Black Badger

“I’m fine!”

Ami answered boldly.

With that same voice, she first lamented the tragedy of dropping her frappuccino, then added seriously,

“But it felt like the stab avoided my vital points on purpose.”

“What?”

Ska repeated.

Yehyeon narrowed his eyes and looked down at her.

“I’m not that spaced-out, you know.”

It was the patient’s claim.

Everyone in the room turned their round eyes toward her. She looked so normal it was hard to believe she’d just come out of surgery.

Until Yehyeon arrived, she had been the oldest in the hospital room.

Ami spoke solemnly.

“The culprit’s really skilled. I didn’t even sense them coming.”

“It’s okay~... people can get distracted by frappuccinos sometimes....”

Ricardo grinned slyly.

Ami flared up.

“No!”

“Ami. Don’t move so much.”

Yehyeon hurriedly pressed down on her shoulders as she raised her arms.

“Your wound will open.”

“Ska didn’t notice either! And the person vanished like a ghost!”

Lowering her arms again, Ami insisted earnestly,

“Someone who moves like that isn’t an amateur!”

Ska stayed silent for a while.

Sitting down, he only stroked his chin. Yehyeon and Ricardo waited quietly for him to reach a conclusion.

The tall aide uncrossed his legs.

“That’s a valid point.”

Silence filled the room.

Everyone sank into their own thoughts, eyes downcast. Only Ami blinked wide eyes, waiting for the others to finish thinking.

When she couldn’t bear the boredom anymore and smacked the blanket with both hands, the silence finally broke.

“I’m already bored!”

“Let’s call Hilde here first, then talk more.”

Yehyeon muttered as he patted her head.

“No idea why we can’t reach him, though.”

***

I stared fixedly at the monitor.

Yehyeon’s photo and the text beside it.

The sentence at the very top of the personal information caught my eye.

“During the zombie-type Creature outbreak within the Core, received subject X’s biological data from Falcon.”

What is X.

And what is the “zombie-type Creature outbreak”?

I stared at the incomprehensible words.

Then I felt a chill of killing intent from behind.

Startled, I threw myself sideways.

Crash!

Jaeyeon’s fist shattered the computer screen.

The glass cracked but the frame held. Cracks spread outward from where his fist had struck.

It was still functioning, but not for long.

Jaeyeon kept swinging his fists.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The screen went completely black.

What the hell is he doing again?

The shattered display, the glass shards stuck to his bleeding hands.

I could only watch, speechless, as Jaeyeon lost control.

What’s his problem?

Only after pulverizing the screen entirely did he lift his head.

Just like when he smashed the serum at Erich Erhart’s museum, he was panting heavily.

“What the hell was that for now?”

Surely not because he saw Yehyeon’s face?

“Why the sudden fit?”

Wham!

Yun’s shoe slammed into Jaeyeon’s side.

Jaeyeon’s body flew back into a pile of documents. Thud! The stack, as tall as a man, burst into the air.

I exhaled a stunned “Huh...” at the abrupt chaos.

Yun walked slowly toward the man struggling to rise.

“Psychopath.”

The shooter stopped at Jaeyeon’s feet and muttered coldly.

“If you’re going to have a fit, at least know who’s really to blame.”

His low voice trembled with fury.

A hard, freezing gaze locked on his opponent.

The anger simmered deeper.

“You couldn’t even bare your fangs at your master.”

Jaeyeon screamed.

Eyes gone wild, he lunged at Yun with an inhuman sound. Even expecting it, the force was overwhelming enough to make me flinch.

The sheer rage and grief reached even me.

But Yun didn’t flinch.

The gun went off.

Bang!

A bullet grazed Jaeyeon’s ribs.

Even with blood spurting, he didn’t stop.

“What do you know!”

Jaeyeon slammed Yun down, straddling him, and raised his fist.

He was so frenzied he didn’t even feel the pain of the wound.

“What do you know! What do you know about what he and I had!”

Thud! Thud! Thud! His fists pounded Yun’s face. Yun didn’t blink through the barrage.

Even under the blows, he calmly reloaded.

He lifted the gun, aiming at Jaeyeon’s wrist.

Bang!

If this went on, one of them would die.

Most likely Jaeyeon—since Yun had the gun and his sanity. Though ironically, Jaeyeon’s insanity granted him monstrous strength; Yun couldn’t shove him off.

Still, if nothing changed, Jaeyeon would die first.

I sighed and looked around.

Good.

Another crowbar.

Crash!

The crowbar snapped in half.

Of course. Crowbars never hold up to impact.

I tossed the broken tool away, but didn’t stop this time. I ran toward the men wrestling on the floor and kicked away the gun.

Then I grabbed some nylon cord—clearly meant for restraining test subjects—and put it to use. I tied up Jaeyeon first, then Yun’s hands as well.

And I set them back-to-back.

“Why tie me?”

Yun spat blood and glared.

I smiled at the two disheveled men.

“Did you forget? You threw the first punch again, senior.”

“He’s the one at fault.”

“What did he do?”

Ignoring Jaeyeon’s ragged struggling, I asked.

The cord wouldn’t break. I’d tied it with all my strength, and the material was tough; besides, I knew how to bind hands so they wouldn’t slip free.

Yun narrowed his eyes.

I waited patiently for one of them to speak.

At this point, I deserved to know. I couldn’t keep breaking up their psychotic fights forever.

Silence fell over the lab.

Yun finally spoke.

“You don’t know about the zombie-type Creature incident, do you.”

“No.”

“There was once a humanoid Creature—like the one we just saw—rampaging inside the Center Core. It caused a major crisis because it infected people like a zombie.”

Wait. I’d seen a disease like that in my old world.

And the fact that it was humanoid nagged at me.

Jaeyeon’s thrashing grew wilder, making Yun’s body jolt along with him.

The shooter stopped talking for a moment and glared at Jaeyeon.

“Knock him out.”

“I’ll finish listening first.”

“The infection spread fast. People’s panic rose to dangerous levels, and rumors started that the Center Core itself might collapse.”

So this happened after the Second War.

“The Elders took it seriously and got involved.”

“I saw a note earlier. It said Falcon gave Yehyeon the biological data of ‘X.’”

I said it absently, then asked,

“Who is X?”

Could it be my data?

That thought hit me as I spoke. Maybe it was mine—or one of my kind’s. Maybe Falcon handed over the biological data of someone human-shaped but not human.

I asked with half certainty.

But the answer was something else entirely.

Unexpected.

“Jaeyeon.”

My eyes widened.

I stared down at the two bound men.

“Him?”

The one sitting back-to-back with you right now?

“Why his?”

“Because he isn’t human either.”

I stayed frozen.

Jaeyeon had gone dangerously quiet. Head bowed, motionless. The calm before another storm.

Problem was, I was too stunned to react.

Still, I kept ready in case he exploded again.

“What is he, then, if not human?” I muttered.

“He arrived here before you did,” Yun said flatly.

“Not a Titan, not a human. Didn’t you suspect it? Before you passed your youth to him, Jaeyeon was already staying young at Falcon’s side.”

Ah.

The memories rushed back.

Red lipstick. Upturned eyes. Flowing black hair.

Rose lipstick, high nose bridge, golden strands glinting over the collarbone.

A sharp Adam’s apple, distinct veins, short black hair.

Jaeyeon was a master of disguise.

That talent had eaten away at his mind. Like someone with dissociative disorder, his identity kept collapsing. A drifting self—no one knew what his true face was.

Perhaps only Colton did.

The one we called Shapeshifter.

From the very beginning, he had been Colton’s subordinate.

Jaeyeon laughed.

“I was gladly his.”

The human-shaped thing smiled wickedly. In his eyes I saw a dizzying mix of emotion—

Betrayal, rage, humiliation, pleading, hatred, love, fear.

“I served him while he consumed me. And this is what I get for it!”

Even after knowing Colton for decades, I’d never known what Jaeyeon truly was. Probably no one had.

Not until Colton handed Jaeyeon’s biological data to Yehyeon.

“A truly, truly grand ending!”

“If your master betrayed you, then your blade of hate should be turned on him,” Yun growled.

“Why aim it at Yehyeon instead?”

“Because he asked for my biological data!”

“Bullshit. He asked for useful information, not your data. He didn’t even know you weren’t human.”

“Yun. He’s not thinking rationally anymore.”

Even as I tried to calm them, half my mind was spinning, processing the new information.

Now it made sense.

Everything that hadn’t quite fit clicked into place.

Why Jaeyeon had smashed the vial of blood serum in a frenzy.

Why he hated Yehyeon so much.

How Yun had been able to create the “Creature Recognizer” so quickly.

All of it traced back to that zombie outbreak.

Jaeyeon couldn’t bring himself to hate Colton, who’d given away his data, so he directed his hatred at Yehyeon, who had merely received it.

And Yun /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ had used Jaeyeon’s biological data and the infected Creature samples in his research ever since.

“So what was that thing, exactly?”

I said aloud to no one in particular.

“The zombie-type Creature?”

I was almost afraid of the answer.

I regretted asking as soon as I did. It was over and done with—better to forget.

But words can’t be taken back.

Yun answered coldly.

“A diseased Titan.”

My stomach twisted.

I tried to absorb what I’d just learned.

I didn’t know which part hurt most.

That one of my kin had still been inside the Center Core?

That they’d met such a miserable end?

Or that because of it, Jaeyeon’s hatred for Yehyeon was misplaced—and Yehyeon was still suffering for it?

The illness had appeared around the time the World Tree began to sicken. Those who had received its blessing sometimes contracted it, though rarely.

We’d never found its cause.

Blankly staring at the floor, I murmured,

“So that’s why Yehyeon was so sure there was a Titan inside the Core.”

“Maybe. The higher-ups and I thought it might’ve crawled in from outside. Sometimes the dimensional rift opens, linking inside and out. That’s usually how Creatures appear inside the Core.”

That, too, was new to me—but I didn’t have the mental space to dwell on it.

I looked at Jaeyeon, cold with rage, and Yun, cold in his own way.

The diseased Titan who had endangered the Center Core.

“When you made the Titan Recognizer—you said the research started before I appeared.”

I murmured, watching Yun.

“The sample you used was that Titan, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a specific way to kill someone infected with that illness.”

A throbbing headache hit; I pressed my temples hard.

“We learned it the hard way. If they’d known that, it would’ve ended as a minor incident....”

Why do I always arrive too late?

The ringing in my ears made me wince.

If only I’d been inside the Core then.

If only I’d stopped it before it spread—

Bang!

Something slammed against the lab door.

Yun and Jaeyeon turned their heads, but I didn’t.

Instead, I bent down and began rifling through the scattered files.

“What was that Titan’s name?”

They looked at me as I muttered.

I ignored their stares and kept digging, hands flying through the papers.

“There must be more information here.”

My goal had shifted.

“I think it’s a name I know.”

I wouldn’t leave this place until I’d learned everything the Elders knew.

Not until I’d torn every scrap of information from this lab.

Like an addict deprived of a fix, I began tearing through the research materials.