Chapter 21: The Heart of the Chaos

“Hello?”

Hannah was the first to come to her senses and answer the phone.
The receptionist’s clumsy common language flowed into her ear as she brushed her hair back.
For about ten seconds, she held the receiver to her ear and stood still, then hung up without a word.

“…Bondo Square at the Central Station in Sector 17. A giant Abaddon has appeared in the EH building in front of the scramble crossing.”

As she muttered what she had heard, her mind slowly began to clear.
Bondo Square was one of the most crowded intersections in the world.
A mecca for young people and a street of entertainment that reached its peak at night.
‘How could an Abaddon appear in such a place without a sound?’
‘No, before that, what was I just doing?’

“Let’s deal with it and then find the hole right away. The way back might still be open underground.”

She turned around, hastily putting on the combat uniform that had been hanging there.
As Zakar stubbed out his cigarette, the magic that had been cast melted away.
As she familiarly put on her combat boots and broke the glass window of the motorcycle shop she had scouted out beforehand, she had already recovered her sense of reality to the point of feeling a pang of conscience.

“May God’s grace be with the owner.”

She muttered a blessing to the shop as if to herself and got on the black bike.
Beep, beep, beep.
Leaving the alarm behind, she exited the shop, and unlike before, a road full of cars greeted the two of them.
As if the driving laws had changed to only step on the white lines, she weaved through the cars and occasionally glanced at Zakar.
The black motorcycle in the next lane was keeping up with her at almost the same speed, never falling behind.
A hot, humid wind brushed past her cheek.
‘A colleague whose skills I can trust is more reassuring than I thought,’ she thought calmly.
The congested road looked like a dystopian movie long before Bondo Square.
In the distance, black smoke rose from a skyscraper, and drivers who were anxiously sticking their heads out of their car windows or trying to turn their cars around in impossible places and getting out to argue were visible everywhere.
It had been 9 minutes since the accident news came out.
At this rate, they wouldn’t make it in time.
Hannah, who had looked at her watch and come to a conclusion, pressed her earphone and spoke to the only pair connected to her device.

“One o’clock direction. Under the overpass.”

Then, with a loud honk of the horn, she pulled the accelerator hard.
Someone who was about to open their car door jumped in surprise and went back inside.
Not one, but two bikers.
As they passed through the narrow maze, people’s gazes flew at them like bullets.
‘I feel like I’ve gotten all the attention I’ll ever get in my life,’ she thought cynically, then leaned forward and accelerated towards the guardrail.
She heard a scream from behind, but instead of stopping, vrooom, she overheated the engine.
The moment she finally jumped over the railing, the motorcycle lightly floated in the air and slammed down on the asphalt.
As soon as she landed, she narrowly avoided a truck that was coming straight at her with a loud honk and sped off diagonally.
Zakar also landed on the ground and sped straight towards Bondo Square.
The incoming lane was empty.
They broke through the crowd of people running out of their abandoned cars and, in the blink of an eye, entered the heart of the chaos, the intersection where the crosswalk was drawn like a scribble.

“…Damn it.”

Hannah gritted her teeth at the scene unfolding before her eyes.
‘Is this what it would be like if the nightmares I often see under my eyelids became reality?’
Like an imagination that comes when the bright daylight of midday descends on the city like a fog, the scene of the skyscraper turned into hell was both unreal and familiar.

“Mom, mommy…! Sob, sob.”

“Let us in! Open the door! Please! There are people outside!”

Long black tentacles were piercing through the windows of the giant building like a worm eating an apple, and the humans who fell from there had their heads crushed on the car bodies or the ground, spewing black tentacles from all their orifices.
Watching the bodies pouring down from the skyscraper like a mass suicide, Hannah brought the emitter to her lips.

“Good luck.”

She aimed the muzzle and pulled the trigger, and the tentacle that was stretching out like an electric wire exploded in mid-air and scattered in all directions.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM –!

“Aaaaaaaaaah-!”

If she had known it would get this big, she wouldn’t have just given the police a warning about electromagnetic waves.
She had never seen an air raid in a downtown area, not even in her own world.
‘What on earth happened?’
Even when she looked around, she couldn’t see any signs of Abaddons coming up from the ground.
There was a possibility of a parking lot, but… it was when she happened to glance at the combat helicopter crossing the sky.

• “If we don’t go up, we’ll be doing this until we die and it won’t end.”

Zakar’s low voice flowed into her ear.

“I know. The problem is ‘how’. Do you have any ideas?”

• “To the right of the target building, do you see the construction elevator on the exterior wall?”

When she tilted her head, she caught a glimpse of a steel frame structure with its bones exposed.
It wasn’t big enough for two.

“I see it. I’ll join you there in 30 seconds. Cover me.”

As soon as she made her decision, she drove her motorcycle, dodging the tentacles that were rushing at her.
The Abaddons, which seemed to have a survival instinct even if she didn’t know where their heads were, had recognized her as an enemy.
Vroom.
As Hannah accelerated and dug in close to the building, she rolled off, and the motorcycle, unable to overcome its inertia, slid on its side with sparks flying.
Like moths to a flame, the tentacles followed the trajectory of the sparks.
Zakar, who had been waiting, shot at the fuel tank of the overturned motorcycle at that exact timing.
Tang, tang, tang, tang, tang.
Following the deadly gunshots, the air behind them expanded massively.
She reflexively raised her arm and ducked, but a few of the fragments that flew from the explosion hit her as well.
Hannah looked back at the black tentacles engulfed in flames and gritted her teeth.

“Are you crazy? In a place with civilians?”

“Where were the civilians just now?”

The man, with his black hair scattering in the wind, answered nonchalantly as he reloaded his magazine on his motorcycle.
He was truly the worst partner to pair up with in a world with no headquarters to discipline him.
Since he had caused an explosion, the tentacles would endlessly flock to the burning motorcycle as he had wanted.
Shaking her head, she naturally got on the back of his motorcycle.
And as she looked around, she happened to see people holding up their phones and filming them from the building windows and frowned.
Excited faces, pointing fingers, and flashing lenses.
‘Are they filming us?’
She was once again keenly aware that she was in a different world.
According to the Allied Nations security law, filming the Nemesis unit or the Abaddons was strictly prohibited.
Not that there was any way to stop or restrain people from taking pictures in such a chaotic situation anyway.
Her thoughts were short-lived as the motorcycle started moving again.
As Zakar broke through the safety cones and barriers and entered the exterior wall lift, Hannah pressed the up button.
It was a close call.
If he hadn’t braked in time, they might have gone through the elevator.
As she caught her breath, the altitude under her feet gradually increased.
She could see the armed police entering the scene beyond the steel frame.
The burning motorcycle was diligently serving as a bait.

“From what I saw earlier, the size class is low for a giant one. It’s doable.”

Hannah spoke calmly first.
‘It’s much better than at the Rain River.’
Then they had only managed to drive it away, but this time, they had to kill it.
Since it was in the middle of the city, it would cause a huge commotion to go back underground.
When there was no answer, she glanced ahead and saw Zakar staring intently at something else.

“Why?”

“The gaze, don’t you feel it?”

Zakar asked back.
Hannah also looked down at the crowd of people in a corner of the sidewalk he had been looking at.
As he said, she felt a stinging sensation, but it was momentary, and when she narrowed her eyes, it quickly disappeared.

“Someone must be filming us again. From what I saw earlier, we’re going to be bigger stars than the Allied Forces promotional models.”

“If you wear a swimsuit before summer and don’t get attention, you’d feel a great sense of deprivation.”

“Ah, is that why you refused? Because you didn’t want to wear a swimsuit?”

Zakar gave a cold smile instead of an affirmation.
He moved his gaze slightly and asked.

“You?”

“I hate that kind of thing. I know what some people with something in their heads use that poster for.”

The moment their eyes met, thud, the lift finally stopped at the top floor.
The dark department store with its doors open was eerily quiet.
If fear comes from ignorance, then the fear should disappear when you know what’s inside.
Darkness is a place where beasts hide.
And she, humanity, no matter what anyone said, had been a predator with fire on this earth for thousands of years.