My heart stops. Or at least it feels like it does, suspended inmy chest for one agonizing moment before resuming at twice its normal speed. The lab suddenly feels too confined, the air itself in limited supply as I move toward him on wooden legs.
Kelly hops off her stool to follow.
“And?” I ask. “Did you find anything?”
Hyun-woo’s expression is grim as he turns to face us, and I know the answer before he even opens his mouth. I can see it in the set of his jaw and the wariness in his eyes as they meet mine.
“Poison,” he says quietly. “A sophisticated compound—high-grade, the kind of thing you’d need serious connections to obtain. It’s designed to be almost completely untraceable. Metabolizes quickly and leaves minimal evidence in the bloodstream while also mimicking natural complications. If you weren’t specifically looking for it, running exactly the right tests, you’d never find it. Whoever made this knew what they were doing.”
As if the air in the room didn’t already feel like it were in short supply.
I release a noise between a gasp and a cough, sputtering in my attempts to even breathe. My hands reach out blindly behind me and grip at the lab counter to steady myself.
For some sort of support standing.
It was the tea.
The tea Mr. Noh had gifted me for my pregnancy nausea and I foolishly drank again and again. His kindness was all an act so he could gain my trust and use me and the baby to get to Jin.
He destroyed us as some twisted form of revenge.
I think I’m going to be sick.
Kelly’s hand finds my arm, steadying me, and for a long moment no one speaks. The weight of the revelation presses down on all of us, heavy and suffocating.
Then Kelly breaks the silence, unable to helpherself. “I always knew he was sketchy. That’s really some kind of serial killer level of crazy.”
I slide a hand down my face, the other digging in my jean pocket for my phone. “I have to tell Jin. He needs to know that Mr. Noh is really?—”
A howl of pain from outside the lab doors cuts me off mid-sentence.
Sang-cheol.
My stomach drops. For one frozen moment, none of us move, the echo of the agonized sound hanging in the air like a death knell.
Then instinct kicks in as I realize what’s happened.
“RUN!” I scream, grabbing Kelly’s arm and yanking her toward the back of the lab.
Hyun-woo is already moving, directing us toward a door I hadn’t noticed before. Some back exit that’s an emergency route and our only chance.
We reach it in seconds, Hyun-woo shoving against the handle with all his weight.
It refuses to budge.
“What the—” He pushes again, harder, throwing his shoulder into it. “Something must be blocking it from the outside.”
“He’s barricaded us in,” I whisper, eyes large. “He knew it was the only other way out.”
“Hide,” Hyun-woo says. “Both of you.”
The main door’s opened, and a figure steps into the dim lab, silhouetted against the light from the hallway beyond.
He’s dressed in black from head to toe, wearing a long coat, gloves, and hood pulled up over a face hidden behind a featureless mask.
As he takes a few heavy, slow steps into the lab, I’m able to make out more details, like how the mask he wears has a subtle shell-like texture.
Black Shell.
