Parallax’s Singapore office.
The images on the monitors covering the wall shook.
An abandoned factory on the outskirts of Zamboanga.
The collection team’s field of view was being transmitted directly through the cameras mounted on their helmets.
Agents, including Gavin and Victor, were checking the scene through the screens.
“Arrived at the target point. No abnormalities on the perimeter. We’re going in.”
The breathing coming over the radio was ragged.
The team leader raised a hand and gave a signal.
5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
Bang.
He kicked the rusted iron door with his combat boot,
and the door opened weakly.
“Entering.”
The agents spread out in a fan formation.
“Left clear.”
“Right clear.”
“Second floor clear.”
The collection team continued to inspect the abandoned factory.
There were discarded machines and broken conveyor belts,
but no servers were visible anywhere.
“No servers in sight.”
One of the agents reported in.
“Expand the search area. Tear the place apart.”
“Yes, sir.”
An agent headed toward the back of the factory.
An object wrapped in a dust-covered waterproof tarp came into view.
“Isn’t that it?”
One of them carefully pulled away the cloth.
What was revealed was not a server.
Hundreds of kilograms of TNT were intricately wired together.
On top of it, a red LED was blinking.
6
5
4
“B-bom… bomb. Take cover. Everyone out.”
The team leader shouted at the top of his lungs, but it was already too late.
Boom!!
A blinding flash swallowed the screen.
The monitor went white, and then no image appeared again.
Only the words “No Signal” floated there, stark and alone.
The abandoned factory collapsed without a trace.
Parallax’s collection team vanished into the rubble as well.
.
.
.
“No Signal.”
Those were the only words on the screen.
Gavin and Victor stared at it, unable to say a word.
In truth, they were too shocked to move.
It was too unreal a sight.
Someone had planted that amount of explosives and blown up an entire building?
A scene that seemed like something out of a movie filled the monitor.
Flames spread like special effects, and people disappeared.
This can’t be real.
A momentary error.
Maybe it was a signal issue.
He wanted to believe that.
But no matter how much Gavin wanted to believe it, reality did not change.
The communications, the vital signs—everything had vanished.
That was reality.
Gavin slowly looked around.
Everyone was staring blankly at the empty screen.
They couldn’t even take off their headsets, couldn’t even remove their hands from their keyboards, frozen as they stared at the screen.
They seemed unable to believe the situation either.
Gavin asked Victor in a low voice.
“Are there still people who work like that these days?”
“They don’t use methods like that anymore.”
Victor stared at the screen for a moment before answering.
“Why?”
“That takes a long time to prepare, has too many variables, and most of all, leaves far too many traces. It also increases the number of witnesses. It’s not a good method.”
Even in this situation, Victor answered calmly.
Recent trends were different.
Actions that made a loud noise, like bombs, were avoided whenever possible.
The principle was to handle things quietly.
Without traces, without sound, without records.
This was the complete opposite.
A display, a declaration, a challenge, a mockery, a threat, and a declaration of war.
Gavin’s eyes turned cold.
He couldn’t get worked up.
What he needed now was not anger, but calculation.
The opponent was no ordinary bastard.
He did not follow the unspoken rules that only applied in this world.
Anyone who understood even a little about how this business worked would not do something like this against Parallax, at the very least.
This was either someone who knew absolutely nothing about this world,
or someone who did not care at all how this world worked.
And Gavin was certain.
It was the latter.
That bastard was someone who did not care in the slightest how this world worked.
Balance, factions, the logic of power—none of it seemed to matter to him.
People like that needed to be shown exactly what this world was like.
They needed education.
They needed to be taught what happened when they broke the rules.
What happened when they opposed Parallax.
Gavin clenched his fist tightly.
The pencil in his hand snapped clean in two.
.
.
.
Gavin closed his eyes and went over the situation once more.
He pushed away, for a moment, the image of the explosion that kept surfacing in his mind.
He erased his emotions as well and began retracing the situation in order.
What mattered most right now was not rage.
He had to determine where the gap had opened.
From the moment he first met Dennis,
to where they had sat at the table,
Dennis’s tone,
even his smallest gestures.
He reviewed them one by one.
Had he been hasty?
There had been some of that.
Rather than hasty, his decision had been fast.
But that had been a matter of time.
Phantom Grid was an important technology he could not afford to miss.
To obtain it, he had to make a quick decision.
Before another faction interfered.
There had been no mistake in the process of dispatching the collection team.
Naturally, they had done preliminary reconnaissance,
and examined the surrounding terrain.
The search had been thorough as well.
But the result was annihilation.
It had been a trap.
Gavin had been completely had.
Had he underestimated the man named Dennis too much?
No, that wasn’t it either.
He had been plenty cautious.
Gavin recalled Dennis’s face.
That sly, smirking face,
the way he said everything he wanted with a smile,
the way he had treated the enormous sum of ten million dollars as pocket change and kicked over the negotiation table.
And the way he had not shrunk back at all before the name Parallax.
He was not an opponent to be taken lightly.
But there was no need to agonize over it.
There was only one answer.
The one who set off the bomb and Dennis were one and the same.
If they caught Dennis, that bastard would come along with him.
“Where is Dennis now?”
“He is staying at Marina Bay Sands Hotel.”
Gavin’s eyebrow twitched.
“He’s got no fear. After pulling that shit, he’s lounging around in a hotel?”
A thought flashed through his mind.
The urge to tear that bastard Dennis to pieces surged up in him.
But emotions were a luxury.
This was not something that would end with Dennis alone.
He had to drag out the one behind him as well.
To do that, he had to secure Dennis.
“I’m going myself. Get ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
Victor answered Gavin’s order.
“Victor, you command on-site too. We can’t have that rat running off somewhere.”
“It’s already been taken care of. He won’t be able to take a single step outside the hotel now.”
The corners of Gavin’s mouth rose coldly.
“Good. Get the car ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
The agents in the office began moving busily.
They put on bulletproof vests and picked up their firearms.
The agents already in the field had surrounded the inside and outside of the hotel.
The lobby, the parking lot, the elevators, and even the door to the room.
Gavin, too, put on a bulletproof vest and headed for the scene.
.
.
.
Ding-dong.
The bell rang.
When the door opened, Gavin was standing there.
His face was expressionless, but it was easy enough to tell that he was holding back his anger.
“What’s the matter?”
“I have something to say.”
“Come in.”
Whether he didn’t know the situation,
or knew and was ignoring it,
Dennis invited Gavin into the room without the slightest reluctance.
There was no tension in his attitude.
“Beer? Wine? Or coffee?”
“If you have whiskey, give me a glass. Single malt.”
On the other hand, the moment Gavin saw Dennis’s face, anger surged up within him.
That calm face.
He wanted to punch it at least once.
“Single malt? I don’t have whiskey. Do I have to take it from the minibar? That costs money…”
Dennis grumbled as if the minibar expense pained him.
Gavin found the sight disgusting enough to make him sick.
Even so, he held back his anger and continued.
“That much isn’t so bad, is it? Or I’ll pay for the minibar.”
“Come on, why be so stingy? You might become our client, so I’ll treat you to that much. Should I order room service too? The steak here is pretty good.”
“A glass of single malt is enough.”
Before he knew it, Gavin had begun speaking casually to Dennis, and Dennis was doing the same.
Dennis took a small bottle of whiskey from the minibar and handed it to Gavin along with a glass.
It was lukewarm liquor without even ice, but Gavin poured it into the glass and downed it in one gulp.
The hot burn of alcohol flowing down his esophagus instead cooled Gavin’s head.
“Come on… savor it. That’s the most expensive one here.”
Listening to Dennis grumble, Gavin organized his thoughts.
“By the way, what brings you here? I don’t think I’ve told you the date of the demonstration yet.”
Dennis asked what he wanted.
“You know. Why I came here.”
“I’m not a ghost. How would I know? You have to tell me.”
“Zamboanga.”
Gavin quietly threw out the single word.
For an instant, Dennis’s movements paused, but he soon answered as if nothing had happened.
“Zamboanga? Nice place. Pretty ocean, good air.”
“Our team had an unfortunate incident there, you see.”
“Why? Was there an accident? Want me to look up a hospital for you?”
Dennis spoke as if he didn’t know a thing about the situation.
It was mockery.
“Some lunatic planted bombs there. So behind the times.”
Gavin answered head-on.
His voice was low, but sharp.
Sharp enough to make the listener flinch.
But Dennis did not waver.
“Really? And? I’m curious why you’re asking me that here.”
“Because I think that was your doing.”
“Hahahahaha. That’s funny.”
“What?”
“Anything else? Are the people injured in the Middle East my fault too? The people shot in South America, the people strung out on drugs—are they all my fault?”
“What did you say?”
“I’m sorry you had a bad time, but you can’t just come here and whine without any basis. Especially not so rudely. Who was it that stormed out of the negotiation room? It’s not like we parted with smiles and handshakes, so it’s troublesome if you act like this here. I guess Parallax doesn’t teach manners.”
Gavin’s anger shot to the top of his head.
He wanted to draw the pistol inside his jacket right then and there.
But logically, everything Dennis said was correct.
At the negotiation table, Gavin had tried to press him down using the name Parallax, and that was why the negotiations had fallen apart.
So he had gone to steal it, and been annihilated.
Following that logic, Dennis had done nothing wrong.
But that was not the situation.
This was a grand board Dennis had set up.
Gavin poured the remaining half of the whiskey and drank it down in one breath.
“I told you to savor it.”
“So you have nothing to do with this incident?”
“Of course not. And it seems like they got hurt trying to steal something from someone else’s house. Is it really okay to confront me so shamelessly? I hear human rights have gotten better these days, but I guess even thieves are overflowing with rights now. If I’d known, I should’ve become a thief instead of a smuggler. Do they get social insurance?”
“That’s going too far.”
“I’m only talking. You acted. You made a mistake, and now you’re here making unreasonable demands to cover up your mistake. Am I wrong?”
Gavin was certain.
This was no coincidence.
The explosion had been part of Dennis’s plan.
“You’re right. But there’s one thing you’ve overlooked.”
“What’s that?”
“This situation. This is Singapore. Our agents are laid out in two, three layers. Without my permission, you will never leave this place alive.”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.”
Dennis answered playfully.
“Did you not understand what I said?”
“I understood perfectly. It’s just so cliché.”
“Cliché?”
“Yeah. Threatening me with my life? Is that all you’ve got?”
“Hmph. You’ve got no fear.”
“This job is something you do with your life on the line to begin with. You know that.”
“So you have nothing to do with this?”
“That’s right. I don’t know anything about it. I can’t understand why you’re complaining to me after doing something you never asked me about, and that I never gave you permission to do.”
“I’ll give you one last chance. How about cooperating even now?”
“What cooperation?”
“The guy behind you. Bring him to me, and I’ll let you live.”
“Hahahaha. I guess Parallax has no talent.”
Dennis laughed.
“What?”
“How did you climb all the way to purchasing director with threats that bad? If you were on my team, you wouldn’t even be qualified to move goods. Should I apply to Parallax too? Do they hire experienced people? How are the benefits?”
Gavin’s anger reached the very top of his head.
Unable to hold back his fury, Gavin moved to draw his gun.
“If you take that out, you die.”
Dennis’s low, heavy voice rang out.
In the meantime, a gun was already in Dennis’s hand.
Startled by the gun, Gavin raised his hands.
“You’re fast. But no matter what, you won’t get out of here. Put that gun down and let’s talk.”
Gavin spoke with his hands raised.
“There really are a lot of weird bastards. You were the one trying to pull a gun. I pulled mine first, and now you’re telling me to put it down. Take your own gun out carefully.”
Gavin carefully removed the gun from inside his jacket and placed it on the table.
It was humiliating, but he had no choice.
“And did you think I was sitting here without calculating that much?”
At Dennis’s words, Gavin’s heart dropped.
No way.
Had this been planned all the way to here?
Had he known Gavin would come?
Had he been waiting here?
Anxiety swept through his entire body.
“If you’re curious, why don’t you try the radio?”
Gavin carefully called Victor.
The signal rang, but the call did not connect.
Gavin quietly called Victor through his earpiece.
But there was still no response.
No one from Parallax, including Victor, responded.
Not a single one of the agents they had laid out in two, three layers answered.
Dennis smiled as he spoke.
“Parallax isn’t the only one with a team. We have one too.”
Dennis winked.
“So, how is it? Phantom Grid? Killer, isn’t it? You really thought it was there, didn’t you?”
Phantom Grid?
Why was Phantom Grid coming up here?
That signal was fake?
A signal they had deliberately leaked?
They had created a signal that didn’t exist and inserted it?
It was the moment Gavin truly felt how terrifying Phantom Grid was.