# Chapter 35
—I think there’s someone with invisibility ability among them.
Fenil spoke carefully to me. Invisibility. Depending on the level, it was one of the optimal abilities for lurking. Especially if they were ambushing with other complex abilities combined.
My confused mind began to clear slightly. I don’t know how they knew of our existence, but I understand why we couldn’t detect them.
The gun barrel aimed at me seemed to say “this is the end for you.” Killing all these people and escaping was practically impossible.
If they knew our identities for certain, they would have prepared their own countermeasures. No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with a good plan.
Meanwhile, someone wearing a crooked lab coat approached, pushing past the armed individuals. He had ash-gray hair and ash-gray eyes. His eyes were so sunken they reminded me of fish eyes, but at a glance, they also resembled the eyes of a murderer.
He tapped the floor habitually and slowly opened his mouth.
“I almost got caught off guard.”
Lifting one corner of his mouth in a vile smile, he let out an exaggerated sigh.
From the looks of it, he seemed to be one of the researchers. It wasn’t strange to have researchers in a laboratory.
But with Zenon’s subsequent reaction, I had to face the identity of the unease I’d been feeling all along.
“How are you…”
Zenon knew this researcher. His eyes began to waver incessantly.
“She told you, didn’t she? That the leash is in our hands.”
When Zenon spoke to the researcher, he too familiarly responded to Zenon’s words.
An ominous feeling began flooding inside me, enough to make me stop breathing. A hypothesis that should never be true was forming.
I was more afraid of discovering what Zenon had been hiding than the thought of being surrounded. I hoped it was just a baseless concern. But as always, desperate wishes don’t come true.
“No way…”
Zenon looked at me as if he had noticed something in my incomprehensible words. It could just be a coincidence. But why did everything sound to me like it was confirming my hypothesis?
When the researcher mentioned the leash, Zenon hastily touched the back of his neck. At this, the researcher’s smile deepened.
“When you come to Peace, a signal automatically comes to us.”
The researcher’s words and Zenon’s actions. They were connected in an impossible way. Zenon couldn’t have. This thought should have been just my delusion. But amid screaming emotions, my reason found a clear answer.
I forcibly parted my dried lips. Surely if I spoke these words, it would be Zenon who would be in danger, but why was I the one feeling the pain?
“…What are you saying?”
I hoped he would tell me it was nothing. I needed just one word I could believe in, even if it was meaningless.
“…”
But no words of denial came from his mouth. In his eyes, which I glanced at briefly, guilt was stained so visibly even I could see it.
With that expression, I could understand everything. If Zenon had such an expression in this situation, there was only one reason.
“He was on our side from the beginning.”
The only explanation was that Zenon was a spy for Peace. Simultaneously, the researcher’s words confirmed my suspicion.
“…Not anymore.”
Zenon belatedly spoke, but his words didn’t reach my ears.
Zenon, a spy? Even in a situation where I couldn’t deny it, I wanted to deny it. It was that unbelievable.
He was a colleague I had been with at ‘Alice’ for 5 years. Despite his playful side, he always worked for the organization. It was he who looked after me, he who approached me when I refused him.
And such a Zenon was a spy?
The time we spent together, which was reality for me, was no different from a play to Zenon. While I recognized Zenon as a colleague, he saw me as an enemy.
It felt like sinking into an endless abyss. My mind turned white, and my thinking was paralyzed.
What should I do in a situation like this? Should I kill Zenon?
My eyes wandered in the air, unable to grasp anything. I had the illusion that the ground beneath my feet was collapsing.
I needed to move. In this state, I would be captured exactly as they wanted. But despite that thought, my feet wouldn’t move.
I knew I should escape with Alice, leaving Zenon behind, but I couldn’t do anything.
If this had all been Zenon’s plan, I could readily say:
It was an unparalleled success.
Because with just the fact that Zenon had betrayed us, I was collapsing miserably.
—Snap out of it. Escaping is the priority right now.
Fenil kept speaking to me as I stood frozen. I knew that. I knew it better than anyone. But what could I do when my body wouldn’t move?
Though it was my body, I couldn’t find a way to move it, as if I had forgotten how it worked.
Would I just have to wait to die like this? Such a thought flashed amid the endless despair flowing in. If I was captured, I would certainly be tortured, and then my lifespan would end there.
Being captured by the enemy and dying a dog’s death. I never thought my imagination would become reality.
—Kay.
But that imagination was instantly shattered by a familiar voice that suddenly rang out.
“Boss…?”
Even the tens of thousands of thoughts swirling in my head became pointless before him. It was just the Boss calling my name, but my emotions instantly calmed.
—Kay, what do you need to do now?
My mouth opened automatically at his solemn voice. What I needed to do now. It was already clear. I just couldn’t do it.
“Escape… sir.”
Somehow, my stiffened mouth began to move slightly. My emptied white mind awakened and found direction. My body, which I thought couldn’t move, was released.
Amazingly, with just one word, the Boss had drawn my fallen mind out from beneath the surface.
Yes, what I needed to do now was escape. Not stay still and die.
I forcibly forgot about Zenon amidst my current thoughts. I could think about it after getting out. Right now, escaping was the priority.
“I’ll escape with Alice.”
After regaining my senses, I turned toward Alice. Though her mouth was closed, her eyes were trembling severely, as if she was afraid.
Though dangerous, rescuing Alice was the objective of this mission. I had to ensure her escape no matter what.
It was at that moment as I was about to approach her.
—No. We’ll rescue Alice next time. Right now, only Kay should escape.
The Boss’s voice stopped my actions.
“But…”
If this opportunity passes, the possibility of rescuing Alice becomes slim. They would either move the laboratory elsewhere or stop the experiments.
Moreover, Peace had realized that the organization’s goal was Alice. Such people wouldn’t keep her safe.
The Boss wasn’t one to not know this. But he didn’t change his stance.
—This is an order.
At his continued words, I automatically looked at Alice’s expression. Her eyes met mine as she blankly stared at me, and Alice’s mouth opened slightly.
“I’m… fine.”
She finally formed a sentence, repeatedly opening and closing her mouth. Did Alice understand the entire situation?
Just like when I first saw Alice, she immediately recognized my feelings.
As Alice repeated several times that she was really fine, I finally had to make a decision.
“Understood.”
At that, Alice smiled slightly as if pleased. Though that smile kept haunting me, I soon turned my gaze away.
Suppressing the rising guilt, I looked at the researcher. As I manifested the wolf-human, he laughed leisurely, saying it was a useless action.
“You don’t seriously think you can escape from here, do you?”
His gaze swept around. Indeed, the situation was overwhelmingly unfavorable. They not only outnumbered us, but they were also armed.
They must have prepared for my ability. In reality, my chances of escape were practically non-existent.
But even for me, it wasn’t that there was no way.
There was a place that entered my vision as I looked around. If it was there, escape wasn’t impossible.
As soon as I thought that, I immediately ran toward that place.
I ran at full speed, breaking through the acrid dust cloud. Behind me, shouts rang out in succession.
“Catch him quickly!”
The place I fled to was none other than the ventilation duct. The ventilation duct, large enough for a person to pass through, became a good escape route for me.
As soon as I thought I could escape, I threw my body toward it. They quickly approached, noticing my action, but my body had already broken through the cover and entered.
A human body wasn’t advantageous in the narrow ventilation duct. That’s why I transformed into a wolf and began running through the narrow interior. My vision lowered, and my senses became clearer. I exerted force on my hind legs and ran forward.
As I traversed the pitch-dark ventilation duct, those who had belatedly climbed up aimed their guns, possibly to stop my actions.
With the sound of a gunshot, a bullet flew toward me. But that bullet never reached me.
The bullet stopped abruptly in mid-air and then lost its force and rolled on the floor. The only one capable of such a feat was Zenon, who possessed barrier superpower.
Seeing this scene, something I hadn’t thought of earlier came to mind.
He was clearly a spy for Peace. If that was the case, it would be normal for him to deactivate the barrier around me from the moment his identity was exposed. After all, a spy wouldn’t help the enemy.
But Zenon didn’t do that. The fact that I could freely use superpowers in a building surrounded by barriers was proof of that.
Moreover, he even blocked the attack. It’s not the behavior one would expect from a spy. Why was he helping me?
I really hope Zenón makes it out alive with Kay