Geocaching #13: The Brainwashing Chair
Song Jin-seop stared into space with a dazed expression and began to describe what he remembered.
“From what I saw, they were all people just like me.”
“People like you? Don’t tell me you mean ordinary civilians who came for the same examination?”
“Yes. That’s what I thought. I wanted to talk to them, but the agents stopped me, so I couldn’t say anything. We lined up and moved together, then each person was sent into a different room, one by one.”
“...”
“It was my turn. When I entered the room, there was a strange chair with wires running to it. They told me to sit down… but I suddenly got scared and asked what it was. The agents didn’t say a word. They just grabbed me and forced me into the chair. Then they put something like a lid over my head and… Ah, aah… Uhh…?”
“Song Jin-seop!”
Suddenly Jin-seop drooled and his head lolled limply to one side. I rushed to lay him properly on the seat and braced his neck so it wouldn’t twist any further. What the hell? Had a side effect kicked in while the hypnosis dragged his memories out?
“Uhhheee…”
“Snap out of it!”
I splashed water across his drooling face.
“Egh, eck… glup, ah… uhh?”
“You back with me?”
“Ah, ah! Something’s forcing its way into my head! It’s coming in!”
“What the hell is coming in?!”
At that point Jin-seop’s whole body began to shake violently as the seizure took hold. His unfocused eyes drifted like a cross-eyed doll while his hands and feet hammered the floor. I pinned him down to keep him from hurting himself and focused hard so I wouldn’t miss a single word.
His screaming movements cut off as suddenly as they had started.
“...”
A heavy silence fell.
“J-Jin-seop?”
I checked to see if he had died. He was still breathing. Thank god. It looked like he had simply fainted.
“...”
I felt an icy weight settle in my chest. Those Fake Bureau bastards… So this was how they replenished their agents? They kidnapped people caught in anomalies, brainwashed them by force, and turned them into loyal soldiers?
It was genuinely horrifying. As shocking as the day they ripped my brain out.
The reason every Fake Bureau agent burned with that fanatical conviction was now clear. It all came from the brainwashing device.
I swallowed a mouthful of water and raked a hand through my hair.
“These insane anomalous freaks…!”
They really were anomalies. Pulling out my brain wasn’t enough; they were systematically brainwashing civilians. If this wasn’t an anomaly, what the hell was? How could an organization this inhuman even exist? Once a normal person fell into their hands, it was over. Only two choices: elimination or brainwashing. Even if they became an agent with tears in their eyes, they wouldn’t last long.
It was an organization that defied imagination. This was incredibly valuable information.
I kept turning the implications over in my mind.
“Why do they do it?”
It looked inhumane, but the goal itself was obvious. In the end, the Fake Bureau was still a group dedicated to fighting anomalies. The work was obviously lethal; countless agents would die. Given their style, the moment an unknown anomaly appeared they simply fed agents into the meat grinder. That was why they had to mass-produce them using the brainwashing device. Otherwise they would eventually run out.
So were all the Fake Bureau’s agents victims of brainwashing? Even Manager Jo Seong-chun and Chief Lee Do-hyeong? Maybe the higher ranks were spared. Someone had to stay sane enough to command the ones whose minds had been overwritten. But if every single one of them really was brainwashed… then what the hell were the upper echelons of the Fake Bureau?
Crazy psychopaths who had hypnotized their entire organization? Were they the type who would do anything, no matter how insane, if it meant fighting anomalies?
Whether I liked it or not, they were every bit as suspicious and secretive as the top brass of our own Bureau.
“Ugh… uhh?”
Jin-seop was coming around.
“Feeling clearer?”
“Ah… what happened? My head’s spinning…”
“You don’t remember? The memories buried in your head came out while you were under.”
“What memories?”
He genuinely didn’t remember a single word he had spoken in the hypnotic state.
“...”
The Fake Bureau. I felt an unexpected sting of betrayal toward those sons of bitches. Until I saw them having that company dinner, I had thought they were at least somewhat human. They had looked so lively grilling meat together. It was the kind of warm, uncle-filled gathering you’d see at any normal company. But it turned out they were all brainwashed? Did brainwashing make everyone’s tastes converge? Some kind of universal “ajussi-fication” that made them all enjoy meat and alcohol?
Well… it was possible they had only injected the necessary agent mindset and left everything else untouched. Fighting anomalies required a working brain. If judgment deteriorated from brainwashing, you would simply die.
Anyway.
“Song Jin-seop. Do you want to know what your memories showed? Even I’m so shocked I don’t know what to say.”
“W-what…? What exactly did the Bureau do to me?!”
“If you want to hear it, I’ll tell you. But choose carefully.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to hear it now?! Tell me!”
Jin-seop’s spine was finally showing.
“Right after you went in for the examination, they sat you in the brainwashing device.”
“What?!”
I explained everything I had heard. The whole time, Jin-seop clutched his head, eyes and body trembling with raw terror.
“Those crazy…! So all that loyalty to the Bureau was just injected into me! Ah, aah! My head feels wrong!”
“...”
Maybe, for Jin-seop, the apocalypse had actually been the better time.
“Hey! T-then what about me?! What do I do now?!”
“What do you mean?”
“The brainwashing seems to be gone, but if I go back to the Bureau like this I’m screwed! If they keep throwing me into these insane missions I’ll die!”
He was right. New agents didn’t have long life expectancies.
“Before, the whole ‘for humanity’ thing made it feel okay…! But when I actually think about it, I just die! Humanity, my ass—if the anomaly-related people look even slightly off they get killed, and if they look fine they get dragged away and brainwashed! What am I supposed to do?! If I go back like this I’m dead! I’m still a high school student…!”
A raw, desperate plea. Looking at him, I couldn’t help but see my closest friend Kim Seong-jin. The weaker vampire hunters had probably looked exactly like this. Just ordinary people who had the terrible luck to get caught up in an anomalous event.
“Song Jin-seop.”
I gripped his shoulder.
“I’ll find a way for you to escape. I’m a Bureau agent. My job is to rescue people like you who got dragged into anomalous phenomena.”
“Ah…!”
Jin-seop dropped to his knees.
“Huk… huk…!”
“I get it. It’s more than enough reason to cry. Here, use this handkerchief to cover your mouth while you sob.”
Watching him cry made a fierce determination surge through me. This was an opportunity. A chance to secure an agent from the Fake Bureau. If I brought Jin-seop back to our headquarters, I could extract a mountain of information. Until now the Fake Bureau had been treated as pure anomalies, so we had almost no intel despite being at war. This stagnant information deadlock would shift dramatically thanks to Jin-seop. It would count as a major achievement, and it came at the perfect time since I had just started questioning our own Bureau’s upper management. With this kind of merit I might even be able to arrange contact with them.
But first I had to escape with him… and even if we escaped, a huge problem remained. The fact that I already knew Jin-seop’s identity in detail would look extremely suspicious under interrogation. How the hell was I supposed to explain that? And above all else—
“Ah… right. Isn’t Chief Lee Do-hyeong rampaging around right now? How are we supposed to get past him?”
“...”
How the hell do we break through Chief Lee Do-hyeong? This was insane. I also had no idea what had happened to Jaaldi. Like in that little skit I performed earlier, Jaaldi was my team leader and basically a mother figure. Without her, escape itself was impossible. If she died, I would have no choice but to die with her. There was no solution right now.
“Let’s move first. We’ll figure out a way.”
“Okay… By the way, what should I call you?”
“Call me Grong.”
“Huh?”
“Mention Pororo and you’re dead.”
“Ah, yes! Understood!”
And so I walked through this insane world together with Jin-seop. At the moment there was nothing else we could do but keep moving.
“The side I thought was fake turned out to be the real one… It’s too shocking. But Agent Grong, what exactly are those monster agents on the Bureau side?”
“Those things you call monsters. Have you seen them before?”
“Not in person, only in files. Ah, I caught a glimpse during the last vampire incident.”
“Who did you see?”
“It was the entity registered in the database as Curas.”
Ah! Right! This bastard had been right there at the time! It was when Curas and I were carving a path through. Jin-seop had been present. Right afterward the Vampire Angel Geuhanak had descended. It was more than enough opportunity for him to witness Curas. Maybe I could dig up some database secrets through this.
“What did Curas look like?”
“He… um?”
Huh? Something was wrong with my vision.
Uh. Uhh.
“...”
Before I knew it, I was lying face-down on the floor with Jin-seop. No. This wasn’t simply lying down. Because Jin-seop’s lower body was standing upright with no upper half attached. Both of us had been severed at the waist; our torsos had simply fallen off.
—Sssk.
The horrific nightmare anomaly approached. He was holding a sword.
“C-Chief Lee Do-hyeong…”
You were bisected and died.
Death Count: 18(-1) → 19(-1)
Restarting...