The air smells of burning ammonia. It’s thick enough to seep inside the vehicle, the fumes making him teary-eyed and even groggier than before. Noah covers his nose and lets out a few shaky coughs.
They’d made a hard stop by the coast of the Paramus river. Ten minutes ago, the smell was less distinct. It was of rainwater and smoke – “a brushfire,” Jae had suggested, but such occurrences are rare in midwinter. Yoo Seok frowned and accelerated past a hundred miles an hour – awfully fast for a military truck – steamrolling through bushes, taking shortcuts to destination. Five minutes later and the pungency had permeated their senses.
Now, the soldiers have gotten out of the car. They stand on muddy soil, inspecting the blaze up front – not a brushfire, not a forest fire, but a fiery hulking ship. Hundreds of tons of aluminum lit up in flames, the back of it pillowing out dangerously.
The air is hard to breathe in, but especially so inside the vehicle with little ventilation. Noah unlocks the door and a hand extends out to offer him.
“Come on.” Yang Rong motions for him to hurry. “Don’t stay in here or you’ll asphyxiate. No dead bodies are allowed in my car.”
The colonel doesn’t wait for a response before taking him by the forearm and dragging him out. He’s gentler than he usually is – Noah had always associated him with hard bones and calloused hands. Yang Rong throws him a black backpack, tacitly telling him to hold onto it.
“Colonel Yang,” Li Jiayun sighs dejectedly by his side, “it’s no wonder nobody responded to comms. What do we do now?”
Yang Rong’s figure is already up and running towards the burning vessel. He moves extremely quickly, darting well past twenty miles an hour, his exceptionally trained legs not buckling from air pressure. His footsteps are light and nimble. No excess movements. It’s times like these he displays the qualities worthy of his prestige. His soldiers, too, follow suit without a word, sprinting along with him.
“What are you doing?” Yang Rong shouts from a distance upon noticing the two laggers. “Noah and the little boy – get your asses over here!”
How ironic – first telling them to not suffocate and now beckoning for them to run toward a burning ship. Noah might’ve complained in any other situation, but even he doesn’t want to stay straggled far behind. He covers his mouth as he walks forward, only to be interrupted by Ming Tang.
“Noah,” the boy calls out to him. Ming Tang is behind him, standing empty-handed with an inscrutable look on his face. His brown bangs have grown long enough to cover most of his brows, so the only telltales of emotion are his dark-colored eyes. He taps lightly on the hood of the vehicle. “Do you want to leave?”
Noah turns around, looks at the boy, looks at the combat truck, then rests his gaze on the steering wheel. The chains around it are unlocked, left haphazardly unmanned. It would be easy to leave. He doesn’t know why he feels the need to make an excuse in front of Ming Tang’s discerning eyes.
“I don’t know how to drive it,” Noah says as he continues to walk. “And the truck has enough food and water for weeks. If we were to take the vehicle, they would be… at a disadvantage. I will not sabotage them.”
Ming Tang just nods and follows him. “Are you alright?”
Noah frowns a little and reaches to check his own temperature. His hand feels cold on his forehead, though he can’t often tell normal from fever. “Why are you asking?”
“You’ve been pale since earlier,” Ming Tang informs him. “Your movements are sluggish and you are more… agitated than usual. Normally you wouldn’t have bothered talking with that guy. Are the inhibitors harmful to your body?”
“I’ll be alright in a bit,” Noah says. He reaches his hand to lightly ruffle the boy’s hair. He belatedly realizes that Ming Tang is really too small and skinny for his age – a whole quarter of a meter shorter than Noah, who’s just above the average. Noah gives him a soft smile. “Ming Tang, I am actually rather fond of you. You are intelligent, respectful and considerate, which is why…”
Ming Tang gives him a questioning look.
“Which is why you of all people should have a brighter future. Children have no value in the slums, but you… are very special, Ming Tang.” He rearranges the boy’s disheveled bangs, gently wiping away a drop of rain on his forehead. “If you want to—hm, in a few more years, you will have a calling to be a Nexus researcher.”
Their boots are clad in dark brown mud, slushing uglily per each step. The rainfall gets heavier, pelting down the damp soil, tapping against their coats, forming crystals on the nylon fabric. Ming Tang pulls over his hood and says, “Grandma told me the same thing.”
The sky is of ashes and dark, black smoke, dithering outward from the ship ahead. The rain lessens the suffocation, but it’d be a while longer before the fire is put out.
Noah hums. “Do you want to? Be a researcher, I mean.”
“Yes,” the boy replies. “I want to.”
Voices are coming from the deck and orders are barked one after another. The commotion grows louder. There are sounds of gunfire, heavy stomping, shrills rings of a monoxide alarm going off. The shouting is getting more frantic. When Noah focuses, he can make out a dark silhouette of a human inside the flames. Limbs thrashing uncontrollably, face distorted, bent over in chemical fire.
He frowns and holds out his palm, telling Ming Tang to stay. “Wait a moment. I will go and—"
“Don’t you think I’m strange, Noah?” the boy suddenly asks.
Ming Tang stands there unwavering, not even blinking an eye as the person burns to death in front of them. The figure crawls onto the docks, wriggling as grotesquely as a beheaded worm. He drops with a thud. Red, raging flames spread their way through the wooden planks, only extinguished by a large douse of rain. The man is charred black and the only telltale signs of gender are his bulky figure.
The smell is nauseating and the sight sends convulsions down Noah’s spine.
And the boy, twelve-years-old, stares in apathy.
Ming Tang walks over, crouches down and examines the body a few feet away. He’s already assumed the position of a researcher or a scientist, an objectively detached one, and if he had a scalpel in his hands, there’s little doubt he’d start the dissection right here. Noah can visualize the boy poking at the wounds festered with charcoal and puss.
“According to behavioral science, it may be a form of developmental disorder,” Ming Tang says, monotone like he usually is. “I cannot express the emotions I feel inside of me. I don’t know if I even feel sympathy or sorrow. When I saw Yu Ying, Wu Shan, Chang Yifen—when I saw them dead in front of me, my brain filtered it out. Is it a coping mechanism, Noah, or am I an aberrant?”
“No,” Noah tells him. “You are not.”
The boy stands back up, brushing away a cinder on his jeans. “Are there many like me?”
“There are.”
“Oh.” Ming Tang nods once. “I see.”
Noah holds out his hand, beckoning for the boy to get up. “Let’s go, Ming Tang. It is not sanitary to be so near.”
The putrid fumes condense into miasma in the air. Charcoal and flesh, distinctively rust-like, an unmistakable smell of burnt human remains. He suppresses the urge to hurl and then gingerly walks Ming Tang to the edge of the pier. Though his steps falter, Ming Tang’s do not.
The small vessel is still smoking in front, but the flames have considerably lessened after heavy rain. From his peripheral, he makes out Li Jiayun spraying down the bottom of the mast with an extinguisher the size of her whole torso. Next to her is Jae who is similarly hosing down the aft, though he’s so distracted that the water sprays in a wide, sporadic arc, drenching the entire ship and streaming down to the lower deck.
Noah and Ming Tang are blasted with residues of rain and seawater the moment they step onboard.
“Oh!” Li Jiayun rushes to receive them. She takes a glance at the scorched remains pliant on the dock. The wooden planks are blackened with soot and crumbling on the edges. The structure wouldn’t last enough even if it weren’t burnt – about five decades old, maybe, considering how rusty the nails are. The redhead soldier dismisses the dead man and with a small frown on her face, tells them to hurry to the berthing.
“The situation is being handled,” she says as she empties the rest of the extinguisher on the lingering flames. “You two should go and take shelter over there – don’t worry, the fire has settled down in the main pit. Ah, but be careful of the anomalies.”
Noah wipes the water off his cheeks. “What’s happened?”
“There’s been an outbreak. The unit onboard was infected before they could disembark the vessel. One of the survivors mentioned there was an anomaly that snuck up the hull.” She hands him a familiar black dagger. Sharp edges, gleaming silver steel, serrated and polished by the hilt. It’s the colonel’s dagger – Noah remembers the distinct shape he’d held once before. Li Jiayun ushers him to go on. “You don’t have to assist with the cleanup but take this just in case.”
He takes Ming Tang and walks along the ship deck, purposefully avoiding the battle going on at the stern. It’s hectic of loud shouts, smoldering smoke and clacketing rain. Gunshots are set off like fireworks in interval.
There’s a person, a young soldier or perhaps a naval officer, by the difference in uniform, dangling off the edge of the rail, dangerously close to seawater. He’s screaming something, shouting for help, but it lands on deaf ears as his companion, a brunet man, shoots him and ruthlessly kicks him off board.
When the man falls with engorged eyes, his arm flails upward, revealing a blackened gash on the deltoid. The infection is obvious – the bite wound is fresh but already, the blood vessels have ruptured. It travels fast too – before the man falls out of sight, the swelling has reached his shoulder.
There is another witness to the scene. Colonel Yang, equipped with a heavy rifle, had just finished clearing out his side. A body of a shark is scattered onto the floorboard, the creature’s caudal fin messily snapped off and the jaw wretched open so wide it ripped off the skin of the cheek. The creature had been wrestled with prior though it doesn’t seem to be handiwork of the colonel.
A clean bullet to the snout, another to the gill raker. Noah makes out Yang Rong’s firm back and upright posture.
“Don’t throw them into the sea,” the man instructs the unknown soldier. “There is possibility of contamination.”
“Yes sir,” comes the hasty reply.
They speak a bit more, their voices now muffled due to the louder sounds coming from the forward bow. A loud impact of something – blubberlike – hitting the quarterdeck, a surprised yelp, then heavy footfall. Jae is coming top speed towards Noah, running for his life.
“Watch out!” the young soldier shouts as he sprints with all his might. “Ahh!! Noah! Ming Tang! Run for it!”
It would’ve been comical in another situation – Jae’s eyes as wide as saucers, his black hair flying in a detangled mess, his clothes completely drenched. Noah doesn’t dwell on his appearance, however, when a loud explosion ruptures behind, engulfing the front deck in a harsh sea of flames – just when they’d gotten the situation under control.
He immediately throws Ming Tang into the cabin for shelter, but before he makes it in himself, Jae’s body collides into his with the force of a rocket, barreling so hard his bones might have cracked.
The sudden collision has them both sent toppling down the deck. They spin three mad rotations as the flames howl in the background. The rusted wood scrapes their bodies through their clothes, cutting into fragile skin.
Noah’s air circulation is promptly cut off, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on that either when the floorboard cracks apart, the explosion sending shrapnel to their direction. He instinctively rotates his back to take the brunt of the hit, veering Jae underneath him. A large chunk of wood pelts straight onto his spine.
He tumbles over with a groan. If it weren’t for his backpack, he’d be paralyzed from the impact. In his moment of pain, he hardly registers Jae swiftly reaching out to hold him.
“Noah, are you alright?!” The young man supports him as his body lies limply on top. Surprisingly, Jae doesn’t look nearly as frazzled as he does and even more surprisingly, the soldier’s body has more muscle mass than his own. Perhaps all soldiers have rock-hard chests and while Noah is quite fit himself, he has to envy those more toned. Thousands of battles fought. Jae’s soft outward appearance is deceiving.
Noah might have complimented his endurance if he could speak a more coherent sentence. Unfortunately, all he can muster is a grunt through the wet fabric of Jae’s clothes. “Mm… fine…”
“I’m sorry! It was a genuine mistake… The explosion wasn’t planned—I mean, of course it wasn’t but I didn’t expect for there to be so much ignition material onboard. You’re okay, right? Thanks for—" The young man frantically pats him from head to shoulder, trying his best to pinpoint any injuries. A press on his trapezius prompts another low groan and Jae immediately goes into a panic. “The colonel’s going to kill me, isn’t he?! What should I do? I’ve already apologized—oh God—”
“—What the hell happened?”
A commanding voice cuts into conversation.
Yang Rong stands with his arms crossed and his face stern. From Noah’s position – his body plastered onto Jae’s and his head lowered to the ground – he can only make out the colonel’s military boots. The tips are dirtied with mud and debris, wet with seawater. The worn shoes are flecked with dark brown, stains from months of neglect. The leather soles have distinctive rust on them.
Behind him, where the colonel walked, the prints are red in color.
