## Chapter 13 – Coincidence (2)
I’m dodging the flying metal fragments that tear through the air with slight turns of my head as I run.
There are about 10 people chasing me.
Their identities are hidden by the cloths covering their faces,
but I need to shake them off quickly.
At the corner of the alleyway ahead, a man in black clothes and a black iron mask appeared and lunged at me.
“!!!”
Using his shoulders as a vaulting horse, I launched myself into the air and grabbed his collar, slamming him into the ground.
“Ugh…!”
“A is down.”
They didn’t seem to care about their fallen comrade and continued chasing after me.
Ugh, this is endless.
Is Oppa safe?
————————
“Wait a minute.”
“Yes?”
The thought suddenly occurred to me as I was running.
What if the pursuers have finished investigating the flower,
and everything about it?
Thinking about it that way, do they know about my existence?
The fact that we learned through repeated experiments is that these creatures parasitize humans,
and only women.
“…The genes of the ancients aren’t exactly common, right?”
“…No.”
According to Chaeyoon, I am special.
And if I think about what she told me before…
‘The brain cells of the ancients are a bit unique.’
‘What’s so unique about them?’
‘If they parasitize an ancient man,
the brain cells actually use us as nourishment to grow.’
Those bastards definitely detected us with that white dome thing, no.
To be precise, they only detected Chaeyoon.
I don’t have that thing inside my head.
Even if the nutrients left behind by that creature might still be there.
This is a problem that needs to be addressed clearly.
A 50/50 gamble where both she and I will surely lose our lives if we fail.
Instead of letting Chaeyoon pull me along, I grabbed her hand and hid in a narrow alleyway.
Then, I took off my hoodie and started tearing it.
“Oppa, what are you doing…?”
“I hate to say this, but do you trust me?”
I wrapped the torn cloth around her face like a muffler,
and explained my plan.
“…What if they know?”
“They won’t.”
“Could we die?”
“That’s why I’m asking,
can you trust me?”
————————
We split up as Oppa planned,
but their pursuit is getting more intense.
They’re even shooting something that looks like a gun, and they don’t seem to care if civilians get hit?
Is that even a real gun?
They haven’t been aiming for my head since earlier, but keep targeting my neck or legs.
If I get hit, I’ll have to focus on regeneration, leaving this body defenseless.
They already know how to subdue us effectively.
And it’s a means of subduing, not killing.
What are they planning to do with us if they catch us?
Many thoughts run through my head, but I need to escape for now.
I left the alley and hid in the crowded, bustling streets,
blending into the crowd.
They were pushing through the people, running fiercely after me.
Then, I brushed past Oppa in the crowd.
Oppa didn’t cover his face and wasn’t running away.
Instead, he was walking towards them.
‘I need to see how strong those guys are,
you just run like hell.’
It’s a really simple and reckless plan.
————————
The iron-masked man is running at me,
will he recognize me? That I’m the same as Chaeyoon.
The black hands reaching out.
I close my eyes slightly.
A hand grabbed my shoulder,
and pushed me away.
I opened my eyes and turned around, they didn’t even glance at me,
and ran towards Chaeyoon. Stage 1 passed.
But the plan wasn’t over yet.
Chaeyoon was literally running around the neighborhood.
From Daehak-ro, through the alleyways, to the bustling streets.
She was luring them.
The iron mask that the pursuer is wearing.
It’s definitely not an ordinary item.
An item that allows them to accurately chase after Chaeyoon even in this crowded place, something like thermal detection?
At least that mask didn’t find me.
But first, the first item that found us,
that white dome.
Can that thing detect me?
I moved my feet and headed back to the university.
The university was covered in white light,
making its appearance blurry.
I looked around, observing people’s reactions, but…
“I guess I’m the only one who can see it…”
Everyone was chatting and laughing as if nothing was wrong,
or passing through the light without paying attention to it.
“…Hoo….”
I took a short breath.
If this thing detected me, they would chase me.
Then it’s game over. I’m just stronger,
I don’t have the skills to fight them like Chaeyoon.
I could try to run away,
but I’m facing technology that makes me wonder how far that will go.
Simply put, if my guess is right, it’s a win,
or we’re all dead.
After taking a deep breath, I reached out and put both hands into the light.
————————
While Oppa headed to the university,
I left the bustling streets and entered a deserted alleyway again.
As soon as I entered the alley, iron-masked men blocked my path,
I was immediately surrounded.
“…It’s too much to do this to a woman…”
Bang.
I heard another thunderous sound from behind me,
and the bullet, the source of the sound, flew from the back of my neck, piercing through my flesh and coming out under my chin.
A hole the size of a finger appeared in its place,
and dark red blood began to pour out of the hole.
“Cough…”
This is bad, I’ll die if I don’t regenerate now.
But regenerating such a large wound consumes a lot of calories.
A dilemma where I can’t move forward or backward.
The wound is too big to move my body, but if I don’t move, I don’t know what will happen to me.
I was staring at their black hands, which were getting closer and closer to me, holding a pistol in both hands.
“Ugh?!..Cough?!!”
“Halt, anomaly detected.”
What?
My consciousness is fading.
The men who were approaching me are wary of something.
One of the men behind me collapsed to the ground, convulsing wildly.
Another one is still pointing a gun at me,
and the other one is checking on the fallen comrade.
“…Shock due to poisoning…”
“..What kind of poison is it?”
“Unknown.”
“Headquarters, G is down. Is this your doing?”
“Cough…”
Poison?
The man who is pointing a gun at me and approaching me seems to be the leader of these guys.
I wanted to tell them that I didn’t do the poisoning,
but only a small cough came out of my mouth because of the hole in my neck.
Then, the man in front of me didn’t even make a sound and literally collapsed to the ground.
“Anomaly detected, anomaly detected! J is down too.”
I don’t know what’s going on either.
People are falling in front of me one by one.
The leader showed signs of panic for the first time.
“Erase…!!”
The neck and body of the man who was trying to urgently request support were instantly separated and collapsed.
Then, the silhouette standing behind that man slowly began to appear.
Taller than the average woman, with short black hair, piercings in her ears,
and blood dripping from abnormally long and sharp fingernails.
“Seo….hee…Unni.”
“It’s okay, it’s all over.”
The bodies of the pursuers were simply scattered on the floor,
how did Unni get here?
How…
Maybe it’s because I used too much energy to regenerate, my eyes are starting to close.
I saw Seohee Unni approaching me and then lost consciousness.
————————
“Hello?”
‘How’s Chaeyoon?’
“I arrived just in time. She’s sleeping now.”
‘Ah, that’s a relief.’
“So what’s going on, are those the things you mentioned before?”
‘Come to my house first, I’ll explain everything.’
I hung up the phone and looked around at the situation.
“Should I start with the body disposal…”
————————
“…Alpha Team is annihilated.”
“What about the recordings from the body cams?”
“There are no recordings…”
They bowed their heads and silently prayed for the members of the pursuit team who had fulfilled their roles and left.
“…I’ll talk to the families of the victims.
Please prepare the report.”
“…Yes.”
He came out of the trailer and took out an electronic cigarette from his pocket and smoked it.
“…Hoo.”
Countless people have been sacrificed for the operation.
From the first discovery of the parasite until now.
Their sacrifices can be said to have contributed to the development of humanity.
This university, huh.
As I was looking around the university with the radar turned on,
Minjeong also followed me out of the trailer and asked me.
“Senior, should we start collecting the bodies of Alpha Team?
If we extract the poison from their bodies, we might be able to make an antidote…”
“No, there’s no need to do that.”
“Yes?”
An entity that uses a deadly poison.
The entity that can use it is not the entity we were chasing.
There’s one more.
If that thing could use poison, wouldn’t it have used it a long time ago?
“It seems like the situation is more serious than I thought.”
If it’s an entity that creates poison, then an antidote won’t work either.
It might be able to create a new poison.
Interesting, a huge ecosystem starting from a small flower.
Different creatures are born from small petals.
“You’re the best after all.”
