“I… oh… okay. Sure. I’ll come back.”
My gaze meets Mom’s, who’s sat up in the armchair out of alarm. She mouthsWhat’s wrong?at me.
“Great, Monroe. I’m sure we’ll be able to get more information once we run the next panel of tests.”
We hang up with my head still reeling from what she’s told me.
“Baby?” Mom says, eyes wide and mouth agape. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
But I don’t know how to answer. I’m not even sure anymore.
15.Jin
The ringing dragsme back from the darkness.
I open my eyes to a world of pain.
The first thing I register is the shattered skylight above me and the cool gray sky it reveals beyond the jagged shards of glass.
Then it’s the solid concrete under me, and how I’m lying broken among more pieces of fractured glass.
I’m still so out of it that I can’t connect the dots and realize I fell through.I’mthe reason the glass is scattered across the floor and the skylight window above is no more. I’ve been lying here for who knows how long…
The ringing continues.
A grunt of pain grinds out of me as I fumble around. My arm struggles even reaching for the pocket where my phone is. It’s as if my whole body has shut down and refuses to cooperate.
Pain jolts through me as soon as I try to make it do so. But I’m able to slide fingers around my phone and dig it out.
Min-gyu’s name flashes across it.
Have I been gone so long the syndicate is searching for me?
I answer with another grunt, basic English feeling too complex at the moment.
“Baekho-je Jin-tae!” he says, his voice pitched sharper from his panic. “Where are you? Is everything alright? We’ve been trying to reach you for hours. No one knew where you went, and then your fiancée had an emergency and we couldn’t?—”
“Monroe?” I choke out, even my throat burning. I blink through my mental haze, fighting for clarity. “What…?”
“She collapsed at her school this afternoon. She’s been taken to the hospital, but we couldn’t reach you to?—”
“Where am I?” I growl more at myself than him. I move to push myself upright and nearly black out from the pain that shoots through my side. I glance down, pausing when I see it—a large glass shard protruding from the side of my abdomen, buried deep in the flesh inches below my ribs. Fresh blood beads around it while older blood has crusted and dried.
“Baekho-je?”
“The old industrial compound,” I manage through gritted teeth. “On the outskirts. Near the port district in Jangnim-dong. Send someone. I’ll drop a pin.”
I hang up before he can respond.
My phone is overloaded with notifications. Missed calls stack on top of each other—Min-gyu, Sang-cheol, Lieutenant Hwang Do-gil.
There’re numbers I don’t recognize.
The text messages are even worse, crowding the screen one after another going back at least two hours.
Then there’re the voicemails—my inbox is full of them, ranging from concerned calls from Baekho members like Min-gyu and Sang-cheol to a panicked message left by Monroe’s mother once she found out Monroe collapsed at the school.
I select Monroe’s first, grinding my teeth to block out the fiery pain in my side.
