Ch.119The Foundation’s Intruders (3)

# All Foundation facilities share the same characteristics.

First, they can isolate and contain anomalous entities scattered throughout the world.

Second, the more dangerous entities are placed on lower floors.

Even if an anomalous entity manages to escape, this ensures time before it can reach the surface.

“Wait. Hide over here.”

Yoon Daju stopped walking and held the group back.

Jung Haewon, who had been following closely behind, bumped into her with a thud.

“Huh? Why?”

“Shh.”

This doesn’t feel right.

The weapons storage is on the second basement level.

But as a weapons storage facility, the security is far from negligible.

Armed security personnel were blocking the middle of the corridor, forcing them to first go down the stairs to the third basement level.

The plan was to pass through the corridor below and then go up the stairs on the opposite side… but even that wasn’t going smoothly.

“I don’t see anything. Are you sure you saw something?”

“I didn’t see anything special either.”

Dan and Jung Haewon dismissed it casually.

“Can’t you hear that? Someone keeps talking. From over there.”

“…Should I knock her out?”

Dan directed his questioning look at Jung Haewon instead of Yoon Daju.

If she was suddenly talking nonsense, she might be under some influence.

Lim Dabin’s instructions were to knock her out without hesitation in such cases.

“No. Let’s observe a bit longer.”

“Sir, I’m perfectly sane right now. And I really do hear something. Seriously, am I the only one who hears it?”

Ichinose Riko, who had been quiet, raised her hand.

“Oh, I can hear it now too. I can’t make out what it is, but it sounds like someone talking. Or maybe it’s the wind. I’m not sure.”

“See!”

As she spoke triumphantly, Yoon Daju recalled her memories from her time at the Foundation.

What she saw during her time as a researcher wasn’t much different from the current scene.

Containment facilities lining both sides of the long corridor.

Each room, sealed with solid steel doors, contained a monster.

Anomalous entities.

Horrific monsters that should never be released into reality.

The Foundation typically identifies their characteristics and contains them perfectly.

A monster with teleportation abilities would be kept in a vacuum.

A monster with corrosive saliva would be confined in specially manufactured reinforced glass.

But the containment here didn’t seem quite perfect.

From somewhere among the many steel doors in the corridor, something was continuously leaking out.

What could it be?

She couldn’t tell which one was affecting this area.

She didn’t know what kind of influence they were under.

She couldn’t determine any specific characteristics either.

Why could some people hear the sound while others couldn’t?

“Maybe only women can hear it? You can’t hear anything, right?”

“No. I still don’t hear anything.”

Dan and Jung Haewon exchanged words while she was lost in thought.

Gender, huh?

Could it be related to gender as Dan suggested?

Considering that women typically have weaker anomaly observation abilities, this was quite unusual.

Thoughts continued to chain together.

Moving beyond just assessing the situation, now toward fear.

It might not end with just hearing strange sounds.

Perhaps, even at this moment, their lives were being slowly consumed.

Without realizing it, their bodies might be melting away, or they might be losing their sense of self.

The most frightening things are those that remain unknowable no matter how much you think about them.

A situation with no information.

An atmosphere that naturally creates tension.

“Hmm…”

Yoon Daju let out an excited breath.

She should be scared and worried, but instead, her heart was racing with excitement.

“Good.”

A smile followed by a sigh.

Her complicated thoughts cleared immediately.

She stopped thinking and simply enjoyed the thrill.

This was the driving force that had pushed her to participate in all kinds of dangerous experiments as a Foundation researcher.

She had forgotten it for a while.

Putting on a blindfold and stepping into a dark room with unknown contents.

The thrill and excitement from the unknown in that moment is incomparable to any other pleasure.

Yes.

‘This is why I worked at the Foundation.’

It was the first time she’d felt this emotion since regaining her memories.

Yoon Daju checked the condition of each member of the group and prepared to move again.

“We don’t have much time. Let’s just go through, whatever it is.”

The corridor was still empty.

They needed to run through it quickly and reach the stairs again.

There was a possibility that the sound might draw attention, but the unknown danger behind those steel doors worried her more.

“I’ll go through as quickly as possible, so keep an eye out for anyone coming.”

They passed through the corridor where unknown entities slumbered.

Was this really the right decision?

As always, there wasn’t much time to think.

Whoosh-

All the lights went out, plunging everything into darkness.

“What? Have we been caught?”

Just as Dan finished muttering to himself, a loud emergency alarm filled the building.

While everyone was panicking.

“Move!”

“Huh?”

“Jung Haewon! Run! Riko, hurry too!”

Yoon Daju was the quickest to assess the situation.

“Shouldn’t we find a place to hide first?”

“No need for that!”

The emergency alarm wasn’t sounding on the third basement level where they were, but much higher up on the ground floor.

They hadn’t been detected.

This meant that Lim Dabin’s team had successfully accessed the server.

How long would it take to hack the server, take control of the system, and open the weapons storage?

“We need to get to the weapons storage as quickly as possible!”

Yoon Daju roughly grabbed Dan’s arm and ran.

“That’s the only way the timing will work!”

Boom.

A dull metallic sound kept rhythm.

***

Inside the server room, which had already been taken over.

Robin kept staring at the monitor as she spoke.

“For now, I’ve released a few anomalous entities from the third basement level.”

Robin spoke casually.

I felt a chill for a moment.

Weren’t we trying to get access to the weapons storage entrance?

“Is that really okay?!”

“Dabin, calm down.”

Robin continued calmly.

“The breakthrough team is on the second basement level anyway. This is just to buy time.”

“What about the weapons storage?”

“I’m working on that simultaneously, so don’t worry. It will take a little time.”

I had no choice but to lower my voice again.

I was worried, but there was a rational aspect to it.

The weapons storage that Yoon Daju’s team was targeting was on the second basement level.

If it’s the third basement level, they shouldn’t encounter anything immediately.

“So what kind of entities did you release on the third basement level?”

“Nothing special, just common monsters. They’re relatively easy to deal with, but still require armed personnel.”

“So you’re not just buying time but also dispersing their forces.”

“Yes. We can’t hold out if all the security forces concentrate here. We need to divide their manpower to have a chance.”

I turned my gaze toward Serim.

She seemed to have used up quite a bit of energy when subduing the personnel in the server room earlier, and now she was lying stretched out on a chair.

“She’s resting as much as possible right now. She’ll need to knock out more guards later.”

“…Okay, Dabin.”

I could only hope that everyone would be safe.

***

Clang!

Boom!

The steel doors opened one after another, releasing the entities trapped inside.

“W-what? Are they deliberately releasing the contained entities?”

“This is insane. My God. Insane.”

Jung Haewon and Dan kept glancing back even as they ran.

“What are you doing! Keep running!”

Yoon Daju shouted at them.

She had briefly considered fighting, but now was the time to keep running.

Riko pointed ahead.

“Daju. That one’s opening too.”

“Riko. Can you buy us some time? Haewon too.”

“What? Time?”

“Just enough time for me to get the weapons out.”

“Daju, are you crazy? How am I supposed to fight something that big!”

“Hurry!”

Before them was a monster in the form of a massive mouth.

Like a beast’s muzzle separated from its body, it was filled with sharp teeth, and where the throat should be was an abyss reeking of blood.

Behind them, a masked man was tearing at his own head.

Flashes of light and arms grabbing at something were also briefly visible.

While Yoon Daju stopped to rummage through her bag, Riko approached the monster with her arms spread wide.

“Aaaah! Buying time!”

“That’s enough! Come this way now!”

Crack-

She never intended to rush at the monster. Instead, she broke the doorknob and went inside.

Among the heavy steel doors lining the corridor, there was one ordinary door, like an emergency exit.

It was a space used as a rest facility for researchers, or as a shelter.

“Phew…”

As soon as she entered the room, Yoon Daju immediately began pushing furniture.

Jung Haewon quickly caught on and helped block the entrance.

Dan and Riko joined in belatedly. A barricade was soon formed around the entrance.

“Alright. Let’s catch our breath here.”

Yoon Daju muttered to herself even though no one had asked.

“The doorknob is broken, so we can’t hold out forever. We also need to time our arrival at the weapons storage. We’ll have to leave again within three minutes at most.”

The original plan was to head straight to the weapons storage on the floor above.

But considering the surrounding situation and the group’s stamina, they had found a temporary shelter.

The small room was filled with heavy breathing.

Dan, being a smoker, was struggling the most. Yet he still managed to ask Yoon Daju a question.

“Thanks to you, we survived. How did you know this place was here?”

“Just saw it with my eyes.”

“Wow. Your observation skills are insane.”

“Actually, most Foundation facilities have at least one space for researchers.”

This time it was Riko.

Despite being out of breath herself, she continued talking excitedly.

“Usually they’re used for quick coffee breaks, and in emergencies, they serve as shelters. Daju must have known about it, right?”

“Oh, come on!”

“What? You did work as a researcher, didn’t you? Are you going to keep hiding it?”

“It’s embarrassing, seriously!”

“Can’t Ichinose just tell us?”

“Haewon? Yes. Daju used to work as a researcher. And what happened then was—”

Thump.

“Mmph! I can’t breathe! Daju! I can’t breathe!”

“Shut up.”

“…”

After a long struggle, Riko was released and wiped the saliva from her mouth while grumbling.

“Do you know what I went through because of that? I’ll tell everyone someday.”

“But you’re not nervous even in this situation, Riko.”

Dan looked at Riko with surprise.

“What? I don’t get nervous easily!”

“Phew… I’m really tense. Ugh, why is running so hard?”

Dan was almost out of breath from running with all his might.

Jung Haewon caught Dan as he was about to collapse and placed him on the back of a chair.

“It’s because you keep talking.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. Rest a bit.”

Jung Haewon got up from the chair and took a seat next to Yoon Daju.

“Sis. There’s something outside.”

“I’m sure there is. We saw them earlier.”

“No, not that. Don’t you hear something like gunshots?”

Yoon Daju.

And the others too.

Everyone listened to the situation outside the door.

“Security personnel have come down.”

They had to avoid both the released monsters and the armed security trying to subdue them.

Yoon Daju had to make another decision.

“…”

“Get up. Let’s go back out now.”

“Right now?”

“I’m dying from exhaustion.”

“I’m a bit short on stamina too.”

Everyone was complaining, but there really wasn’t much time left.

“This is our only chance.”

Gunfire could be heard from outside the door. Yoon Daju kept listening carefully.

Quite a lot of personnel seemed to have gathered here, suggesting a serious situation.

Then what about the security forces patrolling around the weapons storage on the second basement level?

They might be mixed in with those outside.

And perhaps, just perhaps, Dabin’s team had deliberately released the anomalous entities.

To create this very situation.

No, that’s right.

That’s the more logical assumption. Wouldn’t her brother have thought we’d be on the second basement level?

If so, he had unintentionally put us in a difficult position.

After thinking this far, Yoon Daju silently got up and cleared the barricade from the door.

‘When I get back, I’m going to make him pay for this.’

More than worrying about the imminent danger, she was looking forward to that.