WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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Chapter 379: Each One's Homeland (13)

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The interrogation was brutal. He had that much reason to hurry. His only tool was a lighter the Rangers had given him. Gyeoul forced himself to summon as much coldness as he needed. The prisoners were terrified by the calm with which he burned their eyeballs the moment they refused to answer. No amount of struggling could break free of the grotesque grip clamped around the backs of their heads. The first traitor to be questioned had already had one eye cooked, and the instant sparks flew from the flint before his remaining pupil, he began foaming at the mouth like a madman.

"I'll talk! I'll tell you everything!"

The sobbing man's crotch darkened with wetness.

Even after that surrender, Gyeoul used measured violence throughout the interrogation. He could not give them time to invent lies. The enemy's numbers and current condition, the outline of the hostages and officers. Bad information on any of it could prove fatal.

Their testimony might become a problem later. Right now, though, this was no time to consider the illegality of torture. Gyeoul had limits.

The allied troops said to have been isolated had all been captured in the end. If there had not been Medal of Honor recipients among them, they would have been massacred. In other words, Mrs. Chadwick had given a firm order: noble war heroes were not to be sacrificed carelessly.

He also confirmed where they were being held. It was time to end the interrogation.

"Don't even dream of escaping."

With that savage warning, Gyeoul wasted about eight seconds using 「First Aid」 on the bound traitors. Even if the treatment amounted to little more than tearing strips from their clothes and tying them tight, they might survive to the end if they were lucky. This was the best he could do. The traitor prisoners were thrown into a corner storage room like cargo.

Gyeoul ran down the hallway. Enemy reinforcements had arrived at the earlier firefight site. The radio going dead must have unnerved them. Hearing his footsteps, they split left and right and took cover. It was the sensible choice, and the wrong one. To kill Gyeoul, whose shooting and senses had reached the middle tier of the superhuman realm, they needed to accept losses and pour all their firepower on him at once, overwhelming his ability to respond.

Gyeoul slowed and advanced quickly, keeping his rifle shouldered.

Pak!

Blood sprayed.

"Ah! My hand!"

The fingers of a traitor who had tried to stick out only his gun and spray fire were severed before they could even pull the trigger. One shot. Gyeoul's aimed fire. The fallen index finger had only two joints left. The bullet had chewed through the longest joint from the outside, then burrowed into the glove and tore a long gash across the back of the hand.

Breathing was a weapon. It was momentum crashing over them. Before they could decide on their next move, Gyeoul had already reached the corner and rolled two grenades with their pins still in. Ting, ting, ti-ting.

"Shit!"

As the traitors shouted, Gyeoul slipped between them. He planted a rifle round in the face, in the dilated pupils, of the man trying to grab a grenade and throw it back, poured the remaining rounds into the right side, and the instant the rifle's hammer struck an empty chamber, drew his pistol and swept the left side. Two seconds. Tatatatang! The enemy's desperate fire rang out, scraping across the walls and ceiling. He had expected ricochets. The white shower of ceiling texture was outside Gyeoul's calculations. The sensory correction warning came late. It got in his eyes.

"Ugh!"

He squeezed both eyes shut, and bootsteps came up from the stairs. He could hear hostility in the curses. With only his senses besides sight to guide him, he fired his pistol wildly. Click! Right after he heard an unlucky traitor scream, even the pistol's chamber ran empty. Gyeoul threw himself toward cover based on his last glimpse. Relief followed as he struck the wall. He had rolled the right way. With his back against the wall, Gyeoul hurriedly reloaded his rifle. The fresh magazine did not go in on the first try. It was an uncharacteristic mistake, brought on by the tension that spiked when his vision vanished. Ever since the afterlife had changed, fear had always been underfoot. He only kept it suppressed by force of will.

Tears streamed from his blinking eyes. While Gyeoul recovered his vision, the enemy only made noise with meaningless suppressive fire and failed to approach. It was probably because of the blood dripping down below the railing. He had killed so many enemies that everywhere he looked, the floor was soaked red.

Of the two grenades he had saved earlier, Gyeoul recovered the one still clutched in death by the enemy he had shot in the face, and this time he pulled the pin. Then he used the corpse's arm to barely hold down the safety lever so it would not spring free. The enemies chasing him would disturb it naturally. Making a trap with a corpse violated the rules of engagement, but none of that mattered now.

After loading his pistol and collecting the remaining grenade, Gyeoul started running toward where the hostages should be. The enemy who heard him must have thought he was running away. For a moment, there was a commotion behind him. Then a bang rang out, and everything went quiet.

Only belatedly did Gyeoul notice his own pulse. Thud-thud-thud-thud. It felt as if his heart were pressed against his eardrums.

The radio taken from a prisoner was noisy. Throughout his breathless run, anger and fear spread over the enemy frequency. The traitors had mistaken the scale of the raid. That was both good and bad. At least for the safety of the hostages, it was bad. If the enemy decided to run, orders or not, what would they do with the hostages who were now nothing but dead weight, with no one left to negotiate with? That was why Gyeoul hurried even more.

At last, he reached the destination. Concentrated danger radiated from the tightly shut door. It was a cluster of firing lines gathered in one place. He had the ability to charge in head-on and force his way through, but it would take time, and in the process a hostage might be hit by a stray round.

Gyeoul found another way inside.

Thud.

"What...!"

Gyeoul dropped from the ventilation duct and fired eight quick shots, almost in full-auto. Only the last person to die managed so much as to meet Gyeoul's eyes. Before he could even finish shouting, "What the!" he slumped down as a corpse with a shattered jaw. The bullet had pierced his lower jaw and blown out the back of his head.

Gyeoul cut the allied survivors' bindings. Once their hands and feet were free, they grabbed the terrorists' weapons and equipment before saying a word. Many of the faces had become familiar over the past month. They were Medal of Honor recipients. One of them asked in a tense voice.

"Did you come alone?"

Gyeoul nodded and gestured.

"This way!"

Many were still empty-handed. Rearming everyone came first.

The equipment from the enemies he had killed on the way was enough to rearm the survivors. Excluding the wounded, they had thirty-two troops. Gyeoul split the team in two. Twenty would block the last remaining side route, and twelve would support Gyeoul's actions. He gave weapons to the wounded and told them only to hide and defend themselves.

"Captain!"

The Army Captain Gyeoul pointed to had a White Cell IFF module attached. It was equipment that had been taken from them, but the traitors did not seem to know what it was.

"Block the eastern entrance by any means necessary!"

"Where are you going?"

"I have to catch the leader! Go!"

The Captain nodded and ran off with the nineteen assigned to him.

Gyeoul ordered the soldiers to search the building in four-man teams. It was a desperate measure to increase their speed. If combat broke out, the soldiers only had to hold out until Gyeoul joined them. Even after interrogating the prisoners, the toxin's location was still unknown. It might not exist at all, but he always had to prepare for the worst.

From the rest of what he had learned, the enemy force attacking D.C. numbered around four thousand. But the force that had attacked these expo grounds was only one reinforced battalion. Since more than half were tied down at the southern front by Colonel Emmert, the enemy could not have much strength to spare in this direction.

By the time they broke through to the top floor, Clarissa Chadwick was still in the exact place the prisoners had described. It seemed she had not even tried to flee. In a room crowded with monitors, the old woman sat alone with the same grace she had shown when he first saw her, waiting for Gyeoul.

"Welcome. I was waiting for you."

"..."

Gyeoul glared at the object in her hand. A key was inserted into the side, and it was a pressure-type Clacker that would activate the moment it was released. A deadman switch. A mechanical insurance device built to respond to its user's death.

"Are you planning to blow yourself up?"

"Oh, of course not. I could never kill you, of all people, after you came this far. This is..."

The old woman looked down at what she held and smiled weakly.

"This is the switch that detonates every bomb planted in the city."

The soldiers accompanying him frowned. Captured in the early stage of the incident, they had not yet received detailed information about the jammer or the bombs in the residential districts. But even now, the context alone was enough for them to understand the old woman's threat.

Careful not to make it obvious, Gyeoul examined the area around the old woman. The trigger itself seemed wireless. But considering the jamming waves filling the outside, the signal to the bomb sites would have to be transmitted by wire. In other words, it relied on the existing communication network. If he found this room's communication line and shot it apart...

The old woman shook the Clacker.

"Lieutenant Colonel, where are you looking? When you hold a conversation, it is polite to look at the other person, isn't it?"

Her gesture and tone were almost playful. But it was a clear warning. If he showed anything suspicious, she would release the switch at once.

"What do you want?"

"A brief conversation."

The old woman looked around at the soldiers.

"First, I would like you to send the others out."

Gyeoul hesitated, then glanced behind him.

"I don't understand."

Once only the two of them remained in the room, Gyeoul condemned Clarissa Chadwick.

"You said you would send a message, didn't you? What meaning is there in setting off those bombs yourself? The sacrifice of the few for the many. Wasn't your original intent to force that unavoidable choice onto the authorities? If all of that was a lie, then you are nothing but an insane murderer!"

It was acting. Clarissa had become a mad butcher the moment she conspired in treason. But Gyeoul judged that she would never like having her patriotism dismissed as madness.

'I need to buy time.'

The soldiers he had sent out first were not fools. They would report this situation somehow. Or they might find and cut the communication line themselves. It was a hurried, fragile hope.

At the same time, Gyeoul watched for an opening in the old woman.

"Ah, this feeling."

A flush rose on the old woman's face as she murmured.

"I had forgotten this feeling."

"What are you talking about?"

"The thrill of facing someone whose thoughts are filled with killing me, and who has more than enough ability and right to do it. I have not felt it since I retired... It makes me feel young again."

Clarissa's strange words, and the way she gently closed her eyes, threw Gyeoul into conflict. Was it possible? Was that not an opening she was showing him on purpose? Dozens of decisions and dozens of hesitations flickered past in an instant. In the end, Gyeoul could not move before the mad old woman opened her eyes.

"You asked what meaning there was, did you not?"

Clarissa shrugged.

"Half the meaning still remains."

"Half?"

"Yes, half. My intent was not only to teach this country a lesson. Did I not say so? The greater the shock, the bolder the surgery that would follow."

"..."

"The more terrible the damage, the higher the citizens' rage will rise. Those who supported this idiotic rebellion will be branded that much more deeply. And the fools who still have some room for salvation left will change their minds. Ah, even so, this is not right, they will think. It will be the final chance given to them. And those who still refuse to repent will be dealt with by the most rightful public outrage of a people who demand justice."

"Are you saying you insist on massacring the citizens of Washington?"

"No."

Unexpectedly, the old woman shook her head.

"There is meaning. There is, but... I have changed my mind. Watching the most honorable heroes, including you, fight without regard for themselves made me suddenly think I did not want to lose them. Because you must not be broken. Because the war heroes all America relies on are one of the most precious assets this country currently has. Because I confirmed that value again with my own two eyes. So... this much is enough. I will end it here. The results so far should be enough to root out the traitors."

She still did not think of herself as a traitor.

"Then what was everything you just said?"

"An answer to why I prepared such a method. Perhaps you could say I did not want to be mistaken for a hypocrite, at least not by the youngest and most beautiful patriot of my life."

Clarissa looked straight at Gyeoul.

"Yes. I mean you, Lieutenant Colonel Han Gyeoul."

Footnotes:

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