Chapter 250

The ones who stepped out of the taxi that pulled up at the hotel’s front entrance this time were a young couple.

Even after 7:30 had passed, Warden Malcolm Knox still had not appeared at the charity event. Barely ninety minutes remained until the end of the function.

Only five days were left until Gezar Bazelli’s execution date.

If the warden failed to show up, it would mean nothing but wasted time. But if he did arrive, persuading him might open the possibility of meeting Gezar Bazelli.

If persuasion failed, however, they would have no choice but to kill him. Outwardly they could pretend to negotiate cooperation, but it was entirely possible that he was already compromised by Hybris. For now, though, there was no path to Gezar except the one he controlled.

Isaac, sitting in the darkened hotel room, kept his eyes fixed on the front entrance below while laying out firearms on the table one by one.

—“I’ll bring the whole bottle in an ice bucket right away. Please wait just a moment.”

The voices of guests asking Siron for champagne, and the blues singer’s drawl, merged into a muffled roar inside the earpieces. The earpieces they wore were linked to a walkie-talkie with separate channels for transmission and reception, enabling two-way comms. Isaac and Baekgyeong could hear even the sound of Siron’s breathing in real time.

—“This really feels like we actually came here to work.”

Siron grumbled, panting as if he were hurrying toward the server station.

—“Mourners, was it?”

—“Mourners, what about them? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Baekgyeong reacted to Siron’s muttering.

—“I think I just ran into a familiar face in the banquet hall.”

—“Who did you see?”

—“Anna’s therapist. The counselor she goes to. His name was Jackson... Clinton, I think?”

—“Then he must be a worthless shrink, no doubt.”

Through the comms, Siron and Baekgyeong burst into laughter.

—“Jackson—he asked me for champagne. I panicked for a second thinking he might recognize me, but he had no clue.”

Siron told it with smug pride, then exaggerated a long sigh.

—“Feels like they’ve all been possessed by ghosts that died of thirst. God, it’s chaos out here.”

Cars were still streaming into the parking lot: black vans and SUVs, suited bodyguards stepping out. Guests kept arriving. The men in tuxedos and suits, the women in evening gowns and cocktail dresses. As the governor and his family, surrounded by guards, entered the lobby, Isaac checked the time. 7:50 p.m. Only an hour and ten minutes remained until the end of the event.

The formal program would begin at 8:00. Speeches by the Bureau of Corrections director and the governor were scheduled. If Warden Malcolm still hadn’t shown by then, there would be no reason to remain at the hotel.

“Once it passes 8:10, we pull out. Straight back to the car.”

—“Got it. We leave exactly then—ah, no, no! I can’t. This is a champagne order. Please ask that server over there instead.”

Isaac barely listened as Siron’s voice carried from the floor below, dealing with guests.

He left only four pistols out and stowed the rest in his bag. Two with extended magazines and suppressors he kept on the table, ready to fire at once. A third went into the outer holster at his left side. The last was strapped tight to his right ankle.

The banquet grew louder as the main event neared. Noise from the hall poured into his left ear, while suffocating silence pressed into his right.

7:56. A sudden vibration buzzed in his pocket. Isaac reacted instantly. An unfamiliar number was calling.

Of all times...

He clicked his tongue softly. After a brief but meticulous calculation, he shut off the transmit switch—Baekgyeong and Siron wouldn’t hear his voice now—and answered.

—“Hello? ...Mm? Hello?”

A young man’s voice, early twenties. Isaac recognized it. A server from the French fine-dining restaurant Éclabie.

“Speak.”

—“Ah! You picked up. Do you remember me? I’m staff from Éclabie.”

A few days earlier, Isaac had visited Éclabie. The same restaurant where Kim Seontae, who had arranged Choi Baekhee’s murder and Baekgyeong’s abduction, had met.

[2013-10-02 16:11:25] NoName:

The USB you sent arrived safely. It’s worth around a hundred grand at current rates. Did you give me this ‘cyber toy’ because I said I didn’t need money? Whatever the case, I’ll take it gladly. I’ll come to you again. Let’s meet at Éclabie where we dined last time. Joseph, I remember you liked the trout.

Kim Seontae had used the Vile Group office computer to exchange encrypted messages with a man named Joseph. Out of more than five hundred encrypted logs, only one message had been left without its encryption key, stored on the central server. From that, Baekgyeong learned that Kim Seontae and the man called Joseph had met at Éclabie.

Isaac had gone there himself, leaving behind Kim Seontae’s photo, two hundred dollars, and a note with his number for the staff, telling them to contact him if they remembered anything about the man who’d accompanied Kim.

“I’ve been waiting for your call. Did you find out what I asked?”

—“Yes, that’s why I’m calling. A senior staff member who’d been on assignment came back today. Remember the photo you gave me? The Asian man. I showed it to him, and luckily he remembered something about the man who was with him.”

Kim Seontae’s companion had been the villain who spread a new breed of human—one that should have gone extinct with Isaac—to sow chaos in the world. His concealed identity was finally about to surface.

Isaac’s pulse accelerated, heat rushing to his fingertips, mind sharpening with a crystalline brilliance, as though he could see straight through the entire situation at once. His entire being focused on one single name.

Joseph Elliott.

Isaac had first come across the name when he and Marta Monto narrowed down nineteen candidates suspected of meeting secretly with Belzoras officials.

Joseph Elliott was believed to have trafficked political dissidents held in “labor reform camps” through clandestine deals with the Belzoras regime. Under the dictatorship’s protection, he created luxury packages for alpha clients—bundling cruises and hidden resorts. Inside, the trafficked victims were left defenseless against sexual exploitation, most dead within six months in wretched conditions.

Isaac and Marta had destroyed that network and exposed its core hubs in Belzoras, but the middle boss had been murdered, and the money converted into cryptocurrency, scattered into untraceable foreign accounts.

The name Joseph Elliott resurfaced from an unexpected source: Sonia, a woman who had been forced into labor on the island.

Joseph had deceived a naïve Mexican software developer, exploiting him to build a live crypto-laundering platform for black money. Then he kidnapped the man’s mother—Sonia—onto the island.

His atrocities didn’t stop there. He orchestrated Choi Baekhee’s murder and Baekgyeong’s abduction from behind the scenes. He sought to suppress all evidence of alphas’ existence while securing the rut suppressant Choi had developed, to cement absolute dominance.

Beyond that, he colluded with the powerful to systematically cover up alpha crimes, exploited welfare loopholes to abduct the vulnerable, and funneled them into sexual exploitation structures through Hybris branches across the map.

The restaurant worker kept talking.

—“The man he dined with is one of our regulars, pretty well-regarded. They say he often eats with Governor Brown. He’s the head of a newly built mental health center near the restaurant. A white man, looked about fifty. His name was... hold on, I wrote it down. Ah, Jackson Cliff.”

Jackson Cliff. Another name for Joseph Elliott. Likely nothing more than a social mask—a fabricated identity for a middle-aged white man.

At once Isaac’s world shrank to a single pinpoint, leaving only the voice over the phone, every other sound wiped away. Even Siron’s muttering through the earpiece vanished.

—“Who did you see?”

—“His name was Jackson... Clinton, I think? A counselor. Jackson—he asked me for champagne.”

A chill surged through Isaac’s chest, the blood draining from his face. He hit the transmit button and barked with a voice of steel:

“Siron! Run. Now.”

A suffocating silence fell. Siron’s startled voice came back:

—“What? Run...?”

“Right this instant!”

At Isaac’s thunderous shout, Siron gasped sharply. Realizing something was wrong, he answered in a tight, urgent tone:

—“All right. I’m going.”

—“What the hell! What’s going on?”

Baekgyeong broke in, but Isaac had no answer to give. Heavy footsteps thudded down the corridor, followed by the click of a door lock disengaging. Someone had swiped a card key.

Isaac snatched up the two pistols from the table and rushed to the door, toppling a cabinet across the entryway. But the effort was useless: an inhuman force shoved the door, splintering the cabinet aside. Through the gap, men appeared with murderous eyes.

Isaac and the intruders raised their guns at each other in the same instant.