Coal waited for his aunt to fall asleep before climbing out from the balcony.
The ground floor balcony was less than two meters from the ground; when he jumped down, his knee hit the concrete edge of the flower bed, causing a sharp pain, but he ignored it.
He caught the last bus and got off at a stop in the eastern suburbs of the city.
It was about a two-kilometer walk from the bus stop to the Abandoned Cement Factory.
There were only a few intermittent streetlights, and most of the road was pitch black.
Only the glow of the distant city cast a faint band of light on the horizon.
Coal walked along the road for twenty minutes.
He did not know why he had come here.
The plainclothes police had been following him, but he had taken a side path to get out tonight, so he shouldn’t have been followed.
He stood before a gap in the perimeter wall of the Abandoned Cement Factory and glanced inside.
The factory grounds were pitch black, and weeds rustled in the night wind.
Then he saw something else.
At the entrance on the north side of the factory, there were several fresh tire tracks.
He crouched down to take a look.
The width and tread pattern of the tire marks looked like standard tires for police vehicles.
Coal looked into the distance along the direction of the tracks and saw a dark van parked on the side of the road, about fifty meters outside the factory wall.
The car windows were covered with dark tint, making it impossible to see inside.
But there was no dust on the car’s hood, which was completely different from the abandoned cars that had been parked on the roadside for a long time.
Someone was staking out the place.
The police were monitoring this Abandoned Cement Factory.
Why?
Because his brother was inside?
His heart rate accelerated.
If the police were monitoring this place, it meant they thought Haruka was here.
Coal did not go in.
He observed from outside the wall for another ten minutes, confirmed the position of the van and the possible surveillance angles, and then quietly returned the way he came.
On the bus back, he sat in the last row, the city lights outside the window flickering as they receded.
His brother was right there.
He could be almost certain.
But he could not go find him.
At least not now.
Because the police were there too.
He needed to think of a way.
Coal’s fingers clutched a folded piece of paper in his pants pocket; it was a flyer he had picked up in the residential area near his old home.
The flyer was printed with the police hotline and a standard statement about “cooperating with the investigation can lead to a reduced sentence.”
He crumpled the flyer into a ball and stuffed it back into his pocket.
He would not betray his brother.
Inside the Abandoned Cement Factory, at the end of the corridor in the deepest part of the workshop, Haruka curled up at the bottom of a discarded conveyor belt.
His senses had captured an extremely familiar aura a few hours ago.
It was very far away, outside the factory perimeter wall.
But he recognized it.
Coal.
His younger brother had come.
At that moment, two forces were violently clashing inside his body.
One force was saying, “Rush out, go find him, and tell him you are still alive.”
Another force was saying, “Don’t move. If you go out in your current state, you will only scare him, or worse, make him your target.”
The second force came from the instinct of Carnage, reminding him.
“You are a predator now; any creature that appears near you may trigger your predatory response, including your brother.”
Haruka dug his nails into his palms; red liquid fluid emerged from his fingertips and then retracted, repeating several times.
In the end, he did not move.
Only after Coal’s aura disappeared did he unclench his tightly gripped fist.
There were several deep nail marks on his palm, oozing blood.
This violent emotional fluctuation, torn between family affection and bestial nature, was transmitted through a mental link to the deep underground of the city.
Knull received this energy, and its main body trembled slightly on the rock wall.
It was more than three times the usual input.