Chapter 134: Escape (３)

****

Handle it yourselves.

That was the order that came down from the Director’s Office. The researchers under Lee Seah really were handling it themselves. They didn’t know what Dr. Chloe was capable of, but she didn’t look dangerous either.

The research team was gathered outside the containment cell.

“Nothing’s changed, right?”

“Dr. Chloe is reading a book. I thought she was dead, but looking closely, the pages keep turning.”

“She’s not doing anything in particular.”

“Is she dangerous?”

“The instance occasionally tries to talk to us — what should we do? It’s fine to just ignore her, right?”

“Ignore her. Keeping records is fine, but the principle is to ignore what instances say. And, the person in charge this time…”

The Head of Research.

Every Foundation employee knows.

With someone like that in charge, keeping your head down is better for your personal safety. She’s not the type to care about the welfare of test subjects.

The person most likely to care about an instance’s welfare is the Director, but Chloe is a traitor who tried to kill the Director, so…

Even the Director didn’t have much interest.

*Tap, tap.*

Dr. Chloe knocked on the glass, and the research team waiting outside the containment cell turned their heads. Expressions that said they were bored.

“Go tell Director Geum. If you give me a chance, I’ll capture all three — no, all four Blue Roses within a day.”

“Understood. I’ll pass that along.”

“I’m bored. Is there anyone among the researchers out there who’d like to play a board game?”

“I’m sorry, but we can’t let you out of the containment cell for a reason like that.”

“Bring me a chessboard. I’ll call out coordinates. That’s possible, right?”

The researchers thought it over for a moment.

“What should we do?”

“Let’s not make contact rashly. There’s glass between us, after all. She could hypnotize us, or we could get persuaded. She might be something dangerous.”

“Wouldn’t it be fine? She hasn’t done anything suspicious. And she’s completely trapped within the Foundation’s influence anyway.”

In the end, the researchers decided not to bring a chessboard.

There could be an ability that manifests through a chessboard as a medium, or something else could go wrong. Unless ordered from above, there was no need to go to that kind of trouble.

****

Dr. Chloe let out a sigh.

The research team had quickly left the area outside the containment cell. They seemed scared by her words. She hadn’t intended to harm those people anyway.

The containment cell wasn’t perfect.

The humanoid anomaly cells used at Facility 82 were on the weaker side. The containment cell did have a steel door and a reinforced glass window, though.

It wasn’t a facility capable of properly holding genuine superpowered individuals. Chloe had been thinking about ways to get out, too.

Still, there was a bed and meals were provided. That was better than wandering through tunnels to evade the Foundation’s eyes. There was no particular reason to escape.

Most of the personnel who had worked on Jeju Island had been reassigned. After a battle like that, they couldn’t just resume work as if nothing had happened.

The problem was the executives who had directly run Project Blue Rose. Admiral Hourani was dead, and most of the other executives had been taken by Headquarters.

Some had been put on the kill list.

And Chloe, who had directly engaged Dr. Geum, went straight onto that same kill list. Dr. Chloe had slipped away to evade the Foundation’s eyes.

She should have gone to Busan.

But the Busan Branch didn’t seem likely to be hunting the Blue Roses on its own initiative. It was the Seoul Branch that needed Dr. Chloe.

The Busan Branch might have killed her on sight.

In a way, it might be precisely because this was a facility where Dr. Geum was in charge that she was still alive. As long as she was contained within the Seoul Branch, Headquarters wouldn’t try to kill her either.

Or would they?

Dr. Chloe thought a little more.

Either way, Dr. Geum couldn’t avoid coming by entirely. She seemed to visit the Humanoid Division’s containment cells periodically. She’d come here too.

****

And then. The Humanoid Division conference room.

Head of Research Lee Seah, Dr. Kang, Dr. Ahn, and Secretary Paper were seated. Since the Director had said she wouldn’t come, Paper had come in her place.

“Um, should I be sitting here too?”

“The Director isn’t here, so we should at least have the secretary. If you don’t know what to do, just sit there. Speak up if you have something to say.”

Lee Seah brushed it off casually.

“Then let’s get started right away. We’re busy.”

“Yes.”

“First, let’s hear what we’ve found out about Dr. Chloe. She participated in Project Blue Rose, and while her record of working for the Foundation isn’t clear, it’s believed to exceed ten years.”

Chloe.

Yellow eyes that didn’t look human, a small stature, a frail frame. If you covered her eyes, she could be mistaken for a child. But once you saw her eyes, that thought didn’t last.

It wasn’t for nothing that she wore a mask. Just looking at her eyes sent a wave of unease rushing over you.

“Yes.”

“Her majors were biotechnology and nanomaterial engineering, and most of the degrees she obtained are Foundation-issued degrees. But Dr. Chloe’s personal information, including her age, has mostly been erased or censored.”

Even her name alone showed that.

Chloe was a given name. Not a surname.

Calling her Dr. Chloe was as absurd as calling someone Dr. Cheolsu or Dr. Yeonghui.

There was no way to know why she called herself Dr. Chloe. But Dr. Chloe had even covered her face on Jeju Island, so one could only assume she had her reasons.

“And we don’t know the reason?”

“No.”

Dr. Kang opened his mouth.

“Anyway. We never had a proper chance to examine her, but Dr. Chloe is blatantly not human. She looks fine on the outside, but she doesn’t even seem like something similar to a human.”

“That makes sense.”

“Uh… this is hard to explain in words, but she’s not even human-like. You’ll recall that Director Geum, from a cytogenetic standpoint, was found to have chimerism.”

Miss Paper tilted her head.

“Sorry, but what’s chimerism?”

“It’s a condition where cells originating from multiple individuals with different genotypes are mixed together. In Dr. Geum’s case, there were quite a few cells with different X chromosomes.”

Anyway, that wasn’t the important part.

“Dr. Chloe isn’t at that level. It’s not that she’s a slightly different human, or that something about her is off. She’s fundamentally not human.”

Dr. Kang placed a wad of papers on the desk.

“Dr. Chloe is just… just human down to the skin. Only her appearance is human.”

Miss Paper stared at Dr. Kang with a dumbfounded expression. Not human at all?

“I’m thinking if you cut her open, a mass of tentacles might come out. She refused X-rays, but the ultrasound we did under the pretext of checking for injuries showed similar results.”

“If she’s not human, then what is she?”

Dr. Kang scratched his head.

“I don’t have a clue. If she were a fairy or sprite type, she’d have reacted to cinnamon, and if she were a doppelganger, her internal structure would at least be similar to a human’s.”

“If she were a mimic, she wouldn’t have that high an intelligence, and if she were a skinwalker type, she couldn’t pass as human like that… I don’t know.”

“Should we dissect her?”

Miss Paper, startled.

The Head of Research let out a small laugh.

“Anyway. Let’s do some research on what she is. At this point I’m just curious. Did the Foundation know what Dr. Chloe was all along?”

No one could offer an answer to that question. There was nothing of the sort in Dr. Chloe’s records, and the Foundation in principle did not hire non-humans for executive positions.

Looking at it now, the exceptions seemed to outnumber the principles. Perhaps it could be called the fate of a Foundation that had become the very thing it fought against, in order to contain anomalies.

Paper cleared her throat.

“Um… since we can’t very well dissect Dr. Chloe, I’ll just speak to the Director and have her ask Foundation Headquarters.”

The scientists gathered in the room froze. To those inside the Foundation, nothing was scarier than Foundation Headquarters—not even anomalies.

“I’d think dissecting her would be easier.”

“Let’s hear it. The Director wouldn’t kill Miss Paper, would she? Foundation Headquarters might provide information on Dr. Chloe.”

The people gathered in the room nodded.

The meeting ended at three in the afternoon.

“Well then. Most things are settled, so let’s bring it up with the Director. Ask Director Geum about the dissection-related matters too.”

****

Three in the afternoon.

I was sitting at the Director’s office desk, flipping through papers and reports. There had to be materials related to the Blue Rose somewhere.

The analysis results on Blue Rose-0 were—

*Brrrring!*

Shit, that startled me. My hair stood on end. A call from Foundation Headquarters… had that ever happened before? This was almost the first time.

“This is Dr. Geum, Director of the Seoul Branch. Is something the matter—?”

Foundation Headquarters ignored my words.

[Dr. Chloe is not human. That is a fact we have long been aware of. It is precisely why, despite Dr. Chloe’s career and abilities, she was never given a high-ranking position at the Foundation.]

“Ah, I see. Is that so?”

[Dr. Chloe is a far more powerful being than she appears. She is also quite old… We recommend you establish a thorough control plan.]

Why are you telling me this all of a sudden. Was this something my future self was going to ask? I mulled over my next question.

[Good work, Dr. Geum.]

Headquarters’ call ended, as always, with a click.