Chapter 52 - Subway (1)

I bolted upright. My head spun, but I didn't slump back down. Cupping a hand over the communicator dangling from my ear, I stared blankly ahead.

Where was I? How had I ended up like this?

The last thing I remembered was falling with the creature.

And...

Right. I'd hit the water.

A broad river ran through the bottom of the gorge. My last memory was of slamming into it. I must have hit the surface wrong and lost my memory.

After sitting there in a daze, I slowly looked down at myself. A waterlogged combat uniform. The sharp, piercing smell of blood. But it didn't seem to be mine.

Probably blood from the creature I'd stabbed. I'd felt the blade pierce its body squarely.

Clearly, through both hands...

Huh?

My sword.

My sword. Where was my sword?

I frantically patted myself down. The sword I'd plunged into the creature.

Why wasn't it here?

["Hilde!"]

A sharp voice stabbed into my ear as I groped wildly around me.

["Get a grip!"]

"Sir?"

My wits returned.

My senses opened up. Sight and sound flooded in all at once. A scene unlike anything I could remember seeing in my life imprinted itself on my eyes. It was quiet. River water flowed right beside me. Beyond it stretched a desolate clearing.

The sun didn't seem to have set yet, but my surroundings were dark. The trees weren't particularly dense, and there were almost no traces of a city. What little remained was buried under faded grass.

And lying in the almost ash-gray clearing was an elongated corpse.

The creature that had climbed up the gorge.

I straightened my back.

"Aide Owen."

["Report your situation."]

There was unmistakable tension in Ska's voice.

["And keep your head clear."]

He had always been so relaxed. I'd often thought he was the most relaxed person I'd met among the Badgers. If Yun had his ennui and Yehyeon his seasoned composure, Ska had his easy confidence.

But not now.

I pressed my palm firmly against the communicator barely clinging to my ear.

"I think I lost consciousness after hitting the river. I'm on a plain below the gorge now. The creature that fell with me is dead on the other side of the river."

["Any other creatures?"]

"I don't see any, but..."

I swept my gaze around. There wasn't the slightest sign of anything, not even the chirping of insects. The silence grated on my nerves.

And why was it so dark? The grass had faded to gray, and the few trees were lifeless and colorless too.

Only the tracks smothered in vegetation and the old train lying beside them showed that humans had once lived here.

Every nerve on edge, I answered slowly.

"There's nothing around me."

["Hilde."]

Ska's reply was grave.

["Under your feet."]

Under my feet?

"Below me?"

["There's nothing under your feet either?"]

I lowered my gaze.

What could possibly be under my feet...?

Then I understood why it was dark. And why Ska's voice had been so tense. Frozen, I stared down at the ground beneath me. Confronted with something utterly unexpected, I briefly forgot how to speak.

A place where nature had taken over in humanity's absence.

The ground was blanketed in black mold.

"No, are those mushrooms, not mold?"

["Mushrooms are fungi too."]

Ska gently corrected my mutter.

I found myself reflexively admiring how gentle the correction was. There was no contempt for my ignorance in Ska's voice. If it had been Yun, his tone would have betrayed the thought, 'It's exhausting trying to talk to someone dumber than a chimpanzee.'

Not that this mattered right now.

["To be more precise, that's mycelium rather than mushrooms. Creature mycelium," ] Ska said.

["Soon, the fruiting bodies of that creature covering Area A will rise out of the ground to devour you and the dead creature. Can you see it moving?"]

"Yes."

The enormous black mold was slowly spreading. I rose to my feet, my gaze fixed on the ground. I could see the netlike black mold closing densely around my feet.

This was fucking ridiculous.

It looked grotesque spread over that vast expanse, but was it really that dangerous?

As I cautiously lifted my right foot off the ground, the aide continued his explanation.

["Its main body is deep underground, and cutting off the fruiting bodies won't kill it. The mycelium is ridiculously extensive too. Run the moment the fruiting bodies emerge. We still haven't found a way to kill it."]

Seriously?

["The creature carrying you unconscious in its mouth probably drifted into this area and was eaten by it too, from the looks of things."]

I looked up. My gaze moved to the corpse across the river. Only when I looked again did I realize it was covered in black mold.

This was insane. Ska was right.

Besides, there was a tracker implanted beneath the skin of my finger. Senior leadership had put it there to protect me from that unknown person, "Jaeyeon." They would have been able to locate me with it. They couldn't have told the seniors deployed outside the core, but they must have checked my location as soon as they received the report.

The signal had probably drifted down the river, then stopped somewhere around here.

["It must have left you alone because it was digesting that creature."]

No sooner had he finished than the ground beneath my feet began to writhe. I stared dumbfounded at the creature's corpse, rapidly shrinking before my eyes.

"It's moving under my feet."

["It'll emerge in thirty seconds."]

Ska offered his advice matter-of-factly.

["Run for your life. If you have any last words, say them now."]

"Yes. For my life... What? Last words?"

["Senior leadership doesn't give detailed instructions to Badgers outside the core unless it's a land-reclamation campaign."]

The mesh beneath my feet was now packed solid, without a single gap. As I tensed my calves, Ska's grave voice struck my ear.

["Except when a Badger's life is in imminent danger."]

Something shot upward. More followed, surging out of the ground. Fruiting bodies erupted, filling my vision with tentacle-like shapes in an instant. Black stalks sprouted from the earth.

Horrified, I ran.

Mold trying to pierce my legs and engulf my body.

What the hell was this?!

I didn't want to be killed by mold. Especially not mold that covered the ground in a grotesque web of nerves.

"Aaaagh!"

I ran. Ran like mad. Then nearly fell. One of the fruiting bodies erupting crazily from underground had struck my heel.

This wouldn't work. I had to get to the river.

I ran desperately, feeling the ground heave wherever my feet landed.

I'd be safe in that flowing water...

["Don't go into the river!"]

At the sharp warning, I barely managed to stop at the river's edge.

["Jumping into the water will only slow you down! You think that thing isn't under the river too?!"]

SPLASH!

Black fruiting bodies burst through the surface.

Water sprayed everywhere. I twisted and sprinted away, irregular masses of fungus erupting behind me. Fuck! Was this really mold? Gritting my teeth, I ran wherever my feet took me. Cutting it wouldn't kill it, it was absurdly fast, its main body was underground, and it was stupidly huge.

How had such a grotesque life-form come into existence?

How had something like this taken root on Earth? There was no one to answer the questions spilling out of me. No time to ponder them either. I just ran blindly wherever my feet took me. I knew a single misstep or fall would leave me impaled by those tentacles, engulfed and digested.

It didn't seem to bear me any particular grudge. It was simply trying to devour everything alive, indiscriminately. As I ran, Ska ordered me through my earpiece to hold on until I got off the ground it covered. He said it didn't matter which direction I ran.

That was one small mercy. I had no time to think about direction. If I'd stayed on the ground even a second longer, something would have punched through the top of my foot.

I lost myself in the trance of running. A euphoric state where all I could hear was the wind.

But it wouldn't last. I was already gasping for breath. My legs were turning hard as stone. Several times, I'd slowed a little and nearly had my foot pierced.

How far did this thing stretch? The wind brought reflexive tears to my eyes. Though I couldn't be sure whether they were reflexive or brought on by the sense of a pointless death pursuing me.

Ska shouted something, but I couldn't make it out.

Wow.

I really couldn't go any farther...

"Hey!"

The piercing shout snapped me out of my runner's high. My eyes widened.

The speaker was poking his head out of a subway entrance a few meters away.

"Run this way!"

Into the subway?

Angela had told me never to go down into the subway.

But now wasn't the time to argue about that. I had to do something to escape the creature covering the ground. Besides, though the structure around the subway entrance was covered in black mold, the inside looked clean.

I had no other options anyway.

First, stay alive!

I sprinted toward the person sticking his head out.

"Hurry, get in!"

As I reached the subway entrance, he snatched my arm.

"Before those things get inside!"

The man hurled me onto the stairs and thrust a device forward. It generated a strange membrane. My legs had given out, and I stared in shock as the black fruiting bodies plastered themselves thickly over the transparent film.

Fortunately, it was over quickly. Mold held back by a translucent barrier. Solid concrete underfoot. The man who had sealed off the entrance picked up my immobile body and carried me down the stairs, then lifted an iron door and entered the subway.

He lowered the door again, shutting out the sunlight from above.

A gray space opened before my eyes.

I'd survived once again.

* * *

There was no signal.

Apparently communicators usually got poor reception in the subway. When I frowned at the sudden crackling static in my earpiece, the man approached and plucked the communicator from my ear as I sat slumped on the floor.

"Let me see."

Having casually taken it from me, he examined it from various angles and clicked his tongue. Then he slipped it into his pocket.

"Completely dead."

He looked at me, still panting hard, and beckoned with a finger.

"Once you've caught your breath, follow me. You can't sit there forever."

He kept his black mask on the entire time he spoke.

"You're not planning to sprawl out and sleep here, are you?"

And so I'd been following this nameless man for ten minutes now.

A subway with no sign of anyone else. A desolate space where our footsteps echoed. I trudged along, watching his back.

Strangely, the subway corridor still had power. The man walked beside a stopped escalator. Since we started walking, he hadn't spoken to me or turned to look at me.

He hadn't asked my name.

Nor offered his own.

"Excuse me."

My quiet voice bounced off the empty subway walls.

"Who are you?"

"Your senior. Far, far above you."

He answered without looking back.

His footsteps were measured and neat. Trudging behind him, I spoke wearily.

"Are you human?"

"Can't you tell by looking?"

"A Badger?"

"That's right."

"But you can't be an official Badger."

At my murmur, the man ahead stopped. I stopped too, studying him as he stood motionless with his back to me.

A gray space. A place so clean it was hard to believe we were outside the core.

Standing in what could have been a downtown subway station at two in the morning, I watched the motionless human.

"If you were an official Badger, Aide Ska would surely have told me someone was coming to rescue me..."

"Maybe he didn't know I was here."

"And you don't have a communicator..."

"I told you, reception's bad down here."

"Has my communicator stopped working?"

"You're the one who said you were getting static, aren't you?"

"That thing at your waist."

He shifted slightly.

"That's my sword, isn't it?"

"... Yeah. I picked it up for you."

"And the thing on your left is a communications jammer."

He slowly turned his head. I didn't move. I hadn't recovered the strength yet, and I wondered what good moving would do anyway. So I simply watched him in exhaustion.

He slowly turned his body. I looked steadily into his sharp eyes.

They were green. Far more vivid than Riccardo's.

Utterly human eyes.

"I've seen one in Yun's lab."

"Oh. That bastard's still alive?"

He asked casually, then smirked.

He slowly tugged off his mask, gradually revealing his features. Long hair tumbled down over his shoulders. A beard showed that he clearly hadn't shaved in a long time.

The distinctive face of someone long cut off from civilization.

He threw the mask onto the floor.

"With that little upstart Ska giving orders, I thought Yehyeon must have finally died. So everyone's alive and well? No. Who knows. If Yun were dead, Yehyeon would be too. But Yehyeon dying wouldn't necessarily mean Yun was dead."

"Are you a deserter?" I whispered wearily.

"Did you flee outside the core?"

Like me, fleeing Jaeyeon.

Outside the core. Outside civilization. Outside the organization. Away from everything that bound him.

To a place teeming with creatures, but where there was freedom. Perhaps nothing but freedom.

"Have you been living alone outside the core, listed as missing? I never assumed there were no Badgers like that."

"What a clever junior you are."

He approached quietly and set a blade against my throat.

"Follow me. No trouble."