Taeho was walking down the corridor with a fruit basket in his hands.
Three days since returning from Congo.
After spending some time in Samcheok with Amira, he had come back up to Seoul today.
He saw the nameplate.
Taeho knocked in front of it.
“May I come in?”
“Director! Please come in!”
When he opened the door, he saw a neat hospital room flooded with bright sunlight.
Seong Gihwan was sitting on the bed with his upper body half raised. His left shoulder and chest were wrapped in bandages, but his complexion looked much better than it had in Congo.
Beside him, Sophie was sitting in a chair, drinking tea.
“Director!”
Sophie stood up with a bright smile.
“It’s been a while, Sophie. Have you been well?”
“Yes. I was safely here in Korea, after all.”
Sophie’s eyes reddened as she glanced at Gihwan.
Taeho felt sorry for her.
Like Amira, Sophie had decided to live in a distant foreign land with only Gihwan in mind. Taeho hadn’t personally suggested that Gihwan go to Congo with him, but he still felt indebted over the fact that Gihwan had been hurt.
Seeing Taeho’s expression, Gihwan laughed exaggeratedly.
“I turned out to be luckier than I thought, and my recovery’s pretty good too. Hahaha.”
But the moment he laughed, his shoulder flinched.
Taeho asked worriedly,
“Does it still hurt?”
“A little. But it’s a lot better now. At first, I couldn’t even lift my arm, but now it’s become quite a bit smoother.”
Taeho activated Biovision.
He could see the muscle tissue in the shoulder. There was almost no inflammatory response. The blood vessels were connected well too.
Gihwan hadn’t been lying. It was fortunate amid misfortune that the bullet had passed through cleanly, and his recovery ability was better than most people’s.
Somewhat relieved, Taeho set the fruit basket on the table and sat down in the chair beside the bed.
“Gihwan, no matter how quickly you recover, you can’t overdo it. You should avoid lifting heavy things or doing intense exercise for about a month too.”
“I understand, Director. But a VIP room must be too expensive. You didn’t have to do this for me…”
“What are you talking about? Do you know how important you are to our Geumsan Research Institute? The foundation can more than cover this much.”
Taeho spoke quickly, then put on an apologetic expression again.
“I’m sorry. Because I took you to Congo…”
“What are you saying? I went of my own will. If it weren’t for you, Director, I would have died in the Congo jungle. Please don’t ever say that again. And the ones who should apologize are the bastards who shot me. Why would you, the person who treated me, apologize?”
Gihwan spoke with a serious face. Even on the plane back to Korea, Taeho had said he was sorry.
At the time, Gihwan had been in too much pain to think straight, but if Taeho continued feeling guilty, Gihwan himself would feel even more sorry. Taeho had clearly been against Gihwan coming along.
Taeho hesitated for a moment, then opened his mouth.
“Gihwan, about the people who attacked us that day. WHO confirmed their identities.”
“Who were they? Were they from President Tshisekedi’s side, by any chance?”
“The president had nothing to do with it. They were rebels hostile to General Mbeki. To be precise, they were an armed group called the ‘Liberation Front.’”
“Rebels?”
“Yes. They heard the rumor that we’d made a ‘miracle treatment’ and attacked us to steal it.”
Sophie covered her mouth with her hand.
“My God… because of the treatment?”
“That’s right. Because it would be worth a fortune. Ironically, a medicine meant to save lives became the cause of a gunfight.”
At Taeho’s words, Gihwan shook his head bitterly.
“On a battlefield, even medicine becomes a weapon.”
“That’s right. And General Mbeki was killed by the rebels afterward.”
“What? Then what about Ngili Village? What about Rose’s children?”
The first people who came to Gihwan’s mind were Rose, his patient, and her children. When Taeho had first heard the news, Masika and her younger siblings’ faces had been the first to come to his mind as well.
“Fortunately, the government forces sent by President Tshisekedi arrived and wiped out the rebels. Most of the residents of Ngili Village are safe. Rose and the children are all healthy too. They’re under the protection of the government forces.”
Gihwan let out a sigh of relief.
“That’s really a relief. Ah, then what happened to the treatment we made?”
“WHO secured the recipe we sent, and several countries are preparing to produce it now. If there’s an outbreak somewhere else, they’ll be able to respond quickly.
So from now on, don’t worry about anything and focus on your treatment. Geumsan Research Institute is taking a big hit with two of its core personnel out, you know.”
When Taeho finished playfully, Gihwan and Sophie looked at each other and smiled.
“I understand, Director. But are you leaving already?”
“This is a chance for the two of you to spend some sweet time together, so the nuisance should disappear quickly.”
“Oh, please, what are you saying?”
“Actually, I have another appointment in a little while. I’ll stop by again.”
Taeho left the hospital room.
***
Taeho arrived at a café in Gangnam.
The moment he saw Park Seongwoo sitting by the window, Taeho stopped in his tracks.
Park Seongwoo had changed so much that it was hard to believe he was the same person who had once gone around collecting cardboard boxes and even earned the nickname Mr. Boxes.
His face was clean-shaven, his clothes were neat, and his complexion was healthy. To anyone’s eyes, he was a dignified gentleman in his mid-sixties.
“Director!”
Park Seongwoo rose from his seat and bowed deeply.
“Mr. Park. It’s been a while. You look much better.”
“It’s all thanks to you, Director.”
After sitting down, the two exchanged brief greetings and asked after each other.
Park Seongwoo said he had recovered his health while staying with his daughter in the United States, and that he had come to Korea briefly to settle his affairs.
But Taeho did not miss the fact that Park Seongwoo kept fiddling with the bag under the table. This was not a simple meeting to catch up.
“So this is your first time coming to Korea since then?”
“Yes. My daughter told me I should sort out everything I had left in Korea. The truth is, when I used to run a construction company, a friend had been keeping the belongings I had from back then. Company documents, personal materials—I sorted through all of it this time.”
Park Seongwoo paused for a moment.
“When I first arrived in Korea, I saw the news. It said there had been bioterrorism in Congo, and WHO had launched an investigation. I also saw an article saying that a Korean doctor had been deployed to the scene.
When I saw the photo, it was you, Director. I can’t tell you how glad I was to see your face again.”
Taeho nodded.
“The news said at the time that you were a special advisor to WHO. So I worked up the courage to call you. I wanted to ask you whether this might be important or not.”
Park Seongwoo placed his briefcase on the table. The leather was worn and the corners were frayed, but the lock was sturdy.
“At first, I was just going to burn it.”
Taeho looked at the cover of the documents Park Seongwoo took out.
“Greenwood Bio?”
“Yes. They said it was a pharmaceutical company. Do you know of it, Director?”
“It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“I took on construction work for this company ten years ago. At the time, it was a very large project compared to the size of my company, so I was extremely excited. But it didn’t seem like an ordinary pharmaceutical company. There were more than a few suspicious points. So I tried to stop the construction.”
Park Seongwoo’s voice trembled.
“I was threatened. Men I couldn’t identify came to me and said they would harm my family. I was frightened, so I completed the construction. But I never received eighty percent of the payment.”
“Is that why your company…?”
“Yes. It went under. That company had already been liquidated on paper. That was what destroyed my life. I lost contact with my wife and children in America too.”
“I see.”
“When I came back this time to put everything in order, I went to see that company again. The building was still being maintained exactly as I’d designed it. Under tight security. The company name had changed. To Biosynergy.”
“What? Biosynergy?”
“Do you know it?”
Taeho looked straight at Park Seongwoo.
“Mr. Park. Biosynergy is currently under investigation. On suspicion of planning bioterrorism.”
Park Seongwoo’s face went pale.
“Hm… So that’s what it was.”
With trembling hands, Park Seongwoo opened the briefcase.
Several yellowed blueprints, a thick contract, and a USB drive came out.
“These are the designs from back then. They include everything: the five underground floors, the layout of the special isolation rooms, the ventilation system design.”
Taeho unfolded the blueprints. Complicated architectural drawings.
But even to Taeho’s eyes, there were things that looked abnormal.
“Look. It’s a ten-story building above ground, but the real core is underground. They dug down to the fifth basement level, and because it was a bedrock area, the construction costs were astronomical. Even so, they threatened me to shorten the schedule.”
Park Seongwoo pointed to one spot on the drawing.
“Especially the fourth basement level. This area in the center here was called the ‘Core.’”
Taeho’s gaze fixed on that spot.
Even on the blueprints, the walls were abnormally thick, with a double and triple-blocked isolation structure.
“They built the walls over a meter thick with lead and concrete. It was on the level of radiation shielding. And the ventilation system runs independently.
It’s a structure where outside air can never flow in, and inside air can’t get out unless it passes through filters.”
“…It’s a BSL-4, biosafety level 4, facility.”
“What? What is that?”
“A facility for handling the deadliest viruses. It wasn’t included in the officially reported blueprints, was it?”
“No. They called it a storage room. But you don’t connect a supercomputer server room’s cooling system to a storage room.”
Taeho’s heart began beating rapidly.
“A server room cooling system.”
There was a strong possibility that Prometheus’s main body, or its main data center, was there.
Park Seongwoo pushed the USB drive toward Taeho.
“This contains the security system wiring diagrams from back then, the emergency exits, and a list of people entering and leaving that I secretly recorded. I had hidden it away in case I might use it in a lawsuit someday.”
Park Seongwoo took out the last set of documents. They were handwritten notes.
“This is a list of the people I saw during construction.”
Taeho skimmed through the list.
Then he stopped in front of one name.
“Han Seokhun.”
The current CEO of Biosynergy.
At the time, it seemed he had been merely a researcher.
“This man came often. He only went in and out of the fourth basement level core room. He was always alone, and he didn’t allow anyone to follow him in.”
Park Seongwoo’s eyes reddened.
“Director. My life was ruined because of that company. While working on the construction, I was threatened the entire time, so every day after work I drowned myself in alcohol.
Because of that, I parted from my family too, and I lived like trash.”
He continued in a trembling voice.
“But you saved me, Director. Thanks to you, I met my daughter and granddaughter again. If I hadn’t met you, I wouldn’t be in this world anymore.
So if these materials could be of any help to you, I decided I would give them all to you. Will this help you, Director?”
“Yes. I’m certain it will.”
Taeho’s jaw tightened.