L*st and Death

“Shit!”

Anna, without even realizing it, had picked up Baek Kyung’s favorite curse. She barked it out as she stormed up the stairs. Finally reaching the 9th-floor hallway, she stood in front of Yoon Siron’s door, pale-faced, and slammed her fist against it.

“Fuck—open up—haa—fuck, I said open the damn door!”

After a long pause, the door opened, revealing a worn-out face drained of energy.

“Ugh, the e-elevator’s broken... you could’ve said something...”

Baek Kyung stared blankly at Anna, who was soaked in sweat and gasping for air. He didn’t respond. He looked like he was carrying the weight of the entire world’s despair on his back and had no energy left to react to her anger.

Dragging his feet, Baek Kyung shuffled into the living room, collapsed sideways onto the narrow couch, and stared into his phone. The screen was playing live open-circuit CCTV footage of various roads throughout Baggers City. He’d been glued to it like a corpse for 29 hours straight, without sleep.

Anna downed a full glass of cold water in one go. Her flushed face finally cooled, she asked:

“Seeing anything?”

“Not a goddamn thing.”

Baek Kyung grumbled as he mimed wiping his eyeballs with his hand.

Half the CCTV screen was taken over by spiderwebs. During the day, you could still make out cars through the webs, but at night, the camera’s light reflected off the webs and turned them white, making it nearly impossible to see anything on the road.

When tracking stolen vehicles or investigating traffic accidents, visibility issues from spiderwebs and light-attracted insects were a constant headache. They did maintain the cameras periodically, but in Hell-sota, where it was warm year-round, bug damage was just part of the reality.

And the video quality wasn’t even good enough to tell car models apart. Trying to trace the vehicle belonging to Isaac Bazelli—who was masquerading as Steven Davis—was like looking for a black cat in a coal mine.

“What do you want me to do? We’re short-staffed and underfunded. No one’s maintaining the gear.”

“Negligence of duty, huh? Aren’t you traffic police? What’re you gonna do about all those cobwebs?”

“Excuse me?”

“What else would those damn Yankee cops be doing? Probably stuffing their faces with donuts and waddling around town, jiggling their fat asses.”

Anna blew out an irritated breath, lips pursed, and glared at the air. She was still in uniform, with a taser strapped to her back pocket. In Hell-sota, even off-duty officers had the authority to enforce the law—and if a civilian insulted a cop in public using aggressive language, they could be regulated.

Should I give you a taste of the taser?

If only the cartridge didn’t need recharging after each shot, she would’ve electrocuted Baek Kyung on the spot—private residence or not.

“Shut up and get over here.”

Anna grabbed Baek Kyung by the ear, yanking him off the couch like she meant to tear it off.

“Ow! Hey, fuck—let go while I’m asking nice! Hey! You’re not letting go?!”

“Come quietly before I tase your ass.”

Hunched over, Baek Kyung was dragged helplessly into Siron’s bedroom. Anna tossed him onto the floor and glanced around for Lewis. He was on the bed, buried in a dam-like heap of Siron’s clothes and blankets, fast asleep.

“Ha... wow. Look at me. A real grown-up now. I didn’t even snap.”

Baek Kyung shook his head and covered his red ears with both hands, dumbfounded.

“Cut the crap. Lewis! Get your ass up too!”

Lewis, face buried in Siron’s blanket, groggily lifted his head at the shouting.

“...Huh? You’re back?”

“You’re seriously sleeping at a time like this?!”

“...Huh? Oh... yeah, that was the best sleep I’ve had in a while...”

Anna clicked her tongue in disgust as Lewis, hair matted into a bird’s nest, scratched his head in a daze.

“I’ve been up all night on duty and you’re over here napping like nothing’s going on?”

“That bastard had a seizure last night.”

Still rubbing his burning ears, Baek Kyung glared at Lewis with exhausted eyes. Anna turned to Lewis, alarmed.

“After a few quiet days?”

“Yeah, just out of nowhere. Calmed down a bit after sniffing Bebe.”

Baek Kyung and Anna both grimaced at the word "Bebe," but Lewis couldn’t care less. He yawned loudly, scratching his belly.

“Yawn... seriously, I slept like a rock.”

“Get your damn head on straight and look at the file I sent.”

But Lewis wasn’t snapping out of it so easily. Wrapped in Siron’s warm seersucker blanket, he sluggishly sat up and distanced himself from Baek Kyung on the floor like he didn’t want to catch whatever virus he had. Staring blankly at Anna sitting by the bed, he asked:

“What file?”

At that moment, both their phones buzzed with a new message. A file had arrived—an image of a map of Baggers City. Zooming in revealed small red dots scattered across it, each labeled with a date and time in tiny font.

“What is this?”

“Vehicle activity data for Steven Davis, from the ALPR database.”

“Huh?”

“What?”

Anna elaborated for the confused duo:

“That Suburban pickup truck with the plate number 4XCZ271? The owner’s listed as Steven Davis. That’s Isaac Bazelli’s forged identity.”

She brought the tablet down to their level, enlarging the screen as she explained.

“The red dots mark where the Suburban was spotted. ALPR auto-scans license plates and logs locations. Most of the scanners are set up around the slums, so it’s easier to track movement there. It’s way more effective than CCTV.”

“Well, that sounds easy. What took so long?”

“Easy?! I only got this data because it was reported stolen! And that asshole of a chief limited my access to the database just to screw me over. I had to beg to get the damn clearance back!”

“Why does the chief hate you so much?”

At Baek Kyung’s question, Anna’s rapid-fire speech clamped shut like a clam.

“...I kinda got on his bad side. Dug into his dirt.”

“Figures.”

Baek Kyung muttered, anxiously scraping at his lower lip with a fingernail.

“We can’t afford to leave a police trail.”

“Then you shouldn’t have asked me for help.”

Still staring at his phone, Baek Kyung bit his lip.

“It’s been days since Siron was taken. Shouldn’t we go public with this already?”

“No way.”

“Absolutely not!”

Baek Kyung and Lewis shouted in unison at Anna’s suggestion. Their response was so urgent and in sync, it was clear that revealing Siron’s disappearance—or even his existence—to the public would be catastrophic.

“So what are the red dots for? You must’ve marked them for a reason.”

Prompted by Baek Kyung, Anna got off the bed and sat on the floor, face clouded with thought. Placing the tablet at the center of the three, she pointed at a section dense with dots.

“These are the places the Suburban lingered the longest. Near Siron’s apartment, the motel, and the urology clinic.”

“So that bastard Bazelli was scoping the place out, planning the kidnapping.”

Anna calmly countered Baek Kyung’s fury.

“We can’t say for sure he’s the culprit yet. We’ve got no solid proof. It’s still just a working theory.”

Lewis spoke up, visibly uneasy.

“What about now? You said it was reported stolen—can we track it in real time?”

“Unfortunately, no. The ALPR system only operates within Baggers City. Unless it passed through a toll station or facility equipped with tracking, we can’t trace it anymore. If they crossed state lines, we can’t even query the data. But we do have movement logs from the likely time of the kidnapping.”

With a dead-serious expression, Anna slowly connected the red dots with her fingertip, mapping Isaac Bazelli’s recorded movements on the tablet screen.

August 4th, 5:47 PM, the vehicle passed through Atlantic Coastal Road, stayed somewhere unknown for about three hours, and re-entered the same road at 8:41 PM. From there, it continued heading southeast, left Baggers City, passed through the nearby town of Adamo, and disappeared on the main road leading to Secreta National Park. Unfortunately, Secreta is a vast wetlands region at the southern tip of the Hell-sota peninsula, spanning multiple cities.

“That’s it? That’s the last trace?”

“Yeah. Nothing after that.”

The final data point was three days old. No further updates had come in since.

Staring at the zoomed-out map, the scale of Secreta National Park sprawling across the screen, Baek Kyung’s eyes twitched slightly before turning to stare at empty space. After a long pause, he exhaled heavily and stood up.

“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

“You’re seriously just gonna leave like this?”

“You think if we sit around, Siron’s gonna come back with souvenirs?”

“Do you even know how big Secreta is?”

“Fucking massive, I bet. So what? Hey—you coming?”

Still wrapped in the blanket, Lewis looked up from the tablet screen he’d been inspecting. His response was indignant, like Baek Kyung had insulted him.

“Of course I’m coming.”

Then he turned to Anna.

“Anna. Go back to the motel. If you find even the smallest clue, let us know.”

“Ugh, I don’t know anymore. Honestly, we should just make it a public case...”

Baek Kyung cut her off instantly.

“That’s our last resort. Right now, going public would only make things worse.”

Lewis nodded in agreement. There was a clear, quiet understanding between the two of them—a secret alliance of some kind. Even with Baek Kyung’s rut suppressants, Anna had seen Lewis’s rut firsthand. Releasing two alphas into the wild like this—was that really okay?

The truth was, Baek Kyung and Lewis might pose a greater threat to each other. Their sparks, their tension, could easily erupt into wildfire and turn them against each other. And the deeper truth Anna didn’t want to say aloud was: she didn’t want to keep looking for Yoon Siron anymore. If not for the suppressants Baek Kyung promised her, she would’ve dropped this case long ago.

In the end, Anna reluctantly agreed to their request.

“Fine. I’ll take care of the motel.”

Then, with a deadly serious look, she issued one final warning.

“But you two. I mean it this time. Don’t fucking fight.

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