Chapter 24: “We Apologize.” Why China Bowed Before South Korea
Chapter 24: “We Apologize.” Why China Bowed Before South Korea
National Intelligence Service Secret Conference Room
An employee burst through the door in a panic.
“Deputy Director Jang, we received this document by fax and email.”
Second Deputy Director Jang Seokjin snatched up the document and examined it with a puzzled expression.
“What? Your team was only established recently.”
A moment later, he shouted at the employees with a grave expression.
“Send a protection detail to the VIP immediately! Hurry!”
The mysterious document threw the National Intelligence Service into chaos.
A dark night. Science Facility Factory No. 1 Office.
“They said the target was only one student. Why did they choose five of us?”
“It means they want us to succeed no matter what. What does it matter? We all escaped execution because of it.”
The assault team infiltrating the office whispered among themselves.
Crackle—
“Xing, Zhao, don’t let your guard down. Russia has already failed once while trying to abduct him.”
Their leader’s warning came over the radio.
“I heard that was because the National Intelligence Service was protecting him. Isn’t that why we went through all that hell to enter the country?”
“Focus, Xing. Opening the door.”
Bang!
The office door flew open violently, tearing through the silence. The black shadows that had infiltrated in secret swept their eyes across the interior.
“He’s not here.”
“He was here just a moment ago.”
The target, who should naturally have been sitting there defenseless, was nowhere to be seen.
The target they had been watching through binoculars until moments earlier had disappeared.
Whirrr—
The faint sound of a microwave timer finishing rang from one corner of the office.
A hot dog slowly rotated behind the glass door.
“Must be a snack. He hasn’t gone far. He’s nearby.”
“Wait. There’s something else in there with the hot dog.”
“What?”
Bang!
Something inside the microwave exploded with an eardrum-shattering blast.
The bodies of the two soldiers flew through the air like sheets of paper and slammed into the wall.
Shhhhh—
The sprinklers activated.
The formerly silent office was reduced to complete wreckage in an instant.
Crackle—
“Xing? Zhao? What happened?”
“Something sounded like it exploded.”
The mercenaries in the other team listening to the radio from outside were bewildered.
They had clearly been told that their opponent was an untrained young student.
Then how had he instantly incapacitated two armed special operatives?
“Be careful. He may be only a student, but he is the most famous arms dealer in the world.”
Their leader, Xiaoran, spat out the information he knew.
“An arms dealer is still just a dealer. What the fuck was that explosion?”
Zhai swallowed dryly and scanned the surrounding darkness.
“Xiaoran. Tell me now if there’s anything else you know.”
“...”
There was no response from Xiaoran.
Sensing something strange, Zhai turned around and could not believe his eyes.
Xiaoran, who had been standing directly behind him only moments ago and warning him to be careful, had vanished without a trace.
“Xiaoran?”
“...”
“This isn’t the time for jokes. Come out!”
Zhai’s heart dropped.
A trained mercenary had suddenly evaporated into the darkness.
What the hell am I dealing with right now?
The explosion had only just happened, yet the leader standing directly behind him had disappeared.
He trembled as doubt crept over him as to whether he was truly facing only “one person.”
Clatter—
At that moment, Zhai sensed someone’s presence.
The instant he tightened his grip on the knife—
“You son of a—”
Crackle!
A blue flash erupted, and he collapsed foaming at the mouth without even knowing what had struck him.
Crackle—
“Xing? Zhao? Xiaoran? Zhai? Fuck, what the hell is going on?”
Enku, the final member of the assassination team, adjusted his grip on his tactical knife with trembling hands.
Four men had been taken down in an instant.
Wasn’t their opponent supposed to be nothing more than one defenseless high school student?
“Fuck... This is completely different from what they told us.”
Their opponent was not ordinary.
There was definitely more than one of them.
Their route had been designed with escape in mind.
There was no way people positioned so far apart could all have been taken down at once.
Click.
At that moment, a cold metallic sound came from behind him.
It was the sound of a loaded gun being aimed.
“Do not move unless you want to die.”
Fluent, cold Chinese echoed from the darkness.
So this was Ryu Hyesung.
Enku dropped the knife in his hand and slowly raised both hands above his head.
“You speak Chinese well. Did you learn it?”
“How did you get to South Korea?”
At Ryu Hyesung’s question from behind him, Enku thought quickly and gave a suitably evasive answer.
“By plane. I’ll leave quietly, so don’t shoot.”
“It was definitely not by plane. I need to know exactly how you came here. There will not be another chance.”
Enku instinctively realized that this was not the bluff of a child.
“By ship.”
“Why is there no record? Your name wasn’t on the list of arrivals.”
“My name? How do you know my name?”
Click.
The pressure against the back of his head intensified.
“If your next answer is another question, I will shoot immediately.”
“We entered illegally. The higher-ups told us not to leave any records.”
“I see...”
Enku waited for Ryu Hyesung to lower his guard.
Now.
He twisted backward with the explosive force of a beast, intending to slash the throat of the person standing behind him with the dagger hidden in his sleeve.
But—
His blade cut through empty air.
There was no human standing behind him.
At his feet, within his field of vision, stood only a quadrupedal robot dog with a weapon mounted on its back, its red lens gleaming.
“Fuck, it was all fake—”
Crackle!
Blue sparks burst from the machine that had been speaking through its speaker, and Enku’s eyes rolled back as he collapsed to the floor.
Operation Control Room No. 0, Xishan Military Restricted Zone, Beijing, China
Inside the sealed room, completely isolated from the outside by strict security, a single sentence broke through the heavy silence.
“It appears the operation failed.”
“What?”
Mo Shaxiao, Director of the Equipment Development Department under the Central Military Commission, stared wide-eyed in shock.
“How is that possible? You chose men with military backgrounds, didn’t you?”
“Yes. We barely managed to select them from among four hundred death-row inmates.”
The fingertips of Mo Shaxiao, who was receiving the report, trembled.
This assassination operation had been an unreasonable gamble that he had secretly carried out on his own authority, without even obtaining proper “approval” from the Vice Chairman at the highest level, solely to prove his loyalty and produce results.
“Director...”
Even the voice of the Director of the Special Operations Office reporting directly to him was trembling.
Now that the situation had deteriorated this far, it was obvious that, in the worst case, not only the department head but also he himself, as the person who had handled the operation, would not escape punishment.
“How exactly did they fail? Even if they couldn’t kill him, did they at least cripple him or damage his brain so he could no longer think?”
The Director clung desperately to the slightest hope.
If the target, that young student, had become involved in close combat with five trained special forces operatives, he should at least have suffered critical injuries.
“No... It seems they were taken down without even seeing his face.”
“You stupid bastard! How the hell is that possible?!”
Unable to contain his boiling rage and fear, the Director grabbed a thick file from the desk and hurled it.
Thud—
Documents scattered across the floor.
“You sent five soldiers, and they couldn’t capture one child?”
At that very moment—
Bang!
The heavy iron door to the situation room burst open.
“Arrest them all.”
The man who appeared with troops dressed in black tactical gear was none other than the grim reaper of the Ministry of State Security—the Commander of the Political Security Bureau’s Special Mobile Unit.
“Director Mo Shaxiao, you are under arrest for acts of treason against the state.”
“Wait! The Vice Chairman wanted this too.”
“Don’t talk bullshit. The Vice Chairman personally stated that he never said any such thing.”
At the Special Mobile Unit Commander’s cold sneer, the thoughts of Equipment Development Department Director Mo Shaxiao froze.
No. That could not be right.
That phenomenon is quite enough in the world of Go. Do you understand what I mean?
The Vice Chairman had clearly been the first to subtly imply that they should deal with that Korean thorn in their side.
“So you’re cutting off the tail, you son of a bitch.”
A hollow sigh escaped Mo Shaxiao’s lips.
Even he, a high-ranking official who had once wielded influence over an entire nation’s intelligence apparatus, was ultimately no different from the death-row inmates he had sent to their deaths.
He too had been nothing more than a disposable piece to be used and discarded according to the wishes of those above him.
Some time later.
Office of the Second Deputy Director of the National Intelligence Service
In the wide, silent room, Second Deputy Director Jang Seokjin spoke alone into empty space.
Before him, only the blue holographic light emitted by a smartphone flickered.
“So, you are the AI created by the VIP?”
[Correct.]
A dry, emotionless mechanical voice echoed through the deputy director’s office.
“The executions of those involved in the attempted assassination of the VIP were carried out at an unusually rapid pace. I heard the materials sent from South Korea played a decisive role.”
The evidence sent by South Korea—or rather, by this “Hermes”—had been flawless.
It had been so thorough that the Chinese government had no room even to make excuses. Under the outward justification of showing respect and apologizing to South Korea, it had been possible to swiftly execute those involved and sever the tail.
[There are no gaps in the material I sent.]
“I know. We received the exact same material. CCTV footage, detailed operational plans, even the other side’s internal reports...”
Deputy Director Jang Seokjin clicked his tongue in amazement.
“The Chinese Ministry of State Security uses a closed intranet... How did you obtain all that top-secret information?”
Deputy Director Jang assumed the AI possessed some magical “hacking” ability.
[I created some of it.]
But Hermes’s unexpected answer made him doubt his own ears.
“What?”
[Fifty percent of the material acknowledged by the Chinese government was created by me.]
“You mean it was fake?”
A chill ran down Deputy Director Jang’s back.
Field operatives and even high-ranking officials in the Ministry of State Security had been implicated one after another and executed.
Yet half of the deadly evidence that had thrown an entire nation into turmoil had been fabricated at the AI’s own discretion.
[They were death-row inmates whose executions had already been scheduled. They were expendable assets deployed under the condition that they would receive special pardons if they succeeded in killing Master.]
“No, even so...”
Jang Seokjin tried to force out a rebuttal, but ultimately swallowed the rest of his words.
Was this really acceptable?
An era in which an AI could perfectly fabricate and manipulate even a nation’s legal system and diplomatic truth.
What horrific events would occur in a future where this overwhelming technology escaped human control?
[Are you disturbed by the fact that the evidence was fabricated?]
The mechanical voice struck directly at the deputy director’s complicated thoughts as though seeing through them.
“Of course. There isn’t a human alive who wouldn’t be.”
[Understood.]
After that brief answer, the AI said nothing more.
Deputy Director Jang suddenly began to fear the blue light floating before him.
New Office, Science Facility Factory No. 2
Fortunately, the Factory No. 1 office, which had been ruined by the mercenaries’ infiltration and the explosion, was fully covered by insurance.
The essential production equipment had also been successfully defended without suffering any damage.
“Hermes, what happened to those people?”
I asked indifferently while performing the final inspection on the prototype of the new reconnaissance drone resting on the workbench.
[They were found guilty of all charges and executed.]
“Already? That was fast.”
[They were the sort of people who warranted it.]
“What about the evidence? Wasn’t there too little? There shouldn’t have been anything decisive.”
[No. I took advantage of their carelessness and secured everything.]
“Really?”
[Yes. There was nothing fabricated in the material I transmitted.]
Zhongnanhai, Beijing, China. Secret Conference Room of the Highest State Leadership
The Vice Chairman anxiously tore at his hair, lost in deep thought.
“How should we speak to South Korea?”
The current Chinese leadership had been driven into such a completely inescapable corner that even the proud Vice Chairman was directly asking his officials for advice.
South Korea had now grown into a military power capable of defeating the Chinese military in a war game.
Diplomacy in the ruthless international community was governed entirely by the logic of power.
“What if we apologize directly?”
“What?”
The Vice Chairman’s expression hardened fiercely.
China, ruler of the continent and master beneath heaven, was supposed to bow its head first and apologize to South Korea, a small peninsula nation in Asia?
But reality could not be denied.
This time, China had touched a Class 1 national security asset of the Republic of Korea.
It was obvious that a mere performative purge would not be enough to extinguish South Korea’s uncontrollably burning anger.
“...Bring me the hotline.”