WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 420: Daughter of Russia
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“......Did they move first?”
By “they,” the Russian operative meant the unidentified allied force inside Korea.
This was a problem. They had asked her side for cooperation, then acted on their own. The operative swept back her bangs and let out an irritated sigh.
‘I feel like I’ve been mocked.’
Judging by the traces left behind, the attack had happened just before her side arrived. And after all that, they had vanished while leaving the 「cargo」 they had stressed was so important at the scene. How else was she supposed to interpret it? Perhaps their collaborator in Korea was still angry about the previous failure.
The previous failure. The operative bit her lip. Honestly, that had been beyond their control. The collaborator’s information had been accurate, but the time they were given had been absurdly short. They had done their best to respond to an unprecedented urgent request, but by the time the operative arrived, the cargo for that mission had already become a cooling corpse. The Korean collaborator had expressed regret over it in a brief message. Because it was so brief, the disappointment in it felt even sharper. At least, that was how the operative and that bastard Vladimir read it.
Goddamn Cheon Jong-hun.
That was the name the cargo from that mission had carried. Everything else was unclear. What kind of person Cheon Jong-hun had been, why the suicide had happened, what value the person had.
A separate investigation had not been entirely fruitless. She simply could not believe the results. According to the information visible on the surface, Cheon Jong-hun had not been important in any sense. The family relationships had been absolute garbage as well. The very picture of a bottom-rung life, one might say.
But there was no way the unknown collaborator had requested custody of a nobody. There had to be something the operative did not know. Every piece of information they had found should be treated as fabricated without exception. She had no choice but to assume Cheon Jong-hun had lived with a secret so great that the person’s entire life needed to be disguised.
Truly strict security measures. And they had missed such a major figure. Regardless of her side’s own grievances, the collaborator had reason to be angry. If they had been just a little faster, even if they could not have stopped the death itself, they could at least have extracted and preserved the brain. They had even brought equipment for that purpose, but in the end, it had all been useless.
Regretting it now meant nothing.
Today, she needed to focus on today’s work.
The operative tried to make the foreign language sound gentle.
“You should come out now. We are here to protect you.”
Through enhanced senses, the operative detected the shape of a person crouched on the other side of the accident-damaged vehicle. A three-dimensional visualization of sound using ultrasonic echoes. Judging by the build, it was a young woman. Her overall traits matched the cargo’s information. She was holding a pistol, but she was not dangerous. Her grip alone was clumsy enough to show she had no shooting experience at all. A rookie’s awkward attempt at self-defense could hardly threaten a special agent with an experimental body.
As long as she avoided vital points, she could let herself take about one magazine.
With the ease born from that fact, the agent spoke softly once more.
“There is no need to be on guard. If we meant you harm, we would have chosen a rougher method instead of speaking to you like this. If you are truly uneasy, you may keep that gun with you when you come along.”
The hidden woman trembled. She seemed startled that the agent spoke as though she could see right through her. After a stretch of silence, the woman asked,
“Were you sent by Chairman Go Geon-cheol?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know the identity of the person who requested that we save you. That is the nature of the relationship from the beginning.”
“......”
“But they told me to pass on this message. I often listen to singer Lee Sora’s Track 9. I will never harm you. I hope to meet you in person soon and talk. So for now, I would like you to follow these people...... That was the message.”
That mysterious message worked. Thud, thud, thud, thud. The heartbeat of the cargo still crouched there, Han Ga-eul, sped up. Listening to that heartbeat, the operative checked the time. The collaborator had said they would buy fifteen minutes. They still had some room.
Ga-eul’s head was a mess right now. Sweat pooled on the hand holding the pistol. No matter how she adjusted her grip, it still felt awkward. The metal meant to kill people gave her chills even at a lukewarm temperature.
‘The song Gyeoul used to sing for me all the time......’
What was she supposed to make of this? Ga-eul desperately clung to her reason as it tried to drift away.
At this point, the only people who shared that memory were Ga-eul, Gyeoul, and the youngest, Parang. Even then, it was doubtful whether the late-born youngest, still a child even after all these years, remembered that time in full. Parang also had no friends or acquaintances to talk to about a subject like this. Mandatory education without meeting people was cold.
Her parents might have overheard it in passing, but both of them had been dead for a long time. And if asked whether they had ever had enough affection to listen to their children’s songs, she was skeptical of that too.
So the person who had requested Ga-eul’s rescue had to be someone connected to Gyeoul.
That only made it harder to understand. Her pitiful younger brother had entered an Afterlife Insurance facility, yet he had formed a relationship with someone capable of pushing something like this forward? Was that not absurd?
There was one guess that had at least a little realism to it.
‘Is the target Chairman Go Geon-cheol...? Are they trying to use me as leverage for some kind of deal?’
If they had approached Gyeoul first in order to secure Ga-eul, it made a certain amount of sense. Rather than dragging her away by force, earning a little goodwill first would make smoother cooperation more likely. If the goal was an unfair deal, having Ga-eul step forward in person would be effective in many ways. For Go Geon-cheol personally, it would be an even more inhuman threat.
As Ga-eul mulled it over, she flinched at her own thoughts. An unfair deal. That was Go Geon-cheol’s way of putting things. Whether she liked it or not, they had spent a long time together, so it made sense that traces of him would linger in her unconscious.
Her thoughts were drifting somewhere strange. Ga-eul shook her head.
Assuming her guess was true, how should she act?
Special Secretary Kang Young-il had said that someone hostile to the Chairman had taken her under their wing. Some other third party might have intervened too.
She did not want to risk herself for a tyrant. But she did not want to take part in making him suffer either. She especially did not want to be used as a bargaining chip.
Still, perhaps the reason this mysterious figure had mentioned an old memory with Gyeoul was to indirectly tell her that Gyeoul was in their hands.
If so, resistance was impossible. Comparing Gyeoul and Go Geon-cheol was meaningless.
Because to her, Go Geon-cheol had now become nobody.
Nobody.
At the thought that it had ended like this after all, Ga-eul felt a passing sorrow.
Her hesitation could not last long.
Perhaps tired of waiting, the agent said,
“Was the name Parang? Your younger sibling is also under our protection. We took measures in advance in case any other threat might be directed there. That child likes grape-flavored candy.”
The pistol she dropped rang with a metallic sound. Ga-eul stared blankly for a moment, then weakly rose to her feet. The agent took off her sunglasses and gave her a gentle smile.
“This way, Han Ga-eul. We will escort you somewhere safe.”
Ga-eul approached, trembling. The experience of nearly being kidnapped, the suspicion that she might still be getting kidnapped right now, the fear and tension, all of it had to be draining her stamina. The agent took off her coat and draped it over Ga-eul’s shoulders. Ga-eul’s gaze stopped beneath both of the agent’s shoulder blades. More precisely, on the pair of holsters holding her pistols.
“Please don’t mind these.”
The agent guided Ga-eul toward the car as she explained.
“We needed to be prepared for a shootout with the kidnappers.”
She could rip out most opponents’ spines with her bare hands, but she had been informed that Hyeseong Group’s special secretary was a former intelligence agent who had received unofficial body modification.
Korea’s body modification technology was the best in the world. Thanks to the Afterlife Insurance system, they had been able to repeat experiments without being held back by ethical concerns. So she had come fully prepared, only for the collaborator’s side to handle it first.
‘And this stench...... Did a synthetic combat soldier pass through here?’
The Korean Army’s combat soldiers were famous for forms that strayed far from the human shape. Naturally, their bodies had a distinctive smell. Ordinary people might have found it impossible to notice, but it was too intense a stench for Russian intelligence agents to miss.
Then was the collaborator powerful enough to move the regular military? Or did the collaborator have private control of a facility capable of producing military-standard artificial bodies? Could that even happen in a country where an unprecedented artificial intelligence handled military security? All human culture facilities in Korea should be entrusted to the Afterlife Insurance Authority for management.
The collaborator’s identity only sank deeper into mystery.
“What is your name?”
The agent realized Ga-eul had asked her a question a little late.
“Ah, you mean me?”
There was probably no reason to hide even her name. After all, she did not live under only one name anyway. Exchanging names was the foundation of building trust. Even when interrogating a spy, if the persuasion was based on friendliness, calling each other by name was basic. The agent answered with a smile.
“Yelena. Please call me Yelena.”
“Yelena......”
Ga-eul nodded, then gave her own name before getting into the car.
“You seem to know already, but my name is Han Ga-eul. Whatever the reason may be, thank you for saving me.”
The agent had thought she was simply trembling in fear, but perhaps it had only been tension. This cargo had life in her eyes.
‘Are we thinking the same thing?’
The Daughter of Russia revised her evaluation of the cargo a little.
One of the other agents investigating the scene reported,
“Yelena Vladimirova. The blood trail leads into the ventilation duct. The tunnel blueprints exist in the database, but an additional search will take quite some time. What should we do?”
With her back to the car, Yelena erased the purposeful smile from her face.
“I doubt the collaborator’s side handled it sloppily, but...... Is the target alive or dead?”
“Judging by the amount of bleeding, we believe the target is not dead.”
“So they’re alive.”
After a brief thought, she snorted.
“They must have dragged the target away alive on purpose. If that cargo is truly an important person, it would not be strange for them to have earned the collaborator’s rage the moment they touched her.”
It was inefficient, but revenge and punishment did not always need to be efficient. The Daughter of Russia herself had once felt satisfaction in inflicting pain on Russia’s enemies.
‘Whoever their decision-maker is, there may be a somewhat emotional and immature side to them. At least in this field.’
The thought was a little unexpected.
The fact that they had called in Russians and then acted first might also have another explanation. Perhaps what they wanted from the Russians really was only protection. It was an optimistic reading, but still.
Even so, there were still many things she could not understand.
‘They could just protect her themselves, either alone or as a group, could they not? Why bother bringing in a foreign force? Is there another internal conflict within the force? Is that cargo an acquaintance of the side connected to us? Family? An involved party? Was this an unavoidable measure to protect her from the threat of an internal faction? Or is the force itself under threat? Enough that they need to entrust an important person to outsiders just in case?’
Her mind grew tangled with all kinds of thoughts.
There was no answer for now, so Yelena turned away in disgust.
“Let’s go. It is almost time. It will become troublesome if we get caught in this country’s security net.”
In truth, it would be more than troublesome. They would have to risk their lives. They needed to leave this site within the fifteen minutes the collaborator had guaranteed that the security net would be disrupted.
‘It felt wrong when we abducted the Afterlife Insurance security engineers too. We were prepared to die, yet...... the tracking and pressure from the relevant authorities were weaker than expected. Even if it was nothing but a disguise, having that disguise exposed should have been a risk in itself.’
Whatever the reason, the collaborator must have been watching the Russians since then. Perhaps the weakening of the investigation was also due to the collaborator’s influence. Yelena was certain her intuition was right.
It was only recently that they had realized the existence of the security engineers had been a means of deceiving other countries.
When they built an unregistered external facility connected to Afterlife Insurance at the collaborator’s request, Russia had been shocked by the level of the technologies the collaborator shared.
According to Russia’s engineers, there was far too great a gap between the level of the confirmed technology and the structure of the publicly known Afterlife Insurance-related facilities. At the very least, it was clear that scraping out the brains of the Afterlife Insurance security engineers had been a meaningless waste of effort.
When Yelena heard that, she had cursed Vladimir, who had given the order, viciously in her mind.
She did not mind dying during a mission. But she hated the idea of that death becoming meaningless. A death for the motherland had to be the greatest honor.
The mission to abduct verified samples with high TOM aptitude because they were needed to develop the Kasparov Engine had been similar. After all the suffering it took to succeed, had they not tested the cargo just once, declared it below expectations, and dumped it at the bottom of the Baltic Sea?
She hoped Vladimir had made a wise decision about this case.
As she got into the vehicle, Yelena put on a kind smile again and looked at Ga-eul.
There was much she wanted to ask. But the collaborator had not allowed it. To keep the relationship from becoming tangled later, she would have to obey that condition.
Still, there was nothing to lose from building a friendly connection. That had always been one of the basics of intelligence work.
Footnotes:
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