While Siron was still wrestling with the phone password, the sun slipped from its noonday height and twilight began. Isaac entered the lounge with a syringe and a small ampoule, trailing shadows behind him. His target, unexpectedly, was Sonia. He approached her sleeping figure and injected something into her arm.
It was a reversal agent—designed to temporarily override the effects of a sedative. Sonia began to stir.
Over a long stretch of careful, deliberate explanation, Siron told her the truth: that her son had died long ago of natural causes, and that she'd been exploited on the island to repay a debt she never owed.
She didn’t scream or sob in rage. Instead, she reacted as though she'd always suspected the truth deep down—though she'd spent years denying it. Her face, lined with age, looked worn like weathered stone. Only a single, silent tear traced its way down her cheek.
From her chest she pulled out a photograph of her and her son. She pressed her lips to his face for a long time, made the sign of the cross, and offered a prayer to God. Isaac watched from the side with a cold, unreadable gaze.
“I don’t understand why you’re clinging to our itinerary,” he said with a sharp click of his tongue.
Siron felt a bead of cold sweat run down his spine.
That merciless man would throw Sonia into the ocean without hesitation if he decided she was a liability. Remembering the compassion Isaac had once shown to the homeless captives, Siron gripped Sonia’s trembling hand tightly.
“She’s a victim too.”
“Victim?”
Isaac slowly stroked the stubble on his chin.
“To me, she looked like just another cog making the island system run smoothly.”
Before Isaac could dig deeper into Sonia’s heart, Siron jumped in, defensive.
“She was forced into labor! And we already agreed to place her in a shelter. Why are you bringing this up again?”
He pointed toward Rafael, slumped asleep over the table. Once they reached land, Sonia would go with him. Rafael’s mother had founded a charity for citizens abused in the old regime’s “Reform Through Forced Labor” camps, after her son’s abduction. Sonia wasn’t a citizen, nor had she been held in one of the official camps, but through Rafael’s influence, she would be granted entry. The foundation would provide temporary housing, a new identity, and medical care.
The problem was that Rafael had made the decision for her.
If Sonia, in her grief, turned to Hybris in hopes of finding her son’s body, she could expose not only herself but everyone who had escaped with her. That’s what Isaac was really worried about.
“Don’t worry... I’ll live like I’m already dead,” Sonia murmured, her pale face the picture of guilt. She’d been forced into a new life before even having the chance to mourn her son. It was pitiful. But Isaac showed no sympathy as he plucked the photo from her hands.
“A graduation picture. So this was before or after he became an alpha?”
“Before... He turned in the same year. 2010.”
“There wouldn’t have been many alphas in Mexico back then. How was he transformed?”
“Inigo was in the U.S. at the time. A coworker took him to the hospital.”
“Coworker?”
Sonia nodded.
“He said there was only one way to save Inigo’s life.”
Her memory of the time was hazy and disjointed. Inigo had been a graduate student working in computer science. While finishing school in Mexico, he worked remotely as a software developer.
Then one day, an American company reached out. They promised him a job and a green card if he accepted their offer. The recruiter came in person to persuade him, showing a surprising level of interest. Eventually, Inigo moved to the U.S. for work.
That’s when Sonia got the devastating news: Inigo had overdosed and was in a coma, undergoing emergency treatment.
From there, everything went wrong.
The seemingly legitimate company was in fact a meticulously run criminal syndicate. To make matters worse, her son was now $800,000 in debt to them. They sent someone to Mexico to threaten Sonia directly and demand repayment. She sold everything she had—but it wasn’t enough. In the end, they used her son’s life as leverage and dragged her to the island, where she was forced into endless hard labor.
“I haven’t seen Inigo since then... And now you tell me he died long ago...”
She wiped away tears with gnarled hands. Isaac watched with blank detachment, more curious about the tears’ chemical composition than their meaning.
“What did your son do, exactly? What kind of company was it?”
“He said they bought and sold... money made by computers.”
“Buying and selling computer-made money...”
For the first time, a flicker of genuine interest sparked in Isaac’s otherwise steady gaze.
“Do you know his email account?”
Sonia shook her head, embarrassed.
“Any data left behind?”
“They took everything.”
Isaac’s eyes turned cold again. But just then, Sonia’s expression shifted—as if something had just come to mind.
“I met him.”
“Him?”
“The recruiter. He said he was in Mexico on business... stopped by for a short visit. He didn’t seem like an HR guy. More like an executive.”
Her tone slowed, voice weakening.
“Inigo had turned down the job at first... said he didn’t want to leave me alone in Mexico. That man came to persuade him. He... seemed like a good person. Like the author I liked...”
Her hand fell limp from the bed rail. Her voice dwindled as sleep began to overtake her again.
“Author?”
Startled by Isaac’s nudge, she blinked rapidly.
He repeated the question in a mild voice. “What do you mean by author?”
“Oh... I mean... His name was like the authors I liked.”
She struggled to stay awake, eyes fluttering open and shut.
“Joseph Elliott. His name was... Joseph Elliott. It reminded me of Joseph Conrad and George Eliot...”
“Describe him.”
“White, mid-to-late fifties... Tall. Dyed black hair. So well-mannered and handsome, you’d never imagine him capable of such evil...”
“Any other features?”
Prompted by Isaac’s sharp tone, Sonia’s heavy eyelids sprang upward. She stared blankly into space for a moment before speaking.
“He spoke... gently. Like a priest. He listened to everything Inigo said, no matter how silly it was... Inigo trusted him. ...That monster... my son...”
She couldn’t finish.
Sleep took her before she could. Tears welled at the corners of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. The only sound left in the room was her steady, unconscious breathing.
“Joseph Elliott.”
Isaac repeated the name.
A well-dressed white man in his fifties. Tall, dyed black hair. A calm and composed demeanor, like a priest.
The description was frustratingly vague—too little to identify anyone.
“Joseph Elliott.”
But the name wasn’t unfamiliar. Isaac already knew who he was. It wasn’t just that the name was common.
He picked up a pen and began writing on a piece of ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) paper—the same one Siron had been scribbling on while trying to unlock Baekgyeong’s phone.
Edwin Keats, 404-55X-327X, AA235, 540123XXX, 2008.11.08., 2009.02.06...
Joseph Elliott, 998-52X-249X, AA234, 656481XXX, 2009.02.13...
John R. Miller, 555-23X-356X...
Isaac sat there and, without pause, wrote out the names, phone numbers, passport numbers, and travel dates of 19 individuals. All of them had entered Belzoras between 2007 and 2009, clustered around a specific set of parameters.
Before her death, Marta Monto had given Isaac access to a laptop protected by encryption keys. That laptop, lost when their hideout near the Secreta Swamp was raided, was never recovered. But fortunately, Isaac had memorized most of the data.
All 19 individuals were suspected to have secretly met with senior officials in the Belzoras Interior Ministry. There was no official entry record for the ministry building, but communication logs placed all of them within its restricted zones. They could have been American government officials, corporate executives—or members of the human trafficking syndicate.
The Interior Ministry had overseen the “Reform Through Forced Labor” camps under the old Belzoras regime. Dissidents were imprisoned and later sold to trafficking organizations through collusion between camp wardens and high-level bureaucrats.
Isaac had tried for years to track them down, but a military coup had wiped out many of the involved officials, making it harder to prove the link between Hybris and the trafficking ring.
Now, he stared long and hard at one name among the 19.
Joseph Elliott.
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