They heard the screaming before they reached the school.
It came through the trees as Jin and Echo were halfway back through the forest, high and ragged and full of terror, cutting through the quiet night like a knife. Jin's head snapped up. Echo stopped dead, one hand going to his ear.
"Inside," Echo said. "Deep. Under the building."
Jin was already running.
He thought about Yerin. Alone in some dark room at the bottom of the school with a stranger from a church that had tried to burn them. He thought about how little they actually knew about Lee Dong-hwan. How easy it would be to cry and beg and bow in the road, then turn on the one person who'd been left alone with you.
He came out of the trees, across the courtyard, and through the main doors at a dead sprint. Down the hall. Down the stairs. Down the second set of stairs, the narrow concrete ones that led into the old boiler room at the very bottom of the school, where it was always cold and nobody ever went.
