There Are No Humans in the Monster Company

Central Control Room.

It was the only name that could be given to the space we found when we opened the door.

However, that place was filled with such grotesque and overwhelming chaos that the word control lost all meaning.

Hundreds of monitors covered the walls, but what appeared on their screens was not limited to confinement cells.

Someone’s bloodshot eyes.

Lips that twisted endlessly.

And recordings of unknown organs beating while deforming amid static and noise.

On the ceiling, instead of electrical cables, thick blood vessels intertwined with one another.

From the dozens of speakers hanging from them came an unending macabre harmony composed of prisoners’ moans and screams.

“…We came to the wrong place.”

Bae Hyeon-yu muttered in a low voice.

Even her normally steady voice trembled like a sandcastle before the grotesque visual pressure of that place.

She’s right.

I nodded inwardly.

This place was both the heart of Gangsol Prison and its deepest tumor.

We needed to get out of there as quickly as possible.

I tried to start moving again.

But.

“…!”

The moment I tried to put weight on my left leg, something inside my brain screamed.

An unbearable cold descended from my patched-up side down into the bones of my leg.

As if the inside of my bones were hollow.

As if all my weight rested on a thin glass tube.

An ominous sensation.

My knee gave out against my will.

Thud.

“Hyung!”

Lee Seong-hoon hurriedly caught me, but my body had already collapsed to the floor.

“Haa… haa…”

Every time I breathed, I could feel the tiny bone fragments that had repaired my side stabbing into my flesh from within.

It was the price of forcing it back together.

My legs no longer felt like part of my body.

They were nothing more than old pieces of wood abandoned by someone.

I could feel absolutely nothing.

Silence fell over us.

Only the grotesque noise of the monitors filled the stillness.

I looked at the others’ faces.

The hand with which Min Do-hyeon was supporting me had lost strength.

Bae Hyeon-yu watched me without saying a word.

Cold and merciless calculations crossed her eyes.

Min Do-hyeon cautiously glanced at Bae Hyeon-yu’s expression.

“Hyeon-yu… Agent Jeong is too…”

Min Do-hyeon’s voice faded before he could finish the sentence.

My legs were as numb as dead logs.

Bae Hyeon-yu’s eyes trembled.

Only for an instant.

Amid that heavy silence, I was the one who spoke first.

“I’m fine.”

My voice was far too dry for someone with a hole through his side.

It was reason, not emotion, that spoke first.

When a team member loses mobility in an operational zone, there is only one way to increase the survival chances of the others.

“You two go ahead. I’ll rest here for a moment and catch up later.”

It was a lie.

How was I supposed to catch up to anyone with these legs?

But I had something to rely on.

Director Mok and Supervisor Shik, who had entered this strange hell with me.

Quite a bit of time had passed since we got separated, and there was a high probability that both of them were actively searching for me.

That was the foundation of my decision.

Of course, it was a gamble.

I didn’t know whether they would find me first or whether the prison guards would tear me apart first.

And, honestly, I also had no idea what Director Mok and Supervisor Shik would do to these people.

Perhaps it would be better if this chance encounter ended here.

“Agent Jeong! What are you saying…?!”

Min Do-hyeon tried to stop me.

SLAP—!

A sudden impact made both Seong-hoon and me open our eyes wide.

Bae Hyeon-yu had just slapped herself hard across the face.

Holding her reddened cheek, she gritted her teeth and looked at us.

“I’m sorry. I just had a really stupid thought.”

Firm determination had returned to her voice.

She tightened her grip on her expandable baton and looked at Min Do-hyeon.

“We crawled all the way into this hell to find people. We can’t abandon someone who’s alive right in front of us.”

“…Hyeon-yu.”

“Besides, didn’t he get hurt helping you?”

I hadn’t expected that.

Seeing me so stunned, Min Do-hyeon gave a bitter smile and draped my arm over his shoulders again.

And then Lee Seong-hoon, who until that moment had only been trembling while clutching my clothes, stepped forward.

“Um… Hyung, noona.”

Scratching the back of his neck shyly, he pulled a crumpled chocolate bar from his clothes.

With hands covered in sweat and dust, he carefully split it into three pieces and offered them to us.

“Here. I saw hyung eating candy earlier, and I thought maybe everyone needed some sugar.”

Though his lips trembled with fear, he showed us a faint smile.

“When you two started arguing earlier, I was honestly terrified.”

“But when I saw you still worrying about others until the very end… I really appreciated it.”

Tears glimmered faintly in Seong-hoon’s eyes.

“And hyung… thank you for bringing someone like me this far.”

A trust so pure that it bordered on recklessness.

His eyes were still filled with fear.

Yet within them shone a kind of courage I was seeing for the first time.

These people truly still retained their humanity.

“Um… well… I’ll go first.”

“Since both of you have your hands full helping hyung, I’ll check what’s behind that door.”

“Seong-hoon. Don’t be reckless.”

Even though I tried to stop him, Seong-hoon shook his head.

“I was always the one being protected.”

“I also… I also want to be useful. I just have to check what’s over there, right?”

It seemed my cold resignation had ended up touching the reckless courage hidden deep inside his heart.

Seong-hoon tightened his trembling grip on that crude metal pipe and walked toward the massive iron door at the front of the Central Control Room.

As I watched his slender back move away, I felt a strange premonition.

The necklace on my chest had gone cold, as though it were holding its breath.

It happened just as Lee Seong-hoon peeked his head through the gap in the iron door.

[Stand by]

The hundreds of speakers hanging from the ceiling simultaneously emitted a single voice.

CRUNCH!

It was not the sound of an explosion.

It was a wet, revolting noise, like a giant press crushing flesh.

From the other side of the gap emerged a gigantic monstrous hand formed from dozens of rusted keys tangled together like vines.

The thing completely seized Seong-hoon’s head.

Without even being able to scream, Seong-hoon’s body was lifted into the air.

“Seong-hoon!”

Before Bae Hyeon-yu could even leap forward, the door slowly began to open and that thing appeared.

It wore a prison uniform.

But its body was made of thousands of punishment chains and padlocks.

Where its face should have been, a massive guillotine blade was embedded vertically.

Somehow, I knew.

‘The Prison Director.’

Holding Seong-hoon’s head, it gently squeezed it as though it were a ripe fruit.

Crack. Crunch.

The sound of a skull shattering tore through the silence.

Seong-hoon’s eyes could not withstand the internal pressure and burst from their sockets, falling to the floor.

No response came from his mouth.

Only blackish-red foam.

Bae Hyeon-yu’s and Min Do-hyeon’s steps froze before that brutally violent sight.

As though it had not the slightest interest, the Prison Director tossed Seong-hoon’s crushed head to the floor.

Splat.

The dream of the boy who had wanted to be helpful only moments ago cooled forever, becoming part of the brain matter and blood scattered across the ground.

The metal pipe he had been holding rolled helplessly across the pool of blood.

One of his old sneakers flew off and rolled across the floor.

The trembling voice of the boy who had said he wanted to help mixed with that horrifying mechanical noise, turning into a bitter auditory hallucination.

Min Do-hyeon couldn’t even scream.

Bae Hyeon-yu stood frozen with her eyes wide open.

It felt as though I could hear the sound of the humanity she had reinforced by striking her own cheeks shattering like glass inside her pupils.

Crunch.

The Prison Director advanced while crushing Seong-hoon’s chest beneath his enormous shoes.

The sound of ribs breaking was amplified through the control room speakers and reached us.

“Ah…”

An empty groan escaped Bae Hyeon-yu’s lips.

My vision began flickering once again in a red so dark it bordered on black, projected by the necklace.

The price of choosing hope.

The most miserable way possible to die.

At the same time, the chains wrapped around the Prison Director’s body began pouring toward us with piercing metallic screeches.

BEEEEEP—!

What shattered the silence was the sharp warning sound emitted by the extractor inside my clothes.

The indicator, which had remained at 40% until moments ago, suddenly began skyrocketing.

Why?

Was it simply the energy radiating from the Prison Director?

Or was it the extreme despair being expelled by this place?

[45%]

The number was increasing at an abnormal speed.

[60%]

The strange vibrations emitted by the extractor traveled through my wounded side and spread throughout my entire body.

[70%]

Every time the indicator rose, the patched-up wound in my side resonated with the extractor’s vibrations and screamed in pain.

It felt as though I was prolonging my own life by using the suffering and despair of others as fuel.

The numbers climbed frantically, flashing red like a brand burned into flesh.

“Min Do-hyeon! Move!”

Snapping back to his senses, Min Do-hyeon practically lifted me into his arms.

Bae Hyeon-yu gritted her teeth and swung her expandable baton, knocking aside the Prison Director’s chains as they lunged toward us.

“Get a hold of yourself! If we don’t get out now, we’re all going to die!”

At Bae Hyeon-yu’s shout, Min Do-hyeon swallowed something indescribable and turned around.

We ran through the complex mechanisms of the Central Control Room toward the emergency exit on the opposite side.

But the metallic sounds behind us kept drawing closer.

Clank! Clang!

The Prison Director’s chains slithered across the floor like snakes, threatening our feet.

The Director wasn’t running.

He simply advanced one step at a time.

And every time he took a step, the room’s monitors exploded and shattered.

“Over there! If we get through that door…!”

The door Min Do-hyeon pointed at was only a few meters away.

But at that moment, a massive bundle of chains wrapped around his ankle.

“Aaaagh!”

Min Do-hyeon fell to the floor and began being dragged away.

The strange light descending from the ceiling reflected off the Prison Director’s guillotine blade, stretching grotesquely as it pointed toward Min Do-hyeon’s neck.

At that moment, I didn’t feel profound empathy.

Nor burning rage.

Nor some noble sense of duty.

I was never someone who possessed those things by nature.

I simply understood that this was one of those decisive moments that appear in life.

Damn it… why me…?

I tightened my grip on the shoulder I was holding.

My ruined legs still weighed as much as mountains.

But the extractor’s pulse, racing toward 100%, was forcefully pumping adrenaline into my heart.

I violently shoved Min Do-hyeon toward the door.

“Agent Jeong!?”

“GO!”

I spun around and rolled across the floor.

Pulling the knife from my pocket, I drove it between the links of the chain wrapped around Min Do-hyeon’s ankle.

Sparks flew.

And the instant the chain hesitated, I kicked Min Do-hyeon in the back and launched him through the doorway.

“Miss Bae Hyeon-yu! Take Min Do-hyeon and go! Hurry, close the door!”

“But you—!”

“GET OUT OF HERE!”

Ignoring the hesitation in Bae Hyeon-yu’s eyes, I grabbed the handle from the inside and shut the door myself.

BOOM—!

The massive iron door slammed shut.

And with the final sound of the locking mechanism clicking into place, a suffocating silence settled over me once more.

Now the only ones left in that insane Central Control Room were me…

…and the Prison Director, standing atop Seong-hoon’s corpse.

BEEP—!

At that moment, the extractor’s indicator finally reached 100%.

The entire device began emitting black smoke while vibrating with enough intensity to tear my body apart.

Staggering, I faced the Prison Director.

The enormous guillotine blade cast an icy shadow over my head.

“…Fuck. Come on.”

My limbs trembled, and I could barely remain standing.

I wiped the blood from my lips and silently adjusted my grip on the knife.