He was riding on a helicopter and looked out the window. Instead of moving the dead bodies at that moment, they decided to take care of the living people first because they could wake up at any minute.
It wasn’t a long ride from the HQ in Ilsan to the one in Seoul. When he saw it, he thought about the first time he encountered a poring.
The event had been shocking, but the porings were displaying even more astounding qualities.
“The building looks sturdy.”
At least from the outside, it looked fine. Considering how damaged it had been, they had to have rushed the reconstruction.
Junhyuk was lost in thought, and Elise got out of the helicopter and tapped his shoulder.
“Follow me.”
He kept thinking while following her. In that moment, he was really busy and he didn’t have the time to look after her. However, he couldn’t just let her die. She was important to him and she was also a valuable figure for humanity.
Without Elise, humanity would be at the mercy of the Dimensional Battlefield managers, and he couldn’t allow that, so he followed her to her lab and asked, “How long does it take?”
“It depends on when they wake up. I can take a sample of their blood and see if it generates a wavelength.”
“Don’t they activate their powers before their blood carry a wavelength?”
“That’s correct, but I still want to watch the developing stage.”
He smiled and followed her. Just in case, she had the forty-two people separated. A strong glass covered the separate rooms housing the hosts.
Among the two thousand infected, only forty-seven were there. Five of those had been killed, so only forty-two remained.
Elise operated a new tablet.
“I can’t use Zaira, but the one at my house is fully operational.”
He wondered what she had meant by that.
“Are you saying you have a supercomputer at home?”
“Sure! The company paid for Zaira, but her schematics belong to me.”
He was shocked. However, he knew how wealthy she was, so it wasn’t a complete shock. He had Ganesha, so it was only natural that she had a supercomputer at home.
Elise pulled up the Wavelength Detector and murmured, “After the EMP, the Dimensional Tear Detector stopped working. It takes days to make a new one.”
“Don’t you have to work on that first?”
“I don’t have to do it myself. The team that made the decomposition liquid is probably making the new one.”
He shook his head.
“I have to make a phone call. There’s a meeting tonight I have to cancel.”
“Do it. Sora is with me, so if any danger arises, I’ll run.”
“Don’t fight. Run.”
He went out and pulled out his cell phone. He called Sarang, and when he heard her voice, he was relieved.
“Big brother.”
“You must’ve been scared today. Are you OK?”
“I’m fine, but I feel little depressed.”
“We had some trouble of our own. The first people infected by the poring activated powers.”
“They became novices?”
“Yes, but they didn’t reason like human beings. I had to kill them all.”
She was silent for a while, and he continued, “The remaining survivors might activate powers, so I have to stay here and protect Elise.”
“You are cancelling our dinner.”
“I can meet you tomorrow.”
She took a moment to think before saying, “OK, but you’ll have to spend some money tomorrow.”
“I’ll get you a full-course meal. Don’t worry.”
“Then, see you tomorrow.”
“Get some rest.”
He felt bad that he couldn’t see her since she was depressed, but he had work to do. When he walked back inside, Elise said, “Someone woke up.”
The person had woken up inside the isolation room, looked around and shouted, “Where am I?”
Elise said, “We can’t find a wavelength.”
“Do you know when that person was infected?”
“I don’t know that yet, but they haven’t activated a power, so I want to run more tests.”
The door to the lab opened, and Eunseo walked in. She saw the person had woken up and said, “The government found out about the people who activated powers.”
Because one of the novices had had a teleportation power, Junhyuk had to transform into the Dark Knight to kill them, and people had seen it.
“What are they going to do?”
“They want to take over the survivors.”
“The Korean government?”
Eunseo nodded, and Junhyuk frowned. Elise shook her head.
“I can’t allow that!” Eunseo looked at her, and she continued, “The Korean government is misinformed!” Elise turned to look at Eunseo and finished with, “The Korean government is way behind in researching monsters. I can’t allow that to happen.”
“But this isn’t an easy decision. They could pressure us…”
“I don’t care! Guardians belongs to ST Capsule, but its investors are mostly foreign. They can make it a foreign company anytime they choose. The government can’t force us to give up survivors.”
“Is that really necessary?”
Elise nodded.
“I’ll make a call. Wait here.”
Elise left, and Junhyuk looked at Eunseo.
“I agree with Elise.”
“But it won’t be that easy.”
He shrugged.
“Elise wants to research them.”
“What?!”
He didn’t answer her. Instead, he looked at the awoken survivor. No wavelengths had been detected.
When Elise came back, she said, “CEO, don’t worry about it. They belong to Guardians.”
“What?!”
Eunseo didn’t have a chance to ask any more before her phone rang. She spoke a few words and hung up.
“Elise, what did you do?”
Elise answered her nonchalantly, “You said they pressured us, so I put even more pressure on them.”
Junhyuk was surprised again by Elise’s power. If she had involved the Rockefeller family, she was capable of applying that pressure.
Eunseo looked at her and said, “That’s a relief. You can do your research.”
Eunseo left, she looked wounded somehow, and Junhyuk smiled bitterly as he watched her leave. She was the CEO, but Guardians main figure was Elise. Eunseo was replaceable while Elise was not.
Junhyuk turned to the people waking up. None of them had activated a power yet.
—
Those waking up didn’t show any special symptoms. They had all awoken, except for two who were still sleeping. Those awake were being tested, but because there was no reason for Elise to run the tests on them herself, another team was in charge of them.
Guardians was a lot larger than when it started, and most of the researchers were foreign. The government hadn’t known what was happening up to that point, but now it was trying to get into the inner circle, and Elise had pressured it to step back.
Junhyuk looked at the two who hadn’t woken up.
‘Why aren’t they waking up?”
Elise tapped her tablet and said, “They were in the first batch of people infected by the original.”
Junhyuk looked at her, and she showed him the tablet.
“They were infected by the people originally infected by the poring.”
“You are saying there are only two out of all those people?”
“Correct. Only two.” Then, she added, “Maybe they were lucky.”
“They were infected for the longest time after the original.”
Elise touched her chin and said, “Something is strange.”
“What?”
“Why aren’t they getting up?”
Something was strange. Both the original and the second batch of infected had woken up. Only the survivors of the first batch were still sleeping.
“They are very suspicious.”
Junhyuk sat on a chair and stared at the area where the two were sleeping, so Elise offered him some coffee and sat next to him.
“Nothing is out of the ordinary, but we do know they only infected younger people.”
Junhyuk kept staring at the two.
One of them was a PhD student in engineering. The other was an ordinary college student.
While he stared at them, he said, “Any news from the corpses?”
Elise clicked her tongue.
“I haven’t really begun my research on them yet.”
No one knew when those two would wake up. If they activated powers, he would need to restrain them, and because Elise was staying there, she hadn’t had the time to research the corpses yet.
She might even get a live sample out of all of that.
He leaned back on his chair and sipped his coffee. Then, he heard a voice from the isolation room.
“One of them is waking up.”
They went through the glass enclosure and checked the Wavelength Detector. The PhD student didn’t respond.
“Is that good?”
“I was hoping one of them would activate a power.”
He laughed at her. The man who had just woken up looked at the machines around him and got up.
Elise spoke to him through a speaker, “We are running tests on the people who were infected. Come out and follow the instructions of the people wearing white lab coats.”
Student looked around some more and asked, “What do you mean by infection?”
“You don’t remember, but you’ll find out about it soon. Just follow the instructions for now.”
The student walked out, met a foreigner with a white lab coat and followed him.
Junhyuk looked at the remaining woman and said, “Only one left.”
Elise was feeling nervous.
“All that suspense.”
The woman might activate a power. The engineering student had woken up, which meant the woman might wake up at any time.
She opened her eyes, and Junhyuk and Elise frowned. They looked at each other.
“That’s an odd eye?”
Only one of the woman’s eyes was green, and she was getting up very slowly.
