The Traitor Among Us
Dohyun caused no further incidents after that, and returned to the place they had originally agreed upon.
“...Did you have a pleasant outing?”
“I went to reminisce about old memories, but the place has changed a great deal. Ah, as you probably saw, there was a minor scuffle along the way. I would have preferred to avoid it, but circumstances left me little choice. I trust you'll understand.”
The FBI agent Jake nodded. A brawl with some gangsters hardly qualified as an incident.
And yet, that was precisely what made it suspicious.
Why did he come back without doing anything? Was he really just there to relive old memories?
Not a chance.
He wasn't some insane psycho — who on earth goes downtown for something like that? If he truly wanted to savor memories of a trip with family, he could have strolled the safe streets of Waikiki instead.
There had clearly been some other agenda, yet Dohyun displayed not a single suspicious behavior.
Only one thing snagged.
“What did you discuss with that Goodlow fellow?”
“Who's that?”
“...The Maui Family executive Kim met partway through. The two of you spoke, did you not?”
“Ah, that fellow. Didn't you already hear what we talked about through the listening device here?”
Dohyun said this while tapping the button fastened to his sleeve, and Jake's face went white.
“Th-that was... please don't misunderstand. We didn't attach the device because we suspected you...”
“Oh, it's quite all right. I understand the American government's concerns. You still suspect me of being the Genocider, don't you?”
“...Yes, we do.”
“I left the bug in place on purpose. I wanted to clear up the misunderstanding.”
Jake made an awkward face.
Clear up the misunderstanding, my ass!
But it was undeniable that Dohyun had done nothing today that could be held against him.
“I'm starving — shall we head back? Do you know what's on the mess hall menu tonight?”
“Steak, I believe.”
“Again...? Isn't that three days in a row now?”
“Is that a problem?”
“...No, sir.”
Dohyun swallowed a sigh and climbed into the car. He would face every manner of hardship in America in the days to come, but it occurred to him that the hardest obstacle to overcome might just be the food.
Just as Jake suspected, Dohyun had indeed had business downtown.
Business no one in the American government could have imagined.
“What did you talk about with that Fucking Dog, honey?”
“I-I didn't talk about anything!! GYAAAAAAAAAH—!!”
In the basement of an abandoned building in downtown Honolulu, a horrifying scene was unfolding.
The Family executive who had exchanged a few light words with Dohyun earlier was being tortured, and three men and women stood around him.
All of them were awakeners.
And powerful ones at a single glance.
The one conducting the torture was a Black woman with half her head shaved.
For the record, 'Fucking Dog' was a derogatory slur for the heroes working under the US government.
The Family executive was being tortured over his conversation with Dohyun.
“Honey? Keep this up and I'll be heartbroken. It's like you think we're idiots.”
“I-I swear!! It's the truth!!”
The Black woman sighed, then snapped his fingers with a sickening crunch.
“You just exchanged greetings, nothing more? Since when was a Maui Family executive such close buddies with a Fucking Dog?”
“I-I'm telling the truth. Believe me. GYAAAAAAAAAH—!!!”
The screaming continued without pause until he passed out from the pain.
The Black woman frowned.
“He's not the type to hold out like this. Did he really just say hello?”
“Impossible. This is the man who killed Pierrot. He clearly came hunting for our trail.”
The man in the gentleman's suit spoke sharply, while the nerdy Asian man tapping away at a laptop in the corner muttered under his breath.
“Kim Dohyun. Awakened as a B-rank Shadow Knight one month ago. Recruited through an immigration office contact. Unusually, upgraded to S-rank one month later. Currently suspected of being identical to the Korean villain known as Genocider.”
“Suspected? What's the probability he actually is the same person?”
“One hundred percent.”
An astonishing conversation.
Information on Dohyun was classified at present, yet they had it nailed down to the last detail.
“Genocider? I've heard of him. First Devil-class villain to appear in ages, wasn't he? Isn't he our friend, then?”
“Not a friend — far more likely a disgusting vigilante. Word is he hunted nothing but villains back in Korea.”
“Ha! My least favorite breed. So he came looking for us to play the apostle of justice? How did he even know we crossed the Pacific to get here?”
“No way of knowing. But he's definitely onto us. Otherwise, there's no way he'd have killed Pierrot.”
The Black woman and the suited man's faces hardened, and the nerdy man looked at the two of them with dull, listless eyes.
“There's one possibility. Information leaked from among us.”
“It wasn't me!!”
“...Are you suspecting me?”
Though the two showed flashes of anger, the nerdy man continued in an indifferent tone.
“This is a hundred-million-dollar contract, sure, but far too many hands are in the pot, no? Split it with the other friends besides us three and none of us would even take home ten million. At that point, someone might well prefer to sell the intel instead.”
The nerdy man turned his gaze back to the laptop as he spoke.
“Bloody Gentleman of Canada, Red Scarlet of Cuba, and me — the Psychic Engineer of Silicon Valley. The combined bounty on our three heads alone would comfortably clear ten million.”
The Black woman and the suited man looked at each other.
It was a plausible enough theory.
The three of them had never been friends to begin with.
Aside from the nerdy man, the other two weren't even American villains.
They were a mercenary team of sorts, assembled by the client for this particular job.
“...So then, was Genocider planning to contact the traitor through this man?”
“Probably.”
“In that case, if we pry this man's mouth open, we can find out who the traitor is.”
“True — but it's too late. He's dead.”
“!!”
The gang executive's body hung limp in his restraints.
In the brief moment their attention had slipped, he had bitten through his own tongue.
“We don't know who the traitor is, but I suppose he figured death was better than opening his mouth.”
“...Let me be clear. It wasn't me.”
“Not me either. And I suppose you'll say it wasn't you either, Red Scarlet.”
“I swear it really wasn't...!”
“Enough. There's no way to prove who the traitor is anyway. What matters is that one exists among us — and.”
The nerdy man closed his laptop and looked at the two of them, his voice sinking low.
“How we're going to carry out the contract alongside a traitor. Backing out of the job is not an option. The client won't sit still for it. They'll hunt us to the very ends of hell.”
The client.
At that word, the other two's faces grew heavy.
“This job was dangerous enough as it is. Even if the US military's Super Force are a bunch of fat pigs, we can't work the job with a traitor in our ranks.”
“Don't worry about Super Force. They're piglets, just as you said, Gentleman. If we can't trust each other, there's only one solution. The three of us move together.”
The Black woman and the suited man nodded.
With a traitor in their midst, separating was not an option.
“The operation date is three days from now. That's when we reduce the US military base at Pearl Harbor to rubble, exactly as the client requested.”
Several days passed.
Throughout them, Dohyun did nothing at all, simply resting and letting time slip by.
“The third test still hasn't been scheduled. I'm sorry for the delay.”
“It's quite all right. I understand the American side's caution.”
Dohyun nodded graciously every time Michelle apologized.
Michelle, meanwhile, had reached the point of genuinely wondering whether Dohyun was really the Genocider after all.
Looking at him like this, he doesn't seem like a villain at all...
Dohyun was even handsome.
Because he was under suspicion as a notoriously vile villain, it hadn't registered at first, but he was a remarkably good-looking man.
Not the sharp-angled, Western-style handsome, but the K-pop idol type that had been all the rage before the Cataclysm?
He was dressed in the plain accommodations uniform the US military provided, but properly suited up and groomed, his looks would shine.
If Kim ever worked as a vigilante, he might become wildly popular. Especially with the ladies.
Dohyun, for his part, thought:
How tedious. When are they planning to move?
The Pearl Harbor massacre was due within the next few days, though the exact date shifted slightly with each regression. It could be today, for all he knew, which was why he was obediently waiting at the base.
Three days of American chow already...
Survived the apocalypse nine times, and he's picky about food?
Thanks to Dohyun's efforts, in every cycle beyond the earliest ones, South Korea had maintained its social infrastructure right up until the brink of destruction.
In other words, the country had eaten well and lived well.
One of the reasons I hated living in America was the Fucking American Food.
If he could go outside, he'd at least visit a Korean restaurant, but he couldn't afford to wander while waiting for those bastards to make their move.
Then it happened.
FLASH—!
The lights in Dohyun's room went out.
Not just his room — every light across the entire Pearl Harbor base went dark.
“Wh-what's going on...?!”
Michelle, beside him, stammered in panic.
“Looks like a power outage.”
“It won't be an outage.”
“A terror attack, then...?”
“Is there any other possibility?”
Michelle's face stiffened.
This base was a top-priority facility.
It had multiple backup generators — a blackout simply made no sense.
“But even for terrorists, a feat like this...”
There's someone who can.
The Psychic Engineer.
A Chinese-American S-rank villain operating out of Silicon Valley.
Class: Supporter — specifically, a hacker.
And the man who would play a massive role in today's Pearl Harbor massacre.
Red Scarlet and Bloody Gentleman will be with him, no doubt.
Dohyun didn't know every last person involved in the massacre, but he knew the principal culprits.
The Psychic Engineer of Silicon Valley.
Red Scarlet of Cuba.
Bloody Gentleman of Canada.
All three were S-rank villains.
America had no shortage of S-ranks, but at this point in time, it was extraordinarily rare for this many to gather in one place.
Even here at Super Force Pacific Headquarters, only about five S-ranks are actually stationed at the base.
Hawaii Super Force had fifteen S-ranks in total, rotating in three shifts — ten on vacation on the mainland, five on duty.
That was the rotation, supposedly.
Word was, unless working conditions were this cushy, S-ranks wouldn't bother serving in Super Force at all.
Subtract those dispatched on missions from the five, and only two or three S-ranks were typically at the base on any given day.
And since I killed Pierrot, there'll be even fewer.
Pierrot, after all.
He'd apparently been an inside man, so it was just as well to have killed him early.
“Might I accompany you to the operations room as well?”
“You, Kim?”
“The test isn't finished, but I'll be an American citizen soon enough, won't I? I'd like to be of help.”
Michelle deliberated a moment, then nodded.
When they reached the Super Force operations room, all hell had broken loose.
But it wasn't chaos over planning a response to the attack.
“I cannot follow that order. It deviates from the terms of our contract.”
“So you're telling me you won't suppress the terrorists right now?!”
“The contract says nothing about suppressing terror attacks launched by villains, does it? Suppressing villains is the job of HPD heroes.”
“Isn't this a terror attack on a military base?!”
“Doesn't the contract stipulate our right to refuse any assignment that endangers our lives? For now, mobilize the counter-terror units and let them wear the bastards down. Once they're exhausted, then we'll step in.”
Two S-rank awakeners belonging to Super Force were refusing the order to suppress the terror attack.