Black Badger

There were many attendants.

It felt as if I had become an animal inside a cage. Of course, they were here to restrain me.

At least, thanks to the excuse I came up with, I probably would not be killed. There would not be another specimen like me, after all.

A man in surgical scrubs approached, holding a syringe filled with Green Dream.

“Once you take my biological data, let me go.”

I said it with a smile.

Naturally, I knew they would not grant that.

As expected, Yates did not respond to my words.

“The fact that you think you can leave here surprises me.”

The Elder glanced at the line of attendants standing in formation.

All wore suits and sunglasses. Each was ready to shoot me at any moment. Tranquilizer rounds, no doubt—strong enough to put down an elephant.

The muzzles aimed from the study had not lowered.

My limbs were bound to the chair; I could not move.

It was not that I lacked confidence in escaping, but—

“My word.”

The man in scrubs murmured.

“The Green Dream really doesn’t take effect.”

“Astonishing.”

Yates stroked his chin, muttering to himself.

“How could something like this happen?”

“I believe he’s an unusual mutation.”

The researcher replied.

He grabbed my chin with one hand and pulled my eyelid open with the other.

I stayed still. But I had no intention of sitting here for long. I needed to go back and apologize to Yehyeon.

Just thinking of that document still made me nauseous.

The researcher began drawing blood from my vein. I felt the unpleasant sting of the needle and looked past his shoulder.

White walls. A small TV mounted on the ceiling corner.

Six attendants surrounded the restraining chair; the door was locked tight.

How should I talk my way out of this?

As I was thinking, I suddenly inhaled sharply.

Was it because the researcher injected me with something unknown?

That was part of it, but not the real reason.

I fought the urge to open my mouth.

A sentence appeared on the TV screen.

[Idiot]

Why did it sound like I could hear a voice?

[You refused my experiment table, yet you climb up onto theirs willingly?]

I didn’t do it willingly.

I was spacing out in the study when the Elder caught me.

I wanted to refuse every kind of experiment table, thank you very much!

[I can’t let those bastards experiment on you before I do.]

Why the phrase “before I do”?

[LMAOOOOOO]

Ah, that’s Jaeyeon.

[✧٩(ˊωˋ*)و✧]

I lost all motivation to speak.

Any will I had to plan an escape vanished in an instant. Those lunatics would soon come to drag me out anyway, so what was the point of struggling?

Wait. I felt like I had thought the same thing when I was kidnapped.

I grimaced from the nausea creeping up.

Since there was no need to worry about escaping, I might as well talk while waiting for rescue.

“The Commander’s document.”

When I swallowed and spoke, Yates’s gaze shifted to me.

“Destroy it.”

The Elder did not move.

Then he smirked. Not a surprising reaction.

Still, it was better to try words before resorting to violence.

“Kid... you think you’re in a position to negotiate? Hah. Typical of the fool who dared sneak into my study.”

“You can’t kill me. And calling child abuse a weakness to exploit is a bit pathetic, don’t you think? It won’t work anyway.”

“Why not?”

Yates shrugged.

“I think it’s a fine excuse. You must’ve read the vague testimonies of those criminals, haven’t you?”

“I did. But what can you even do with that? Yehyeon isn’t at fault.”

“You really know nothing.”

The Elder snorted.

“The media are crawling everywhere trying to dig up the Commander’s past.”

“Disgusting.”

“And in that chaos, imagine dropping something like this. The reaction would be enormous. Perfect headline material—scandalous, juicy. Once it’s out, and the culprits are found mysteriously dead afterward, the rest follows naturally.”

This man was capable of doing exactly that.

The guilt twisting inside me began to fade. I had been wondering if storming in and wrecking this place on my own was truly right, but—

With every word he spoke, the guilt evaporated and only fury remained.

“Ever heard the saying, ‘Never fight someone who buys ink by the barrel’?”

Of course I had.

I had witnessed the power struggles of the mighty back on Earth. I had cleaned up more than a few of them—those who tried to turn our kind into test subjects.

I had spent so much effort removing the ones who despised us, the minorities.

That was all in the past.

What mattered now was the being before my eyes.

Ignoring my spinning vision, I blinked.

KWAANG!

The room’s door exploded.

Six muzzles turned toward the doorway.

The researcher flinched; Patrick Yates tensed.

The attendants fired blindly into the thick smoke.

Tatatatatang! Tatatatatang!

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

Wait—did something just roll in?

A grenade?

KWA-A-AANG!

My mind went blank.

Everything went silent from the ringing in my ears. My vision turned white, then blacked out.

When I regained sight through the tearing pain, I realized I had been hit by shrapnel laced with Green Dream.

They’d thrown that inside this tiny lab?

I looked down at the unrecognizable remains of two attendants.

“It hurts.”

Bang, bang, bang!

Bullets punched into the skulls of the remaining ones who were still twitching.

Jaeyeon stepped in, trampling over corpses.

I resisted the urge to clutch my side—right flank, left ribs, maybe even my leg; I couldn’t tell which hurt more—and grumbled.

Thanks to Yun blocking the blast at incredible speed, I was still alive. Otherwise, I’d be gone.

“Friendly fire?”

“I just saved you.”

Yun replied, lowering his body bunker.

He didn’t even glance at Yates, who sat on the floor in a daze. Yates had survived only because his attendants had thrown themselves over him.

The Elder stared at Jaeyeon in shock—mistakenly believing it to be Colton’s strike.

“But if we load him into the car like this, we’ll have a problem.”

After unbinding me, Yun examined my wound.

I gave a dry laugh.

A bomb had exploded this close; of course there’d be a problem.

“Not in great shape, are you?”

“Right. The bomb went off right in my face. Rescue operations are difficult mostly because people worry about the hostage’s safety, you know.”

Even coughing blood, I kept talking.

Neither Yun nor Jaeyeon blinked.

Jaeyeon smiled and cupped Yates’s cheeks in both hands.

“Yates~!”

“Jaeyeon, don’t kill him yet.”

“Absorb him.”

I called out urgently, but Yun spoke instead.

I tore my gaze away from Jaeyeon and slowly looked up at Yun.

“Like the Tenth did.”

Is that what he wanted to see?

Was that why he pushed things this far—just to watch my ability in action?

I stared up at him and smirked.

“No.”

Yun raised an eyebrow.

“Because you want to die? Or because you don’t remember how?”

“I have a physiological aversion to that technique.”

I rose to my feet slowly.

Luckily, the shrapnel had only grazed my leg, so I could still walk.

“I won’t use it unless I’m on the verge of death.”

“That’s now.”

“It’s tolerable for the moment. Please treat me.”

I spoke as I walked toward Yates.

Jaeyeon let go of the Elder’s face and gave me a playful grin.

“Yates.”

I spat out blood and said,

“Destroy the documents.”

“You insane bastards.”

Yates growled between clenched teeth.

“You think you’ll get away with this? This is my mansion! I won’t go down quietly!”

“Destroy them.”

I lowered my gaze and repeated,

“I don’t want to see those papers in your hands.”

Wiiiiiiiing!

Instead of answering, Yates slipped his hand into his pocket.

He must have pressed a button. Forgetting my pain, I lifted my head, fury coiling through me.

A familiar AI voice echoed.

[All specimens are being released.]

“What about that specimen?”

“Dead!”

Jaeyeon cheerfully propped her chin on her hands.

“I slit its throat and hung it on the wall! The guy was a convict serving a life sentence. I just made sure he paid for his crimes. Praise me.”

“Was it human?”

“Of course.”

Jaeyeon laughed as if I’d asked something ridiculous.

“What else would it be?”

Lately, I’d often thought about the changes I’d brought to this world.

These things.

All of this.

“Seems like more of that kind is coming.”

Yun approached and handed me a sword.

Blinking, I looked down at the long blade. My instructor spoke.

“I’m giving up on trying to make you use a gun.”

“Ah. I’m sorry.”

“You’ll lose too much blood. Forget your aversion—if things get worse, absorb.”

Come to think of it, we didn’t even have blood packs.

We might find something similar on the attendants, but who could trust what’s inside their syringes? There was no time to check.

After Yun treated me, I looked again at Yates—

Holding his phone.

“You... are you working with the Commander?”

The Elder, panting, thrust the phone toward us.

A detonator?

Narrowing my eyes, I readied to draw, but Yates spoke first.

“I sent everything to the press.”

What?

“All those documents you were desperate to destroy.”

Everything went white before my eyes.

I froze, unable to react. His words didn’t make sense.

What did he send? Could he mean Yehyeon’s information?

All of it?

“By now my man’s already left the mansion with the files.”

The Elder’s twisted grin deepened.

“The reporters have been contacted!”

Why do these beings always struggle so desperately before dying?

Is it because their very existence has already been erased from the world, leaving them frantic to cling to a name that will not remain even after death?

“The moment they get the data, they’ll publish it! Everything! Every single thing—photos included!”

Yates screamed,

“You nobodies dare touch me?!”

His voice rose higher,

“You dare touch me?!”

The floor was covered in corpses.

I absorbed the dead.

Half my reason was gone. My mind burned white-hot with rage. Cold fury ignited into fire; sensations dulled beneath emotion.

I could not hear Yun or Jaeyeon.

Nor Yates.

It had been a long time since I’d felt such pure fury. I had grieved, resented, suffered—but not like this.

Not this blinding, suffocating rage.

The technique came as naturally as if I’d used it yesterday.

A blessing once given—

What the World Tree had bestowed upon me.

As the wounds sealed, power remained.

As long as the dead were not reduced to ash, there was always something to draw in.

“Then I’ll just bury the whole mansion.”

I said—and drew my sword.

“You, your attendants, and the documents they carry.”

I swung.

***

“My word.”

Eric Erhart, who had leisurely arrived at Patrick Yates’s hideout, let out a disbelieving laugh at the sight.

“It looks as though there was an air raid.”

“Prometheus and the scientist have returned to headquarters.”

Shashinsky, his red-haired aide, reported, unable to hide his shaken face.

The man with the crimson hair tapped his tablet with long fingers.

“It seems headquarters received the report about the Black Badger attack too late. The Falcon’s attendants who left with them are once again unaccounted for.”

“They won’t be found even if you look. Forget that fascinating being for now.”

Erhart gave the order, then gazed at the ruins for a long time.

Or rather, where the mansion had once stood.

Its skeletal frame was all that remained, as if after a bombing. No one could have survived.

A work sculpted by Prometheus’s wrath.

Once Colton Wiseman’s ace—and now the ace of Lee Yehyeon.

“And even so, he still hasn’t regained his full strength.”

Erhart let out a quiet laugh and slowly shook his head.

“No wonder our ancestors acted as they did.”

If he had faced the Titans back then, what would he have done?

Would he, like them, have been paralyzed by fear and worsened the disaster? Or, like Colton Wiseman—the ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) one now seated at the top—would he have offered them a small escape route?

The very path that had drawn Hildebert Taleb’s eyes?

They say “if” has no place in history, yet—

“When he regains his memories, even Falcon’s mansion will not remain intact.”

Erhart smiled faintly as he spoke to himself.

He continued to stare at the remnants of fury for a long time afterward, thinking—

That when Prometheus finally recovered his memories, perhaps he would see those eyes filled with searing regret and hatred turned toward him.

***

“Ami!”

I burst into the hospital room.

“Choi Ami!”

“Hilde!”

Ami looked up at me and beamed.

“Did you bring my Java Chip Frappuccino?”