Clatter, clatter—the body swayed side to side. In an instant, the mind that had been sunk in darkness all this time shattered like ice, and Seoryeong’s eyes flew open.

A vast plain stretched endlessly, and beyond it jagged mountain ranges pierced the sky. Wow... Her bewildered face reflected in the window glass rushing by.

This was inside a train. Yes, she must be being transported by train. Seoryeong secretly clenched and released her fists, focusing on the slow return of her strength.

What had become of the mansion? The brown-uniformed soldiers who had tried to help her until the end? Her instructor? Had he been hurt? He mustn’t be.

Suddenly, unbearable anxiety struck. The moment she thought of Lee Wooshin, her nose stung, and her heart seemed to melt weakly. Then a cold voice struck the nape of her neck.

Why do you think life and death are decided so overwhelmingly in the final moment? It’s because there’s no strength left for just one more step. That’s why we train like hell, taking other people’s money. To make sure you learn to move even one step in the moment you feel like dying. So what should you do here?

The lessons from the training center flashed into her mind. At that, Seoryeong looked at the cuffs biting into her wrists and the electronic anklets strapped around her legs, and corrected her weak thoughts.

She had been told again and again to make a habit of saving her own life. But Lee Wooshin would surely come. If so, she too had to prepare to escape by any means.

When she turned her head, the space was strangely silent except for the rattling noise of the train. There was not a single other passenger besides herself.

“Finally coming around, are you.”

Just then, someone entered through the carriage door and dropped heavily into the seat before her. Seoryeong stared in disbelief at the face before her, her eyelids blinking slowly.

“Why... why are you here, senior...”

Yu Dawit was wiping his face, slick with blood and grease, with a towel. One ear was bound thickly with bandages, and his thigh was strapped with a black compression band. He acted as though he were merely washing up. Each time their eyes met, something strange stirred inside her.

“Could it be that Blast Corporation... the assignment is here...? No, that can’t be...”

Blast Corporation had collapsed. The CEO had been arrested, and the special operations teams dissolved long ago. It must have been at least half a year. So why was Yu Dawit sitting right before her eyes?

“When you reach America, you too will become a faithful disciple.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Suddenly her temples throbbed. None of this made sense.

“The one I followed said that if you were brought in and examined, all questions would be answered. You too will soon be an agent working for the United States.”

“You expect me to work in America when I don’t even speak English well?”

“You can learn English... no, that’s not the point—”

“In this day and age, who the hell kidnaps people for job placement?”

Her face twisted in disgust. Though he had been curt, he had always been the one she turned to when she needed knowledge, always the senior she had trusted. Now there was only a bitter sense of betrayal.

Yu Dawit stared intently at her forehead, then tapped his own head.

“I thought about it carefully. Don’t you have something inside your head too?”

“...What?”

“Haven’t you heard something in there?”

“......!”

“Like a chip, for example.”

In that moment—Kukoom! A huge detonation shook the train ominously. Seoryeong was flung aside, her forehead slamming against the window.

“Ugh...!” Flattened against the glass, she peered outside. Sparks of orange fire sputtered along the tracks. Perhaps because the window was dim, the ominous sparks stood out all the more.

“When you came back from Sakhalin, you asked me what the mark of the beast was.”

Seoryeong’s face turned to stone. What had the Sakhalin monastery and Winter Castle done together? What was the crushing weight that had never been lifted from her head? She knew the truth now, thanks to Wooshin, but there was no need to show it.

“For the record, I have it. Most of my colleagues working alongside me have it too. We may not be good men, but we were granted a miraculous new life. Soon you will be one of us.”

At last, Dawit’s scheme was plain. This bastard is a U.S. lackey. Her lips twisted.

From Wooshin, in long nights together, she had heard how Ju Seolheon distrusted both America and Russia alike. At the time she had felt little, but faced now with such a direct threat, she began to understand how long Ju Seolheon had fought that lonely war.

“There is something in my head.”

Seoryeong’s eyes burned as she glared at the traitor before her.

“But it’s all Lee Wooshin.”

Her clear gaze glinted dangerously as she lifted her mouth into a grim smile.

“There’s nothing in my head but him.”

“Han Seoryeong. Don’t joke—”

“Even if you crack my skull, you’ll find nothing but Lee Wooshin.”

She slammed her foot against Dawit’s seat and continued in a chilling voice.

“So go ahead, do as you please. You won’t get a thing.”

Her defiance drew a sigh from Yu Dawit.

“...Think carefully. If you don’t come with me now, this pursuit will never end. In time, your family will be dragged into misery. Your husband, maybe even the children you’ll have one day.” 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Her face stiffened faintly.

“If you don’t come with me now, when you are living your happiest life, I will come back like a calamity. Do you want to spend your life running, plagued by fear?”

At the preposterous threat, Seoryeong clenched her fists. To stir her anxiety by invoking children who didn’t even exist—it was surely a deliberate tactic. She knew the trick, but her heart still dropped with a thud.

She slowly closed and opened her eyes, feigning calm, turning her head. She took in Dawit’s bandaged ear, his injured thigh, the radio in his hand, the torn seat padding with stuffing poking out, the flickering lights, the emergency phone with its red button, even the solid-looking fire extinguisher. Her eyes, cold and steady, swept everything in an instant.

I am not a tool. Living like that in childhood had already been more than enough.

The place she had to return to was her first true home, her one safe embrace.

“If there’s only one calamity, it doesn’t matter.”

She sprang up, seizing the steel bar fixed to the ceiling, and kicked him hard. Leaving her fettered ankles as they were, ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) she spread her thighs wide and coiled around his neck like a snake.

Throwing the seat back she had already marked, she swung the hard cuffs like a baseball bat, cracking them against his nose. Pinning his twitching thigh with her knee, she smashed the radio against his injured ear.

It all happened in a single storm of motion. From afar came endless gunfire, like a hallucination.

“Do you know how I lived when I was young?”

Dawit swallowed groans, trying to tear off the girl clinging to him like a spider. But the once-white bandages reddened anew. With eyes drained of emotion, Seoryeong twisted his head the wrong way.

“You don’t know. That’s why you dared to come alone.”

Crack. A hideous sound of bone twisting echoed, but her strength was not enough. Dawit, not dead, gasped raggedly and slammed her head and cheek again and again, but it was useless. She staggered but never once loosened her hold with her thighs.

At last Dawit screamed, forcing himself upright and trying to hurl her onto the opposite seats. Seoryeong wrenched her waist and this time snapped his head for real. He collapsed in the aisle, twitching like an insect.

Her husband, and her future children, would suffer misfortune? She bit her cheek hard.

Finally, the train burst out of the dark tunnel, racing between canyon walls reared like horns. Below the towering rails, black-blue water writhed.

“Urgh... uncouple... the tail... and don’t stop...”

The eerie voice crawled up her spine. Dawit, already dying, still clutched the crackling radio and gave his command. She kicked it away, but his breath was already gone.

With an inexplicable dread, Seoryeong quickly searched his body and pulled out an SDS card. She unlocked the electronic anklets binding her feet and punched the red button to halt the train. But her heartbeat only thundered harder, like nausea rising in her throat.

—The control system is down...! We suspect the firewall’s been breached from outside! Whoever it is, even when we try to defend, the security protocol’s been completely wrecked! Kim, we don’t know what Kim Sook-hyang is!

The radio was in English, so she could not follow, but the sound “Kim Sook-hyang” pierced her ears.

That was... Channa’s phishing account.

But there was no time to think further. The shaking grew worse, sparks bursting again from the rails. Screeching metal shrieked, and Seoryeong’s face twisted.

—We’re driving manually but collisions keep happening! At this rate the train will really stop...!

The moment she heard the word stop, the opposite carriage door slid open soundlessly. It was as if someone were signaling an escape route.

Seoryeong did not hesitate; she sprinted that way. Just then, two men with rifles burst through, scattering agents, firing wildly, closing the distance car by car.

“――!”

Even from afar, one face seared into her eyes. They tore through the train corridors like their own den, competing as they ran, overtaking each other.

Was it an illusion that their eyes met? Lee Wooshin’s gaze wavered briefly, then pierced through two, three heads in a single shot, and charged straight forward.

It was no illusion. His fervent gaze stabbed into her face like a coordinate, never fading.

As burning emotion surged to the crown of her head, Seoryeong opened her mouth to shout his name. But her body lurched and slammed against the wall.

“Ugh...!”

The train, stripped of control, was losing its center of gravity and tilting. Because of the curved track like a bend, the rear cars derailed one after another, plunging into the gorge below. In the blink of an eye, as the background collapsed behind the two men, Seoryeong froze stiff.

“No—!”