“...What?”

W-who? Even through the thick bandages, his pupils trembled minutely. Wait. Damon... If he said Damon, did he mean that “Damon,” the CIA Deputy Director mentioned in the documents Ju Seolheon left behind?

Pitch-black gooseflesh swept over his whole body. His gall went cold—no, all his innards froze—and rage surged so hot his vision flushed red. Fuck, fuck...! He’d been away from his post for barely five days.

But in that time the mansion had opened a gap, and this was the result. Why, and how.

With that question in mind, he rammed the muzzle into the other ear canal this time. Yu Dawit, who had been hiccuping and choking, went vacant and muttered:

“Sonia belongs to America. Retrieve her.”

“......!” 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Teeth clenched, Wooshin slapped him across the face with a palm like a block of iron. He hit again, and again. Skin split; the sticky smear of blood on his palm was vivid.

The more he struck, the more Ju Seolheon’s face surfaced—white as a sheet, defending herself desperately, hypersensitive to the point of pathology. That dead superior’s face.

And he was certain he wore that face now. His hands shook.

“Sonia... belongs to America...”

A fear that stabbed at his ribs—he hadn’t felt anything like it since the moment his parents died before his eyes. Was he going to lose someone again to some far-off power before he could even lift a hand?

“Team Leader... Outside, there are hundreds like me.”

No. No. He had survived all this shit for one reason—to keep it from repeating.

He had clawed his way forward to protect someone the next time. So that nothing would ever be taken again.

He snapped his crumbling mind back into place and ripped away one side of his bandage. His ex-teammate’s face, ear shredded to shapeless meat and drenched in blood, came into view at a glance.

“Deputy Director Damon saved people of color who were on the verge of dying in accidents and gifted them new lives. From then on, I decided to follow his voice—”

“Don’t delude yourself. The ones who died because the surgery went wrong must already number in the thousands.”

Wooshin’s retort was icy.

“You were just lucky, that’s all.”

Anyone could see it had been all-or-nothing surgery. He had a very good guess why that Damon bastard targeted only people of color, and the blind devotion of Yu Dawit—who’d pledged fealty to the first voice he’d ever heard—stoked a murderous urge he couldn’t name.

In ten years as an NIS operative he had never been one for lofty mission talk, but for this one cutout, selfish fury surged—he would smash him.

He couldn’t ruin both ears if he meant to interrogate. Jaw tight, he buried another round in Yu Dawit’s thigh.

“Why did you join Blast Corporation?”

“Ghh—!”

Tendons stood in the man’s neck as he thrashed, but Wooshin’s face stayed blank. Then he rammed his fingers deep into the bleeding thigh and tore cruelly. The sclera of Yu Dawit’s eyes burst with threads as he scraped the floor, screaming.

He hovered his hand around the ragged ruin of his own ear, unable to even touch it, and his twisted face filled with despair.

“CEO Kang Taegon... There was intel he had Russian lobbyists... I joined on that lead...!”

“Since when. Since exactly when did you target Han Seoryeong.”

“T-that... only—gh—! recently. After Deputy Director Damon passed away... I r-received a document. Kh...! It was a photo.”

He chewed a curse in his mouth. He hadn’t been as deeply involved with Owl, but the parallels to his own case were striking.

But, as he understood it, Deputy Director Ju Seolheon had buried Sonia by fabricating an entirely new Korean name, face, and all other growth data. It had been the only measure she could take.

If so, Damon should never have been able to know Han Seoryeong’s real face. Then how had Yu Dawit recognized Sonia? Strength bled into his grip without him noticing.

“Sonia... I’d heard that name in Sakhalin... ngh...! I asked upstairs to have the child photo Deputy Director Damon gave me... huhh... reconstructed by artificial intelligence. The adult face it produced... looked far too much like Operative Han Seoryeong...”

A trivial thing, nothing at all—and yet the decisive name had reached ears that never should have heard it.

Ju Seolheon had always warned that a dam fails through an ant hole; only now did he see she hadn’t been wrong.

He should have left Yu Dawit to die in that minefield then. A stab of regret pierced his gut and he ground his molars.

“The moment I got out of detention... I attended Deputy Director Damon’s funeral... and then tracked Operative Han Seoryeong. But her trail cut off in Azerbaijan, so I had no choice but to chase you, Team Leader. If it was the two of you... I was sure you’d meet somehow—ghk!”

Staggering, Wooshin still fired another round into the same spot. “Aaaah—!” Yu Dawit’s cold sweat poured like rain as his whole body convulsed.

You watched me to find Sonia...

Yu Dawit had no doubt witnessed every dogged act and stare Wooshin had turned toward her, and he had seen through the feeling behind them.

So the reason Seoryeong’s location was blown... was it his own feelings, spilled everywhere?

The guilt that he’d exposed her with his own hands clawed his inner organs without mercy.

“...Either way, my role ends... here.”

Out there, there are men just like me... Sonia will be taken by America... Thunk. Roll.

It happened in a blink: Yu Dawit pulled something from his pocket and yanked the pin with his front teeth.

Wooshin shouted. Wham—! The leather sofa blew to tatters, and the sitting room shuddered.

The pin had dropped from a grenade.

***

Deep in a heavy sleep, Seoryeong suddenly turned over. She buried her face into the pillow, breathing in Wooshin’s body scent rising from the warm bedding.

Air soft as from a humidifier brushed the tip of her nose—cool and pleasant—and the corners of her mouth lifted.

Wham—!

That was when her eyes snapped open.

“Haa—...!”

What was that sound? Even as gooseflesh rose down her spine, the explosion felt far away, like something in a dream.

She forced her rock-heavy lids to blink, blink, and lift.

“What... is it?”

The ceiling fan trembled, just perceptibly. Not a trick of the eye.

She tried to lever up her leaden body somehow, but blackness kept washing over her.

And the whole room was fog-white, as if swaddled in mist. Instinctively clamping a hand over her nose, she forced herself to roll off the bed. Looking up at the vent, she saw white smoke seeping out.

How long had it been? Her head sank like waterlogged cotton; no matter how she thought about it, it had to be a sleeping gas.

She gritted through it and crawled doggedly toward the window to open it. Her body had turned to mush with no strength at all, and drowsiness kept taking her. Even so, she bit her tongue hard, somehow got one knee under her, and stretched an arm, stubborn.

I’ll come. I’ll come to you. The disjointed whisper circled her lips.

The shut door blew inward and agents in gas masks flooded in, rifles tucked along their ribs. Faced with the insect-like goggle-eyes of the masks, Seoryeong accepted, coldly, that she had no real odds.

In that case, she would...

The hesitation was brief. With the last of her strength, she hauled the bandage that still held Wooshin’s scent.

Her cheek was ground into the floor. The agents traded hand signals and bound her hands and feet. They smashed the window, clipped a rope to her waist, and hoisted her like cargo.

“Engage!”

Then soldiers in brown uniforms stormed the torn doorway and leveled their guns. Her heart dropped, yet strangely she was not afraid.

No matter what it takes, he finds her. Lee Wooshin would never be the one to give up on her first.

“Woo... shin...”

I was the fool...

She had mistaken faith for something that falls from the sky like a perfect gift, like recompense. So she had believed she would never again trust him completely.

But no... it wasn’t that...

Her pupils rolled back under her lids.

He’d swatted the grenade at the instant before detonation, and the skin of his hand backs, forearms, and shoulders had been flayed in ribbons.

He’d been out for about a minute. In that time, Yu Dawit had vanished, and only the Gurkha mercenaries were shaking him awake. Seeing their faces, Wooshin drew a long breath and wordlessly pawed the floor.

At some point his in-ear had been flung who knows where; groaning, he dribbled a long string of blood-tinged spit as he searched.

He jammed the little marble-sized transceiver into his ear with a shaking hand, and when he spoke his voice came out embarrassingly unsteady. Hot fire seemed to sweep over his eyes.

“Owl’s been taken. Track her location now.”

—...Team Leader...! Are you all right? We lost the line for a moment...!

“I’ll give you the code. The tracker’s inside her body.”

—Sir? H-how...

In those five days of lust-madness, he had inserted a biometric tracker into her vaginal canal.

Even with their legs tangled and skin stuck together till they were slick, his anxiety hadn’t lifted. He clenched a fist until ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) the bone showed white.

The capsule would pass naturally after seventy-two hours. There wasn’t much time left.

He shoved off every hand that tried to steady him, squeezed one eye shut, and took the stairs two at a time.

A shattered door and an empty bedroom. The white duvet she’d been under was fouled into ruin by black combat boots. A fallen pillow and a flipped slipper. And several Gurkha corpses with round holes in their foreheads. Blood was everywhere, but there was no telling if any of it was Seoryeong’s.

With a piercing beeeep tinnitus scraping like a nail, he wiped away the dripping beads of blood.

Seeing the smoke sputtering from the vent, he stuck out his blood-splotched tongue.

“...Halothane anesthetic gas.”

A riptide of despair washed over him. He panted raggedly and stared into the broken mirror. The vacant face was corpse-pale; the unfocused eyes barely looked human. He pulled the trigger and shattered the mirror.

Snarling, he unwound the remaining bandages completely. One corner of his vision was still black as if clogged with grit, but this was no time to play it safe.

He rolled a dead Gurkha’s torso, stripped the remaining magazine and gun.

“This is why I can’t entrust Sonia to some pampered brat.”

At that moment, beyond the web-cracked mirror, a black cassock slid into view. Black eyes, blazing, fixed on him.

“Lead the way, young master.”