Chapter 12: Unspoken Words

Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything.
About Ian’s death, and about the lingering feelings I have whenever I see him.
The more you know, the more deeply you get entangled.
The earthquake slowly subsided.
Like the forced sobs of a crying child.
As the ground beneath them quieted, Zakar pushed himself away as if nothing had happened.
It was then that she found a strange point in his words.
The isolation he mentioned would, of course, refer to the injured waiting in a safe place, but.

“You said your team members are isolated ‘below’? Not upstairs?”

When Hannah straightened her back and expressed her suspicion, he turned away and answered indifferently, as if talking about someone else’s business.

“Before the earthquake, we took the elevator down to the 7th basement floor. I saw something interesting on the CCTV in the security room.”

“What did you see?”

“Abaddons pouring out of a capsule.”

My steps naturally stopped.
Since Zakar didn’t stop, his broad, sturdy back quickly dominated my field of vision.

“What does that mean?”

The man, as black as pitch from head to toe, didn’t answer.
He had noticed it too.
Where they were.
As I slowly followed his long, black back, a low voice flowed from Zakar’s lips, who had been looking straight ahead.

“They didn’t crawl out from under the ground, but from the 7th basement floor. This is the origin.”

‘Abaddon Cultivation Department’.
The thought I had been suppressing since I saw the name tag earlier leaked out in a cloud, unstoppable, like smoke escaping through a small gap in a hand that had been trying to block it.
Of course, since it was a research institute, cultivation itself was not a problem.
Research on subterranean creatures was also a task to stop them.
But if the number was 800, the logic led to one conclusion.
Hannah spoke directly to the one person Ian had truly trusted, words that would have caused a huge stir anywhere else.

“Do you think the military fabricated the attacks of the past two years?”

“It’s a plausible scenario. The election is coming up, and an enemy of humanity is a good material to solidify the united nations system.”

“……”

“Ah, and it would also be effective in suppressing interest in the conflict zones where war has been raging for decades.”

Zakar spoke as if he had always expected something like this, even in response to her sudden question.
Reflexively, the faces of the colleagues who had died over the past two years flickered across her consciousness.
Many of them were from poor backgrounds, having volunteered for the life allowance, but even they had families that were like nests.
The sound of the bereaved families’ cries as they collapsed in front of the graves was still vivid in her ears.
She had never felt anything but pride when she delivered the news of their deaths and looked into the eyes of their families.
Because they had all fought with their lives on the line.
To protect their beloved families, friends, and neighbors, it was an honorable death, a will to prevent the Abyss from ever opening again, upheld with their own hands.
But he was saying it was a dog’s death.
All of it.

“Come to think of it, it does seem like the Abaddon appearances overlapped with political scandals.”

Hannah clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white, suppressing everything with reason.
It was ridiculous.
It was still just a baseless hypothesis, but it was ridiculous how everything fit together perfectly, as if she had found the right puzzle piece.

“Then Ian’s account would also be explained. In the military security system, the security level is raised just by the presence of a specific word. The mere mention of ‘13th Military Science Research Institute’ in the email would have restricted access to it. And wiretapping, tailing, and CCTV on the person who received such an email would also be possible for the Allied Forces.”

Zakar said nothing more.
He was either thinking about her email, or…

“Did you know?”

Hannah asked with a blank expression.
Since she had no expression, the contempt that had seeped into her voice must have been because the darkness that had been circling her like a predator had seeped into it.
Ever since she came to this environment that reminded her of the Abyss, her five senses had been numbingly vulnerable.
At her question, Zakar seemed to furrow his eyebrows, then his lips twisted into a deep, cold smile.
He tilted his head and said.

“If I said I didn’t know, would you believe me?”

His pupils, clad in a chilling coldness, held her as if to examine her.
This time, Hannah kept her mouth shut because she didn’t want to lie.
With that conversation, a silence as if something had died hung between them.
Even though she had someone to watch her back, her guard didn’t let down, but instead, the tension, with her hair standing on end, grew in volume.
The thought of the cultivated Abaddons, the dead team members, and the email made her temples throb.
If the military was really behind all the attacks, she wouldn’t be able to just quietly end it with a discharge.
She would drag down everyone involved.
Definitely.
Once her mind was sharpened, it refused to settle down throughout the search of the labyrinthine building.
In the long, nightmarish hallway, she passed by a shadow that seemed to be watching her.
A dry mouth and a forehead beaded with sweat.
The field of vision illuminated by the light was particularly narrow.
Light is always like that.
A blind darkness that makes you see only yourself.
Ah, right.
This is what the Abyss was like.
Making people only able to sleep with the lights on, plaguing them with the fear of something crawling out from the darkest corners of the room and from under the bed.
Betrayer.
At that moment, someone pressed down on her shoulder and whispered in her ear, and Hannah’s eyes widened and her steps stopped.

“…ing. Rest for 5 minutes and then move.”

The fact that the hand belonged to a living person, and that Zakar had said something else, registered in her consciousness a beat later, as if with a time lag.
Hannah, who had temporarily stopped, brushed her hair up as soon as the hand was removed and nonchalantly stood against the wall.
Their eyes met fleetingly with Zakar’s.
It was for a split second, but as she was putting her gun in the holster, a firm hand suddenly reached out and roughly grabbed her chin, pulling it up.
Thump.
The back of her head hit the wall slightly, and a clear, low voice scraped her eardrum.

“You, do you have Abyss trauma?”

Her eyes met the man who was looking down at her with a blank expression, his head tilted.
Her breath caught in her throat as if she had been pulled up from murky water.
His intuition was incredibly sharp.
Her breathing and expression control had been perfect.

“I’m fine.”

“How did you pass the psychological evaluation until now?”

“Because I’m fine.”

As she answered, staring at him intently, Zakar twisted his lips.
As she grabbed his wrist, as if to push away the hand that was holding her chin, he, as if waiting for it, flipped her hand over.
The thick part under her palm was covered with scars from being pressed by her nails.
Some were red and bleeding, others had already become scars.
His lowered eyes, as if licking them, swept over the blood that had pooled in the new wounds, and then he nonchalantly tried to undo the military watch under it.
This time, she struggled to twist her wrist free, but he was just as strong.
Her muscles trembled under the coercively strong grip.
Of all things, it was her injured hand, so she couldn’t even put much strength into it.
When the watch, which had been blinking two in the morning, was finally undone and fell to the floor with a thud, her white wrist was starkly revealed under the light.
The marks were so severe that the word ‘self-harm’ was an understatement.
Zakar looked up at her without a trace of a smile.

“If you’re going to hide it, at least use your head properly. Is there a right-handed person who wears a watch on their right arm?”

The annoyance and fatigue of being caught by the person she hated the most rose like a bitter liquid.
Hannah swallowed the unknown lump and pulled her arm away.

“It’s annoying, so I just don’t show it. It’s the same as what you do.”

She then lowered her hand and pressed firmly on his lower back, and she could feel the hard body wrapped in the combat uniform tense slightly.
Hannah tilted her head as if she had expected it.

“You got hurt when the building collapsed earlier, didn’t you?”

She had known.
His movements had been strange from the beginning.
She could see his pupils narrowing in his lowered eyes, as if she were right.

“Then you should know well too. You just have to focus on other senses. So much so that something like darkness doesn’t matter. As long as I can focus on the fact that I can kill them with my own hands, whether I’m in the subway or the sewer, that’s enough.”

When she felt dizzy, she would either press her nails into her skin or stab herself with a knife.
That was how she stayed in reality.
Because she had to kill them all.
It was then that Zakar grabbed her wrist and opened his mouth.

“You seem to be mistaken about something. I never tried to hide it like you in the first place.”

Hannah frowned at the force that was pressing down hard on her wound.
‘Crazy bastard.’

“And the problem I’m pointing out is not your injury, but your mental trauma. A weak team member is not needed during an operation.”

“Don’t look down on me. I’ll get out of the way myself before I become a hindrance to the search.”

“I’d be grateful if you did.”

With a close gap between them like lovers, Zakar stared at her intently.
The air seemed to slowly distort under the force of them pressing against each other in different directions.
After what felt like dozens of seconds, he spoke in a low voice without taking his eyes off her.

“Remember this clearly. This is not the Abyss, and I won’t die even if you don’t hold me.”

The moment her eyes widened, the thick hand was released, and her body fell away.
While Zakar picked up the watch, Hannah briefly looked down at the wrist that had been held.