IF-684.
The traitorous serpent, once called ‘Dragon’.
Felt its body shatter into pieces.
Scales, skin, muscles, even bones.
After burning for a long while, everything turned to ashes.
Now, all that remained was to scatter and disappear.
The traitorous serpent thought it was fortunate.
Even before the traitorous serpent’s body crumbled, the black-vested humans had already headed somewhere.
It wouldn’t cause any more damage until the very end.
-Whoosh, whoosh.
Finally, the traitorous serpent’s massive body lost its form and collapsed into thousands of tons of ash.
An enormous cloud of black dust enveloped the surroundings.
Darkness, where even sunlight couldn’t penetrate, fell upon the underground where the traitorous serpent had crashed.
And, within that.
Thump, thump.
It pulsed.
It wasn’t like the ‘Dragon’s’ heart, which was the size of a forklift.
It was a small heart held by a ‘Kwangcheol’, whose face was now smudged with ash and looked small and cute.
“Krah-rah…?”
Within a dazed mind that echoed as if inside a tin can.
Giselle was resenting her junior colleague.
There was no way there would be anything like a crane at the lab.
She thought everyone was fine, so maybe it wasn’t IF-114 ‘Jimjo’, but it turned out it was Jimjo after all.
A piece she definitely shouldn’t have eaten.
She was flustered when IF-108 ‘Nessho’ suddenly appeared next to her and dragged her away, and then Kang Hana naturally offered it to her.
Thinking that she wouldn’t be given something that would kill her so casually, she unknowingly took it and ate it.
This wouldn’t have happened if she had followed the regulations.
It was a disaster that occurred the moment she let go of the regulations for a brief moment.
Giselle lamented.
There was a reason why she memorized the regulations so strictly.
‘When did it start?’
Then, a very vivid image of the past appeared before Giselle’s eyes.
It was a life review.
Giselle in the memory was receiving an offer.
***
[I’m tired of hanging out with stuffy black suit old men.]
[Can you be my friend, sis?]
[A little kid she didn’t recognize.]
[Even in the life review that was as clear as a 4k movie, only the image of that little kid was faded and blurry.]
[All she could see was that the kid smiled when Giselle in the memory nodded.]
[Thank you!]
[We’re secret friends from now on.]
[Hehe… Follow me.]
[I made a small gathering where friends can hang out.]
For some reason, Giselle in the memory silently followed the kid.
Like a film being cut.
Time skipped quickly.
***
The next memory was the most radiant part of Giselle’s life.
[That’s how it is. She’s our youngest from now on.]
[The face of a dead team member pointing at a girl sitting blankly.]
[So, Giselle. She’s your first junior.]
[It was a face that Giselle clearly hadn’t been able to recall for a long time, but it was vivid in the life review.]
[Giselle silently watched her past self from years ago, who was overjoyed.]
Time passed.
***
Unfortunately, happy memories were fleeting.
Now, the life review was showing the worst moment.
[It’s hot, it’s hot… My head is blank. Senior. What was your name…?]
The one engulfed in flames was smiling, but Giselle in the memory, reaching out from outside the flames, was crying.
It was an ironic scene.
She would have closed her eyes if she could, but since her eyes were already closed, she couldn’t close them again.
Giselle quietly watched the flowing memories.
Now.
It was quite recent.
[Hello, Senior! I’m Kang Hana from Korea!]
Against the backdrop of the 4th Research Lab, Giselle in the memory nodded to Kang Hana, who was very disciplined.
[Senior, I brought you coffee. Have some and work. My work? Oh, that ended yesterday….]
Kang Hana was a really smart junior when they first met.
[Doroong, doroong… Ack! No, a week’s worth is overdue, and I fell asleep again! Why am I so sleepy ever since I came here…!]
…But the kid went crazier as time went on.
Giselle’s satisfied expression in the memory gradually became more venomous as the days passed.
And now, it was the end.
***
Once this memory was over, all that would remain was death-like darkness.
The last memory flowed past Giselle’s eyes.
[Researcher unnie, what are you doing? I’m bored, wanna play tic-tac-toe?]
The name tag of the Gamma-class girl in the memory read G-6022.
A kid who looked exactly like the idiot junior Kang Hana.
She didn’t think she considered her that important, but she even appeared in the life review.
Giselle chuckled inwardly.
And just when endless darkness was about to unfold.
Burning, burning.
Flames scorched Giselle’s heart.
A burning, hot, and painful ache.
This snapped Giselle’s fading mind back to attention.
As the echoing sounds around her gradually became clearer, Giselle heard chattering voices in her ears.
[Wow, it’s dazzling. Where is this? Who was that cute horned kid from before?]
It wasn’t a life review.
If the sounds in the life review were like echoing through a speaker, the voices now were clearly speaking in person.
Giselle opened her eyes.
“Waaaaah, Senior…! You’re awake? I’m so glad you’re alive…!!”
The first thing Giselle saw as she got up was her junior, Kang Hana, in tears, hugging her.
She sat blankly in her junior’s arms for a moment.
Her head was splitting, and her heart was burning, but Giselle checked her surroundings.
It was definitely a voice she had heard before.
There weren’t many things in Giselle’s view.
Idiot junior, IF-017 ‘Dragon’, IF-098 ‘Tsuchinoko’, IF-108 ‘Nessho’.
Even if she excluded IF-114 ‘Jimjo’, who was already roasted, something was strange.
No matter where she looked, there was no one human except for the idiot junior who was holding her and crying her eyes out.
‘Who on earth was making those chattering voices?’
Giselle wondered.
Above Giselle, in the air.
‘What, this isn’t my head? Whose head is this?’
Something floating down landed on the top of Giselle’s head.
Giselle, startled by the sensation she had never felt before, flailed.
“!!!???”
Giselle was horrified to find something on her head.
It was someone who shouldn’t be here.
After all, she had clearly confirmed that people had come and taken her away.
Giselle barely managed to utter a word with a pale face.
“What, you.”
Then.
“… G-6022, weren’t you dead?”
The ghost of the Gamma-class girl with the G-6022 name tag, who had been somersaulting in the air, made eye contact with Giselle.
“Why are you here! Are you a ghost?!”
Giselle reached out towards the ghost of G-6022.
But, as if reaching into a mirror, she couldn’t gauge the distance.
‘That’s what I want to say, why are you here, Researcher unnie? Are you already dead too? There’s no way I could have come back to life!’
I’m seeing hallucinations after hearing voices, she thought.
Giselle fell backward.
“Hwaeck.”
“Huh? You can’t die again, Senior!!”
There was too much shock everywhere to scold her junior for making a fuss.
Just before Giselle collapsed, she saw IF-017 avoiding her gaze as if she didn’t know anything.
Twilight brushed the fingertips.
***
Emily Harper, a researcher belonging to the FPL 017-1 sub-base, gritted her teeth and ran.
Her breath was ragged, her lungs were burning, and her exhausted legs seemed to be screaming, but she couldn’t stop.
Rather.
If some kind of monster was chasing her, Emily was confident she could shake it off.
She wasn’t holding the title of Cryptid Behavior Analysis Expert for nothing.
However, it wasn’t.
The expression “being chased” was absurd.
That was something you could only use when there was a choice to run away.
Simply.
This was just indifference.
A trivial thing that could be crushed at any time, as long as it opened its eyes, as long as it reached out its fingers from the abyss below.
That was Emily.
Emily trembled in indescribable fear.
Even as Emily ran, the surroundings were filled with people drowning in the middle of the lab.
She could become like that right now.
The most terrifying thing was.
That she couldn’t even know what kind of gaze it was looking at Emily with, that thing that was swimming in the abyss below the lake.
In extreme tension and fear.
Finally, the entrance was visible in the distance.
Her breath reached the tip of her chin.
In the fear that it had followed her right up to her nose in the unseen darkness.
Emily threw herself towards the open entrance.
Emily’s white gown was dirtied as it rolled on the dirt floor.
“Haa, haa… Ugh.”
Emily, gasping for breath, looked at the lab and vomited.
The entire lab was covered in twilight, so it was no wonder she was disgusted.
Emily barely managed to escape the lab.
Limp, limp.
Emily grabbed her legs, which were scratched and injured here and there by sharp debris, and stood up.
She desperately needed help.
With an incident of this magnitude, there would definitely be personnel dispatched from other labs.
“Someone, someone….”
The surroundings were quiet.
***
After wandering around the vicinity for a while, Emily soon felt an obvious presence and turned around.
It was a person.
Even though they weren’t covering their face, it was somehow difficult to recognize their features, but she was sure they were FPL personnel.
Emily, who felt like her legs would give way at any moment, asked for help.
“Please help me. Inside, inside….”
Then, the other person slowly approached.
Emily entrusted herself to the other person, who began to check her pulse and other things, and felt relieved.
“Yeah, um. You almost died, but you managed to survive. First, take some painkillers.”
The other person said it strangely nonchalantly, as if her life wasn’t in danger, and handed her a pill.
Emily frowned at this.
It was absurd that they were just leaving her lying on the ground after she had risked her life to escape, but there weren’t many places in organizations that dealt with unknown phenomena that didn’t have crazy people.
Emily just thought the other person was just an oddball that could be found anywhere in the FPL and swallowed the pill.
“What happened inside?”
At the other person’s question, Emily explained what had happened inside.
Everything from the console suddenly rusting, to people collapsing while vomiting water, to seeing hallucinations of being transferred to an unknown lake.
“I see.”
That was it.
For some reason, the other person seemed uninterested, as if they already knew the contents.
‘Was it a painkiller?’
Emily felt the pain from her scraped wounds gradually disappear.
That’s when it happened.
“Beep, beep.”
A measurement sound came from the wristwatch she received from the FPL, and a hologram was displayed.
Emily, who inadvertently looked at her wristwatch, doubted her eyes.
“This is….”
Detection of anti-entropy levels exceeding the measurement limit.
A top-tier unknown phenomenon was detected.
Emily’s pupils trembled uncontrollably.
“What’s wrong? Did you see something?”
The other person still asked playfully in a nonchalant tone.
“You, could it be…!”
Emily raised her heavy head.
Then, the face that had been difficult to recognize until just now finally became naturally visible.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s me. Director E! I received the report you submitted last time, our sly researcher from the 017-1 sub-base.”
“Did you think it was none of your business just because you belonged to a different base? Too bad.”
Director E smiled brightly and seemed to be enjoying herself.
Emily, who turned pale, reached out to push her away.
Her hand, which had no strength at all, only lightly touched the gray coat.
The pill she had just taken flashed through Emily’s mind.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s right! Should I say, ‘You shouldn’t accept things from strangers so easily from now on?’ But that might be a bit unfair, right?”
Director E’s hand reached out.
Emily could only helplessly watch that hand.
“It’s okay, we’ll release you as soon as the simple physical examination that our â– â– â– requested is over. It might be a little painful by human standards…”Â
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll never think about protesting after it’s over. That’s what memory erasers are for!”
And, a little later.
The entrance to the Research Centre 4 became silent as if no one had been there.