Chapter 94 – An Unexpected Face (Part Three)

Il-hyeon and Seo Jeong-hwa arrived at their destination and exited the airport.

Their destination was Houston International Airport in the southern United States.

After half of Chicago vanished entirely due to a Gate twenty years ago, Houston had become the third-largest city in the US.

And as such, it was a bustling hub for countless people.

“Can’t we ride it one more time?”

Seo Jeong-hwa smacked her lips, seemingly disappointed that the flight was over.

The residence class on their airline offered a multi-course meal prepared by a top-tier chef, a variety of premium alcoholic beverages, and even a room with a bed and a shower, providing service better than most hotels.

Although it was an unofficial business trip, the company had provided the tickets. While Il-hyeon had grown somewhat accustomed to such things, for Seo Jeong-hwa, it was the first time she had experienced such luxury.

“You’re not drunk, are you?”

“What do you take me for?”

Since Il-hyeon was covering the costs anyway, he had told her to do as she pleased without asking for permission each time. As a result, Seo Jeong-hwa had drunk an incredible amount of the wine offered on board.

Seeing her flushed cheeks, it seemed it wouldn’t be a good idea to let her drive.

“Hmm. We’re outside… Now what are we supposed to do?”

Il-hyeon looked around, scanning his surroundings. He seemed lost amidst the cars and buses speeding down the road and the lines of people.

When they had deplaned and come out of the airport, no one was there to meet them.

Just then, a man spotted them and approached, raising his hand.

“Ah, over here.”

“Who are you?”

Il-hyeon asked the foreigner, who spoke fluent Korean.

He was a Caucasian man in a sharp black suit with striking, well-defined eyebrows. Moreover, even without paying close attention, Il-hyeon could sense he was a powerful Awakened.

“I’m Danny Hecht. As you might know, I’m from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Operations.”

The man introduced himself curtly and offered a handshake, but Seo Jeong-hwa, standing next to Il-hyeon, cried out in surprise.

“What? The CIA?!”

The CIA was America’s national intelligence agency, famous since long ago. However, after the Gates opened and the Awakened began to appear around the world, the CIA, plagued by various problems, had to be reborn.

Transformed under global media control and with the full support of the government, the CIA came to possess formidable individuals and was making significant contributions befitting its new status.

It was just that their successfully completed missions were not disclosed to the public and therefore not widely discussed.

“Ah… surely, you weren’t informed beforehand? You must be Mr. Kang Il-hyeon and Ms. Seo Jeong-hwa.”

Agent Hecht asked, puzzled by their unexpected reaction.

Even though she was wearing a hat, the information he had received beforehand confirmed that it was indeed Seo Jeong-hwa.

Of course, he had long known what Il-hyeon looked like.

“That’s us… but this is the first we’ve heard about the CIA coming.”

Il-hyeon stepped forward, leaving the astonished Seo Jeong-hwa behind him, and spoke.

He had expected a kindly driver, not a CIA agent waiting for them at the airport.

Having heard nothing, there was no way he could have known this would happen.

“But how can we believe that’s true, in times like these?”

With relatively lax gun control and a vast territory, it was natural that criminal organizations were more rampant in the US than in Korea.

For a high-profile figure like an Awakened from Aegis, it wouldn’t be strange at all for someone to obtain information about their entry into the country and target them for assassination.

Furthermore, it was Il-hyeon who had thwarted the terrorists at two locations where they would have otherwise succeeded.

Having vowed to himself just hours earlier not to let his guard down, he was not about to take the man’s words at face value.

“You’re right. There’s no harm in being cautious.”

Hecht, agreeing with Il-hyeon, suddenly took off his jacket and began to roll up the left sleeve of his shirt.

“Perhaps you’ll recognize this?”

He held out his arm, and both Il-hyeon’s and Seo Jeong-hwa’s gazes were drawn to it.

On his arm, which had been clean without any tattoos, complex black letters and images began to appear.

It was the CIA’s mark—famous, but much debated as to whether it actually existed.

With the emergence of the Awakened and the proliferation of all sorts of miscellaneous special powers, identity forgery became so rampant that it was nearly impossible to detect, and all kinds of information leaked uncontrollably. Intelligence agencies had to devise countermeasures.

Among them, the CIA utilized the special power of one of its core agents to create their own unique mark, which they embedded within their bodies. The mark contained a distinctive Ether aura, designed to cause a specific reaction when two such marks came into contact.

In this way, agents could verify each other’s identities while remaining covert to outsiders.

Ordinary people, who lacked the mark or any abilities, would find it difficult to distinguish between a real and a fake one even if shown both.

However, Il-hyeon, who could read the flow of Ether, knew that the mark before him was genuine, even though it was his first time seeing it in person.

“You seem to know my abilities quite well.”

“My apologies if that made you uncomfortable.”

Hecht replied curtly to the question, but Il-hyeon shook his head. It would have been more strange if the world’s largest intelligence agency didn’t know at least that much.

“Not at all. Let’s go.”

“How can you tell just by looking at that? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Seo Jeong-hwa asked anxiously, wondering if he might have been sent by the organization, but the moment Il-hyeon saw the man’s arm, he knew the rumors were true.

The Ether aura was so unique that it made him curious about the owner of the special power that had inscribed the mark.

His suspicions completely dispelled, Il-hyeon followed him and got into a parked black van.

Inside, there was no one except a driver who was also wearing a suit.

The vehicle started with a rumble from the exhaust and began moving down a relatively quiet road.

“So, what’s the CIA’s connection to this? Why come and pick us up in person?”

“We have always worked with Aegis. We are quite close collaborators. The combat power of Aegis’s Awakened is truly remarkable.”

The CIA’s vast intelligence-gathering capabilities, built upon know-how and spy networks dating back to the Cold War, and bolstered by government support without media or internal scrutiny, were on a level that even the South Korean government, with its many elite personnel, struggled to match.

On the other hand, while the individual abilities of the Awakened in Aegis’s response team, Raven, were unparalleled, their status as a non-governmental organization made it awkward to intervene in the affairs of other nations, which limited their intelligence-gathering capabilities and other aspects.

Therefore, the two organizations often shared information within reasonable bounds to carry out operations efficiently.

Not many people knew about this relationship, however.

“This time, in particular, both sides have high expectations for you, Ms. Seo Jeong-hwa.”

“Ah… me?”

“Yes. We haven’t been able to get any cooperation from the captured organization members, and you are the only one who has survived unharmed. Do you have any idea why that might be?”

“No, not at all.”

Other than the fact that the brainwashing hadn’t worked well on her from the start, it was hard to find any particular reason.

She was in an unstable state, constantly worried that her death had merely been postponed by a few days.

But Hecht told her not to worry.

“You don’t need to worry. We should be able to find the reason once we reach our destination.”

Contrary to expectations, the vehicle stopped not long after leaving the city.

After traveling down an unpaved road with almost no people or passing cars, they arrived at a desolate clearing where a black helicopter was waiting.

Contrary to Il-hyeon’s assumption that they would travel to their destination by car, the plan was to switch to a helicopter in a secluded location.

The three of them boarded the sleek helicopter without a word.

The interior of the helicopter was filled with various pieces of unfamiliar equipment connected here and there, giving it a rather cluttered and complex feel compared to Aegis’s transport planes or helicopters.

*Whirrrrr!*

The helicopter kicked up wind as it powerfully ascended.

After gaining some altitude, the aircraft’s exterior flickered, the surroundings shimmered, and a translucent film enveloped it, causing the helicopter to vanish.

At the same time, the engine noise disappeared so completely that you wouldn’t notice it even if it were right in front of you.

The stealth function had activated, making it not only nearly undetectable by state-of-the-art radar but also invisible to the naked eye.

“I-It turned invisible, right? Wow…”

Seo Jeong-hwa gasped in awe.

Il-hyeon was just as surprised by the sight.

Being inside, they couldn’t directly see the helicopter disappear, but they could tell that the aircraft’s surface was shimmering as if covered in a white coating.

Seeing technology that looked like it was straight out of a near-future movie implemented right before his eyes left him speechless for a moment.

But the truly surprising part was yet to come.

***

A mountain cabin deep in a dense forest.

The helicopter, which had been flying at high speed, circled once upon reaching its destination before stopping and lowering its altitude.

As Il-hyeon stepped out of the landed helicopter, he saw a man standing in front of a wooden house that looked like a tourist lodge, waiting for him. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

He had truly come face-to-face with an unexpected person.

“T… Timjang?”

“It’s been a while. Have you been well?”

Jeong Jin-seong asked with a smile.

Il-hyeon found the situation utterly unbelievable.

The man he thought was hospitalized and receiving treatment after being caught in an explosion on a mission they were on together was now standing before him, perfectly fine.

Jeong Jin-seong approached him and they shared a light hug.

“I hear you’ve been doing amazing things while I was away.”

“What in the world is going on?”

Still dumbfounded, Il-hyeon let out a hollow laugh and stared straight at Jeong Jin-seong.

He had been caught not in a normal explosion but in a powerful, unknown special power, suffering severe burns on his arm that were difficult to treat. Il-hyeon had thought he wouldn’t be able to return to the field for a while.

But now, Jeong Jin-seong stood before him perfectly healthy, the arm that had been severely injured now completely healed without a trace.

“It’s a bit much to talk about out here… Shall we go inside?”

he said, glancing back at the wooden lodge behind him.