The next morning, Karen awoke, feeling a faint trace of geothermal heat seeping into his body. He could not remember how he had ended up here. His last memory was questioning Tirn about her act of insubordination.

  "Can you move now?"

  Tirn’s voice came from beside him. Karen nodded silently.

  "What time is it?" he asked, his voice devoid of emotion.

  "It’s a little past noon. The enemy is still cleaning up after yesterday's accident."

  "And their response to the explosion?"

  "Most of the fires seem to be under control. Once they begin a formal investigation into the cause, our intrusion will surely be discovered. If you are capable of movement, we should leave now."

  Karen stood up cautiously. His physical condition had plummeted since the shock of the explosion, but after a day of rest, he was just barely stable enough to travel.

  "We must move quickly to the safe house and complete your treatment," Tirn said while organizing their gear.

  "What do you mean? Treatment?"

  "You might not feel it yet, but you have burns on your back. Blisters are forming, so I’ve applied emergency measures."

  Karen felt a surge of doubt. Burns severe enough to require additional treatment? "We cannot waste time on mere burn treatment when the enemy might launch a wide-scale search at any moment. We head toward the border to rendezvous with our contact."

  "But the enemy is already intercepting—"

  "Do not deceive me. You have already disobeyed an order once. And in the middle of enemy territory during wartime, no less..."

  He spoke with anger, but a sudden, unfamiliar wave of pain surged through his back. He winced, his face contorting as he continued.

  "The only reason you are still alive is that I respect the honor of your house. I will find an escape route as soon as we clear this area."

  Karen cautiously checked his condition. Movement seemed possible for now. Since he lacked a mirror, he couldn't see the state of his back, but he found it hard to believe that a simple burn could cause such intense pain. Given the urgency of the situation, he chose not to argue further and stood up. His head spun for a moment, and he staggered, but he quickly regained his balance. It was strange. From his long years in the trenches, he knew that the aftereffects of an explosion shouldn't linger this long. He glanced once more at Tirn’s bag.

  The officer who had spoken with Rilke the day before returned to the hospital room. As he stepped inside, he was met with a mixture of bewilderment and instinctive dread. The air in the room was heavier and more stagnant than yesterday. A sour, rotting smell—the unpleasant scent of something festering—pricked his nose.

  The officer’s gaze shifted to the beds of the three scientists.

  Director Rilke was leaning against his bed with his eyes closed. His neat appearance from the previous day was gone. His face was deathly pale, and his lips were parched and shriveled. Ugly, mottled black spots had spread across his neck and the backs of his hands, and the coarse bandages the nurses had hastily wrapped around him looked gruesome. The bodily fluids seeping through the gaps in the bandages had already dried into a dark, brownish-red crust.

  "Director... your condition... why is it like this?"

  The officer’s voice trembled with panic. Rilke slowly opened his eyes. His pupils were hazy, as if he had lost focus, but the coldness within them remained.

  "This is the... result... of what you called a 'success' yesterday."

  Rilke’s voice was cracked and low, a scratching sound as if shards of glass were lodged in his throat. Every time he coughed, he felt the taste of iron surging up from his chest. A stinging sensation, as if every capillary beneath his skin were bursting, was consuming his entire body. Since last evening, he had felt his skin peeling away like scales every time he moved. Whenever the festering flesh stuck to the bandages and tore away, he was hit by agonizing pain, yet his nerves seemed to be growing numb.

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  Pollack, in the adjacent bed, was in even worse condition. He lay huddled, gasping for breath. Not just his face and hands, but his entire limbs were wrapped in bandages. A sour smell of rotting flesh emanated from beneath the gauze. His lips were so swollen they wouldn't close properly, and the whites of his eyes had turned a dark, bloody red. The bedsheets were stained with damp patches of blood and fluid. A nurse tried constantly to wipe his body down, but the more she wiped, the more his fragile skin tore away.

  "Dr. Pollack, can you hear me?"

  When the officer approached, Pollack winced. His eyes seemed only to perceive faint flickers of light. He raised an arm to chase the officer’s shadow, but it fell back down, powerless. He called out to the officer in a whisper.

  "This might not... end with us. Seal off the area. Quickly."

  He struggled to speak. His body convulsed continuously in a display of agony. His skin was bursting even under the weight of the bandages. The officer took a step back, as if he had witnessed something truly horrific.

  Pardin appeared slightly better, but his eyes were filled with absolute despair. His face was dry and haggard, his skin thinned to the consistency of paper. Black spots spread across his forearms, just like Rilke and Pollack, and he too was wrapped in bandages.

  "What... what is happening?" the officer asked, his voice shaking with fear.

  "Neither we nor the doctors know for sure. All that is certain is that our cells are being rapidly destroyed. Since yesterday," Pardin said, gripping the bedsheets with a trembling hand. He was trying to endure the pain, but more than that, he was fighting to convey what he had realized.

  "We reached a conclusion yesterday. That when you experiment with the mass-energy equivalence formula... things other than light and heat are generated."

  "What are those things?"

  Pardin coughed for a moment, clutching the sheets tighter. Blood seeped from beneath his fingernails.

  "I became a successful mathematician and built my legacy thanks to the disc. But that legacy is now destroying me. The formulas I trusted have shattered my arrogance."

  A self-mocking tone laced his voice.

  "But our bodies... are speaking. They say that what the Disc-Senders took for granted, we were ignorant of."

  He stared at the back of his hand, which had turned black.

  "This is... something that did not exist in this planet's environment. We were too arrogant. There was no certainty that the result of the formula would only be heat and light..."

  His gaze was fixed on a single point in the void. The officer remained silent. What he was looking at were not mere patients. These three top scientists, who had collapsed so violently in a single day, looked like corpses that had been tortured in the dead of night. He had no idea how to even begin a report.

  "Report exactly what I have said. If you want to continue the experiments—no, because you will continue them—you must know. You must first research exactly what was emitted during this experiment."

  "You want us to research something we don't even recognize?" the officer asked, bewildered.

  "The evidence will remain at the site. Start there," Pardin pleaded.

  "But... the site has already been cleaned. We washed it thoroughly with water..."

  Upon hearing this, Rilke and Pardin’s faces filled with horror. Pollack could only manage a weak, huffing breath of disbelief.

  "Where did that water go?" Rilke asked, his hands shaking. It was a tremor born not of pain, but of terror.

  "Naturally, it would have gone into the river. Through the drainage system."

  At the officer’s answer, Rilke began to weep.

  "Listen to me carefully... Close the water supply. For at least the next ten days. If you won't... then at least... send your family away. Far away. And tell my wife to leave Yonic immediately..."

  Rilke was consumed by grief. He closed his eyes, and dark, bloody tears welled in the corners.

  "This is the last thing... I can do... as a husband."

  The officer couldn't wrap his head around the situation. He couldn't distinguish whether they were speaking out of madness brought on by pain, or if they were squeezing out the last of their strength to issue a warning. He stood there for a long time. Even though he knew he had to leave the room, his feet wouldn't move.

  He finally turned around. He cautiously asked the doctor who was leaving the room.

  "How long can they last?"

  The doctor sighed.

  "What you see isn't the problem. Their vessels are already so damaged we can't even administer an IV, and their organs are dying. I need to know what the problem is as well. If this is some kind of contagious plague..."

  Fear was evident in the doctor's voice.

  "Our military does not create such despicable biochemical weapons. I can guarantee that much," the officer assured him, but the doctor still looked terrified by the symptoms of those three men.

  The officer thought he needed to meet the other experiment victims in different hospitals as soon as possible. And then, he remembered Rilke's final words. Could I even do this? With a trembling hand, he wrote the first line:

  'Request to immediately close the water supply.'

  Then, his pen stopped.

  'It might... already be too late.'

  He urgently called for his adjutant.