Chapter 102 – The Assault (Part Two)

Inside the room, Raven’s Song Joon-ho and Cha Yeon-hee stood on either side of a bald man named Marcus, who was bound to a chair, unable to move.

Since their presence wouldn’t be helpful and the scene was unlikely to be pleasant, Il-hyeon and Jeong Jin-seong had been sent outside.

“Are you certain everything you just said is true?”

“Y-Yes! Why would I lie in a situation like this?”

Marcus, the smuggler, quickly answered as Song Joon-ho, who had been scribbling on a notepad, asked in a stiff voice.

Just moments ago, Marcus had nearly fainted in shock when they started pulling out an assortment of menacing objects.

From a small knife to a steel pipe, pliers, a hammer, and all sorts of other bizarre tools.

A single glance was enough to tell they were for torture.

But the objects must have been mere props to instill fear, as the man and woman before him were surprisingly civil.

When they had subdued him, he’d been struck by the steel-hard fist of an Awakened and couldn’t breathe properly for a few seconds, but aside from that initial roughing up, they hadn’t used any violence since his capture.

The man questioning him was relentlessly pressuring him, sometimes even shouting during the interrogation, but for someone who worked in the underworld, the absence of physical violence was a blessing.

“Y-You’re going to let me go now, right? I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Sorry, but that’s not going to happen.”

From the array of tools, Song Joon-ho picked up a sharp steel skewer.

At the sight, Marcus panicked and cried out urgently.

“What…? Wh-Why? You said you wouldn’t hurt me if I was honest!”

“Right. If you had actually been honest, that is.”

“Aaaaargh!”

The steel skewer slammed down, piercing through his leg and into the chair.

A powerful electric current flowed from the embedded skewer, and his body contorted violently in unspeakable agony.

This time, his breath caught in his throat, and he couldn’t even scream.

It was a specialized device made for this very purpose. It inflicted extreme pain without endangering the victim’s life and caused no significant injury beyond the initial piercing, allowing for a relaxed interrogation without fear of anything going wrong.

*Click!* The current was cut off, and Cha Yeon-hee, who had been standing leisurely, approached him.

“Ghaak… Ugh…”

“What you told us differs from the information we have… You’re not the only one we captured who talked.”

Cha Yeon-hee spoke calmly to Marcus, who was drooling and covered in tears and snot.

When they cross-referenced his story with the information obtained from the Mayor of Nigesu, there were several discrepancies.

Since the mayor, under the influence of Cha Yeon-hee’s charm ability, couldn’t have lied, it meant the smuggler before them was the one being dishonest.

“Ugh… Wait, just a minute… I’ll tell you for real…”

The pain was beyond anything he had ever imagined, and Marcus was only half-conscious, but even so, his mind raced frantically to avoid another round.

The problem was, he had told them more than just one or two things.

The client, the destination, the purpose of the supplies, the scale of the facility, the methods of the experiments being conducted.

He had provided far more new information than the mayor, who seemed to have been less involved.

But Marcus had no way of knowing what topic they had heard about, to what extent, or what they believed to be a lie.

“Mexico… Monterrey, in the state of Nuevo León… It’s in a forest on the northern outskirts. It’s a restricted area because of monster contamination from five years ago… If you look there, you’ll find the facility you’re looking for.”

Marcus stammered, still in shock, forcing the words out.

The destination had changed from Brazil, which he had claimed was via the port.

Seeing as it was the same location the Mayor of Nigesu had mentioned, it seemed he was finally ready to talk.

“And? Go on.”

Unlike Song Joon-ho, who had intimidated and pressured him during the interrogation, Cha Yeon-hee stroked his shoulder and asked in a gentle tone.

At that, the stiff and stammering Marcus began to spill his story more easily than before.

He detailed how the large quantity of cores was meant to power the machinery needed for the procedures, the true scale of the people inside, and how he himself had received people kidnapped in the US to be turned into members of the organization and handed them over to the facility in Mexico.

“Is everything you just said the truth?”

“Yes, I’ve really told you everything. There’s nothing more to say…”

*Click!*

A powerful current flowed from the skewer once again, and a scream echoed through the room.

This time, the current lasted considerably longer, inflicting an immense amount of pain for a much longer period than the first.

As Marcus began to convulse, lose his balance, and tip over, Cha Yeon-hee stepped on the back of the chair with one foot to hold it in place.

“Urgh…”

“Much better than before… but unfortunately, there are still a lot of lies mixed in.”

“Ugh! No way! What part?!”

“You know that better than anyone.”

Marcus screamed in defiance, but of course, she wouldn’t tell him.

Not knowing what information they possessed was in itself a huge burden for the helplessly bound Marcus.

In a situation where telling a lie resulted in horrific pain, he was being forced into a corner where he had no choice but to confess everything truthfully.

“How do you know that bastard wasn’t the one lying while you’re just screwing with me? Aaaaargh!”

Seeing he still hadn’t learned his lesson, another shock was administered, and Marcus’s eyes started to roll back.

This time, however, the shock stopped quickly.

Leaning forward, Cha Yeon-hee whispered seductively from behind his ear.

“Tell me again, properly. If you hide anything you know, or if even one thing isn’t true, this will never end. The duration will get longer with every lie… Don’t you want to be free already?”

“Ugh… Okay! Please, stop!”

The bound Marcus pleaded desperately, no longer having the mental capacity to scheme, and confessed everything.

From the fact that the cores weren’t used for machinery but were extracted, processed into refined Ether, and injected directly into people’s bodies, to the true scale of the facility and its security forces, which he had previously downplayed by nearly half.

He also spoke honestly about the mysterious researchers inside the facility and the experiments, sharing everything he knew.

Furthermore, he revealed a fact they had been completely unaware of.

“So there was a barrier…”

Cha Yeon-hee murmured upon hearing the interesting story.

Considering the psychological state of an ordinary person who could no longer bear to lie, and the fact that his testimony now matched the mayor’s, it was highly likely to be true.

The most intriguing part was that the facility was protected by a barrier.

On the surface, it was just a forest, closed off because it was completely blighted by monster toxins. But it turned out the contamination had long since disappeared, and they were using a barrier, one of the abilities of the Awakened, to conceal what was inside.

So, even if civilians, environmental groups, or government investigators managed to get past the restricted forest entrance, as long as the barrier existed, they would never notice anything suspicious.

His words explained everything, including why governments around the world and Raven had been unable to find any related facilities until now.

“Why did they hire you, someone with no connection to them?”

Now that he had the information he wanted, Song Joon-ho asked with his arms crossed.

Marcus, a common criminal not belonging to any organization, didn’t possess any outstanding know-how or skills in smuggling, nor was he a powerful Awakened.

Yet, he was curious why they would hire him for a job so deeply connected to their most important facility.

“They wanted a courier with a minor criminal record. Someone with no connection to their organization, an inconspicuous nobody, and a non-Awakened. Probably to avoid the eyes of people like you. Though I ended up getting caught and spilling everything anyway.”

Having confessed everything he knew, Marcus let out a deep sigh as if it were all over, and continued.

“Damn it. I thought you guys were from that crazy organization, sent to test me. I’ve seen countless others in the distribution network who opened their mouths and were ‘cleaned up’ the next day. That’s why I held out so stubbornly… This is definitely not a job for someone who wants to live a long life.”

“If you knew that, why did you take this job?”

“Damn it all. The money for just loading some goods and crossing a single border was insane! What other reason is there to take a crappy job like this? Enough of that, just do something about this! I feel like I’m going to die!”

Marcus pointed to the steel skewer embedded in his leg.

Aside from the throbbing pain, blood was continuously seeping out.

At that, Cha Yeon-hee nodded and replied.

“We can take care of that. But we’ll need your cooperation on one thing.”

“Cooperation?”

“Help us get inside the barrier. I assume you need permission from the inside to enter.”

While Raven had team members who could destroy barriers, doing so would alert those inside.

But they had a more important goal than simply storming and destroying the facility.

To get inside without being detected, they needed Marcus’s help.

“Help you? Sorry, but if I did that, I’d be dead before I knew what hit me.”

“That won’t happen. The CIA will personally protect you.”

“No, spending a few years in prison is the safest option.”

“You think we’ll send you to prison?”

Cha Yeon-hee drew a dagger from the holster on her thigh and gently placed it on the table.

A suffocating silence filled the room, and Marcus, understanding the meaning all too well, swallowed hard.

The pain in his thigh had long since vanished from his mind.

“S-Sorry, but thanks to you guys, it’s already too late for me to get there on time. I should have already loaded the goods and crossed the border by now…”

“We can make it in time. We’ll be flying.”

Smiling faintly, Cha Yeon-hee gently ran her long index finger along the dagger’s edge.

“So, what’s it going to be? The choice is yours, but if you take too long, one of those choices is going to disappear.”