Chapter 16: The Secret Laboratory

Then there was only one way: the ladder in the internal power room. That was the only passage to the surface.

“Haa, ugh, haa.”

Researcher 38 ran down the hallway, looking for the power room. But because of the flashing alarm lights, he couldn’t tell how far he had come.

The sound of military boots was getting closer. They were opening door after door, looking for him.

‘Damn it,’ he hit a dead end. In a swift turn, a passage he had never seen before appeared.

At the end of this newly appeared path, he found an unusual door. It was a black door made of special nano-tubes.

His heartbeat pounded like a frantic drum. Suddenly, he wondered if that door might be Research Room 9, which Transport Soldier 1199 often talked about.

He checked the area where the footsteps were heard. He needed a place to hide, even for a moment. With no other choice, he opened the black door.

Since the motion detection system was broken due to his unauthorized entry into the medical room, no further intruder alarms sounded.

‘This is…’

His mouth fell open as he confirmed the room, larger than any other research lab. The interior was filled with various experimental collection tools and reagent bottles.

Seeing that nothing was out of place and everything was neatly organized, someone must have been regularly tidying this place.

With each step, a strange scent followed him. A somewhat murky and unpleasant smell. It was like a mixture of sweat and chemicals, making him wrinkle his nose.

‘That is…’

He stopped, seeing a familiar wall. It was a large wall that displayed videos, just like the one in the visiting room.

For a moment, he felt he shouldn’t go any closer, but he touched the wall as if possessed. The opaque wall that had displayed a blue virtual sky instantly became transparent like glass, reflecting a person.

“…”

At that moment, the alarm lights, which had been staining the hallway crimson, disappeared. Researcher 38 widened his eyes, seeing a man staring intently at him.

‘Am I… seeing things?’

Beyond the glass wall was a man wearing white pajamas. Furniture with clear signs of daily life was placed throughout the large room, indicating he had been living here all this time.

He had long hair, which was rare and out of place in a military base. The man’s hair, almost black, extended to his waist. It was proof that he couldn’t be a human soldier and had no contact with the outside world at all.

“So you’re the one who broke the recognition device.”

The man, who had been sitting at a desk reading a book, raised his eyebrows as if observing Researcher 38. His vivid blue eyes stared directly at him.

No words came out. He was too busy taking in the man’s mysteriously beautiful appearance, which was hard to believe was human.

His skin was excessively pale. It was so purely white that one might wonder if even the veins on the back of his hand weren’t white.

Was he a rare white mutant among humans? But unlike other mutants with pale body hair, the man’s eyebrows were black.

Perfect and well-proportioned eyes, nose, and mouth. Even the angle of his eyebrows, as if measured with a ruler. He was perfectly handsome. It was as if manipulating genes to leave only the most excellent traits would result in an appearance like his.

However, Researcher 38’s face hardened as he then saw that the man was barefoot. Was he not the only test subject who would be barefoot inside a military base?

“…Wh-who are you?”

The man stood up from the desk. For a moment, he thought he wasn’t human because of how tall he was. He seemed two spans taller than Researcher 38, who was already tall for an average male.

The man, approaching the glass wall, looked at the clothes Researcher 38 was wearing, as if something was immensely intriguing.

“I see.”

“Wh-what…”

“There might not be no way out.”

After that, he heard muttering to himself, but Researcher 38 couldn’t interpret the meaning. When their eyes met again, the man smiled casually.

“Do you want to leave this place?”

Just then, footsteps rapidly pacing the hallway were heard. It was the human soldiers looking for him. Researcher 38, having no more escape routes, nodded without considering the man’s identity.

Then the man gestured towards one of the glass walls. There was an entry recognition device there. Was he asking him to open it? He hesitated for a moment, but when he heard the human soldiers say they had found traces, he could no longer hesitate.

Researcher 38 brought the recognition interference chip to the glass wall. Fortunately, the code he developed hadn’t been deciphered by them yet, as it worked correctly again.

It was just as the door finally opened. Bullets appeared from somewhere and were fired thud-thud-thud towards the glass wall. He quickly ducked, but one bullet lodged in his arm that was holding the interference chip, and another in his left calf.

“Aaaaaargh!”

The human soldiers, hearing his scream, approached. Researcher 38 immediately tried to push himself off the floor and stand up, but his left leg, which had been shot, had no strength.

He looked down at his calf, which looked like a lump of meat. Blood streamed from the hole. It showed no signs of stopping.

“Pl-please…”

He reached out his hand to the man. The man glared at the ceiling, then took a long step towards the open door. In his blurry vision, he saw him grab a mechanical arm that appeared from somewhere.

The machine, which seemed impossible to break with human hands, crumbled too easily in the man’s grasp. A pattern he had never seen before was etched in his blue eyes.

The man’s eyes, which he had thought were brightly shining a moment ago, darkened as they turned to Researcher 38.

“I’ll help you if you grant me one favor.”

The man seemed to know how to fix Researcher 38’s body. Researcher 38, blinking slowly as if about to faint, gathered his last strength and nodded.

“From now on…”

The man spoke. Flash. A power outage occurred before his eyes. His vision turned pitch black. Just as his consciousness faded, he was enveloped in the choking pain. The man was inserting his fingers into his wound.

Gasp!

He thrashed his arms in extreme pain. It was wrong. There was no chance of survival.

Finally, his airway constricted, and his consciousness faded. His dizzy mind became clear, and his eyelids slowly opened.

“Hey. Where is the ‘jockey’?”

It was a young voice. So young that he wondered if the person in front of him wasn’t a boy. Researcher 38 blinked. Then, with a slightly clearer vision, he saw a figure tying something around his thigh with a string.

“Ah…?”

For a moment, his brows twitched. He had simply thought the voice had suddenly changed, but the man in front of him truly looked young. While trapped behind the glass wall, he had looked to be in his early twenties, but now, he seemed about ten years old.

Just as something else was about to come to mind, his consciousness flickered. He muttered the location of the research facility to answer the man’s question, then closed his eyes.

At the moment his memory vanished, the footsteps of human soldiers were heard nearby. His heart pounded with the premonition of death, and he was drenched in sweat.

The next moment, he was in darkness. Ah, it was a dream. He finally realized that what he had seen was a scene from the past. And he woke up from the nightmare with a rough gasp.

“Gasp…!”

Researcher 38’s eyes snapped open.

Blink. A child, wide-eyed and surprised, took a step back.

Researcher 38 took a breath, looking at the ceiling where rainwater was leaking. This place, then…

“G-grandfather.”

A girl’s voice. Realizing where he was, he covered his sweat-drenched forehead with his hand and groaned.

“Are you… alright?”

He saw the child staring intently at him. Yes, everything was because of this child.

Even that awful nightmare just now. If not for that, he wouldn’t have recalled the events of 43 years ago, which he thought he had forgotten.

“Move.”

Leaning on his cane, he gulped down the water on the table. As his thirst subsided, he began to remember what had happened yesterday.

The woman who had suddenly barged into his shelter. And the girl she had brought with her. Lastly, the request she made, even revealing his identity.

He pressed his temple as if his head was throbbing, and roughly put down the water glass.

The woman, who had shamelessly confessed to being a human soldier, had left the child with him yesterday, claiming her shelter was in danger.