Chapter 666

“The satellite communications signal is weakening!”

“We can’t access the CCTV feeds.”

Fifteen minutes after the cruise ship departed. Before they knew it, the ship had moved beyond the reach of any external communications network. Lia would have to access the systems running internally.

The agents playing the roles of waiters moved throughout the cruise ship without drawing suspicion. They exchanged information through microphones attached to their collars.

-Deck 1, 2C. Area opposite the bow is clear.

-Deck 2, 1A. No access. Crowd gathered on the terrace near the balcony cabins.

-Basement Level 1, 4D. Wine storage....

Everyone in the operations room moved busily, doing whatever they could to provide minimal backup.

“Thanks to the jammer V attached to the pad, we can still pick up the access signals for the interior cabins!”

“Good.”

“We should be able to crack the cabin passwords as well.”

Aside from the staff rooms, which could only be entered with employee cards, they would be able to control everything.

There was hope.

V continued deeper and deeper into the cruise ship through doors opened for him from the operations room.

His face looked different from when he was constantly surrounded by people.

-Long live our country our country is the best

?This country really knows how to turn women into insane patriots

-TT_TT ahhh I love this so much

-Fuck my heart is pounding like crazy

As Lia and Taeo moved along while listening to the radio, a middle-aged woman spoke to them.

“Oh my, what a beautiful necklace!”

The woman wore a warm smile and seemed extremely excited. She must have loved jewelry, because every one of her fingers was adorned with rings.

Lia nodded and smiled.

“Thank you.”

“A handsome husband and a beautiful necklace. You have everything a woman could possibly need to shine!”

“Haha... yes....”

Lia smiled as she tightened her grip on Taeo’s arm.

“Was the necklace a gift from your husband?”

“Yes. For our wedding anniversary.”

“My husband used to buy me jewelry for every anniversary too. All these rings were gifts from him. I wish he could have come with me.”

The woman chuckled and stared at Lia’s necklace as though she truly envied it. Taeo wrapped an arm around Lia’s shoulders and gave the woman a slight bow.

Then they walked past her.

It did not take long before Lia noticed something.

Staring intently at a door handle and its nameplate, Lia said,

“This is different from the blueprints.”

It was thanks to her instantaneous memory, considered exceptional even within Interpol. The blueprint seemed to overlay itself atop the system room Lia was looking at.

Something did not match.

“Haze. Tell me your current location.”

-Basement Level 3. 2-C.

As Haze’s voice came through, the ship’s blueprint shifted. It was as though Lia’s thoughts themselves were being displayed.

Haze happened to be in the same position as Lia, only one floor below.

They were currently on Basement Level 2.

“Put your ear against the corridor wall beneath the bridge. And check the suction pressure of the vents around you.”

-It feels a little strong. But the ventilation fans around the galley normally run at a different intensity.

“Of course they do. But why would the floor above it need to meet the same ventilation standards as a galley? This is a storage area.”

Certainty flashed in Lia’s eyes.

Taeo reached a hand toward the vent. A powerful current of air blew against it.

The most important thing on a cruise ship was its ventilation system.

They had cleverly made use of it.

At last, they had found the control room.

-Ahhhhhhh finally TT_TT

-Holy shit I would’ve just walked right past it

-Ah please let’s hurry up and get out T_T

Taeo pressed the employee card he had skillfully stolen earlier against the door.

Clunk.

The door opened.

At last, the operation began in earnest.

* * *

-V. Can you hear me?

“Wow, the speakers here are really good. The music sounds incredibly clear.”

-So you can hear me. Okay. We’re inside the control room. I’ll start manipulating the CCTV feeds soon.

V answered Lia while pretending to casually converse with the people passing by.

His steps grew lighter, a smile on his face as if he had never doubted that Lia would succeed.

-I’ll send over the CCTV manipulation code along with the previous footage at the same time, so please have the operations room check it.

At Lia’s instructions, the White agents moved diligently.

They managed to access even the internal network, whose password changed every ten minutes, and everything proceeded exactly according to plan.

Once the footage was manipulated, the agents were free to move.

They infiltrated even highly dangerous areas, yet no one suspected a thing. The cruise ship employees in the monitoring room and the armed guards alike were helplessly played in the palms of the ICC and Interpol.

-V, I found where they hid the goods!

Lia quickly located it.

She relayed the location of the drugs hidden deep within the cruise ship and even ordered them to proceed with the additional operation that had originally been Plan B.

-I’m also going to disable the wiretap-detection system, so Raven and Viper, stop putting bugs on the carts and focus on planting them inside the suite cabins.

“This is Viper. Deck 3 cabins, near the bow....”

Pretending to clean the interior of a suite cabin, Viper attached a bug, closed the door behind him, and headed down the stairs.

Then, far away.

Footsteps overlapped from the end of the corridor.

Click. Click. Click.

The sharp crack of high heels mixed with the sound of dress shoes.

-Shit

-I knew she was suspicious

-Fuck

-Nothing’s going wrong already, right TT_TT

The woman who had complimented Lia’s necklace earlier entered the very suite cabin Viper had just left.

She was accompanied by armed guards.

Beep, beep, beep....

The operations room had split into two groups: agents reviewing old CCTV footage on the large screens, and agents manipulating the live feed for the field operatives.

Sound was already coming through in real time from the bug Viper had planted, but no one was paying attention to it yet.

-No listening devices.

But the moment they heard the voice on the other end, the agents froze.

An ordinary cruise passenger would have no reason to check for bugs before beginning a conversation.

“Which room number is that? Check it.”

The ICC operations officer reacted immediately.

Audio was streaming through the bug.

“Those USCG bastards are such a nuisance. So damn picky....”

The woman who had been smiling so pleasantly earlier now grumbled with a thick cigar between her lips.

One of the armed guards beside her lit it for her.

“It wasn’t part of the schedule, but after we dock in Malta, we’re going to ‘that place.’ He contacted us.”

“You mean Paradise.”

“Yes. Eden.”

V slipped underground through the ceiling.

His position was shared with the operations room in real time.

-That’s it. Stop there.

V peered down through a gap.

-How many people are there? Viper and Raven can come as backup—

V raised his index finger to his ear and tapped leisurely.

-. ---

Morse code.

“What did V say?”

“He’s saying NO.”

The two men guarding the place where the goods were hidden had no idea an Interpol agent was creeping in above them.

They flinched in shock when the ceiling suddenly opened.

But it was already too late.

V took one of them down with a suppressed pistol, then threw the man’s body at the other and swiftly struck him in the head, knocking him unconscious.

Crackle.

V calmly pulled the radio from the fallen man’s clothes, wiped the blood from his face, and caught his breath.

-Hey, what was that noise up front?

“Nothing. My hand slipped because it was sweaty.”

-Get your act together.

“Got it.”

After taking the access card and radio, V pressed the card against the door.

The area was secured with a double lock.

The moment the door opened, a bullet came flying at him.

-Long live our country long live our country long live our country

-Ahhh this is so fucking good TT_TT

-I seriously love this so much... I love it so much I wanna die...

-Can we just put Ma Eungyo and Ja Sokhwan in a modern great-figures biography already?

Everything was going smoothly.

“But you know, a rat seems to have slipped aboard. You should’ve done your job properly. Tsk....”

“Excuse me? What do you mean...?”

“Uninvited vermin. Some Asian bitch and a man got on board.”

The agents in the operations room did not even have time to celebrate V’s success before they fell silent.

“No one on this ship would wear such a cheap imitation necklace.”

“....”

“I don’t even need to see more. Filthy unbelievers.”

The woman’s gaze changed.

“They’ve got nerve, but now they’re nothing more than rats caught in a trap.”

She lazily exhaled cigar smoke through her teeth and smiled.

“Bring them to me.”

The ICC operations officer’s shout burst from Lia’s radio in the control room.

-Lia, get out of there immediately. Time! Prepare to retreat! We’re changing the plan from this moment on!

-V! Retreat!

Around V, people lay collapsed and bleeding.

After achieving a solo wipeout, his expression changed when he heard the radio.

“What about Lia?”

-We ordered her to retreat too. Move!

“What’s her current location?”

-Don’t even think about going to back her up! We don’t have time!

-Control room! Control room!

Shouts erupted through the radios of the employees in the previously peaceful monitoring room.

-Intruder detected. Check CCTV.

But there was nothing abnormal on the screens.

Everyone looked around in confusion, their hands moving frantically.

Still nothing changed.

“...This is the control room.”

Only then did they realize how serious the situation was.

“It appears there’s an error in the internal communications network.”

-Goddammit!

Armed guards sprinted off somewhere.

“Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: six hundred and sixty-six....”

Smoking her cigar, the woman gazed at the statue of Christ in the room, a smile blooming across her lips.

She looked upon the crucified figure with reverence.

Unlike Lia, who was shaken by what she heard over the radio, Taeo remained calm.

He reported into his microphone.

“Basement Level 2, 2-C. Lia beginning retreat. Requesting backup.”

Then he grabbed Lia by the arm and headed for the door.

Lia’s face had gone deathly pale, and she could not say a word as Taeo pulled her along.

All she could see was his back.

Nothing else.

He positioned Lia a short distance away from the door, as though telling her to stay there, then drew a gun from inside his clothes.

The instant Lia saw the gun, her fingertips trembled.

Even through the long satin gloves, the anxiety in her hands was obvious.

Lia clenched her skirt tightly and stared at Taeo’s profile.

-How can they show his right side here TT__TT

-This is seriously the final collapse. Just. People are going insane

-Ah please don’t do this

A man who seemed as though nothing could ever shake him.

The right side of Taeo’s face, the side that must have endured alone on that freezing rooftop, vaguely resembled him from that night when he had wrapped a scarf around her.

It was as though he were telling her.

That although he seemed to live after stripping away every emotion, it was not true.

That he still had some humanity left inside him.

Click.

The sound of the gun being loaded was unusually frightening.

“The control room! Something happened in the control room!”

The guards rushed toward it in a swarm.

“They absolutely cannot break through. Absolutely!”

The ICC operations officer shouted, palms slick with sweat.

The unaltered CCTV feed could only be viewed from their side.

The identities of the other agents had not yet been exposed.

They were still in a good position to escape.

The one in the greatest danger was Lia.

She was the target whose face the woman had recognized.

Bang!

The control room door burst open.

Armed guards poured inside, but the room was completely empty.

“What the hell?”

They searched every corner as though hunting rats, but there was no sign of Lia or Taeo.

The camera inside the control room tilted upward.

A gap had been opened in a ventilation shaft in the corner of the ceiling.

The two of them were moving through the secret route inside the cruise ship that Lia had discovered earlier.

When the trembling Lia began falling behind and could no longer keep up properly, Taeo spoke without looking back.

“Faster.”

A concise order.

Lia panted for breath and followed him.

Taeo checked his wristwatch.

“Three minutes.”

-The manipulation is still working. Viper and Raven successfully escaped.

Soon, controlling the ship’s internal computer network would become impossible.

With Lia no longer in the control room, they had no way of learning the constantly changing passwords.

As Taeo moved ahead, he periodically checked the area near the ceiling.

For some unknown reason, he ran his hand along the walls, feeling and brushing over them.

“Um....”

“Shh.”

Taeo raised an index finger to his lips.

The sound of the guards’ shoes could be heard fairly close by.

He checked his watch.

“The shortest change interval was five minutes?”

“Five minutes and forty-two seconds....”

There was almost no time left.

Taeo opened a vent cover and lifted Lia up into it.

The strong arms supporting her body did not shake in the slightest.

“Straight ahead.”

Following Taeo’s instructions, Lia crawled forward.

How long had she gone straight like that?

Taeo opened another vent cover and lightly jumped down.

“Come down.”

“....”

“Come on. I’ll catch you.”

Fear and anxiety toyed with her brain however they pleased.

She felt as though something had gone wrong with her head.

But Lia had no choice but to trust the man standing on the floor below.

She carefully lowered one foot.

A hot hand immediately seized it.

As if he could not wait any longer, he pulled her down from the ceiling.

The two of them had arrived inside a small supply closet.

Taeo opened a cabinet, then cleared everything inside it up onto the ceiling.

The second hand of the watch fastened around his hurriedly moving wrist continued advancing.

They were running out of time.

“Get inside.”

Taeo pushed Lia into the now-empty cabinet.

Then he turned away.

But a pale hand reached out.

It caught him.

“Don’t go....”

There was almost no time left.

Only one person could hide here.

Taeo needed to leave while they could still manipulate the CCTV footage.

That way, no information revealing that Lia was hiding here would be exposed to them.

“V or Haze will come later....”

“Please don’t go....”

A tearful voice.

Terrified eyes.

Her hand refused to release his collar, clinging to it as though it were her salvation.

For a moment, Taeo saw in Lia’s face a fragment of the days he had longed for.

The days when, if she begged him for something, he would grant her anything she wanted.

That was why.

Taeo had no choice but to indulge Lia’s plea.

“Lia. Current position, Basement Level 2, 7-G.”

-Status?

“Open the door to 7-G2 across from us, and the door directly above it as well. About thirty seconds later, misdirect them toward 6-F2.”

-Okay.

Clunk.

The sound of the door to the room across the corridor opening reached them.

At the same time, a door on the floor above opened as well.

“There!”

Men’s voices rang out from the end of the corridor.

Lia tugged hard on Taeo’s collar.

Almost as though she were pulling him into an embrace.

The cabinet was cramped even for one person.

With both of them inside, there was barely enough room to stand upright.

Taeo placed both hands around Lia’s waist and lifted her, making her stand on top of his feet.

For a moment, the cabinet rattled noisily.