Chapter Seven
OuroborosChapter Seven
She shuddered awake as shivers ran through her body. Her forehead was matted with cold sweat and every little muscle from her ears to her toes was aching in response. The fever still hadn’t died down, the heat of her forehead burning with the power of a thousand suns. But she couldn’t linger around too long; the risk of being found out was still there. She hadn’t gotten far away enough.
Twisting to her side she slowly pulled herself up as the burn in her abdomen pierced her whole being, her spine acting as a conductor for the pain rushing through her whole body. In response she almost keeled over completely and it stopped her from getting up so she fell back down to rest on the bed.
Waiting here was too risky she couldn't stay, but she was drifting in and out of consciousness and moving right now was even more dangerous. The only hope was that her body was strong enough to bring her fever down, that was first priority for her now. If she couldn’t get her fever down she was as good as gone.
How was it that she got here again? The fever and pain was too much for her to concentrate and form proper thoughts, everything was a haze and she lulled in this headspace, floating in a sludge of confusion. Trying to think was causing her more pain, and the headache forced her to close her eyes as her mind drifted off to sleep again, into the muddled and confusing territory of memory and dream.
“Hey Seulgi, are you alright? What’s wrong?! Hey, which one of yall had medical training?!”
Convulsing on the ground, her body shaking from pain and unable to respond to any of the urgent calls of worry that her co-worker was making, Seulgi could feel the burning prickly pain run back and forth along her spine. Her fingers curled up involuntarily and she was clenching her teeth hard, the whole ordeal appearing as if she was having a seizure, and that is what her co-workers thought it was as they rushed their local station’s nurse over to her.
“She is having a seizure, don’t restrain her and let it stop. Turn her this way after the convulsions are over.”
As the convulsions stopped soon after she was placed into the proper recovery position and waited for a moment on the ground trying to reorient herself. In that short instance her whole world had changed and she remembered everything; The Lock, The Door, the Daughter’s, their Mother and the Cycle. Her old soul had re-awoken.
“You okay there Seulgi?”
She looked up to see the nurse crouched down by her.
“Yeah, I think it's over, although,” as she attempted to move her whole body screamed with lactic acid as the extreme curling of her muscles that had happened had made every muscle in her body prohibitively sore. “Every muscle hurts, I don’t know if I can get up on my own.”
“Well that’s a given,” the nurse chuckled caringly motioning for Seulgi’s surrounding colleagues to assist her in getting her up and into the nursing station. “Go get us a wheelchair.”
“Have you ever had a seizure before?” The nurse asked as they lifted Seulgi up, a wheelchair arriving pretty soon to assist in the transporting.
“No, never before,” Seulgi responded, feeling the strain in her vocal chords and her voice barely carrying over. She had never had a seizure before, at least not in this life or body.
She was pushed by the nurse to the infirmary of the station and left to rest there for a while until she had regained her strength. Seulgi had an evening shift so she had come into the office not too long ago.
Her recovery from the apparent seizure was surprisingly rapid, however with the recommendation of the medical staff on site she was granted leave for the rest of the evening to recover as it was more important that she was at the office tomorrow. The sectors performance analysis and audit was scheduled for tomorrow and the head of the Cyber Crimes Department, the CCD, had his monthly review of the situation with the heads of sectors and their best analysts present, Seulgi belonging to this latter group.
Making her way home rapidly she took her time to rest and recover but also searched for any information on her Sister’s, the Lock, the Cult, and the allies of the Eternal Ladies. She looked for any news articles and historical journals related to the events that they had been a part of or the places where they lived. In truth there was really very little rest for her to be had, especially since Seulgi already knew what the seizure was and how well she would recover from it, all from past experience. She knew that the seizure wasn’t a typical medical issue, but rather her souls reawakening.
It was a blessing that she was part of the CCD as a security specialist and analyst there. It meant she had the know-how to dig deep into the hidden crevices of the internet and data storages and she had access to powerful worms and slicers to hack where she needed.
As was pretty customary but also illegal, Seulgi had her own intranet and server setup and powerful rigs to run them at home privately, using the databases of her workplace. She could get into lots of trouble if her employers found out about them, but this was something she had been taught by her senior so she knew that she wasn’t the only one doing this, and that if anybody outed one out it would be mutual destruction for everyone.
There was no mention of her Sister’s or the Lock, nor was there any real mention of the Eternal Ladies. She did find a small thread and link to the Cult however and she left her data miners running to gather as much information as she can, hopefully finding an actual internal communications link so she could find out what they knew and were planning. This time around the Eternal Ladies might have a real upper hand from the very start.
While her servers and secret hacks ran within their secure hidden false back storage, Seulgi went to sleep and was ready for the next day's audit arriving early to work.
“Good morning Seulgi! Feeling better today? Did you go see a doctor?”
“I’m feeling wonderful, all good. I’ll go see the doctor tonight after work, but nurse Sunmi said that it didn’t look too severe considering my quick recovery. Although I still need to go get checked,” Seulgi frowned arriving next to her senior co-worker and direct superior, Sang-hyeok. “When and where’s the audit?”
“It starts immediately and is being held in the second floor interrogation rooms. We are having one-on-one meetings with the Chief.”
“Why are we having one-on-one meetings? And the interrogation rooms of all places,” Seulgi eyed her superior with surprise, “That’s unusual.”
“I’m not sure. I’ve heard people speak of both promotion and demotions, of internal leaks or special commissions and assignments. You know how it is, it could be anything.”
“Well, you’d know best sunbae, you’re the one who’s taught me most of the ‘useful’ things in this place,” Seulgi quipped, giving her senior Sang-hyeok a little jab with her elbow.
“Shhhh, those are trade secrets,” Sang-hyeok smiled back before walking off to be the first from the office to meet Chief Eonyeong that morning.
Seulgi accompanied other analysts in the break room to chat and wait to be called on by the Chief. None of them had a clue why this was happening and gossip was rampant, however after Sang-hyeok came out of the room as the first person relaxed and smiling, most of them were relieved. It didn’t seem like anything serious.
Eventually Seulgi was called upon. The meeting was a standard but in depth look on the projects and suspects that she was tracking and working on; the Chief asking questions about her doings and the criminal groups she was tasked to track, and asking for Seulgi’s opinion on next steps as the analyst assigned to the specific task.
“So you think that the Hidden Baek cell won’t make a move against the local shipping companies or try anything through the Busan port?”
“Yes sir, that’s what my analysis of the situation is.”
“Very well. Good, good. Very good...” Chief Eonyeong hummed to himself brushing his hair with his hand and heaving a huge sigh. He was an older gentleman in his fifties well groomed and maintained with a little weight on his chin from years of office work. He seemed to be perpetually tired.
There was a lull in the questions as Chief Eonyeong fiddled with his coat pocket and pulled something small out. Tucked into his rather large hands it was hard to see what it was at first, but he wiped the tabletop in front of him with a piece of napkin then opened the cork of a little vial before dropping something onto the table from it.
Against the dark brown table surface it was hard to differentiate what it was, but the keen shine and its viscous quality was very familiar to Seulgi; it was blood. Seulgi’s eyes shot wide in recognition and fear as she looked up at Chief Eonyeong. It was divination blood.
“If that was all Chief Eongyeong, I would like to excuse myself I need to get back to work,” Seulgi managed to say as she stood up from her chair trying to excuse herself with haste, before the blood on the table began to move. Slowly but clearly it crawled towards Seulgi across the table surface, leaving a faint trail of blood that never coagulated. A wide smile spread on Chief Eonyeong’s face as he looked up at the shocked eyes of the young analyst.
“Oh, I think we should have a longer chat, Eternal Lady.”
Seulgi immediately turned around and walked out of the room, speed walking down the corridor and out the side entrances trying to get as much distance and confuse anyone that could be after her all the while trying to avoid raising any suspicion from any other co-workers. How had she been so unlucky that Chief Eonyeong of the Cyber Crimes Division was a Cultist? She had only been re-awoken for less than a day and they already knew her face. Seulgi couldn’t remember any time that she had been this unlucky or found out this fast.
Far behind her she heard the Chief speak into his intercom and just as Seulgi opened the door to the emergency stairwell down the corridor she heard a few people shout behind her. “Seulgi, stop!”
Without looking back she was off, running out through the door and down the stairs. As she got down the first flight she swiftly slipped her high heels off to aid in running and to make less sound ducking through a door into the corridors of the floor below, immediately stopping her run and walking in a measured pace through the lower offices. She needed to get to the basement server rooms and behind them into the service channels. It had an access that went directly from their building to the subway station. There she had a higher chance of slipping away unnoticed.
She reached the opposite side of the offices when she heard loud barging through doors somewhere behind her out of sight. The men chasing her must have made it down the stairs. Just as she went through another door that lead into a side stairwell that reached the basement there was an announcement.
“The station is in lockdown and we are initiating security protocol Orange. Kang Seulgi, you are wanted for questioning. Capture of Kang Seulgi is highest priority; she is to be detained on sight.”
Now what little cover she had was gone and it was an all out escape. She had limited time. Rushing down the steps she made it all the way to the basement as somewhere high above her she heard the sounds of doors opening in the stairwells. There was little she could do to avoid the security cameras, at least until she reached the service rooms.
Running down the corridor of the second basement level she passed one of the maintenance officers who didn’t seem to recognize or realise what was going on until she was far past him and had turned a corner. Once again far behind her she could hear shouts to stop and then the muffled crack of talking into a radiophone. The maintenance officer was reporting her location.
She knew that behind the next corridor the cameras were at an angle in which she could slip by and as she turned another corner, she planted herself against the wall and shimmied along it before diving across the corridor into a crevice. She had learned the blind spots of these cameras and her way to escape in advance, in case there ever was a terrorist infiltration or attack on their office. From here she entered the crawl space of the primary maintenance channel and shafts that ran up the whole building, closing the hatch behind her.
The space was cramped but manageable for someone her sized, and Seulgi slipped and crawled between ducts and pipes, avoiding the heat of some of the uninsulated hot piping and managing to stop herself from sneezing from all the dust that had gathered in the shaft. Within a few minutes she had walked and slipped through the space and the narrow ducts finding her way to the opposite maintenance hatch she was looking for. Beyond this hatch were the back rooms of a convenience store in the subway station.
With her she carried a multi-tool, and jammed one of its tinier metal slots into the lock twisting it hard and managing to bust it open, unlocking the hatch. This hatch with its feeble lock was one of the major security risks within the station that had yet to be cleaned up or attended to, but she was glad it existed and she hadn’t reported it.
Through the small opening she saw a few boxes right in her way which she pushed aside with her feet before clamouring out into a room filled with boxes of various food items; Pocky, tens of varieties of ramen, chips, chocolates and lots of canned coffee and non-carbonated drinks waiting to be filled into the fridges of the convenience store.
Standing up she closed the hatch door behind her and pushed the boxes back in front of it before patting herself down to get rid of most of the dust from her outfit. She then put her high heels back on, straightened her jacket and confidently opened the door from the backroom to the corridor as if she was supposed to be in the backroom in the first place.
Opening the door she saw a little tiny kitchen and bathroom in a little nook to the left and further beyond the brightly lit interior of the convenience store, with the bustle of a subway station behind it. She took her first step forward before a tall man walked in to view from the side to stand in front of her.
“Sunbae…”
“You need to come back to the station with us Seulgi,” Sang-hyeok said to her as he stepped just to the side enough for Seulgi to have a clear view outside. There was a cadre of almost ten individuals waiting for her, there was no way out. She was caught. How could she have forgotten that Sang-hyeok sunbae was the one who taught her this escape route and he would have immediately known where she was headed when they saw her going to the basement and maintenance rooms?
Following Sang-hyeok out of the convenience store peacefully she was immediately grasped by three men of which one wrenched her arms hard behind her to place handcuffs, the pull being overly zealous and violent. It felt like her shoulder and elbow would pop out of place, a searing insurmountable pain running through her body.
“Ahhhh!” Seulgi let out a loud scream and woke up, opening her eyes as another jab of pain shot through the wound in her side up her spine. She had turned in her sleep and now the edge of the bed was pressing against her wound, causing the hurt that had woke her up from the reverie.
Scrambling to focus on the clock on the wall she checked the time; she had been sleeping for almost six hours now. That was a good sign, at least her body was getting some rest to recover and the pain wasn’t causing her to constantly wake up. She didn’t have a thermometer but it felt like her fever was reducing in intensity although her headache was pounding from the dehydration.
She was planning to go back to sleep when the grumbling of her stomach called her to action. She would have to get up and out and visit the convenience store just down the road on the next block.
Managing to pull herself up in bed she reached out to put on her sweater with lots of strain, trying to avoid stretching her muscles on her pained side. She looked at the makeshift bandages around her wound to make sure there was no excessive bleeding and the patch was holding before carefully getting up. There was a huge amount of sweat pouring from her forehead and her face was a mess. She made a quick visit to the bathroom to wash her face so she didn’t look completely pitiful and finished the last drops of free drinking water provided by the hotel, before walking out.
It was late at night and there was almost nobody awake. Underpowered streetlamps set at distant intervals barely illuminated the road and the only real source of light was the convenience store just down the road, shining like a beacon in the night. Seulgi slowly shuffled to the store attempting to look as nonchalant as she could and upon walking in there was only the cashier, a young girl probably in her late teens, not really paying much attention and bored out of her mind.
Gathering a rather large amount of water, ion drinks, easy to consume food, and some basic first aid and hygiene products in her basket, one that she now barely managed to hold in her weakened state, she approached the counter and paid for her items. The girl gave her a few quizzical looks; Seulgi must have looked a little out of it, but the interaction went without a hitch and she was soon on her way back to the room she was staying in. The bag was almost too heavy for her but she somehow managed to drag herself back and upon stuffing her items into the mini-fridge immediately sat back in bed.
It was remarkable just how weak she still felt and how much a simple visit to the convenience store exhausted her. But now she was stocked up with food and could well stay here and rest for a couple of days. The less she had to move the higher her recovery chances were. She had purchased lots of protein and meats, lots of essential vitamins, some nuts, dried fruits and salts. Lots of water. She needed to recover as fast as possible.
Too tired from the visit Seulgi merely took a huge gulp of Pocari Sweat and gorged a protein bar before lying back down on her bed. This would have to do for now. She would wake up once her body started to really get hungry again.
All she could hope for was that the rest of her Sisters and The Lock had managed to get through the Awakening safely and keep their identities hidden. With the abundance of humans and surveillance technology it would be extremely difficult, but there was no way that all of them could have been as unlucky as she had been. Maybe it was just her. She prayed it was only her.
The Cycle had been very difficult the last time they were alive; telephones had just been invented and telegrams were being wired across countries. All of this had helped the Cult communicate more efficiently. Luckily cameras had not been portable or efficient enough to catch pictures of them, but plenty of talented sketches had been made of them once their faces had been revealed to the Cult, and the easy proliferation of newspapers and fliers had made their faces well known within the Cult’s ranks.
The final month had been extremely stressful to them all, and in the midst of their scramble individual Sisters had disappeared without a trace for a time; Trudi and Wera for the longest. There had been some arguing and cause for strife; boy had she been an to some of her Sisters. But eventually as always they all came together to stop Adhabu, The Door, from bringing the terror that was their mother back into this world.
They didn’t have a lot of time back then to really sort and solve the issues they had with each other, but she knew all her Sisters had already forgiven and forgotten. All Seulgi wanted was to apologize to them and ask for forgiveness. To say she was wrong and that she loved them all so much.
What had even prompted the arguments in the first place? It wasn’t like over the years people hadn’t disappeared to sort personal matters before coming back together. It didn’t really matter anyway. They all knew their bond was stronger than any individual issue or division. Why had she ever even doubted that in the first place?
All of that was water under the bridge as they needed to focus on the current Cycle and their ever continuing task of trying to find out how to end it once and for all. They couldn’t keep repeating the same thing over and over again for eternity expecting a different result. That was the very definition of insanity.
Even though they had been captured by the Cultists before, they had never managed to extract any information from her or her Sisters on what they knew. These single life cultists had no idea the multitude of life time experience they had under their belts to resist any torture. They had no idea the horrors they had lived through before. Seulgi was glad that this time she had escaped before the real interrogation had even started. Even though she could soldier through it, she rather not experience any of the pain.
All this thinking and the walk to the shop had drained Seulgi’s battery and her eyes lulled and closed once again, taking her back into her dreams.
“I’ve seen the evidence, it looks solid and conclusive. I… don’t think you can survive this.”
“I haven’t done any of the things they claim. All of it is tampered and planted evidence. I don’t even know what they are charging me with!”
“I want to believe you, but I just don’t know if-”
The interrogation room door opened and a secret service officer walked in. Seulgi and Sang-hyeok looked at him as he motioned to Sang-hyeok that his time with Seulgi was up and that it was time for them to move her to the secure hold. Whatever phony charges they had brought up against Seulgi was now a national security scale issue.
“Sunbae!”
Sang-hyeok turned back to look at Seulgi.
“I didn’t do anything. You know me best out of all of them here. I’m innocent,” Seulgi’s eyes were serious and she was trying her best to sound as truthful as she could. Sang-hyeok opened his mouth to respond but then thought otherwise, nodding to Seulgi an acknowledgement before walking out of the interrogation room.
The door closed behind him as she was left in to the room for a while alone before they would move her to a more secure facility, a more secret and hidden place that the public didn’t know about and which was used by the government and secret service for national security scale criminals.
The desire to tell Sang-hyeok about the truth was strong but she knew that she couldn’t have done any of that, especially here in the station of all places. Even more problematic was that she had no idea whether Sang-hyeok was part of the Cult or innocent. She had little chance of finding that out here; her data mining operation at home was the only real way to find out, other than if he revealed it himself. She needed to find and hack the Cult’s networks to know. The risk of Sang-hyeok playing a double agent was too high for her to ever reveal him anything for now.
This pained Seulgi to no end. He was her best friend and closest co-worker. In this life as a cyber security analyst he was the one who knew her current life the best. However, bigger things were at play and in case Sang-hyeok was innocent, it was safest for her to not tell him anything and that would keep him out of the Cult’s harm for now, although she feared down the line they might use him as a hostage to weaken her resolve. They had done this many times before to all of the Daughters and The Lock.
Her attention was snapped back to the door as two suit clad officers walked in and unlocked her chains from the table, before cuffing her arms behind her back. They took her through the lower levels of the office building, many of her colleagues coming out to see her being taken away. Some of them looked shocked, others as if they knew she was some kind of traitor, there was little she could do to tell the truth or change anybody's mind. None of that mattered anyway.
Their building had an underground parking complex that could be partitioned into sections in case of a breach or emergency, sturdy metal doors and grids hoisted up in the roof at crucial intervals and bottlenecks in the structure. Waiting for her right at the entrance of the internal garage doors was a van reversed towards the door with its two back doors wide open ready to receive her.
She was placed in the van and her handcuffs were once again linked with a chain to the seat of the van and her feet were restrained with leather straps, limiting her range of motion. Two men sat in the back with her and the doors soon closed behind them the van immediately taking off.
Closing her eyes Seulgi focused on the motion and speed of the van. There were no windows so she couldn’t see where their current location exactly was, but concentrating hard enough she could approximate their path and where in the city they were. She knew where her destination was as well so she could tell if they were taking her to that location.
Her mind was drawing a map as she actively kept track of time in her head while also observing the motions of the van and the motors RPM to estimate the speed at which they were going. She did this for what she counted was approximately forty minutes before opening her eyes again. The two men with her in the back were completely unfocused and not paying attention to her by this point and if her calculations and the map in her head didn’t betray her, this was the best place to go for it; optimal for her to try and escape.
All the while they had been travelling Seulgi had been carefully and slowly flexing and twisting her feet, angling and carefully pulling on them. Her legs were pretty tired at this point as she had been hard at work in complete silence, straining her muscles to their limit, but had managed to slip both of her feet out of her shoes and her heels into the strap. All she needed to do was pull her legs out.
Eyeing for the moment of lost focus on the two men, she pulled her knees up in one rapid motion freeing her feet from the bindings in the process. One of the men turned to look and before he could properly say anything Seulgi twisted her body bringing her right heel to his temple, causing him to slump immediately. The man sitting next to her who had been partially dozing off noticed the sudden kick in front of him, just in time to see Seulgi pull her outstretched leg in to land her knee right onto his chin, his head violently snapping back and smashing the back of his head onto the side of the car. He was out cold.
She didn’t have much time. The people in the front seat would have heard all this. She immediately pulled her legs and knees in to her chest and arching her shoulders as far back as she could, at the very edges of dislocating them, she managed to pull her handcuffed hands beyond and around her waist and slipped her hands under her legs to bring her arms to her front.
“Hey, Jonghwan! What’s the ruckus?”
Someone was already calling out from the front seat. Seulgi immediately began to rifle through the pockets and belt of the two men, finding both their wallets and then finally the keys from the first one she kicked. Placing the key into she brought the handcuffs to her face and with precision managed to unlock the cuffs. She was free.
There was shuffling in the front seat.
“Yah! You rascal answer me you litt- what’s this?”
Seulgi looked up to the front to see the little observation window between the back and the front had been pulled open and one of the police officers was looking at her.
Deftly Seulgi rolled over to the door, grabbed a radiophone and stun gun from the belt of the second unconscious guard and opened the back door. The car was still moving and she braced herself as she hopped off the moving vehicle immediately going into a controlled roll to reduce the amount of impact damage. She had jumped from moving carriages enough times over the centuries to learn this skill.
The roll continued for a few seconds before she managed to stop and stand up to see her surroundings. It was almost exactly where she had imagined it to be, they had just passed the optimal location a few hundred metres earlier. She was standing at a mountainside road with trees on both sides, on one side the trees leading down a hill continuing on into a forest. Beyond the small stretch of forest and hillside that followed was Suwon with a population of over a million, big enough for her to find a hiding place within the streets and houses.
Behind her she heard the van stop as well as the escorting cars in front of it. In front of her arriving from the direction they had been coming from she could see the security car that trailed their convoy bend around the corner. She was out of time.
The angle of the descent down the hill was steep and she immediately ran and launched herself over the railing, managing to keep herself balanced and run down the steep hill dodging sharp branches and treacherous stones that could trip her. Without shoes she could feel branches prickle her feet, but now it was the least of her worries. She would have to just bare with it for a little longer. Somewhere in the wind she heard the shouting and commands for her to stop but she ignored it, trying to run as fast as she could.
Then the guns went off.
A hail of bullets rained behind and around her striking the trees and ground, splinters shattering and sparks flying as bullet struck stone. The air hissed with lead, the whizzing of the rounds unnerving Seulgi as they passed closer and closer to her ears. She was almost far enough, almost within the deep dense forest to lose them. They would have to reload soon.
Out of nowhere Seulgi lost the strength in her legs and she went flying down onto the ground, tumbling the last few metres of the hill before it levelled out. Tossed about violently she was her face down on the ground before she realised it and scrambling to get up, to force herself to move, she felt a burning searing pain on her right side enough to send her gasping for air and tears were already in her eyes. She looked down feeling the location of the pain; her hand was completely drenched in blood. She had been hit.
But she had to move. Suwon was just a couple hundred metres across this forest. She needed to move and get over to the city and find shelter. She had to move.
Move. Move. Move! MOVE!
Wrenching with pain and anguish Seulgi forced herself up once again, her eyes red and full of tears, dry and full of spittle from the exhaustion and the reaction to being shot.
Her head was pounding and her senses were numbing, hearing becoming unfocused and she knew that soon her eyesight would begin to fade as consciousness escaped her. It wasn’t the first time she had bled, it wasn’t the first time she had experienced such pain; not her first time by a long shot. She had to get to the city before that happened.
Moving at a slower pace but still jogging, Seulgi ran and stumbled across the forest in her socks, wincing at the sharp branches under her feet and her face grimy from the fall. Her sole focus was to get over to Suwon, to get away and hide. Find something to treat this wound with.
The shooting had stopped and Seulgi figured they must have started to run downhill and chase her once she was out of their visual range and they had figured out what was on the opposite side of this forest. The minutes felt like hours, the pain getting stronger and more intense, she had to stop the bleeding soon. And then she saw the first buildings of Suwon city limits. Just a little more.
As she approached the first houses of the outskirts she spotted clothes on a washing line being dried. She reached the outside of the house with the drying clothes and took a few of them, enough so she could bandage her wound for now and prevent further bleeding, to assist the platelets in her body to clot the wound long enough for her to find a proper way to bind it. By the backdoor of the house there were slippers and shoes lined up and Seulgi took a pair of sneakers so she wouldn’t be running barefoot through the streets.
She stopped for just a second to rip a few of the shirts apart and bandaged the wound around her, biting her lips to prevent herself from screaming, her eyes full of tears and nose running with snot as she convulsed and shook in her silent cry of desperation. Finding an empty plastic bag she wrapped it on top the bandages of the wounded area before pulling a jumper hanging on the line. Hopefully the bleeding would stop and the plastic bag around the top would prevent any blood from bleeding through all the way to her jumper, so people on the streets wouldn’t be shocked.
Rushing down side alleys deeper in the city, she could feel her head pounding so loud she could barely hear the noises of the city; the roar of the traffic or chatter of people. Her sight was beginning to also become hazy and she knew she had to find lodging fast.
She had the two secret service officer’s wallets. Searching through them one contained the pin codes to his cards within the wallet; there was always some scatterbrain that did this. Using the pins she found she cashed those cards out of all the money she could get at the ATM by a bank on the way. She took out all cash from the wallets and any other useful items and after that dumped them into a bin.
The pounding in her head was worsening, becoming louder and louder, the dull thumping and thudding soon turning into a knock, knock, knock, knock...
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Opening her eyes with a start Seulgi focused on her current reality. Her eyes shifted to her right to look at the front door of her hotel room and she realised the knocking was coming from there.
Straining up from her bed, she already felt a lot better than before but extremely hungry and thirsty. She hadn’t eaten the food she had bought from the convenience store earlier and the last time she ate properly had been the previous morning. Looking at the clock on the wall it was noon the next day. She had slept almost thirteen hours straight.
Getting up from the bed she walked over to the door as silently as she could while being careful with her side lest the bleeding and wound reopen, and took a peek through the eyehole. It was housekeeping.
“It’s okay, no need to clean today,” Seulgi said as she flipped the ‘do not disturb’ switch by the door. She had been too out of it to remember to do that when she first arrived or after her visit to the store. Seulgi was amazed she had even managed to find and book a hotel room at all in her state.
Even in her stupor she had at least managed to put the food into the mini-fridge in the room. Seulgi unwrapped a kimbap roll and nibbled on it as she tried to recall where the hotel she was staying at exactly was. She didn’t have a phone, she didn’t have a laptop and there was no map in the room. Her memory was hazy at best, but she was fairly certain she had clamoured in a taxi and asked the driver to take her to the far end of Suwon.
Taking stock of her finances she had extracted close to six million won from the debit and credit cards of the officer. They wouldn’t be affected financially in the long run; all the money she had stolen from them would be reclaimed and paid back by the CCD.
With the money she could buy a new phone at the very least, a new laptop, but what she really wanted was the equipment from her apartment. They were well hidden within a false back room in the house protected from releasing or receiving outside wireless signals, but it was only a matter of time before it was found if they searched her apartment extremely thoroughly.
She also needed to find a new location to stay at, staying at a hotel like this was way too expensive. There were monthly renting options in some of the smaller cities and townships so her best bet was to get out of Suwon to a smaller town and rent a cheap tiny apartment but with access to high speed fibre internet connection. With the amount of money she had it was feasible.
If she got access to the backdoors of the internet she could manage to get her way to her data. It was practically impossible to stumble upon her server by accident, and even when you knew what you were looking for it was ridiculously difficult. As the creator of it she knew exactly what to do to get to it.
Once she was established and had managed to gather all the data she could about the Cult for now, she would try and smuggle herself out of the country. Now that she was a wanted fugitive she could only go about it the illegal way. Hopefully, she could get out and meet up with her Sister’s to sort everything out and plot their next move. Alone in Korea and wanted by the police she was extremely vulnerable.
Before all of this however, she needed to replenish her energy, and clean and bind her wound. The bullet had gone through and through so at least she didn’t have to worry about any metal detectors going off if she ever had to go through security with metal detectors. It did mean however that stitching the entry wound in the back would be a difficult task.
Asking from the hotels reception she found a larger pharmacy not far from the hotel and stocked up on all the materials she would need. Luck was for once on her side as she also found a surgical skin stapler; this would make stitching the wound up a simple task especially the one on her back. She also dropped by a store to get a new smart phone and top-up service so that she at least had a phone and the internet at hand.
She made it back to the hotel without too much trouble although the pain from her wound was consistent and she was still weak from all the blood loss. Added to the fact she had avoided eating any over the counter painkillers, as most of them had properties that reduced blood clotting. She would have to do her best to survive until the stitching and bandaging was done before she could finally start eating painkillers to help with the pain and fever.
Seulgi moved to the bathroom, carefully stripped off the first layer of clothing and plastic and could already feel the stiff resistance of clotted and dried blood against her skin and wound pulling it taught. She wet a hand towel with warm water and began to dab it onto the makeshift bandage that was the ripped t-shirt she had stolen from the yard during her escape. Slowly as the dried blood was moisturized she peeled the shirt off managing to avoid ripping open the fresh scabs on the bullet holes. It was a miracle she hadn’t bled dry last night and had managed to stop the bleeding in both entrance and exit wounds. She praised her luck and stars that her body in this life wasn’t a haemophiliac, something she had been on a few occasions.
Cleaning both wounds carefully she disinfected them, biting down on her teeth as the burning from the alcohol and disinfectant made contact with the wound. Next however was the really painful part; stitching it with the surgical skin stapler. At least she didn’t have to sow and stitch by hand and the process was quick. The action of stapling would probably partially reopen the wounds and bleed however as the stitches rip open the fresh formed scabs on the top, but Seulgi was ready with proper bandages and plasters to help stop any bleeding.
First she would stitch the rear as the stapling would put her in a lot of pain and it would be easier to do the front side in pain as opposed to the hole in the back. Quickly reading up the proper process of stitching with a surgical stapler and preparing all the disinfectants and bandages, she placed the table mirror from her room at an angle onto the toilet seat so she could see her back from the reflections without having to twist her whole body to look.
With apprehension she brought the stapler close to the skin, pinching it on the two sides of the wound just the right amount before stapling.
“Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!”
Seulgi screamed in pain as the first staple stitched the skin together, doubling over onto the floor. She had been bracing herself but was still caught off guard by the intensity of the burn. Now she knew what it felt like however and prepared herself once again to finish up the stitching. With a straight face, her teeth clenched hard together and tears forming at the corners of her eyes, she pinched and stapled her wounds. First the back and then the front of her abdomen.
They were now once again bleeding although the stitching and previous clotting prevented most of it. She sat on the bathroom floor blinking her eyes rapidly to clear them from all the sweat and tears that had accumulated from her medical procedure, giving herself a short rest before finally getting up to wash her face; laughing and crying in equal measure at her current situation.
With both wounds stitched for now, she quickly cleaned and disinfected them once more before placing large loose plasters on the stitches and then bandaging her midriff, wrapping it up well enough to hold but in manner that allowed her bandages to be easily changed later. The wounds could finally start to heal and close up properly, but she still had to be careful and not exert herself too hard lest the stitches rip, reopening the wound.
Patched up as well as she could be, Seulgi took painkillers and fuelled herself up with more food and drink. She still had one more night in this hotel and tomorrow she would buy a new laptop, sports bag and new clothes and try to get out of Suwon into a township further out to rent an apartment.
Laying on her bed in her underwear, she the TV to watch the news as well as keeping the radiophone she had stolen tuned to the police and emergency signals that were known to her. As expected there was nothing on the news about her or any risky chatter on the comms. For now she was safe.
The visit to the pharmacy and binding her wounds had been taxing on Seulgi and her body had to heal up and recover all the blood she had lost in the initial bleeding during her escape. The news broadcasters were talking about the popularity of holidays to Europe, the beauty of the Alps, and mountains of the Balkans as her eyes began to once again flit, her mind drifting to sleep and slipping back into her memories.
“And how do you propose we get anything done if you run off?!”
“What’s this exactly about Sofija?” Wera leaned in closer while further behind her Trudi stood in silence, partially embarrassed but also resolute on her decision about her recent departure to attend to private matters. She had just arrived to Istanbul to join her Sister’s in their final efforts to end this Cycle.
“It’s about people running off when we have a mission to finish!” Seulgi once again shouted her frustration apparent in her voice and body. She knew deep down the reason for this annoyance wasn’t because of her Sister’s but a completely other issue, a private one of her own.
“Since when have we not opted for closure in our current lives if we had the opportunity? It’s not like you haven't done the exact same thing before,” Wera replied, keeping her voice calm and understanding because she knew something else was eating Seulgi on the inside. Christine appeared from behind the corner to stand next to Trudi by the doorway.
“Since…” Wera was right; when chance presented itself they would try to resolve any leftover issues in this body and life. Just because their souls and bodies would disappear and they lived an impermanent existence didn’t mean that the families and friends they grew up with in this life didn’t deserve closure before they once again disappeared without a trace. They, as the Daughters of the terror that was their mother stuck in this eternal Cycle, might have lived a cruel existence, but it was equally cruel to leave their current loved ones forever longing and wanting. It would have been nice though if Trudi had at least been more active in letting them know she was alright, Seulgi had been really worried.
“Then why did you run off Trudi? Huh? What was the reason?”
“She doesn’t have to tell us.”
“Why not, aren’t we Sisters? Aren’t we family?”
“It’s…” Trudi looked down cast and mumbled in response, “personal.”
“And look what happened to Christine! What if she had been hurt? What if…” Seulgi stopped as her eyes locked with Christine’s who was staring back unflinching, but Seulgi could see the tremor in the eyes, the tears at the cusp of forming. She could see how the tragedy of her recent weeks was right now playing behind those eyes, repeating endlessly in an eternal loop.
Seulgi broke. How could she have reminded her Sister of the trauma she had just barely witnessed weeks ago, of seeing her brother murdered with an axe and having to abandon her current family to the wind? This wasn’t what family did to each other, this wasn’t what she wanted for her Sister’s.
“I…” Seulgi stammered as the first tears ran down her cheeks, “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” Christine said walking over and embracing Seulgi in a deep hug before whispering into her ear, “I don’t know what happened to you this time; you don’t have to tell me. But I’m so sorry it happened, it must have been horrible.”
Seulgi felt something hot on her shoulder and knew that Christine was also crying into her shoulder, letting out her sadness about her family and equally crying out of sadness for Seulgi’s own personal issues, even if she didn’t know what they were. Seulgi couldn’t open up about what had happened to her yet, so how did she have the right to demand it from Trudi or anybody else? At least after all these years she still had her Sister’s who she could always count on, even if they didn’t reveal their pains and secrets until the next life.
Over by the living room archway Wera and Trudi stood in silence when behind them Iva rounded the corner and saw Seulgi and Christine hunched in a hug deeper in the room.
“Wha-”
Wera placed her hand on Iva's shoulder and with her finger motioned for silence. “It’s all okay now. Let’s leave them be.”
Hot tears from Seulgi and Christine wet their shirts and the two deepened into their warm loving sisterly embrace. They let out all the tension, fear, frustration and sorrow in one fell swoop. And as they continued in their ever deepening hug and comfort of each other, back in her hotel room tears and a smile appeared on the exhausted face of the sleeping Seulgi, who was lying on her bed alone, wrapped up in bandages and two gunshot wounds in her body. Dreaming.
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