WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 375: Each One's Homeland (9)

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Near-identical houses blurred past the whole time he ran. Washington, D.C. was an expensive city, and in a neighborhood where people with relatively low incomes clustered together, each home was pressed tight against the next, with barely any gaps between them, as if they were all part of one continuous building. Only the occasional fenced-off alley broke the line. A sunken, neglected stretch of road caught his eye. Washington, D.C. was a city with a severe divide between rich and poor.

‘Which makes it easy to play tricks.’

Videos of white police officers shooting Black people who were not resisting. Photos of pale-skinned soldiers roughly driving back dark-skinned citizens. Hundreds of files like that were spreading rapidly online, all claiming to show events happening right now. The Black Lives Matter tag came along with them.

Gyeoul was certain most of them were fake. In a country like America, such things were plausible enough, but for all of them to happen at once in the span of a few dozen minutes was clearly strange.

There was also a good chance agitators were mixed in among the rioters. Some had probably been bought off, blinded by money, without even knowing what they were helping. They would think the risk was low. Even if they were arrested, they would only be punished for violence and looting.

In reality, conspiracy to commit treason would be added too, but there were plenty of people the traitors could deceive. People with little education, criminal records, or victim complexes soaked down to the bone.

The traitors’ plan was tearing into America’s weaknesses with brutal precision. In a sense, it was digging into this country’s original sin.

Was this what happened when Americans attacked America?

Gyeoul cut off his thoughts and braked against inertia. Skreeee. His combat boots slid over the asphalt. The destination that came into view looked like an ordinary family home from the outside. Apart from its old exterior, nothing stood out. His senses gave him no warning, but that silence itself bothered him.

There was no way they had just left it alone.

He thought there had to be an ambush around the jammer. From the traitors’ perspective, the longer they maintained the radio interference, the more they gained. At the very least, it would make sense to station one or two snipers nearby.

That was also why the government had asked citizens not to touch suspicious equipment even if they found it. If citizens cooperated on their own, the jammers could be removed quickly, but it would be hard to rule out the possibility of simultaneous large-scale disasters.

Gyeoul advanced carefully. At a glance, he looked like he was moving without a plan, but he trusted his own reaction speed and was using himself as bait. The death of Lieutenant Colonel Han Gyeoul. How tempting would that be to the traitors? It would not be easy to ignore.

The attack he expected never came.

Even with that sense that something was off, Gyeoul still had to confirm the source of the radio signal.

Of course, he had no intention of wasting time entering a house where any number of traps might be waiting. Thunk! After a short running start, he kicked off a drainpipe and climbed, grabbing a second-floor window frame in one breath. From there, he pulled himself up by arm strength, crouched, jumped up another floor, and finally caught the edge of the roof and climbed onto it. Conscious of snipers, he immediately lowered his body.

When he briefly raised the volume on his radio in that position, he picked up interference of tremendous strength.

It was right nearby. The point the intelligence agents had identified.

Before long, Gyeoul found the camouflaged jammer.

‘Really? This easily?’

It was so easy it left him confused. He checked for any connected traps, but there were no explosives, toxin capsules, or anything of the sort. The jammer simply sat there by itself.

If he tried to think positively, maybe the traitors had not finished preparing either. When the toxin production facility was exposed before D-Day, perhaps they had been forced to launch the attack before they were ready. Or the collaborator assigned to this place might have gotten scared at the last minute and run away.

But no matter how much he thought it over, that did not seem right.

Was it only a bad feeling?

He kept turning it over in his mind, but one fact was clear. The paralyzed wireless communications had to be restored as soon as possible. Just normalizing communications would put the traitors in a fairly difficult position. Most important of all, it would allow them to receive air support.

Since forensic examination would be needed later, Gyeoul did not shoot it. Instead, he found the jammer’s power line and ripped it out. The radio network, which had been flooding meaninglessly with tangled voices from the past, went quiet in an instant. Then.

Kwah-bang! Rumble!

A powerful vibration passed beneath his feet. A blast of wind rushed over him. Startled, Gyeoul looked toward the direction of the wind. About seventy meters east, a black explosion and red flames were swallowing an entire residential block. Debris caught in the blast pressure shot dozens of meters into the air. Surely it included the flesh and bone fragments of residents who had been hiding there.

A dark shiver ran down Gyeoul’s spine. Now he understood. The enemy had not left the jammer unattended.

Sensory correction remained silent. It had not been a direct threat to Gyeoul.

‘Vile... Truly vile.’

He had to report it right away. Gyeoul opened the radio channel connected to the White Cell authenticator.

“This is Lieutenant Colonel Han Gyeoul! All agents within receiving range, be advised! There are bombs in the residential district! They explode when the jamming disappears! I repeat! There are bombs in the residential district!”

He warned them, but the agents receiving it would have no easy answer either.

The situation was in no shape for a citywide bomb search. Communications were a mess, roads were blocked, and trustworthy personnel were desperately scarce. Even under normal circumstances, searching for an unknown number of bombs would take days and nights without sleep.

Evacuating the citizens was no simple matter either. The range was too broad. Since they had no idea where the bombs were or how many there were, they would effectively have to evacuate the entire city population on foot. And many poor citizens did not have gas masks, because the plague was not transmitted through the air.

What if toxins were used against those exact people? Citizens swallowed by madness would become the worst possible enemy. They could neither kill them nor spare them.

A thunderous explosion rang out from far to the northwest. It seemed another team that had not yet received this information had triggered another bomb. It was a malicious trap, designed to make them sacrifice civilians without knowing it.

All they could do was hope the frightened civilians would not pour out into the streets.

The bone-conduction receiver rang.

「Are you injured?」

It was Corporal Sanchez.

“I’m fine, but the civilians...”

「You can think about that later.」

The corporal remained firm. That must have been what earned such high marks.

「We are entering now. Are there any signs or traces of the enemy?」

“I’ll have to look for traces. Whew. Come in carefully. I haven’t checked the interior.”

「Hua.」

Thud. He faintly heard the sound of a door being kicked in from the floor below. Gyeoul looked around the rooftop, searching for traces of the traitors. The traces emphasized by 「Tracking」 were quite faint. It seemed at least a week had passed since this device was installed. Gyeoul was only taking one last look without much expectation. If there had been anything, he would have found it before disabling the jammer.

Sanchez sent another message.

「Sir. You need to come down here. Second floor.」

Gyeoul hurried down the stairs. The four agents, including Sanchez, had gathered in front of an open door in the second-floor hallway. One of the agents who greeted Gyeoul with a nod pointed into the room.

“Look at that.”

Old furniture covered with dusty plastic. In the middle of it were two objects that did not belong. One was a TV, and the other was an IP camcorder mounted on a stand. Those two and the rest of the furniture felt as though they belonged to different points in time. Both were turned off.

Gyeoul entered the room and brushed a finger over the camcorder. The layer of dust was clearly thinner than on the other furniture. He had heard that there had once been assassination tools disguised as cameras, but he could not find anything unusual about the camcorder itself. Gyeoul studied the wiring of the camcorder and TV. They were connected to the network.

“It feels like it’s telling us to turn it on. It doesn’t seem to be a bomb either... If we activate it, can we trace where the signal goes?”

“I’ll put in the request.”

An agent named Cochrane stepped forward. After rustling through the gear, Cochrane took out a military-spec rugged laptop. The agent was not tracing it personally, but connecting them to the department in charge.

After receiving the okay sign from Cochrane, Gyeoul turned on the TV and the camcorder. The camcorder battery had discharged a little because it had been left there for so long, but it looked as though it would last an hour or two for now without trouble.

An anxiously long stretch of time passed before any response appeared on the TV screen, which had been pitch black except for intermittent noise. The screen flickered a few times, then came the sound of a chair being pulled back, and at last, a person appeared. It was an old woman wearing a white shirt and a sky-blue cardigan. Her white hair and kind eyes did not suit this situation at all.

「Oh.」

She smiled gently.

「I was hoping for this, but to think the person who would listen to me would really be Lieutenant Colonel Han Gyeoul. I am truly glad to meet you. My son told me so very much about you... I am a lucky person.」

“Who are you?”

The old woman’s smile deepened softly.

「My name is Clarissa Chadwick.」

Gyeoul narrowed his eyes, half confused and half hostile.

“By any chance, are you Team Leader Nathan Chadwick’s...?”

「That’s right. I am that child’s mother.」

“...”

「Hehe. I can see how flustered you are. How amusing.」

There was no sign of hostility or hatred in the old woman as she covered her mouth and chuckled. She looked like someone who would be perfectly at home sitting in an armchair, knitting in the sunlight by a window. Outside the camcorder’s view, Agent Cochrane typed on the keyboard as quietly as possible.

“Mrs. Chadwick. Are you also a member of the True Patriots?”

When he asked, the old woman shyly scratched her cheek.

「Until recently, I was.」

“What does that mean?”

「Exactly what it says. I am not one now. I simply could not stand watching those people do such pathetic things, desperately clinging only to survival. Ah, of course, even at this moment, they believe I am still on their side.」

She was admitting to a one-sided betrayal. His head felt tangled like a ball of yarn. What should he question first? Looking at the innocent smile of the old woman on the screen, Gyeoul forced himself to continue.

“Did you plan this terrorist attack?”

「Well. My colleagues and I did give a little help to some foolish young people. Intelligence officers still have a hidden card or two even when they get old... It had been so long since I last worked with my colleagues that it brought back old memories, and it was quite enjoyable.」

Judging by what she said, Clarissa Chadwick seemed to have worked in an intelligence agency like her son.

“Is this revenge for Team Leader Chadwick?”

「Goodness, no! What happened to that child was regrettable, but I never thought of revenge. My homeland has always come first for me. I taught Nathan the same. An intelligence officer must be prepared to be abandoned by their homeland at any time. Only by throwing away even their final desire for honor, and being ready to be condemned after death, can one become a true patriot. That kind of devotion, throwing away everything of oneself, is possible only for someone special like you.」

A calm madness radiated from her. It seemed Chadwick had inherited his madness from his mother.

“Your homeland comes first? Then why on earth did you take part in this?”

「First... I wanted to deliver a message.」

“A message?”

「Yes.」

Mrs. Chadwick nodded kindly.

「The message that there are times when the few must be sacrificed for the many.」

“...”

「You already know about the bombs linked to the jammers, yes?」

The old woman smiled.

「That was my idea.」

The madness grew thicker.

「The damage will expand sharply the longer time drags on. That was the picture I drew.」

She placed a hand on her chest in a gesture full of sincerity.

「We must always save everyone... This is meant to teach reality to the naive, selfish people steeped in such soft fantasies. After this incident is over, those who lost someone precious will resent the government’s indecision. If only the government had made a decision a little faster, my family, my friend, my colleague might not have died. That is what they will think.」

Ha. The more he listened, the more insane it sounded, and Gyeoul unconsciously let out a sigh. He did not even feel like arguing. But the trace was still ongoing. An argument would not be wise. Gyeoul chose a new question.

“Let’s say that’s true. Do you have any other reason?”

When giving the first reason, the old woman had prefaced it with “first.”

「Ah, of course I do. In truth, this one is more important.」

Mrs. Chadwick clapped her hands together and continued happily.

「Cutting out America’s diseased parts.」

“America’s diseased parts...”

「For example, look at the fanatics of the South.」

“...”

「Those tiresome troublemakers who are ignorant, full of grievances, and constantly create discord, yet lack the ability to cause a truly major accident. They are no different from cancer cells eating away at this country’s life. Cancer cells that can vote. Wouldn’t you agree?」

Her tone as she asked for Gyeoul’s agreement was terribly gentle.

「But softhearted President MacMillan has delayed strong treatment because those cancer cells have citizenship. In other words, it is the same as enduring a disease that needs surgery with only temporary symptomatic treatment. You must know how hard the many intelligence agencies have worked to deal with countless swindlers.」

“So you grew those cancer cells.”

The old woman’s cheeks flushed.

「That’s right. When the True Patriots collapsed, I saw some young friends entrust themselves to that side, and that was when the idea came to me. Aha, I can use this. I can make martial law take effect and force the federal government to declare these troublemakers enemies of America...」

If this was true, she had succeeded. She had made the American government mobilize the military against American citizens. Martial law would become a watershed. Before and after could never be the same.

Though he still could not let go of his doubts entirely.

“Have you never thought this was excessive?”

「Wouldn’t the surgery be bolder if the shock were greater?」

“The patient might die that way.”

The old woman slowly shook her head with a warm smile.

「I know my homeland. America is not a country that will collapse from this much.」

On what basis? Gyeoul suspected this might be hatred hidden behind cognitive dissonance. A gap born because she could not rationally admit to the part of herself raging over her son’s death. But it was only a guess, and he no longer knew what to say. Just then, the sign that the trace was complete came through.

As if she could see the camcorder’s blind spot, Mrs. Chadwick spoke.

「I have work to do as well, so regrettably, I should end our conversation here. By now, the trace should be complete too. Isn’t that right?」

With a nuance that suggested she had waited on purpose, she waved.

「Then, I will be going. I will be waiting, Lieutenant Colonel Han Gyeoul.」

The connection cut off.

Corporal Sanchez said,

“She’s completely insane.”

The tone was dumbfounded. Instead of agreeing, Gyeoul checked the trace result with Agent Cochrane.

“Where is it?”

“It comes up as the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.”

“Convention center?”

Cochrane nodded with a stiff expression.

“It’s the venue for the Association of the United States Army’s Quarantine War Expo.”

Footnotes:

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