Chapter 2

Scouring his memory for any forgotten pocket of the building, Jinseong remembered the eighth floor: the chemical inspection bay, where bulk precursors were unloaded from an industrial freight dumbwaiter[1] that connected directly to the exterior loading bay chute. Hide her first. I’m faster. I can lead them away and buy time.

“Noona, in here!”

Ordinarily, the eighth-floor door was secured by a magnetic lock and an armed guard. But when Jinseong threw his shoulder against the push bar, the latch gave way with a screech—the frame had already been battered open by a crowbar.

A guttural roar echoed from the flight below. “Found one! Up here!”

Jinseong’s stomach dropped out. He slammed the heavy door, threw the interior bolt, and hauled Yeonjung across the threshold just as her legs folded under her again.

A searing, white-hot sting drove into his bare soles. The concrete floor was carpeted in shards of shattered reagent bottles. Before the broken glass could tear into Yeonjung’s thin socks, Jinseong hoisted her onto his back in one desperate heave, sprinting across the chemical bay and leaving a trail of bright crimson footprints across the gray floor. He reached the far wall and wrenched open the steel dumbwaiter hatch.

The metal cage was sitting idle at their level. The interior was barely four feet square—far too small for two adults, but Yeonjung was gaunt enough to squeeze into the dark space. He shoved her inside, folding her knees toward her chest.

“Put your phone on silent,” Jinseong whispered, his voice raw and ragged. “Don’t make a sound until I come back for you. Do you hear me?” He pulled the wad of crumpled currency from his pocket and tossed it into her lap. The paper struck her cardigan with a dry rustle.

Curled tightly in the metal shadow, Yeonjung stared out at him, realization breaking through the haze of panic. “Jinseong… Jinseong, what are you doing?!” She lunged forward, catching his wrists with icy fingers.

Jinseong’s gaze hardened. “Think about Do-joon. Just Do-joon.”

“What about you—?!”

Yeonjung clamped both hands over her mouth to strangle her own sob.

Jinseong looked away, systematically peeling her thin fingers from his sleeve one by one. The cold certainty that he would never see her face again settled into his chest like lead. For a single heartbeat, he let his gaze rest on the curve of her tear-streaked jaw, committing it to memory. Then he pulled the steel shutter down with a sharp metallic clatter.

Spinning around, his eyes fell upon a heavy pair of industrial utility shears abandoned on an open crate. He snatched them up, iron handles cold and heavy against his trembling fingers. He did not want to die. He wanted desperately to live, to breathe clean air, to see his hometown once more. But every retreat had burned behind him. There was only one gamble left.

The hallway door blew open as if hit by a battering ram, and a man lunged into the room.

All rational calculation vanished. Jinseong’s vision collapsed into a red tunnel, anchored to a single impulse: Stop him. If his life was over, he would spend every remaining second buying time for the woman hidden behind the steel plate. He threw himself forward.

“You little bastard!”

Jinseong had never been in a fistfight; he had never struck another human being in anger. The enforcer read the clumsy, unpracticed charge in an instant, stepped back, and drove a steel-toed boot straight into Jinseong’s solar plexus[2].

The impact hit like an anvil. Jinseong went skidding across the concrete, broken glass gouging deep into his elbows and knees. The wind tore out of his chest in an agonizing gasp, but he ground his molars together, scrambled onto his hands and knees, and charged a second time before the man could reset his stance. The glinting ten-inch blade in the man’s hand didn’t register.

The sheer, suicidal frenzy of the attack caught the intruder off guard. The gangster hesitated for a fraction of a second, and Jinseong lunged through the opening. His left hand clamped around the man’s knife wrist while his right swung the shears toward the man’s neck.

Iron fingers intercepted Jinseong’s right wrist. In pure physical power, Jinseong was laughably outmatched; as they grappled, the combat knife twisted in the man’s grip, slashing across Jinseong’s right thigh.

Pain exploded through the muscle like liquid fire. Jinseong let out a ragged cry, wrenched his trapped arm free through sheer, panicked adrenaline, and drove the blunt tip of the shears down into the back of the hand gripping the knife.

“Aaargh!”

Jinseong threw his entire body weight behind the blow, driving the screaming man backward through the eighth-floor doorway. The gangster’s heel caught on the raised steel sill; he tipped over the landing threshold and struck the cast-iron stair rail with a sickening, wet crack at the base of his skull. He did not get back up.

“Haa… haa…”

Ragged, animal wheezes tore from Jinseong’s throat. His hands shook violently around the blood-spattered shears, so hard the blades clattered against each other. He sank against the doorframe, his knees giving out as he slid down the concrete until his hips hit the landing. He stared dumbly down at his leg. The slash across his thigh was shallow, but thick crimson soaked through the denim, pooling against the floor beneath his heel.

“…”

Below, in the depths of the stairwell, the acoustics shifted. Another set of footsteps was ascending. The entire facility had fallen without mounting a defense; what hope did a barefoot slave have against professional executioners? Would he ever see the northern hills again? He forced his stiff, slippery fingers to tighten around the shears.

His eyes flicked to the man slumped against the railing. No chest movement. No visible breath. The impact must have broken his neck. Jinseong had spent his entire life treated like sewage. Now, for the first time, he was staring at someone he was sure he had killed with his own two hands.

His vision blurred, wobbling so violently he thought the stairwell itself was shaking, before realizing the tremor was entirely his own body. Hot bile rose into the back of his mouth. Mucus and tears flooded his face, and a harsh, choking sob tore out of his chest. There was no point in hiding.

“…”

The footsteps reached the seventh-floor landing—slow, rhythmic, completely unhurried. That calm, leisurely stride was infinitely more terrifying than an all-out charge. The man who stepped onto the eighth-floor landing carried an unmistakable air of authority.

Jinseong knew he should lunge, should do anything to buy Yeonjung another breath, but his limbs were lead. If he had possessed genuine courage, he would never have survived three years of captivity in the first place. Now, the only question was whether this intruder would make his death quick or take his time. Jinseong wiped his drenched cheek against his shoulder, soaking the fabric in tears and blood.

“…”

The newcomer stopped, his dark eyes widening in mild surprise as he took in the crumpled body against the rail. Fine crimson droplets flecked his high cheekbone like deliberate paint splatters. Crouching with effortless grace, he pressed two fingers beneath the fallen man’s nostrils to check for breath. Above his dark hair, crisp, dark-navy Gothic letters surfaced in the empty air:

[Nyx. Letter.]

Jinseong’s stomach turned to ice. This was the man who wrote the letter. The monster who had mailed a severed hand to Gold Class. Whatever ember of resistance remained inside Jinseong went out entirely. I am going to die by this man’s hands tonight. His collarbones hitched with violent, broken gasps as he struggled to draw air through a blocked nose. He stared at the intruder through blurred vision—and an unsettling confusion cut through the terror.

Strip away the blood spattered across his tailored shirt and porcelain skin, and the stranger looked as though he belonged to an entirely different world. Standing nearly a hundred and ninety centimeters tall, lithe rather than bulky, his features were carved with an aristocratic symmetry that remained breathtaking even through tears. There was an unreal, predatory elegance to his face. An Alpha? While Jinseong struggled to process the thought, the man turned dark, clear eyes upon him—gaze devoid of cruelty, yet terrifying in its absolute neutrality.

“Did you do this?” the man asked.

“…”

Jinseong gave a faint, shuddering nod as the stranger rose to his full height. Denying it was pointless.

“Everyone else was climbing over each other to get out,” the man remarked, tilting his head with mild curiosity. “Why are you still sitting here?”

“…”

“Do you live on the tenth floor, by any chance?”

When Jinseong clamped his teeth together, the man broke into a brilliant, effortless smile. The expression was so radiant, so completely monstrous amid the carnage of the stairwell, that Jinseong flinched.

“Or maybe you know where the Omega on the tenth floor is hiding?” the man continued, his tone smooth and conversational. “Her name was… right, Lee Yeonjung. I heard she has a butterfly tattoo right about here.” He tapped the hollow just beneath his own right ear.

Hearing her name spoken aloud sent a fresh wave of burning tears down Jinseong’s cheeks. It was an identity that should never have existed in any syndicate file, yet Nyx had unearthed it and dispatched an executioner to wipe her out. How had their intelligence reached into this room? Jinseong dragged his torn sleeve across his eyes, choking back another sob. Wait. What did he just say? A thought broke through the fog. Lee Yeonjung?

Jinseong was the Omega, and his surname was Lee[3]. Yeonjung’s surname was Kang, and she was a Beta. Nyx’s informants had mashed the profiles of the two captive technicians together, manufacturing a phantom: a female Omega named Lee Yeonjung. Even Nyx’s intelligence was fallible. That single clerical error was the only sliver of light left in the dark.

“She’s not here,” Jinseong rasped, forcing the words through shredded vocal cords. The man had to believe she was gone. More importantly, he could not be allowed through the eighth-floor door. Jinseong had to keep him on the landing, stall for time—even if it meant provoking him. “Why would the bosses leave a valuable technician behind? You idiot.”

His voice broke on the insult. He was bluffing with nothing to back him up; Gold Class had abandoned them without a second thought, fleeing down the mountain while leaving their slaves behind. Yet he piled one reckless lie atop another. The photograph in his breast pocket pressed against his ribs. I should have looked at her face one last time. I should have kissed it goodbye. The thought shattered whatever remained of his control, and he dissolved into helpless weeping.

“Hic… ugh… fuck…” Every ragged shudder sent sharp spasms through the laceration on his thigh. He was crying too hard to maintain any shred of dignity. Mucus and saliva pooled in the back of his throat, triggering a violent coughing fit that left his pale face flushed scarlet.

“Then why are you still here?” The stranger closed the distance between them, one measured stride at a time. A small hand ax swung loosely in his right grip, dark crimson dripping from its polished bevel.

That’s what will kill me. Where would the blade bite? The hollow of his collarbone? Would the man split his skull the way they had split the sentries downstairs? A dull exhaustion settled over Jinseong, muting the sharpest edges of his fear. The nameless slave Lee Jinseong had finally reached the end of the line.

“…”

The man sank onto one knee before him, fluid and unnervingly quiet. Fresh tears gathered along Jinseong’s eyelashes faster than he could blink them away. As a single droplet traced a slow line down his cheek, the stranger’s gaze followed its path, lingering over every curve of his face. The scrutiny sharpened—languid, clinical, predatory.