Chapter 57 - Face to Face (2)

Its nails broke.

Its sharp nails snapped, and a diagonal cut opened across its body. Its blood was red. I clutched my left shoulder, which felt ready to fall off, and breathed.

The attack had landed properly.

It crumpled to the ground, its fallen body spilling blood. But it was still breathing. Tightening my right-hand grip, I ran toward the fallen creature.

The tendons!

Sever its tendons!

“Hyah!”

THUNK

I drove my sword into its ankle. Blood spattered, and I felt muscle part beneath the blade.

Good. Now to sever the tendons in its left foot, too.

I pulled the sword from its right foot and thrust it into the left. The blade sank into its left ankle.

Only after pinning my target like a specimen did I relax a little. Breathing in shallow gasps, I looked down at the living thing at my feet.

It looked close to death. Its slack eyes were unfocused.

It felt strange, as though I were watching a person die. Not that I regretted what I’d done. If I hadn’t gone at it intending to kill, I would have died instead.

As the adrenaline ebbed, exhaustion washed over me.

I looked for a pillar to lean against, only to discover that my sword strike had demolished the one beside the creature. I’d put far too much strength into that attack.

Or had I? Maybe it had gone quiet after a single blow precisely because I’d used so much strength.

My head wasn’t clear enough to judge. In any case, there was nowhere suitable to lean.

I simply slumped to the ground. Clutching my left shoulder, I studied the living thing lying beside me.

If it died, there was nothing I could do. If it regained consciousness on the brink of death, I would question it.

Ask a little more about myself...

THUMP.

THUMP.

A heartbeat.

It took me a moment to realize the sound was coming from the creature. Once I identified its source, my mouth fell open.

I couldn’t speak. I was too dumbfounded for words.

Stunned, I watched its wounds close. Something like rippling waves of darkness made the nearby gravel tremble. Black waves rose from the body of the creature I’d thought was dying.

Just like the level-ten creature I’d seen in the video.

An emotion I couldn’t identify churned inside me.

“What.”

I barely managed to get the word out, and couldn’t form a proper sentence.

“What the...”

CRASH!

Agonizing pain.

Only after the pain that sent light flashing across my vision receded did I grasp what had happened.

Now I was the one on the ground, reflexively holding the creature back. It had knocked me over from where I sat.

It had moved almost too fast for my eyes to follow.

I drew a breath, staring at the creature above me. Up close, it was grotesque. Its eyes had rolled back, showing pitch-black whites and barely visible golden irises.

What the hell was this, all of a sudden?

I struggled to push away the creature pinning me down with its forearm.

Damn it!

“How are you so strong...!”

At this rate, I really was going to die.

The broken ends of its nails crept closer. The gap between those sharp edges and my throat narrowed. There was a limit to how long I could hold it back with my arms. I had no strength left in the left one.

I couldn’t let this happen.

Sensing death looming over me, I clenched my teeth. I had to tell my seniors about Jin Silver. Tell them he’d been alive, that he’d stayed behind with the creature pursuing us.

Tell them to go save him, since they were among the best...

“Ugh.”

The creature’s nails pierced my forearm. A groan escaped me at the sharp pain.

At the same moment, a fist burst through the ceiling.

Huh?

“... A fist?”

Even through the agony, I stared blankly at the ceiling.

Why was there a fist sticking through the ceiling? How had it gotten through? Maybe a ceiling somewhere else could be punched through, but surely that made no sense here.

“This is a subway...”

CRASH!

The ceiling collapsed.

The section on the right, where the fist protruded, caved in. I stared numbly as it fell.

Light poured in. Not artificial light, or the faint glow of mushrooms, but brilliant sunlight.

So beautiful that I forgot the pain of my pierced arm.

Voices drifted in on the breeze from outside.

“Hilde!”

Ami was on the verge of tears.

“Hilde!”

She flew straight through the hole in the ceiling. The other seniors jumped down, landing on the tracks.

Squinting at the sudden flood of light, I made out their faces. Richard Green. Jason Tvein. Aki. Iho Chang.

William Walker, landing heavily.

The creature was kicked away.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Having knocked the creature off me, Ami wrapped her arms around me.

“I’m sorry I let you fall.”

Her small body was trembling a little.

“I won’t let you fall next time. I’ll never let you fall again.”

“Ami.”

I smiled, both apologetic and grateful. My voice wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be, though.

“Thank you for saving me.”

“What is this?”

Then Jason Tvein’s voice rang through the subway.

“Isn’t this a humanoid creature?”

“Holy shit.”

“It’s even still alive.”

“Ami! Get the wounded man out!”

Beside the horrified Iho and Aki, Richard turned and shouted.

“The fight isn’t over yet!”

RAT-A-TAT-TAT!

Gunfire echoed before the words were even out of his mouth. Tvein and the other seniors had begun firing wildly at the creature as it tried to rise again.

I’d been in a daze, but the deafening gunfire made my eyes fly wide.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT!

The seniors fired as though they’d lost their minds, holding down their triggers until they ran out of ammunition.

Tvein and Green fired most ferociously of all.

They seemed even tenser than when they’d faced the building-sized creature at the safe point. Their eyes were fixed on the creature’s shredded body and never moved.

Surely it had to be dead by now, but no one would stop shooting.

Humanoid creatures, said to have terrorized humanity.

With whites burned pitch-black and golden eyes.

That one moment of hesitation had given Yehyeon an opening to attack...

Huh?

An emotion so intense it threatened to choke me consumed me.

What was this?

I blinked.

Why did I suddenly feel as though I were drowning in emotion? Was it because I’d realized I was the same kind of being as them?

Was that why I felt this alienation and fear? Because I wasn’t human? Because I thought they would treat me like that thing if they found out?

I remained motionless, examining the heavy emotion whose source I couldn’t identify.

... That didn’t seem right.

What gripped me now wasn’t fear. It was more like...

Self-loathing?

And sorrow?

Did I hate myself for betraying my own kind? But if I was going to feel this way, why on earth had I betrayed them...

“Hilde.”

As I searched for the source of those feelings, Ami’s voice brought me back to my senses. She tightened her arms around me.

“Let’s get out of here.”

I looked down at her blankly, and her youthful face immediately crumpled.

“I’m sorry we were so late.”

I meant to tell her she wasn’t late at all, that her timing had been absolutely perfect. Any earlier, and they would have discovered what I was; any later, and that thing would have stabbed me to death.

But before I could open my mouth, flames shot from Ami’s boots. Held in her arms, I soared toward the surface.

* * *

The air around me changed in an instant.

I welcomed the sunlight falling on my head. The cool wind stirred my hair and rushed against my ears. An old city spread out below my feet in sharp relief.

I’d finally made it aboveground.

Dangling in Ami’s arms, I watched the asphalt slowly draw closer. We landed lightly.

Ami sat me against a car that looked as though it hadn’t moved in years.

“I’ll patch you up.”

Her hands moved quickly even as she cried and sniffled.

“This must hurt so much.”

“No...”

I wanted to tell her it didn’t hurt that much, but I had no strength.

So I went limp and let her treat me. There was an enormous hole in the ground nearby.

The very spot Walker’s fist had come through.

The seniors’ sharp voices rose from the hole, but I didn’t have the energy to follow what they were saying.

Intermittent gunshots.

The thought that it was truly over now drained what strength I had left.

My mind went hazy. I sat motionless, gazing at the bright blue sky and the pure white clouds floating in it. So much had happened since I’d woken up after falling into the gorge.

What I’d experienced down below slowly came rushing back. Thoughts of my identity were swept away, replaced by other scenes.

The creature dying as the fungus digested it. The fruiting bodies shooting up. Jin, shouting for me to come into the subway. The man who’d held the fungus back, led me underground, shown me his lettuce, and given me chicken soup. The man who’d said he was once called the Badgers’ druid, who’d offered to tell me all sorts of stories...

[“Tell Zhu I’m sorry.”]

His voice, low from long disuse, rang in my ears.

Tears fell silently from my eyes.

“Does it hurt?”

Ami’s voice was alarmed.

“Why are you crying? Hilde, does it hurt that badly? Are you hurt somewhere besides your arm?”

“Ami.”

I pulled her closer as she peered into my face. Then, looking at her blinking eyes, I whispered.

“Ami. Jin Silver is at the previous station.”

For a while, Ami didn’t move. She simply stared up at me blankly, eyes wide. Through my distorted vision, I looked down into those round eyes.

People can’t react immediately to a huge shock.

It was a long time before she spoke.

“Jin is dead.”

“He was alive down there.”

“... Alive?”

“He said he deserted.”

I brushed the hair clinging to Ami’s cheek aside.

“He said he’d spent ten years on the run.”

Again, she didn’t react for a long while. Kneeling right in front of me, she simply stared up at me in a daze.

I didn’t blame her for being unable to respond. I didn’t rush her, either. Instead, I swept the black hair that kept brushing her cheeks back over her shoulders.

Her face always looked so very young.

“Where?”

After a long pause, she asked, her face expressionless.

“How?”

“It seems he was living in the subway. He was growing vegetables and raising chickens.”

“Vegetables?”

Ami’s eyes went blank.

“Chickens?”

“He said they used to call him the Badgers’ druid...”

Looking into her utterly still eyes, I added,

“Please find Jin Silver.”

Her round eyes blinked several times.

“He stayed behind at the previous station so I could escape.”

Ami reacted immediately. She rose to her feet and ran toward the other seniors.