Chapter 18: Unexpected Family (3)

*

Night was laying down ash-gray rain over Manhattan. It was closer not to rain, but to the city’s chronic tears.

Yet two shadows walked through it, unaware of each other’s existence, moving straight in the same direction.

One shadow wore a military uniform. But his steps were unlike those of a soldier. With every moment he crossed the street, black biomass seemed to flow like invisible threads, rearranging itself beneath his skin.

It was Alex Mercer.

[What the hell is going on inside?]

[Team One lost contact the moment they entered the containment room.]

[Enough. Seal this place off. Make sure no one gets in or out of the GenTek building. Initiate Level Four containment protocol.]

He could still feel it, hot and cold in the depths of his mind: the state of the GenTek building as it had appeared in the final sight of the Blackwatch commander he absorbed.

"...All the answers are here."

Rather than a simple monologue, his voice sounded as though the virus had vibrated his throat and spoken in his place. Whether it disgusted him or he had simply grown used to it, Alex showed no emotion.

Behind him was another shadow, walking as it swallowed the city’s darkness.

Its footsteps were exceedingly light. Yet the weight of the emotions beneath them smiled so faintly that no one would notice.

It was Minazuki Kiria.

As he walked toward the GenTek building, he felt as though something were gripping the nape of his neck and pulling him along.

The sensation resembled a frozen scent. Like being forcibly dragged toward a truth he did not want to know.

"Ha... Seriously. Am I the crazy one for taking a walk tonight... or is this city even crazier?"

He muttered that and raised the corner of his mouth ever so slightly. The joke he made to himself was thoroughly soulless, but he needed to laugh at least at something like that to keep moving forward.

A raindrop fell onto Kiria’s head and ran across his mismatched eyes.

And—

At that instant, an almost imperceptible tremor brushed against his senses.

A trace of his father.

But he shook that sensation away as though brushing off an irritating speck of dust.

"No. For now... let’s just go. It wouldn’t be any fun to jump to conclusions before I’ve even checked."

His tone was playful, but beneath it lay an inexplicable fear.

On the opposite side of the street, only four blocks away, Alex was also making his way in the same direction.

Neither had ever entered the other’s line of sight, and their presences had never brushed past one another.

But the enormous island called Manhattan knew that the two were headed for the same building.

Beneath the clouds, the city lights quivered softly.

That trembling was like a groan leaking out a strange premonition: that soon, something would make the sound of breaking.

The two shadows

walked a road that brought them toward each other,

unaware of one another,

and at that road’s end,

the vast heart known as the GenTek building

waited, beating with an ominous pulse.

*

On the way to the GenTek building, I opened a manhole and climbed inside, then stopped before a passageway that had grown as old as a path I had abandoned long ago.

A rusted iron door stripped of paint, the moldy smell clinging to stairs leading underground. To someone else, it might have been a discarded structure, but to me... it was a trace of escape,

and the entrance to memories I had returned to.

"...Ha, seriously. I never thought I’d come back in here."

My voice trembled thinly. I knew all too well that the tremor was not from the cold.

It felt strange that the me from then and the me now were treading this same passage with different emotions.

The passage was deep and still. This sealed space, as if the virus had seeped into it, made me feel as though I were walking inside the blood vessel of some enormous organism.

Whenever the sound of dripping water echoed now and then, my heart would unnecessarily beat along with the same rhythm.

Then—

I saw a stain like a single spot of darkness.

A broad drag mark scraped across the floor.

Fresh blood seeped along the wall.

When I brushed it once with my finger, the thin fluid trembled faintly and gave off the virus’s distinctive scent.

At that moment, the sensation I had suppressed inside my body sprang out like lightning.

"...Ah."

A void of impossible shape hollowed me out in an instant.

It was my father’s scent.

The virus was honest. More precise than memory, more cruel than conjecture. The composition of the blood, the mutation patterns inside the body, even the lingering flow of infection.

All of it

matched the biological data I knew all too well.

But I shook my head hard. I rejected that fact as though cutting it off cleanly.

"No. No... that can’t be."

I muttered to myself.

Anyone who heard me would have called it pathetic, but right then, I could barely breathe without those pathetic words.

I walked farther into the passage.

With every step, the scent of blood grew thicker, and the drag marks on the floor grew longer.

A body dragged somewhere.

As though it had not even been given the chance to resist.

My virus-enhanced senses became too clear to ignore any longer.

‘I’m sure. This is my father’s—’

"Stop."

I severed the thought in my head in a whisper. If I learned the truth, I felt as though I would never be able to turn back.

So I had to deny it for now.

For now. Not yet.

"My father is... alive. I’m sure of it."

The words trembled on my tongue like a futile spell. Even as I said them, I could feel my senses quietly, cruelly denying them.

I kept walking. I felt as though, if I walked, my footsteps might bury the truth.

But another bloodstain appeared, and a handprint stamped on the wall seemed to crush my heart.

There was no reason for my father to be bleeding this much.

My father was stronger than me,

wiser than me,

and knew more than me...

So—

I wanted to believe he would not die.

I forced my blurring vision back into focus and clenched my fist tight.

"The GenTek building... might be where my father is waiting for me."

The moment I finished speaking, I saw a faint light at the end of the passage.

And I hurried toward that dim light as though someone were chasing me.

Even I could not tell whether fear was pushing me from behind or the desire to see the truth was pulling me forward.

Darkness silently fell away behind me, and I continued onward.

Carrying the bloodstains, the denial, and the premonition in my entire body,

I returned once more into the belly of the GenTek building.

*

Once I passed the end of the sealed passage connected to the GenTek building, I felt as if I had emerged from the stomach of some gigantic living creature.

The smell of metal, disinfectant, the vibration of machinery. The senses of humans who belonged to the city had died here long ago.

In their place, only a cold, unfeeling system ruled this place.

...And amid it all, one strange trace my father had left behind.

A red marker blinking on the PDA.

It flashed in regular pulses, like a signal calling out, ‘Come here.’

"Father... you really are here, right?"

No one answered, but I had to ask myself again.

Otherwise, I felt as though I would not be able to take even one more step.

Clutching the PDA in my hand, I walked down a deep, long corridor.

Lights were set into the gray-finished walls at regular intervals, but their glow was strangely cold and sterile.

As though it had washed away all color from the things that happened here.

But even in that cold place, there were traces that had not been erased.

On the floor,

on the walls,

and sometimes reaching all the way to the ceiling—the red stains I had seen in the sealed passage.

The sensations within my body were already telling me with unbearable clarity that they belonged to my father...

but I stubbornly denied it.

"...It could just be an injury. He might have received treatment."

The virus’s senses whispered quietly.

‘No, this isn’t on that level.’

I shook my head again.

"Shut up..."

Because the one speaking to me was myself.

Following the PDA’s red marker, I wandered through several floors. Dark hallways, empty laboratories, shattered windows, overturned desks.

And—

Click.

My steps stopped.

‘You have arrived.’

A text notification chimed on the PDA.

Before me was a nameplate so quiet and orderly it did not belong there at all.

[Chief Scientist Kir Minazuki — Office]

My father’s name.

My father’s office.

Normally, merely standing before that door would have had me bracing myself for a round of scolding.

But now... even breathing felt burdensome.

Slowly, as though performing a ritual, I grasped the handle and turned it.

The air beyond the door held a faint smell of dust intertwined with the lingering scent of disinfectant. A chair, neatly arranged stacks of documents, a small desk, and a computer.

An ordinary office at a glance. Yet somehow, it was far too quiet.

Too... empty.

I slowly began searching the room. A desk drawer was half open, and amid several bundles of documents, one stood out distinctly.

A coded document with a black cover. And—a syringe in a small case. Red particles slowly settled within the transparent medicine.

It looked like blood just before it coagulated.

No, it looked more biological than that, and more dangerous.

"What... is this?"

I automatically thought that my father could not possibly have left something like this behind...

But my instincts said otherwise.

My father left this.

For me to find.

I picked up the syringe and held it to the light. Its strange viscosity stirred an ominous feeling inside me.

Where exactly had it all begun, and what the hell had happened?

Then, in that instant, I suddenly realized something.

"...But."

My voice shook more than I thought it would.

"Why—why hasn’t Father come yet?"

A silence cold enough to freeze blood settled over the room.

I looked at the PDA in my hand. The red marker was still blinking at regular intervals, as though it had been waiting for me to arrive for a long time.

"Could it be..."

The worst possibility rising in my mind was too vivid to say aloud. I shook my head. This was not the time for that.

My father was not here.

My mother was not here either.

Then—

I had to find them.

The truth.

And... those two.

No matter how cruel the ending waiting for me might be.

I gripped the PDA and stepped back out into the corridor full of darkness.

I did not know then

that the place I was headed was the threshold of despair.

And

that waiting at the end of my emotions was a ruin called rampage.

*

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