Chương 29: S.04 Memory of the Clock 06(02) - Parousia

Scene 06. The black gaze faded, and Si-yeon slumped, strength gone, into her seat. She could not hold this state much longer, and so she hurriedly dismissed the 사절(Sa-jeol_Envoy). What obstacles might stand between her and rescuing So-hui, she had no way of knowing. Still, she could not leave Ji-young behind like this, unconscious. The sudden gunshots only fed Si-yeon's mounting impatience. She could not remain here either.

As Si-yeon brought her knee up again and made to move, the front door opened with cautious care. Si-yeon drew out a 은장도(Eun-jang-do_Silver Ornamental Dagger) and crept forward, tense. Through the gap of the opened door, Ju-hyeon peered inside, checking the interior as she entered. Je-hak and Ju-hyeon stepped in and moved to attend to Si-yeon and Ji-young. After the gunshots, as though every party on hearing that signal had begun to move in unison, the pounding of many shoes came down from the floors above.

As if relieved, Si-yeon let out a slightly loosened breath. To the two who had stepped inside with care, Si-yeon asked. Si-yeon: Hey. Got a gun to spare? Ju-hyeon: If you mean an ordinary one. Yeah. I've got one. Si-yeon: When I'm holding it, it's fine. Let me borrow one. I'll take another one off someone and give it right back. Ju-hyeon glanced toward Je-hak, who was lifting Ji-young up to lay her on the sofa, and gave a small nod. Je-hak drew a small revolver from his waistband and handed it over to Si-yeon.

Si-yeon accepted the firearm and, in silence, checked the weapon and its remaining rounds. The motion was practiced. Eight rounds in the cylinder. Looking at the two tending to Ji-young, she asked. Si-yeon: Ah, and... you... no, pig — I mean, officer, ma'am, sir? No, sis? Bro? Whatever, you folks got one too? Honorific, not-honorific — the two, caught trying to calibrate how to answer Si-yeon's oddly hybrid register, paused a beat, until Ju-hyeon answered with a small clearing of her throat. Ju-hyeon: We do.

We met someone called Gyeong-seo, I think? And, well, I don't exactly understand it myself, but we can hold. Si-yeon nodded, and passed a serious tone to the two. Si-yeon: Alright, well. Thanks. Ma'am. Ju-hyeon shook her head. Ju-hyeon: Don't mention it. Ma'am. Ju-hyeon's voice mimicking Si-yeon's clumsy honorifics drew a small twitch at Si-yeon's lips. Well, since she had started speaking like this, she resolved to see it through to the end. Si-yeon: Look after sis. Ma'am. Please. Ma'am.

Si-yeon left a short parting charge and turned to step through the door. Heavy footsteps approached the entrance of the living room where Si-yeon stood. The moment Ju-hyeon pulled her gun in a rush and tried to level it at whoever had entered, Si-yeon moved first—shoving Ju-hyeon and Je-hak aside as she put her body between them, and took the rounds fired by the intruders in their place. There was no time to fall or collapse.

Just as she was, she seized the gun-butts of the intruders as if to twist them loose, and with the revolver in her own hand, shot down the breached personnel one by one, clean and exact. Every time her muzzle loosed its flare, Black Water sprayed outward. With the smoke still curling from her barrel, Si-yeon resumed the motion she had held suspended a moment before. Steadying her stance, she brought the body that had fired back upright and rose to her feet.

Si-yeon looked down at the revolver in her hand for a moment. She flipped the muzzle toward herself and returned the revolver to Je-hak, who had lent it to her. Si-yeon: Used it well. Ma'am. Si-yeon drew a sharp tactical knife from the pockets of the fallen intruders and severed each of their throats one by one. Wherever Si-yeon's hand passed, the intruders' corpses burst into small eruptions of Black Water and dissolved, leaving no trace behind.

Si-yeon rifled through the emptied coat-fronts of the intruders, pulled out their guns and magazines, and crammed them roughly into her own pockets. After drawing out a few more guns, she glanced again at Je-hak, who still stood hesitating. Si-yeon: Just in case. You two use the rest. Ma'am. I can always take more off someone. Ma'am. She handed Je-hak the spare magazines and firearms, then made for the front door, where the dull pounding of boots had begun to close in from some distance away.

Just as Si-yeon finished drawing one deep breath, the footsteps that had closed near all stopped together a short way from the door. Before firing the gun in her hand, Si-yeon cracked the magazine and slide open slightly and, with practiced fingers, counted the rounds remaining. With Ju-hyeon and Je-hak inside—repositioning to shield Ji-young—Si-yeon waited at the entrance, eyes on the doorway. Beyond the open door, those preparing to re-enter waited.

One took point and thrust his muzzle in first, trying to clear his line of sight. The moment the head of the lead group came into view, creeping in at a slow pace, Si-yeon pressed her body tight against the wall by the doorway and angled her muzzle from above downward. The lead corpse's head—pushing its muzzle in at the front—she took off with ease, with a round fired from a gun aimed from above. The pack behind, scrambling to fire and drop Si-yeon, could not.

Si-yeon seized the first man—now slumped like a meat shield—and using him as cover, from within the doorway, she tore apart every single corpse that had tried to breach inside. Si-yeon, tense, gripped the gun close and stepped one pace at a time through the door, checking whether further personnel were coming behind. The apartment settled into a lull, thick with the acrid stench of gunpowder. The corpses struck by Si-yeon's rounds did not rise—they spilled Black Water onto the floor and swiftly burst into nothing.

A stream of Black Water, threading down from Si-yeon's muzzle along her hand, dripped off in beads, one by one, onto the floor. Si-yeon stepped out past the doorway again. Si-yeon's muzzle eased out, in the same way, past the edge of the door. Tense, gripping the gun close, Si-yeon stepped forward one pace at a time through the door, checking for any additional personnel set to enter. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

As though not to disappoint Si-yeon's expectation, the corpses queuing up behind were now waiting for Si-yeon to emerge. They pinned the muzzle Si-yeon had inched out, and dragged her two hands forward. Realizing she could not win this on strength, Si-yeon kicked her feet lightly off the ground, wrapped her own two hands around the arms of the riot team that had seized her, and rolled her own body to throw them down.

Certain she could not bear this through brute strength, she drew on the residue of the curse Ji-yun had handed over. Si-yeon had never learned to fight properly, and so, now, she had no choice but to use anything that surfaced in her mind. Barely keeping the gun from being wrested away through the roll, Si-yeon fired rounds into the jaw of the man who had been trying to drag her weapon off, and blew it open outright.

With no time to pick herself up, she fired the rest of her rounds toward the rear force waiting outside. Then, as if wringing out the pinned, headless corpse, she tore loose the knife mounted at its thigh—and holding the still-unshattered body in place, she rolled her own body aside. The hail of rounds punched through Si-yeon's head and shoulder, but her muzzle sealed the wounds closed almost as quickly. Even as they kept firing, they began to buckle under Si-yeon's pressure.

Si-yeon, as if mildly put out, drove the knife hard into the neck of the yet-unshattered corpse. Under the dread Si-yeon was delivering, the attackers stood momentarily crushed—unable even to remember to swap out their emptied magazines. Si-yeon glanced down at the gunshot traces, now only residue. Her clothes were punched through here and there, but in place of wounds, only Black Water remained, lingering like a mark.

When Si-yeon let out a small sigh, as if the air had finally shifted, the waiting corpses hurriedly changed their magazines. She could not just stand by and watch. Si-yeon moved her long legs forward at a slow pace and, one by one, blew the jaws off the corpses that had been changing magazines. The moment the pistol in Si-yeon's hand spat fire, the muzzles of the ones who had finished reloading just behind her also erupted with red flame.

With nothing to shield her body, Si-yeon staggered briefly, as if rocking on her stance. Then, as holes opened along her body and she collapsed, the reinforcements waiting behind emptied every round into her and tore Si-yeon's body into pieces. The lead of the rear force raised a hand signal for cease-fire. As the wall of gunfire blurred the sight for a moment, two men at the back of the rear formation stepped toward Si-yeon, who had fallen, to confirm.

Si-yeon lay on her back, Black Water pouring from every inch of her. Her eyes were open, but it would have been hard to call her alive. The signaler flashed to those waiting behind that the target was down. The neck of the man giving the signal wrenched around and gave out; he folded to the floor, strength gone. Si-yeon—who, by any reasonable measure, should have been in pieces—rose, whole again, and snapped the neck of one of the two men who had come to check her condition, cutting his breath short.

Judging the situation had not been contained, the rest hastily trained their guns on Si-yeon again and fired—but Si-yeon already had a corpse in her grip to shield her, and the follow-up gunfire came to nothing. She yanked the pistol from the waistband of the body she had turned into her own corpse and, with a single precise round each, put the members of the suppression team who were firing at her on the ground.

Before they could even crumple to the floor, Si-yeon ran her knife across their throats, faithful and deliberate. As the gunfire rose rough and loud, the sound of Second and Third standby squads—awaiting the lead and rear team's signals—charged toward Si-yeon's apartment corridor. Without so much as a small hole left in her body, Si-yeon stepped forward, whole, and kept walking. Army boots sounded again, this time at Si-yeon's back.

Si-yeon, after confirming that everyone in the direction she had been facing was already dead, rifled their pockets and drew out spare rounds and two more handguns. She tucked one of the spare guns into her waistband and loaded it with practiced motions.

Si-yeon, who had walked the corridor, was just about to mount the stairs at a slightly hurried pace, when— Si-yeon: Ah, SSibal, how many has this crazy bitch killed, Having confirmed there was one group moving up through the emergency stairwell and another boarding the elevator, Si-yeon headed first for the stairwell. Contrary to their intent—stealthy steps, minimizing any sound—Si-yeon instead refused to mask her own footfalls and walked up as if this were nothing.

The lead unit of the other suppression team climbing from below met Si-yeon. The moment they did, they fired at Si-yeon's head. One round grazed past Si-yeon's temple. Si-yeon, with no intention of dodging, barely slipped a single oncoming round aside, but there was no way to dodge the second, the third, and every one that followed on pure luck. The gunshot wounds closed almost at once, but she could not stop the Black Water that sprayed the moment each wound struck.

As she sent Black Water splashing onto the walls and bent at the waist as if collapsing, Si-yeon rolled her body down the stairs, aimed exactly for the groin of the man at the very front, and fired. A following knife-strike burst the corpses climbing the emergency stairwell apart in Black Water that flew in every direction. Si-yeon had no intention of raising her lying body.

From the very posture she had taken—prone, nearly rolled—she blew the skulls off every corpse that had closed on her but could neither advance nor retreat, one after the other. Of the fallen, some seemed not yet fully broken. But it didn't matter. She was going to break them anyway. Si-yeon pulled three or four grenades off the chests of the men she had downed and yanked the pins. As she sprinted for the floor where So-hui would be, she dropped every pin-pulled grenade behind her, straight down.

Just as Si-yeon cleared the emergency stairs and came face to face with the other suppression team at the elevator, a huge boom and a tremor shook the building whole. Those at the elevator rushed to tackle Si-yeon down, pinning her two hands with Ritual Taboo Rope. Si-yeon seized the gun tucked into her waistband and squeezed the trigger without mercy. She blew clean through the hand of the one who had pinned her hand, clean through her own hand with it.

Si-yeon's left hand was in tatters, but—as if to say, I'll just shoot with the other—she barely endured the pain as she stood and leveled her gun at the ones fixing her in their sights. Rising from the floor after stamping through something underfoot, Si-yeon—her breath heaving, her face drawn tight—still carried the unerased curl of a sneer at the edge of it. Si-yeon: Any more? No one answered Si-yeon's question.

Something dawned on them—an uncanny dread that even that many of them had not been able to contain the sneering laugh on Si-yeon's face. It tilted past fear into something close to reverence. All of them, seeing Si-yeon's crooked laugh, felt the same thing at once. Si-yeon: I said. Any more. Si-yeon's taunting laugh. Yet she flung the gun she was about to fire to the floor.

As they stood bewildered, unable to read the reason for Si-yeon's move, Si-yeon raised her healed hands and held up the grenade pins hooked around her fingers. The heavy protective helmets concealed what the remaining attackers' faces might have looked like, but every motion of their bodies screamed the pandemonium of trying to flee this place as fast as possible. Si-yeon kicked the three or four remaining grenades she had been standing on, and let Black Water wind around them.

The pins tumbled to the floor around her, releasing the last of the safety devices. A huge roar went up. She slammed her body against the iron door to the emergency stairwell she had come up through, trying to wall off the blast, but she could neither block the door—rammed outward as it buckled—nor the small shrapnel that came tearing through it. After the roar subsided, not a sound came. A large explosion had rung through, and only ringing remained in Si-yeon's ear.

Because she could not block every fragment, a sharp spike of rebar had punched through Si-yeon's thigh, driven through the shattered door. The embedded rebar did not linger long. In an instant, swallowed as if by Black Water and eroded through, the piece of rebar dropped loose to the floor. Si-yeon shook her head two or three times to dispel the ringing, straining to right her senses. More than the lacerations, it was the tinnitus that grated. Beyond that, it did not seem she had taken any major blow.

Si-yeon ran—urgent—toward her own home, where So-hui would be held.