Chapter 127 - Be on Time! (2)

When I came to, I spent a moment in denial.

Surely I hadn't actually been kidnapped.

Maybe this was part of the exam, too? The examiners had clamped a hand over my mouth, and now I had to escape this place and make it to the exam site.

I knew perfectly well that getting to the site was part of the exam. There was a reason Yun had been so adamant about not being late. The location they'd given us a few days ago wasn't accessible by public transportation.

So Tom, Heshy, and I had worked out a way to get there.

Which meant I actually knew full well that the exam wouldn't involve anything this violent.

But I could at least hope...

"You're awake, moron?"

Ah.

"Badgers aren't so tough after all."

Fuck.

The moment I heard the snickering, my faint hope shattered.

I lifted my heavy eyelids and took stock. Bound limbs. My vision spinning, perhaps because of the drugs. A phone camera that stood out clearly even through that spinning vision. People in bulletproof vests and bizarre masks, guns dangling at their waists.

The musty stink of mold.

This was bad. It looked like I'd really been kidnapped.

The matching outfits they'd gone to the trouble of putting together, and the phone cameras held out in case I turned violent, were far too real.

But why now, of all times?

Despondently, I surveyed a room whose location I couldn't even begin to guess.

"Wait."

What the hell?

"Who are you?"

THUD

A baseball bat struck my stomach as I sat tied to the chair.

I frowned at the dull pain, then relaxed my face and sighed. As I'd suspected, they were civilians. They didn't have a Badger's strength.

That would be why they'd used a baseball bat.

The pain, milder than I'd expected, slowly faded. I sighed again and looked at my kidnappers' faces.

How had I failed to sense them approaching?

There was no way I wouldn't have noticed people at their skill level.

Hiding my puzzlement, I asked, "Please tell me why you're doing this."

"You talk too much, punk."

"He's doing it because he's confident," said someone wearing a skull-patterned mask. "He thinks he could deal with the likes of us with one flick of a finger."

What kind of persecution complex was this?

I squinted, trying to steady my wavering vision.

"That's not it. I really just want to know why..."

The baseball bat rose.

WHACK!

Blows rained down again. The kidnappers battered me with metal pipes and baseball bats.

"No, fuck! I'm saying I at least want to know why!"

I snapped in frustration as I took the beating helplessly.

"And stop hitting me! It hurts... Urgh!"

A powerful electric shock tore through me.

I convulsed, bound to the chair.

It was strong enough that an ordinary person might have died from the shock.

Seriously, what the hell...?

Now I knew for certain. Their malice was real. It wasn't half-hearted, either. They hated me with every fiber of their being.

And the fact that I'd been kidnapped the day before my exam was real, too.

As was the fact that, for some unknown reason, I'd been ambushed without putting up a fight...

"I don't like that look. The way you look down on us."

One of the masked figures huffed angrily.

"Every last one of you takes us mortals for fools!"

"Mor... what?"

"You fucking lab rat!"

They were getting worked up again.

"You little rat!"

THUD!

Several cameras were busily recording. Phones on tripods filmed us from multiple angles. Amid an echoing hum, they beat me with zeal.

For a moment, I wondered whether they were trying to shoot some kind of film.

It hurt.

But the drugs were still too strong for me to resist.

More precisely, I wasn't confident I could control my strength well enough not to kill them.

So I quietly accepted the violence, waiting for the drugs to wear off. Driven by their strange convictions, they worked themselves into a frenzy as they struck.

CRASH!

The chair toppled over. No one set me upright.

They shoved one another aside to keep beating me.

Eventually, they stopped, panting hard, and took a step back.

I spat out the blood pooled in my mouth.

"What time is it?"

My hoarse voice broke the silence.

"You can beat me all you want, but could you make sure I'm in Area 1 by six in the morning?"

"Hey. You did give him Green Dream, right?"

Someone jabbed a finger at me.

Sorry, but that stuff didn't work on me.

"I emptied at least three syringes! Even if it's a knockoff, there's no way it wouldn't work."

"Yeah. It does seem to be working. Look, his wounds aren't healing right away."

"But I'm telling you, it doesn't seem to be working all the way."

They muttered among themselves.

Growing impatient, I spoke again.

"What time is it, for God's sake?"

"Stick a few more in him! Fuck, you brought us garbage."

"Then get it yourself!"

"What time is it, for God's sake?"

"When are they coming?"

"Bring the narcotics!"

"What time is it, for God's sake?"

"Nine at night."

Aha.

Someone who managed to seem dim even through a mask had answered me.

Relieved, I gave him a faint smile.

"Thanks. Nine on May thirty-first?"

"Of course it's May thirty-first."

"Hey!"

Someone cut in sharply.

"Don't tell him things he doesn't need to know!"

Roughly nine hours left, then.

I blinked the droplets of blood off my lashes and thought. I'd been kidnapped in Area 1 around six thirty in the evening. That meant I could get back to Area 1 in two and a half hours at most.

In other words, if I got free by three thirty, I could take the exam without any trouble.

"The boss will be here soon."

A gloomy voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

The kidnappers' heads whipped toward the speaker.

The person standing in a musty corner raised his head.

"Keep that thing tied up tight."

At last, I would meet whoever had planned this kidnapping.

I lay quietly on the cold floor while my kidnappers bustled about. They hurried to prepare for someone's arrival, readjusting the camera angles, checking the ropes binding my limbs, and coming over to inject me with what I assumed was Green Dream.

Apparently, they gave me narcotics, too.

I'd thought I'd had more than enough of this sort of thing at the colosseum. Frowning at the nausea washing over me, I estimated the time.

Fifteen minutes had passed...

The door opened.

"Boss."

Light poured through the gap.

"Everything's ready."

It was a young man and woman.

I could tell at once that they were related. Siblings, or perhaps twins. They looked far too alike for me not to notice.

I'd never seen either of them before.

Their jet-black curls fell beautifully around them as they slowly approached me.

"He looks exactly like the photo in the article."

The woman's voice was the first I heard.

"Well done, everyone."

"You got good footage, I trust?"

The man looked over the masked figures.

The kidnappers nodded obediently.

A satisfied expression spread across the black-haired man's face.

"Good. Check the footage on the computer. Pick out some good clips. We'll be sending them to Yehyeon shortly."

"Yehyeon?"

My eyes widened.

Even then, I didn't stop keeping track of the time. Twenty minutes.

"Why send them to the commander-in-chief?"

Eyes shot toward me.

A silence whose meaning I couldn't fathom settled over the room for a moment.

The woman broke it.

"How else are you monsters going to realize what you've done wrong?"

"Sorry?"

"Things that neither age nor die are ruining society."

She approached me as she spoke.

The clicks of her high heels echoed clearly.

"When ordinary soldiers could fight the war perfectly well."

"Truthfully, your sins aren't as grave as Yehyeon's, rookie."

As the woman knelt to peer at me, the man I suspected was her twin also approached, a smartphone in one hand.

"But try to understand. And don't be too sad. You'll become a symbol worthy of that sacrifice. We didn't choose you for no reason. We've been preparing this for months."

"Preparing what? My kidnapping?"

Seriously?

The woman grabbed me by the hair.

Her grip was that of an ordinary person. The narcotics had left my body unresponsive, but I hadn't lost my senses. If I really wanted to, I could get out.

I decided that if these humans kept up this insanity until three in the morning, I'd fight back and escape, one way or another.

Thirty minutes.

The man turned away and busied himself with something as he spoke.

"You took the recruitment exam virtually on your own and got hired, just like William Walker."

Ah.

"We protested when William Walker was hired, too. We told them that recruiting Black Badgers this way would make it even harder to trust the organization. And then they did it again."

"I told you. That arrogant bastard would never listen to us."

The woman pulled my hair, forcing me to meet her eyes, and smiled.

Fierce conviction gleamed in her gaze.

"He's the man who got shot by a hard-line environmentalist and came back an hour later to announce his territorial expansion plan."

So it seemed I'd become the target of some group opposed to the Badgers.

Judging by what I'd heard so far... they'd seen my face in an article and looked into me. Apparently, they'd kidnapped me because I was the latest recruit, and the way I'd been hired didn't seem normal to them.

But why now?

And who on earth had knocked me unconscious?

If it had been any of these people, there was no way I wouldn't have noticed them approaching.

I puzzled over the dubious situation while keeping track of the time.

Until pain fierce enough to wrench a scream from me struck my body.

"Ngh!"

An electric shock.

The heavy jolt, which would have killed a civilian, went on for a while before stopping. Even afterward, my body kept trembling in sharp little spasms.

Panting, I rolled my eyes around.

Forty-five minutes.

I saw the man filming with his phone held out as though taking a selfie.

"See that?" he said into the phone. "This is what happens when you ignore our voices."

So he was recording a video message for Yehyeon.

Drenched in sweat, I listened blankly. The man and woman leading this group were now facing the camera and reciting their beliefs. The Black Badgers were dividing society. They went against the laws of nature. Against God's will. They shouldn't exist. We know perfectly well that you're using the war as an excuse to enjoy the privileges of the power your enhanced bodies give you...

"So we've decided to kill this new recruit as an example."

Excuse me?

Me?

"To remind you that you, too, were once mere humans. To show people just how unnatural your existence is, having rejected death."

That wouldn't work...

I thought as I listened to the kidnappers drone on. If they'd meant to torture me and let me go, their plan might actually have gone smoothly.

But now that they'd decided to kill me, their plan was doomed to fail.

Because Colton wouldn't allow me to die.

At least, not until I'd killed Kyle.

So, probably...

"Look at your new recruit's corpse and understand, Commander-in-Chief."

... Wait.

"Understand the sins you've committed."

Under these circumstances, wouldn't Colton inevitably intervene before I died?

Apparently finished recording their message, the twins—I had decided to just think of them as twins—lowered the phone.

They looked at the screen, then instructed their subordinates.

"Send it."

"Yes, boss."

"Sounds good."

I muttered to myself.

A few kidnappers overheard and turned toward me, their gazes shooting down to the floor.

I smiled at the puzzled masked faces.

"You're going to kill me, right?"

"The bastard still hasn't figured out what's going on. Look at him grinning."

"No, hasn't he lost his mind?"

"Please kill me before three in the morning."

I ignored their muttering and said my piece, wearing a smile that probably looked insane to anyone else.

"You have five hours, so that should be more than enough."

"What?"

"Three in the morning."

I spat out blood and offered encouragement.

"The goal is before three a.m."

The kidnappers stared at me, speechless.

I gave them a gentle smile.

* * *

Ten p.m.

The senior leadership, getting ready to leave for the day, turned as a secretary flung the office door open, white-faced.

"Commander!"

Mitchell, who almost never lost composure, raised his voice.

"There's an email you need to see!"