended up here. He always kept his promises—I knew he wouldn’t just vanish without a reason.”

“Wasn’t his name Joan Welch or something?”

“Yeah.”

Siron’s expression darkened. He’d gone so far as to pretend to be homeless to find Joan—but still had no idea where he’d gone.

“Whether it was prostitution or organ theft, the real crime is kidnapping people without consent. Feels like we got caught in something massive, don’t you think?”

As the blond man spoke, Dermot nodded.

“My number’s 3542. Yours is 3546, right? That means there could’ve been over 3,500 victims before us.”

That incomprehensibly large number cast a slow-moving shadow of despair across their faces.

“We should’ve made that Indian bastard suffer like we did.”

The blond man’s words were echoed in agreement by the others, but Siron smiled awkwardly. What they didn’t know was that Isaac had hidden Manu Singh in the ship’s lower deck.

Right now, Singh was drugged into a coma and sleeping like the dead in a storage bunker—and only Isaac and Siron knew he was on board.

The conversation soon shifted to where in the U.S. they should disembark. Listening quietly, Siron eventually stood and slipped out of the salon. He walked down the ship’s main corridor.

The vessel was mid-sized, with twenty cabins ranging from doubles to four-person rooms. It had a water maker to desalinate ocean water for showers and a barbecue grill at the stern. The storage room was stocked with fishing gear, snorkeling equipment, whiskey, and beer. The Alphas had used this extravagant ship like a vacation cruise—to visit the island, abuse and experiment on their captives.

Siron climbed to the second floor and knocked on the cabin nearest the bow. It was Sonia’s room. She had only regained consciousness two days after escaping the island but couldn’t stay awake for long—possibly due to lingering drug effects or seasickness. When Siron told her they had escaped the island, she only blinked, dazed, and soon fell back asleep, unable to process anything.

No response came from beyond the door. Siron quietly opened it to peek inside. Sonia lay motionless in the center of a wide bed, softly snoring.

Sighing in relief, he closed the door and walked toward the rear of the first floor. The ship’s stern had a small bar, a barbecue station, and a netted platform made of rope.

3547 was sitting on the net, peering down through the mesh at the sparkling sea.

“These are bioluminescent plankton. Scientific name: Noctiluca scintillans. It means ‘shining dot at night.’”

3547 pointed to the sea and muttered. The gentle Caribbean waves rocked the boat, and every time the water touched the hull, electric blue light spread like ink—glowing from the plankton.

“When disturbed, these little guys burst the light-emitting chemicals inside their bodies and glow. They’re startled, see? It’s like they’re giggling—startled and laughing. If you listen real carefully, you can hear them. Tiny whispers. Laughter.”

He grinned as he whispered:

“3543. You hear that? We’re surrounded by happy laughter.”

3547 still hadn’t revealed his real name, so they continued to call him by his number. Like Siron, he’d survived the island. But his mental state hadn’t improved—only shifted.

Now that he was in a new environment, his delusions had taken on a different form. The violence had ebbed, replaced by excessive happiness. He spent the day grinning, muttering to himself, praising the perfection of the world.

“That’s... lovely. Would be romantic, if it didn’t smell like shit.”

Siron replied dryly, glancing at the foul-smelling island nearby. It didn’t reek like the homeless men had, but the odor was still unpleasant.

“That’s from the mangrove trees.”

“Huh?”

3547 pointed to the trees. They towered high above the ship, their massive, spider-like roots stretching out above the water.

“They trap organic matter that decomposes without oxygen. That makes hydrogen sulfide. The smell clings to it. It’s where dead souls gather.”

“You know a lot. What did you do before all this?”

3547 rocked side to side on the rope net, muttering:

“I was a journalist. Majored in exobiology at Harvard. I used to write soul-deep exposés for the New York Times about the cosmic order of all things.”

“Oh, yeah? Harvard exobiology? That’s pretty cool.”

Siron couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yup. I was a science journalist—before the light found me.”

3547 rambled on about the articles he used to write. Siron listened with half an ear, keeping his eyes on the mangrove-covered island, now with a sense of dread.

The island where the ship was anchored had a jagged coastline that stretched out like splayed fingers into the sea. Dense mangrove trees blurred the boundary between land and water. Their ship was now hidden among those trees.

It had been five days since their escape—but they were still being hunted. If Hybris launched an aerial search with helicopters or drones over the Caribbean, all of this could be lost.

They needed a new boat to make a clean break.

Isaac had taken a motorboat to secure two replacement vessels. He’d been gone for two days. If he returned with the ships as planned, the group would split—some would head to the U.S., while Isaac and the rest would take a new route elsewhere.

Siron had already chosen to stay with Isaac.

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