Scene 1. Into the Guts
His fingertips caught on the rusted seam of the ventilation grate.
Lee Kang's fingers closed around the lattice and pulled, slowly. Rust scraped the skin from his palms, but the sensation was dull. The iron whined, low, then gave up and bent. Once more. The bars peeled open one side at a time, and the darkness opened its mouth.
Air pushed out from inside.
Damp and cool. The temperature against his skin was different from the night air outside. Artificially chilled. The texture unique to spaces that have been sealed shut for a long time—basements, storerooms. The texture of dead air.
The smell riding that air drove into his nostrils.
Formaldehyde. The sour, stinging reek of things kept in laboratory glass jars. Beneath it lay the metallic tang of rusted iron, and beneath that—Lee Kang's nose twitched once—beneath that, the faint afterimage of something yellow was hiding.
He gripped the grate and hauled himself up. His shoulders passed through the narrow opening, then his waist. The hem of his coat scraped against rusted iron. Even that sound, he smothered to its minimum.
Inside the duct, pitch black.
Lee Kang's eyelids blinked once, slowly. The darkness loosened by degrees, revealing contours. The height from floor to ceiling barely fit one shoulder. Metal on every side. A narrow, low, cold pipe.
He set his elbows on the floor. Crawled. Like a snake. His body slid forward through the tight passage.
From the duct wall, a low hum transmitted through his elbows. Very low, very regular. Somewhere, a large machine was running. Without rest. A vibration that kept time every few seconds crept through the metal walls and into his body.
A heartbeat.
That was how Lee Kang's brain translated it. A massive beast lay somewhere ahead, and he was now boring through its flank, crawling between its ribs. The cold metal of the duct walls was bone. The pipes running along them were blood vessels. The gaps where steam leaked out were breathing holes.
He was inside the beast's guts.
Faint light bled in from ahead. Artificial light seeping through a joint in the ductwork drew a thin line across the wall. His elbows advanced one hand-span at a time. No sound. Even the friction of fabric against metal held its breath.
He brought his face to the crack of light.
Below. The duct ran across the ceiling, and beneath it, a vast space opened up. White light. The eye-piercing kind used in operating rooms, flooding every corner of the space far too brightly. Barely a shadow anywhere.
The things beneath that light—
Lee Kang pulled his face from the seam. Not yet. A little farther. To the wire-mesh structure covering the ceiling, where he could look straight down. For now, he had only half a view.
He crawled. Elbow, knee. Elbow, knee.
The air grew heavier with each span. The formaldehyde thickened. Beneath the rusted-iron smell, the sweetness of old dried blood crept upward. Something was mixed into that sweetness. Very faintly—the same yellow afterimage that coursed through his own veins.
The root of Lee Kang's tongue stiffened once, then released.
He reached the point where the duct turned. Ahead, the solid floor ended and wire mesh began. Below it: open space. Light. Before leaning his face past the corner, Lee Kang steadied his breathing once. Emptied his lungs and filled them again. Checked the grip of the pistol inside his coat.
Then he looked.
Scene 2. The Hooks
What spread below was a butcher's floor.
Surgical lamps hung in rows from the ceiling. Flat white light bore down as though erasing every corner of the space. Beneath that light, a long rail crossed the ceiling, and from the rail, hooks hung in a line.
People hung from the hooks.
Lee Kang's pupils moved one beat too late.
Stripped bodies dangled upside down. Iron hooks driven through their ankles lined the overhead rail at even intervals. Men. Women. Old. Young. Every one of them the same bloodless pale, hair hanging loose toward the floor. From their fingertips, something dripped. One drop at a time.
Blood.
The floor was sloped. A shallow trench ran down the center, and along it, something red flowed slowly. Blood diluted with water. Somewhere a faucet had been left running—a faint rushing sound trailed along the trench.
Figures in white coats moved beneath the hooks. Two of them. Heads bowed, writing something on clipboards. Along the far wall stood a row of large glass tanks. The tanks were filled with liquid, and inside them, other things floated. Lee Kang's gaze stopped there. What was inside the tanks had not finished becoming anything. Three arms on one. A jaw stretched too long on another. A hump rising from a back. Floating like unfinished dough. Simply floating.
Lee Kang lay flat on the wire mesh and looked down.
The scene entered his brain, and his brain began to sort it.
Over there—the third hook. Still alive. The muscles along the ribs were twitching faintly. Breathing remained. That one was still raw material. Still usable.
Over there—the fifth. Already stiff. Skin peeled back until the ribs showed through. Used up. Discard.
The dough inside the glass tanks. Failed attempts. Defective product. Bound for the trash.
Lee Kang's jaw muscle twitched once.
Saliva pooled in his mouth.
Registering that fact took one beat. Lee Kang, cheek pressed to the ceiling mesh, ran his tongue along the inside of his jaw. From both sides of the tongue's root, something warm welled up and coated the inside of his mouth. At the sight of the flesh hanging from the hooks. At the sound of blood-water trickling through the trench.
Not revulsion. Appetite. That was what came first.
No nausea rose. The fact that the things below were human beings did not tighten his throat. What tightened his throat was something else. Afraid the sound of swallowing might carry too loudly from the wire mesh, Lee Kang moved his jaw slowly and swallowed.
What remained where he had swallowed was hunger.
Lee Kang could not see his own face. But he could feel how his jaw was moving. Force pressed between his upper and lower teeth. The corners of his mouth were pulled minutely tight. It was the face of something appraising what lay below.
"...What a mess."
His lips barely moved. Lower than a whisper—words carried on breath, meant for no one.
Nothing worth using. Not on the hooks, not in the glass tanks. Not a single piece of material worth devouring before the blood cooled. Every scrap of flesh inside this slaughterhouse was a failure. Garbage.
Lee Kang's gaze dropped lower. One of the white coats disappeared through a far door. One remained. Writing on a clipboard in the corner. Back turned.
He shifted his body on the wire mesh. Soundlessly. Found his landing spot. The shadow between two hooks. The stretch where the light fell thinnest. That was where he would drop.
One beat. He emptied his breath.
He threw himself down.
Scene 3. Whisper
The impact of landing vanished at the knees.
When Lee Kang's feet touched the tile floor, there was no sound. Wet tile beside the trench. In the shadow between hooks. From that spot, the motion of rising to his feet finished within a single breath.
The white coat's back was in front of him. A pen moved across the clipboard. The man had not sensed him.
Lee Kang's left hand clamped over the man's mouth. His right hand seized the back of the man's skull and drove him toward the wall. Both motions happened simultaneously. The clipboard slipped from the man's hand and clattered, low, against the tile.
The man's back struck cold tile wall.
"—mmf!"
The muffled scream vibrated against Lee Kang's palm. The man's eyes rolled back white, then returned. His pupils locked onto Lee Kang's face and began to tremble.
Lee Kang brought his own face close. Until the tips of their noses nearly touched. From the man's breath rose the smell of cigarettes and candy. Garlic, too, from whatever he had eaten for lunch. Lee Kang's eyes did not move. Neither did his expression.
"The extraction room."
A whisper. From the distance a lover brings their lips to an ear—low and languid. Lee Kang's right hand gripped the man's temple. Thumb on one side, remaining fingers cupping the opposite half of the skull. No pressure applied. Not yet.
"Where."
The man tried to speak. His mouth was covered, so only a strained whine escaped through his nasal cavity. Lee Kang's palm eased open. Just enough for the mouth to move. One hand-span.
"North." The man's voice was shredded. "End of the corridor... left, left..."
"Steel door."
"Steel door, yes, the thickness is—"
"Key."
"My—my left pocket..."
Lee Kang's left hand covered the man's mouth again. The man's eyes went wide. He tried to say something but could not. Lee Kang studied the man's face one more time.
He read nothing. Not the face. Not the terror. Not the pleading. Not the age.
Only the man's throat was visible. Below the jawline, above the collar of the coat—exposed skin. Beneath it, the contour of a vein. A pulse was beating. Fast. Chased by fear.
Lee Kang's right hand moved.
Snap.
A very short, very dry sound. Slightly thicker than a wooden chopstick breaking. The man's neck bent at a wrong angle, and his body grew heavy in Lee Kang's hands. Lee Kang let the corpse slide down slowly. It settled against the tile floor in a sitting posture, then slumped sideways.
That was when a single drop flew.
The skin of the broken neck must have torn somewhere. One drop. Exactly one drop landed on the edge of Lee Kang's lips.
It was hot.
Lee Kang's breathing stopped.
The tip of his tongue moved before thought could. It swept across his own lips. That single drop touched his tongue. Iron. Salt. And beneath that—beneath that, the blunt, scalding sensation of life. The temperature of what a heart had been pumping just moments ago. Not dough floating in a tank. The warmth that only the blood of something that had been alive could carry.
Lee Kang's knees buckled.
He sank to a half-kneel beside the corpse. The man's broken neck was right before his eyes. Skin exposed beneath the collar of the coat. The spot where the pulse had been beating moments ago. Warmth still lingered there. Lee Kang's head tilted slowly toward it. His jaw opened. His teeth showed. The salivary glands inside his mouth burst once more.
One hand-span. Half a span.
The edge of Lee Kang's lips was about to graze the man's nape when—
Crack.
His own right hand struck his own cheek.
The sound rang unnaturally loud off the tile floor. His cheek stung. Lee Kang's head snapped sideways, away from the corpse. Once more. Crack. The same cheek. Harder. The taste of blood spread inside his mouth. The inner lining of his cheek had torn against his own teeth.
Lee Kang remained frozen in his half-kneel.
On his lips, the corpse's single drop of blood had not yet dried. Inside his mouth, the blood his own torn cheek had shed was circling. Two kinds of blood mixed on his tongue. He could not tell them apart.
From deep in the back of his throat, a very low growl climbed upward. It took three breaths to press it down.
Lee Kang stood. He took the key from the corpse's coat pocket. The cold feel of iron met his fingers. He turned. Walked toward the north corridor.
His stride did not waver. Only his stride.
Scene 4. Lilac
The steel door was thick.
End of the corridor. Left wall, dead end. No rust on the metal surface—recently made. A keyhole in the center, a dial mounted below it. Lee Kang did not insert the key.
He kicked the door instead.
The sole of his foot drove into the exact center of the steel plate. A door thick enough that four broad-shouldered men ramming it wouldn't budge. The hinges screamed. The bolt bent and snapped. The steel door tilted inward and struck the concrete wall. The boom filled the corridor.
Light poured out from inside.
Yellow light.
Lee Kang's eyes adjusted one beat too late. In that single beat, his lungs collapsed first.
The instant he inhaled, the air inside the room adhered to the inner walls of his lungs. Sweet. Hideously sweet. Lilac. The cool, damp breath that rises when you bury your face in a lilac bush after spring rain—
No.
Lee Kang's brain corrected itself one beat too late. Not lilac. Chemicals. But—but the two could not be separated. Somewhere in his brain, the two pieces of information printed on top of each other. Lilac and chemical at once. Chemical and the scent that rose from Yeonhwa's nape at once. Yesterday, the day before, some blurred distance in time—when Yeonhwa had tried to rest her hand on his forehead, the exact fragrance that had grazed his nose.
That was what filled this room.
In the center of the room stood an enormous tank.
Glass walls reaching to the ceiling. Reinforced metal framing held the glass in place. Inside, yellow liquid filled it to the brim. Not clear. Cloudy. A deep yellow streaked with milky white. A very slow vortex turned inside the liquid. A pump running somewhere.
The size of the tank filled Lee Kang's entire field of vision.
That volume.
That volume buckled his knees.
The sound of a levee breaking came from inside his body.
Very precisely, Lee Kang heard it as sound. It started in his shinbones. Something inside the marrow cracked, and the crack spread fast. To his knees. His thighs. His pelvis. Every bone in his body began to protest at once.
Lee Kang's spine arched backward like a bow.
"Kh—"
The scream severed at his throat. Joints twisted in the wrong direction. His elbow bent at an angle that should not exist, then snapped back. Each finger joint popped out of socket one by one, then found its place again. With each dislocation—clack, clack—the sound filled the room.
His knees hit the floor. One side. Then the other. His palms slapped the tile. What ran down his arms was not sweat. Something more viscous. Cold sweat that was simultaneously not cold sweat. Something seeped from the pores of his skin, and even that carried a faint yellow smell.
He raised his head and looked at the tank.
His focus scattered. The yellow light bled outward and swallowed the room whole. His pupils would not constrict. His eyes could not endure the brightness; tears gathered, and through those tears the tank refracted upward like a vast amber wall.
Lee Kang lay prone on the floor and looked up at it.
Inside the lilac fragrance.
Yeonhwa was in there. No—Yeonhwa's scent had dissolved into it. No—Yeonhwa was that. The circuits of his brain tangled until three sentences lit up and went dark in alternation. Which was real, his brain could not determine. His brain had no time for that. Every resource his brain possessed was pouring into his bloodstream.
His veins were empty.
Where the yellow had drained away, nothing remained, and that emptiness was screaming.
Hunger.
Lee Kang's mouth fell open. His tongue moved inside it. No saliva pooled. The glands had dried up. In place of saliva, something else gathered. The wall of his stomach twisted once and released. With each twist, the image of the flesh hanging from hooks flashed through his mind. The nape of the man with the clipboard. A single drop of scalding blood. Its temperature.
He wanted to eat.
Right now. He wanted to go back down the corridor and sink his teeth into the corpse's throat. He wanted to tear down the living thing dangling from the hooks and pry open its ribs. The violet vein on the inside of Yeonhwa's wrist surfaced in his mind. Inside the lilac fragrance, that vein surfaced with unbearable clarity.
Lee Kang's forehead touched the tile floor. The cold sensation cooled his brow, but the twisting inside his bones did not subside. His spine arched like a bow once more. Words leaked from his throat. Words his breath could not support. They broke apart one syllable at a time.
"So this—"
Breath.
"—is what it—"
Breath. His shoulders shuddered once.
"...was."
Laughter. Too dry to call laughter. Just sound riding a parched breath—that kind of self-derision. The corners of Lee Kang's mouth were pulled downward, toward the floor. His forehead still pressed to tile.
He could not survive a single day without this nauseating yellow thing. This enormous tank was his bridle. This tank was the proof. The Unit 731 branch, the mass production, the hunt—all of it was secondary. At this very moment, without this yellow liquid, he would become a beast and tear into the nearest piece of flesh.
The nearest piece of flesh.
Over that image, Yeonhwa's face surfaced. The lilac fragrance still saturated the room, and inside it, the boundary between Yeonhwa's face and the yellow tank dissolved.
Lee Kang's nails scraped the tile floor. No strength behind them. The sensation of bones twisting came and went in waves. The interval between waves was shortening.
The lilac clung to the inside of his lungs and would not let go.
It was sweet.