# Chapter 96
Is it sweat or blood gathering at the tip of my nose?
When I wiped it with my arm, my sleeve turned red. Lee Hwan pressed his nose firmly with his sleeve covering the back of his hand to avoid dripping blood on the floor.
‘Let’s get out of here.’
Even if he searched this place further, he wouldn’t get as much information as he would by exploring the lower floors. Moreover, he didn’t know when the researcher from the next room might barge in.
Only then did he realize he had been sitting down. Lee Hwan barely managed to get up and staggered out the door on weakened legs.
The corridor looked even chillier. The white walls seemed to be thoroughly slashing and churning his mind.
Ding. The sound of the elevator piercing his ears snapped him back to reality. Lee Hwan stared at the elevator display indicating the fourth basement floor, then hurriedly walked out.
Though it couldn’t be true, the air felt increasingly colder. Even if the temperature dropped by a few degrees, he shouldn’t have felt cold, yet at some point goosebumps had covered both his arms.
The fourth basement floor was an open space. Excessively bright lights were positioned at intervals in the ceiling full of pipes, making his eyes sting from the pale white floor.
Large machines were placed at regular intervals in the spacious area, with cylindrical tubes of various sizes installed beside them.
His heart pounded loudly when he saw pieces of flesh twitching inside the transparent tubes.
To make matters worse, a subtle smell of disinfectant permeated the air. It felt like witnessing the bizarre laboratories seen only in movies, making Lee Hwan feel like a child who had been singing the tonkatsu song one moment and found himself in the dentist’s chair the next.
First, he hid by pressing close to the nearest machine. Though no one seemed to be around, the very structure of this place meant anyone jumping out from a corner would immediately spot him.
Even if not designed with that intention, it was certainly disadvantageous for intruders. Moreover, seeing the barrier wall near the ceiling by the elevator made it clear that if he made a wrong move, he’d be trapped with no way out.
‘Wait, a barrier wall?’
It was too thick to be merely for fire prevention. Just like the ones installed at every landing in Building D.
Only then did Lee Hwan turn his attention to the twitching things inside the cylinders.
A chill ran through him as he realized what he had thought were just pieces of flesh had eyes and mouths. Lee Hwan’s face turned pale with shock at these things immersed in what looked like culture medium, moving in rhythm with heartbeats.
One mass with an excessively swollen back had a long tail hanging down.
‘A mouse…?’
Despite its altered appearance and shaved fur, it was probably a mouse. Not a rodent monster from the gate, but a real mouse from this Earth.
However, judging from the transparently visible closed eyes and one side turned yellow, it seemed to be undergoing strange changes from experiments.
‘Mutation…’
The word struck him powerfully, feeling like it was choking him.
Lee Hwan began moving around the large laboratory, hiding from machine to machine, hoping what he saw was just his imagination.
But each visible piece of flesh was grotesquely twisted while retaining characteristics of a certain animal.
This one was a dog, that one a pig. Pieces of flesh with barely any resemblance to their original forms were twitching in rhythm with heartbeats, sending vital signs to the monitors on the machines.
‘This is insane.’
Lee Hwan gulped. The feeling of stepping into a forbidden place scraped coldly down his spine.
The fourth basement floor seemed to be where full-fledged semi-awakening experiments were conducted.
Unfortunately or fortunately, he didn’t find any human test subjects in the midst of this, but just seeing animals submerged in yellow liquid without consciousness was enough to make him shudder as if he’d swallowed ice.
It was an instinctive revulsion. The fact that these things were still alive gave him a different kind of terror than seeing hunters dismembered by monsters.
‘Only madmen could come down here.’
If researchers from other buildings saw this, they would likely scream and run away. The sight of various animals grafted with different monsters and transformed looked beyond experimentation, bordering on perversion.
“Whew…”
Only after he sighed out loud, forgetting he was hiding, did his scattered mind return to his head in terror.
Lee Hwan tried to suppress his pounding heart and finally looked around.
Distracted by the test subjects, he hadn’t noticed the rather large freezers lined up in the left corner.
Did they think no additional security was needed from this floor down, or that there was no need to hide what was inside after displaying such a scene? There was no separate lock on the handles.
Lee Hwan lowered his body, scanning the ceiling and walls to locate CCTV cameras, then moved to the corner while staying at the edge of their field of vision.
No matter what he did, he couldn’t avoid the CCTV. Lee Hwan turned his head to cover his face and opened the very first freezer.
‘-28 degrees…’
Cool air brushed against his face. A-133, AS-144, DK37… Under the flickering light, drugs with incomprehensible alphabetical labels were neatly arranged and kept cold.
‘So it’s a drug freezer.’
It wasn’t a coincidence that Jade’s drug from the upper floor crossed his mind. T.D.F-□. Although the last character was cut off, if he remembered just the beginning, he might be able to find a similar drug.
Lee Hwan stood as if nailed to the spot, scanning the freezer while tracing the name in his memory.
Judging by drugs with different initial letters bundled in the same case, they seemed to be divided into separate freezers based on storage temperature or environment. This meant he’d have to open each one.
‘Not in this one. The second…’
After searching through repeated opening and closing of doors, Lee Hwan encountered a familiar combination of alphabets in the third freezer.
‘Found it. T.D.F.’
It was indeed a drug stored in this basement. A half-frozen liquid in a transparent case. The transparent pale green shimmer at the edges of the crystals made it look almost like a raw gemstone.
However, a problem arose as he scanned the inside again before closing the freezer door.
‘This… isn’t just one.’
Two in the third freezer, one in the fourth, one in the last. A total of four drugs with the same initial letters were found.
If it were just one, he might be able to pilfer it without being discovered for a while. But if this many drugs, all with the same prefix, disappeared at once, it would surely be noticed.
Especially if it were a drug related to Jade, and if Kang Dongha’s name was in the access records at that time…
‘…Should I put it back?’
But he couldn’t just turn his back and walk away with the only substance that could save him right before his eyes. Without this, even if things went well, Jade would disappear before completing four years.
Becoming a sacrificial lamb for experiments twice.
Lee Hwan momentarily recalled the horrific image of the animal test subjects. If he left now, when could he come back? After Kang Dongha discovered the whereabouts of his ID card, he wouldn’t be able to come down to this basement even in death.
He faced a difficult choice. Should he risk his safety for the future by killing him?
The face of Jade, who had calmly accepted the fact of his death, flickered before Lee Hwan’s eyes.
“Damn it…”
Suddenly, he couldn’t move his feet. Why couldn’t he throw him into this laboratory and run away, when he was someone he didn’t even know until before the regression?
Clearly, until the early stages of regression, hadn’t he given up everything and tried to save the world?
Lee Hwan closed the freezer door and stood there stupidly hesitating for a long time. As much as he feared the future his actions might bring, and as much as Jade’s existence was heavier than he thought, he could have spent all night pondering if he left things as they were.
‘I need to go find the piece of causality.’
But that thought suddenly brought him to his senses. Lee Hwan slapped his cheeks several times with his palm, then sighed deeply as he pulled his backpack from his back to the front and opened it.
Ziip-.
There would definitely be problems. If he gave up now and left, even if Jade died, he could plan for the future without risk factors. Nevertheless, his hands moved on their own.
Lee Hwan opened the freezer, found all the drugs starting with T.D.F, and put them one by one in a small bag. Then, to prevent their specific targeting, he mixed in a few more drugs before tightly closing his eyes and leaving the drug storage area.
All the drugs were placed in corners. They were positioned in places difficult to notice until the next check. Still, the anxiety surging like waves was unavoidable… but he had no intention of returning the items he had arbitrarily taken.
He would save Jade. Not just for his sake, but for Taesung’s as well.
Lee Hwan had received so much from Taesung before the regression. It wasn’t just about thick steaks or valuable gifts. For the first time since his parents’ death, someone was there beside him as he always struggled.
Just thinking about it sometimes made Lee Hwan feel joy. Even when depressed, he found comfort in that existence alone. For some reason, that memory hit him harder now than in the past.
‘I don’t know anymore.’
They say never do something you’ll regret, but somehow, if he just left this place now, he felt he would regret it even more.
Whoosh, the freezer door closed. Lee Hwan gritted his teeth and quickly moved back to the corner, avoiding the CCTV.
Despite being warmer than the cold air from the freezer, he couldn’t feel any warmth in this laboratory. After looking around a bit more, Lee Hwan vaguely sensed he wouldn’t find the piece of causality here.
Let’s go down. Lee Hwan raised his drooping shoulders, turned around, and headed for the elevator.
Next was finally the bottom floor of this building and the lowest level of the secret laboratory. The feeling that all kinds of thoughts were poking at his tense back—whether he could really find the piece of causality there, whether he could safely leave this place.
But at the same time, having a hunch that this piece would reveal a very important fact, Lee Hwan calmly pressed the button at the very bottom.
B5.
