"Krrrhh… kh…."
She couldn't breathe.
It felt as though ice-cold water had rushed all the way down into her lungs and jammed her airway shut.
Last time, Sihyeok's voice had been the rope thrown down to her — but now, no warmth reached her at all.
Beside her, only a silent Kang Taemin, and the ghosts of her past dragging her down toward the deep.
The terror felt like drowning — it had climbed all the way to the crown of her head, and she was on the verge of losing her grip on reason completely, when—
Squeeze.
The cold-metal feel of the ring around her right middle finger cut through her fading senses.
The silver ring the Director had bought her.
Director….
The moment the ring's cool touch met her skin, the sound of deep water hammering at her ears split open, and a single scene unspooled behind her eyes.
[I'll promise you. There is no way I'm going to be the one who abandons you first.]
Gold eyes fixed straight on her, not a flicker of wavering in them.
The bridge of the nose that always twitched when he lied — that day, in that instant, hadn't moved a hair.
[And… once this is all over, I'll make you laugh so much, every single day, until you're sick of it — until you can't even remember someone like me.]
And, right before she'd left for the ruins, the warmth of the hand that had ruffled her hair.
Those words and that warmth yanked Sea-ah's suffocating, sinking soul hard, back up above the surface.
Snap.
In that moment, the black water climbing up under her chin stopped dead.
Squeezing the ring hard in her fist, Sea-ah opened her eyes as if breaking the surface from deep underwater, and jerked her head up.
This… isn't real.
Cold, wet water was no place for her.
I have somewhere to go back to.
A cozy Sunshine room, younger siblings she had to protect.
Above all, someone who had promised her he would never abandon her.
Sea-ah wiped her wet lashes and forced her blurred vision to hold steady.
I have to get back. Whatever it takes.
She would live, no matter what, and get back there.
Resolve set, the first thing Sea-ah did was pin down exactly where she was.
The buildings were half-shattered, ugly bones of themselves — but the layout of the streets flashing past the window matched her memory.
Round that corner… and there's the stationery shop. And over there, the piano academy….
There was no room for doubt.
This was the old neighborhood she'd been born and raised in — no question.
After the disaster, Sea-ah had been dragged off to the institute for a hellish stretch of days, cut off from any news of the outside world.
She'd vaguely assumed it must have been reduced to ruins, but it had never once crossed her mind that her whole hometown — the place every memory of her family lived in — had been swallowed whole into 'District Eight.'
But there was no time for sentiment.
Sea-ah rolled her eyes around, looking for a way out.
Jump?
Her eyes rested for a moment on the door handle jolting beside her, but she shook her head firmly.
No. That's suicide.
Right now her body was so fever-wracked she could barely keep her balance.
On top of that, the car was tearing down the ruined road at reckless speed.
Jumping unprotected at this pace could snap her neck when she hit the ground.
Steady, Lee Sea-ah. Panic and you're dead.
Steadying her breathing, Sea-ah began to break the situation down.
If they wanted me dead, there'd be no reason to bring me all the way out here.
The fact that they were moving her this deep into a dangerous closed zone meant they had some specific destination or purpose in mind.
Abduction. Or a hostage….
If so, there was only one answer.
The car has to stop somewhere. Whether they drag me out or lock me in.
That would be her only window.
The instant the car stopped and their guard slipped.
Sea-ah, quietly, began pulling mana up from deep in her core.
She couldn't say how long they'd driven for.
Ka-thunk.
The chassis lurched hard over a bump in the ruined road; the engine wound down, and the car finally pulled to a stop.
Creak—.
Along with the sound of the driver's door opening, heavy footsteps came grinding through the dirt — thud, thud.
Without a moment's hesitation, Kang Taemin yanked open the back door where Sea-ah was.
The face revealed when the door opened held no emotion of any kind — no expression.
He had always been a quiet man with a flat affect, but this was of a different order entirely.
A perfect blankness, uncannily rigid, as though the switch controlling every muscle in his face had been shut off at the source.
Above all, the most spine-chilling part was his eyes.
The keen, veteran's glint had vanished without a trace.
Sea-ah knew it on instinct.
Right now, Kang Taemin was not in his right mind.
Now.
A cool light lit her eyes.
Fwash—!
Between Sea-ah and Kang Taemin, a compressed, dazzlingly clear barrier deployed in overlapping layers.
Kwaang—!
With a thunderous boom, Kang Taemin's huge frame was flung back.
In the short beat as he reeled sideways, kicking up a haze of dust—
Sea-ah forced her body upright and bolted out of the car.
"Hah — haaah…."
Her legs shook and her sight spun in circles, but she couldn't stop.
Sea-ah bit down so hard the taste of blood hit her tongue and ran for the ruins with everything she had.
Behind her, she didn't forget to throw up layer after layer of solid barrier as she went.
Anything to buy her one more second against Kang Taemin's pursuit.
That was when it happened.
Kwang!!
An ear-splitting crack behind her.
Startled, Sea-ah flinched and looked back.
"……!"
Face still perfectly, grotesquely blank, Kang Taemin was hammering his fist, over and over, into the layers of solid mana barrier Sea-ah had thrown up.
Kwang—! Kwang—! Kwang—!
Ear-splitting booms rang out one after another.
Bare fists only.
Bone showed through, flesh burst, blood spattered — and Kang Taemin kept pounding the barrier like a machine that couldn't feel pain, grinding it down.
Krrk, kwaang—!
"That's impossible…!"
Sea-ah's pupils shook as if an earthquake had gone off inside her.
Her barrier had held against A-rank monsters.
And now that solid wall was rocking wildly under nothing more than bare-fist blows — no weapon at all.
Ex-military or not… he's non-Awakened, how—!
Freakish strength, beyond anything reasonable.
But right now, even asking the question was a luxury she couldn't afford.
Krrrrrk—!
Cracks began to spread across the clear barrier's surface, cobweb-thick.
"If I can't stop him… I'll just cage him harder!"
Fwash—!
At the desperate motion of Sea-ah's hand, a new cube-shaped barrier surged up, closing in around Kang Taemin from every side.
But.
Shk—!
…?!
Kang Taemin's outline blurred.
As if he'd read Sea-ah's mind in advance, with animal reflexes he slipped through the gap in the barrier just before it sealed shut.
No way! He dodged that?!
She had no time to be stunned.
Somehow already at an angle on her, Kang Taemin's hand dipped into his coat and came back out — a flash gleamed.
Tang—! Tang—!
A gun?!
Regular lead rounds wouldn't so much as scratch Sea-ah's barrier.
But.
Kkkrk—! Crack!
The rounds lodged in her barrier were giving off a strange light, drilling into the surface.
Sea-ah's pupils trembled small and fast with shock.
Because she knew exactly what that gun was.
… The Director's Mana Pistol…!
The B-rank artifact the Director favored day to day.
The very weapon he had pressed into the researchers' hands personally, one each, telling them to protect the children on this operation.
Same rank or not, its firepower wasn't such that it could punch through Sea-ah's barrier — extreme defense-specialized as it was — at a single stroke.
The problem was that the one pulling the trigger was Kang Taemin.
Tang! Tang! Tang!
The mana rounds pouring from his fingertips traced a chilling, mechanical arc — every single one drilling into exactly the same one point on the barrier, dogged and relentless.
Each round threaded, with zero margin of error, straight through the tail of the last one — uncanny marksmanship.
Kkkrk—! Crack!
At last, across the solid barrier that had looked as though it would never break, a massive crack split — rrrip — and then.
Shatter!
One corner of the barrier finally shattered, shards flying.
Pyoong—!
A mana round drove through the gap in the broken barrier, grazed Sea-ah's cheek, and just barely tore past into empty air.
"Ngh…!"
Sea-ah rolled roughly on the dirt and used the momentum to spring herself free.
With the barrier broken, one more second in front of Kang Taemin's muzzle and she'd be a sieve.
At the edge of her spinning sight, a ruined apartment building caught.
Tang! Tang!
Dodging the shots chasing her by a hair, Sea-ah threw herself in through the entrance.
"Hah… haah…."
The inside was a perfect ruin.
An elevator, its power cut, gaping open like an ugly dead mouth, and rough debris scattered everywhere — a cold silence bled out of the space.
Krrknk—! Crunch.
A moment later she heard shattered glass being ground under a heel behind her.
Thud. Thud.
A steady interval. Heavy footsteps, without a hair of drift.
I have to go up…!
Biting down hard, Sea-ah hurled herself up the stairs.
Her feverish body dragged, heavy as lead, and her legs shook as if they'd give at any moment — but the second she stops moving, she'd dead.
Ta-tak, ta-tak.
Reeling wide, shoulder slamming roughly into the cold cement wall, Sea-ah kicked up the stairs like a woman possessed.
Ignoring the tearing pain in her thighs, ignoring the iron-tasting breath sawing up through her throat, she drove herself upward, desperate.
But.
The speed of the terror climbing from below was overwhelmingly faster.
Thud. Thud.
"Hah, hah, please…!"
Through the choking terror, thankfully, a faint slit of leaking light caught her eye.
At the top of what had felt like an endless narrow, dark stairwell.
A firmly shut iron rooftop door.
Sea-ah, holding her fit-to-burst heart, threw her body at it.
Kri-i-i-k — Kwang!
She rammed the rusted rooftop door with her whole body and burst outside.
Along with the open space, a bitter wind hit her hard, whipping at her sweat-damp cheeks.
But there was no time to catch her breath.
Sea-ah spun back at once and slammed the heavy iron rooftop door shut.
Kwang!
Then, quickly, she grabbed a length of iron pipe from the ground and shoved it through the door handle like a crossbar.
This alone won't be enough…!
"Ngh…!"
Dragging her body past its limit, Sea-ah stretched both hands out and wrung the last of her mana out of it.
Over the iron door, clear barriers began stacking up, layer over layer.
One layer, two, three….
And in the very instant the final layer clicked into place.
Kwang—!!!
Along with a thunderous roar that shook the whole building, the heavy iron door caved in from the inside, folding up ugly as paper.
Kwang! Kwang! Kwang! Kwang!
"Ngh…!"
Sea-ah bit down on a scream and shrank a step back.
Kwang! Kwang! Kwaang—!!
Blows spaced at chilling, perfectly regular intervals.
The iron pipe she'd jammed in as a crossbar shrieked its dying cry, bending like taffy, and then—
Krik-krik — crrick!
At last, the thick hinges of the door, unable to hold, tore free, and the middle of the door split vertically, ugly.
Through the sharply parted gap between the metal.
Through that narrow, pitch-black slit — Kang Taemin's dull, cold eyes, with no trace of life in them, were fixed dead on Sea-ah, and only her.
"Nnh…!"
Their eyes met and her breath jammed in her throat.
Right after, a livid blue muzzle pushed through the torn gap.
Tang! Tang! Tang! Tang!
Every time the muzzle spat fire, the layers of barrier Sea-ah had thrown up screamed and tore apart, merciless.
Kkkrk— shatter!!
"No, please — no!"
Sea-ah stretched both hands out desperately, trying somehow to patch the shattering barriers.
But.
Fzzzzt…. The blue light barely flickering at her fingertips guttered out, weak as a candle in the wind.
Mana depletion.
A body raging with fever and a mind wrung out to its edge had finally, fully, hit rock bottom.
She didn't have a single scrap of mana left.
Kwa-shaaang—!!
The last thin barrier crumbled, hollow and helpless, and scattered like glass dust.
"Ah…."
The strength went out of her legs entirely, and Sea-ah, breath coming ragged, dropped hard onto the cold rooftop floor.
Perfectly defenseless.
Kwang!
Kang Taemin kicked what was left of the iron door aside, walked in, and slowly leveled the muzzle at the space between Sea-ah's brows.
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