Seoul Cyberpunk Story-Chapter 64: Space Dino Park (5)

The restaurant was filled with fear.

People huddled together in small groups, their voices trembling as they tried to reassure each other, but the unease was evident on everyone’s faces.

In one corner of the restaurant, Iris sat beside her older brother Daniel, speaking in a small voice.

“A... unnie will be okay, right?”

Iris asked with anxious eyes.

Daniel nodded reassuringly.

“She’ll definitely be fine. Like Victor ajusshi always says... the most pointless worry... is worrying about A.”

“Hehe.”

Iris blushed as if she’d been personally praised and let out a small giggle.

“A unnie will definitely handle this in no time.”

Relaxing slightly, Iris tugged on Daniel’s sleeve.

The two siblings walked over to the restaurant’s transparent wall and began gazing out at space.

The dark blue expanse of space stretched before them, with the blue Earth hanging in the distance and the massive mosasaurus swimming around it.

Iris pressed her face against the glass, staring at the mosasaurus.

“That dinosaur... looks sad.”

Iris whispered softly, her lips moving faintly.

Daniel leaned down, pressing his face close to the glass as well, and studied the mosasaurus intently.

The enormous creature circling the station occasionally opened its mouth as if letting out a soundless cry that no one could hear.

“Maybe that mosasaurus can sense that the people who used to feed it are in danger.”

To Iris, it looked as if the mosasaurus was peering into the station.

As if it were looking for them.

Without thinking, she reached out and placed her hand against the glass.

“It’s okay.”

Iris whispered in a small voice.

“A unnie will take care of it soon.”

For some reason, beyond the glass, the mosasaurus seemed to respond as if it had heard Iris’s words.

****

In one corner of the restaurant, Ember, Aria, and Scarlet were gathered around Agu, who was lying on the table.

Agu, who had been tightly bound by A, had now become a valuable research subject in this situation.

The three were analyzing Agu’s condition to better understand the zombie outbreak and find a more effective countermeasure.

“It doesn’t seem like the infection targets only humans.”

Ember muttered with a dissatisfied expression.

“Then... could it be something that infects AI Frames as well?”

“Mecha-Agu shows no detectable AI Frame.”

Aria firmly stated in response to Scarlet’s speculation.

She had already scanned Agu multiple times.

“Agu... simultaneously infected with the human strain...”

The three netwitches analyzed Agu’s condition from their own perspectives, their expressions grim.

At that moment, Victor, who had been inspecting the barricades, overheard their conversation as he passed by.

He stopped, watching the netwitches’ research with interest, then cautiously spoke up.

“I remember reading in some netwitch book back when I was younger... that the way to detect an AI Frame is to ping the communication port, right?”

All three netwitches simultaneously turned their heads to look at Victor.

Victor, slightly taken aback by the sudden attention, continued speaking.

“Then... what if it’s an AI Frame with its communication port closed? That would explain why it’s not detectable, right?”

The expressions of all three netwitches changed at once.

It was as if they had just realized an obvious fact that had previously eluded them.

“That’s right... that’s it.”

Ember muttered, her eyes wide.

“But closing the communication port is a technique that was lost a hundred years ago, before the Great Convergence.”

Scarlet interjected, shaking her head.

“When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth...”

Aria murmured in a low voice, deep in thought.

Ember, Aria, and Scarlet exchanged significant glances, then gathered closer around the table.

Their voices lowered as they delved into a heated discussion.

“The AI Frames made by MK Corp...”

“If we dissect Agu, we could find the communication port structure...”

“뀨힝힝.”

“A new scanning method could...”

Victor, somewhat proud of the fact that he had inadvertently provided a crucial clue, but still completely clueless as to what the three netwitches were talking about, shook his head and returned to inspecting the barricades.

****

Since this was a time-sensitive mission, I ignored most of the approaching zombies, focusing instead on the most efficient route to the control room.

“So annoying.”

Whenever a horde of zombies blocked my path, I casually swung my blade-arm, cutting a path through them.

The only thing that mattered was time.

Just as Ember had said, the oxygen supply had been cut off, and the situation had to be resolved quickly.

The station was far larger than I had anticipated.

It was practically the size of an island.

And the number of zombies appearing in each corridor was steadily increasing.

Most of them were tourists still clad in flashy resort outfits.

Colorful shirts, shorts, even sunglasses—zombified vacationers stumbling toward me.

“Coming for a vacation and turning into a zombie...”

Following the map Ember had sent, I ran down the corridor and finally arrived at the entrance to Sector D-7.

A vast open area spread out before me.

And waiting for me there was the Cyber-Zombie Tyrannosaurus.

“...”

Its presence was on a completely different level from the other zombies.

Its skin had turned bluish, and from its empty eye sockets, a terrifying red light leaked out.

“It’s huge...”

I muttered, looking up at the T-Rex’s massive head.

With a deafening roar, the T-Rex charged straight at me.

My arm glowed blue as it extended into ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ a long, razor-sharp blade.

At the same time, the shadow at my feet started to move as if it were alive.

The T-Rex lunged forward, jaws wide open, aiming to devour me.

But with a fluid, natural motion, I twisted my body aside.

As the massive teeth scraped past me, the shadow-whip lashed through the air.

Sshhkk!

A deep gash opened along the T-Rex’s side.

But just like clay returning to its original form, the wound rapidly closed up.

“...Looks like this will take a while...”

I muttered, channeling the power of the heart ring into my blade.

****

“No!”

The cyber-necromancer shouted in a panicked voice beneath her gas mask.

On the monitor screens inside the central control room, she watched as her ultimate masterpiece, the Cyber-Zombie Tyrannosaurus, was brutally hacked apart.

That enormous zombie T-Rex had been designed from the start to handle megacorp soldiers.

A monster that no megacorp in Babel could take down in one strike.

Its endlessly regenerating tissues and boundless stamina had been engineered to resist for at least several days.

But her masterpiece hadn’t even lasted a few minutes against the triceratops girl.

“How the hell is a monster like that running around a resort?!”

The woman’s voice cracked as she screamed, her words drenched in despair.

She shifted her gaze to another monitor, where her original target—the Sakamata heir—was still fleeing through a horde of zombies.

“My plan... everything....”

Her entire body trembled with violent rage.

Ten years spent kidnapping countless people to develop her own independent tech.

A year wandering to find the perfect place to eliminate the Sakamata heir without leaving a trace.

Five years working her way up to a management position at Dino Park.

And all the time she spent kidnapping Sakamata employees to extract information.

Years invested in her vendetta against Sakamata Heavy Industries—now falling apart before her eyes.

“It’s all your fault.”

She ground her teeth and muttered.

“I was going to stop the zombies once I killed that Sakamata heir!”

The woman pulled a small device with a red button from inside her coat.

It was her last resort.

A device designed to ensure the Sakamata heir’s death even if the plan failed.

Without hesitation, she pressed the button.

Instantly, explosions erupted across the station.

The entire station shook violently, rocked by the massive blasts.

The explosions were strategically placed to destroy the station’s orbital control systems and throw it off course.

“Now soon...”

The woman stared at the orbit deviation warning flashing on the monitor with a look of grim satisfaction.

The Earth was slowly drawing closer.

The station was now being pulled down by Earth’s gravity.

“All of you will die because of her!”

The woman screamed at the screen, at the triceratops girl.

Then, without wasting another second, she left the control room and began executing her escape plan.

She had to escape before the station entered the atmosphere.

She sprinted down the corridor toward the emergency escape pods.

Having memorized the station’s layout perfectly, there was no risk of getting lost.

Since the station was built as a tourist attraction, the corridors were made of transparent material.

As she ran, the Earth loomed closer and closer, visible through the glass.

But then, something caught her eye in space, following her.

A massive mosasaurus.

“What...?”

She paused briefly, staring at the creature.

Its gaze felt as if it knew exactly what she had done.

Annoyed, the woman scowled.

“A stupid animal...”

She muttered and resumed running.

Finally, she reached the escape pod and climbed inside.

Now inside the small spacecraft, she felt a surge of relief.

She activated the escape system and initiated the launch sequence.

The woman settled into the pilot seat, eagerly anticipating the moment when the station would burn up in the atmosphere.

When the Sakamata heir would die in the flames.

But then, something enormous appeared before the viewport.

A pair of massive yellow eyes, glowing against the blackness of space.

“!”

They were the eyes of the mosasaurus.

The enormous creature hovered right outside the viewport, staring directly at her.

The woman was momentarily startled but then let out a sigh of relief.

She had worked as a Dino Park employee for a long time, so she knew the mosasaurus’s characteristics inside and out.

“A dumb creature designed never to attack humans without MK Corp authorization...”

She sneered.

After the Great Convergence, MK Corp had vanished without a trace.

Their employees, too.

Therefore, the creature could never attack her.

Confident in her assumption, the woman pressed the launch button.

But at that exact moment—

The mosasaurus opened its massive jaws and swallowed the escape pod whole.

As the pod was dragged down into the monster’s stomach, in the last moments before darkness closed in, the woman caught a glimpse of a girl passing by the viewport.

A girl with white hair, a black coat, and a cute triceratops hat.