Near Raffles Place, Singapore.
Parallax’s front office.
Victor was staring at the countless monitors mounted on the wall.
The monitors displayed all kinds of information as if spewing it out, then switched to different screens before long.
Financial data, port entry and departure records, communication logs, satellite photos.
They had combined countless pieces of information,
but there had been no real results.
There was only one thing they knew.
Dennis had been an arms smuggler operating out of Zamboanga, Philippines.
But Parallax already knew that Zamboanga was his base of operations.
The problem was that they could not even approach the place.
A retrieval team had gone in as well, only to be wiped out.
Victor let out a long sigh.
Even originally, the Singapore office had never had much presence within the organization.
Its profits were meager, and it was always excluded from important operations.
But this incident had made things even worse.
They had carried out the same operation,
but Matteo had succeeded.
Although Dennis had died,
he had not done the foolish thing the Singapore team had—going out on an operation, accomplishing nothing, and simply coming back.
As a result, the mission changed.
Instead of actually carrying out operations,
they were to gather and compile information.
The mission had changed to finding Phantom Grid and its developer.
Of course, they had to take orders from Matteo.
That was what he hated most of all.
Matteo had dumped all the work on the Singapore office and disappeared somewhere.
Saying that if they could not find this much, they had no right to call themselves Parallax.
And so they were stuck in the office, staring at monitors.
They had to find information on Phantom Grid, but they could not find anything at all.
Nothing came up.
‘Damn it. What the hell are we supposed to do?’
A curse tinged with irritation slipped out of Victor before he knew it.
It was then.
One of the many screens showing CCTV footage turned black.
It was the CCTV aimed at the lobby.
What the hell?
Victor felt a sense of unease.
“Hey. What’s wrong with that CCTV? Check it.”
“Yes, sir.”
An agent picked up a radio and sent out a transmission.
“Lobby team. Respond. Lobby team, respond.”
“Underground parking. Underground parking. Respond.”
But there was no response from anywhere.
It did not seem to be a mechanical failure or signal error.
In the meantime, another CCTV feed went out.
Victor’s expression hardened.
“Declare level-three emergency.”
He gave the order briefly and firmly.
At Victor’s command, the agents stopped what they were doing,
and prepared for a level-three emergency.
They grabbed their guns and moved to their assigned positions.
At that moment.
Rumble, rumble—boom.
A powerful explosion erupted from underground, shaking the entire building.
“What the hell?!”
“An explosion. Presumed to be from the underground parking—”
Bang! Bang! Bang!!
Before the agent could even finish speaking, gunshots began to ring out.
Bullets flying in from somewhere shattered the windows,
and smashed the monitors.
Agents in the office began collapsing helplessly.
The agents in the office, startled, fled toward the windows.
Bang!
The head of an agent standing near the window snapped backward.
His body collapsed to the floor along with a spray of blood.
“Sniper!”
Someone shouted.
The problem was that they could not see where the sniper was at all.
They were not in this building.
They seemed to be hiding somewhere outside the building, in another building.
And it did not seem like there was only one sniper.
Bullets came flying from other directions as well.
Every time someone hiding raised their head even slightly, their head burst open.
Forget returning fire—they could not even raise their heads.
If they moved, they would be taken out by snipers,
and if they stayed still, they would be taken by the enemies who would soon storm in.
They had been driven perfectly into a corner.
The Singapore office had paid attention to security in its own way, but it was useless in the face of the enemy’s assault.
Many agents had already fallen,
and only a few remained.
Victor crawled under a desk.
He was holding a gun, but he had no confidence in firing at the enemy.
Firing his gun now
would be the same as telling the enemy his location.
It would be sending a signal asking them to kill him.
But he also did not have the courage, like Dennis, to take responsibility for everything and put a gun beneath his own chin.
As he hesitated, the office door opened.
Through it, people dressed in black counterterrorism uniforms entered the office.
As soon as they entered, they cleared the office with precise movements.
They approached the fallen and finished them off.
Their muzzles did not waver.
There was no mercy either.
They mercilessly sprayed bullets at those who did not raise their hands and surrender.
Victor, too, had no choice but to raise his hands and crawl out from under the desk.
All the survivors were bound.
The office was completely secured.
Then, among the black counterterrorism uniforms, a color that stood out conspicuously appeared.
A Hawaiian shirt with gaudy patterns.
The man wearing that shirt slowly walked into the office.
.
.
.
The man in the Hawaiian shirt slowly entered the office.
A Hawaiian shirt among black counterterrorism uniforms.
Among fully armed agents, he wore no protective gear at all.
Not even a bulletproof vest.
The moment he entered,
it felt as if the air in the office froze.
Unlike the bright colors of his clothes, his expression was cold and stiff.
He was frightening.
The terrifying killing intent he radiated
made it hard to breathe.
Just what kind of life had he lived
for a person to exude killing intent like that?
Victor was kneeling with his hands bound behind him.
In front of and behind them stood men in black counterterrorism uniforms.
The man in the Hawaiian shirt was in no hurry.
Slowly.
Leisurely.
He moved very slowly, as if savoring this moment.
Singapore.
And Raffles Place, at that—there had been an explosion, and gunshots had rung out.
Singapore’s counterterrorism system was among the best in the world.
They would respond with extreme speed and intensity.
The police would burst in at any moment.
Perhaps even the military would be mobilized.
And yet this man was utterly at ease.
He acted like a man with nothing to lose.
“All right. Whoever has the highest position here. Hand up.”
Victor’s heart sank.
He glanced around.
Among the survivors, Victor was the highest-ranking person.
But he did not have the confidence to raise his hand here.
He was only hoping someone else would step forward in his place.
He was merely reading the room.
Seeing that, the man in the Hawaiian shirt said,
“Kill them all.”
At those words, the survivors all sucked in a breath at once.
The man did not even ask questions.
There was no interrogation.
Victor understood, at least a little, the killing intent he possessed.
The man in the Hawaiian shirt turned around without hesitation.
He was about to leave the office when a man in black counterterrorism uniform behind him spoke up.
“Still, shouldn’t there be at least one useful bastard here?”
“From what I can see, they’re all small fry. Rather than asking these clueless sons of bitches who can’t even raise their hands here, it’ll be faster for us to find out ourselves.”
“Understood. We’ll take care of them immediately.”
At the man’s words, the men in counterterrorism uniforms raised their muzzles and aimed at the people.
There was no hesitation in their actions.
They would shoot right away.
The man in the Hawaiian shirt said,
“Don’t kill them right away. Give them the worst death you can think of. You can at least do that, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
The men in black counterterrorism uniforms answered sharply.
“They’re the bastards who killed Dennis. Take out as much anger as you want on these fuckers.”
After saying that, the man in the shirt began to leave the office, but one of the bound men shouted.
“I know everything. I can tell you everything.”
“I know. I’m on the operations team here. I managed the servers.”
“I know the financial records.”
“I’m on the IT team. I can check the communication logs.”
In an instant, the office became a scene of chaos.
They shouted over one another to speak.
Until just moments ago, they had been united under the same name of Parallax,
but now they were accusing and pushing aside one another.
In order to survive.
They could all feel it.
If that man left, they really would die.
Victor shouted as well.
“I… I’m the team leader here. I know everything.”
At that moment, the man heading toward the door stopped.
And then, still slowly. Leisurely, he turned his head.
He looked at Victor.
.
.
.
Geylang, Singapore.
We moved to Geylang.
Singapore’s representative red-light district.
And the place in Singapore where, at least to some degree, the Triads were active.
Doo Man-sik arranged a place for us.
It was an underground space that had been used as a warehouse.
“You should be able to work there with relative ease.”
“We’re digging further into Parallax as well.”
“We’ll contact you as soon as we hear anything.”
I did not particularly like the place.
For one thing, it was cramped.
It would have been nice if there were somewhere wider, somewhere I could beat the shit out of these bastards more freely, but it could not be helped.
It was difficult to find such a place in Singapore.
And taking these bastards across the border was even more difficult.
A single dim lamp barely illuminated the darkness of the underground warehouse.
I looked at Victor, who was tied to a chair.
I simply stared at him.
Simply, silently.
Victor could not endure my gaze and fidgeted uneasily.
His hands were tied, but his fingers kept moving.
He kept avoiding my eyes.
I quietly opened my mouth.
“What are you doing? You said you’d talk.”
“Pardon?”
“You said you’d talk, so I brought you all the way here. What are you doing, not talking?”
Victor’s eyes wavered.
He had said he would talk in order to survive,
but now that he was actually about to speak here, the words seemed hard to get out.
For reference, behind me, Chen Zhihao and many others were standing by.
They had laptops and tablets ready to verify the facts.
All communication channels were open as they exchanged messages.
In order to immediately confirm whether what Victor said was true.
In order to cross-check it on the spot.
They were prepared.
Victor quietly began speaking.
“Our Singapore office usually acts as an intermediary. We handle Southeast Asia operations support, money laundering, and so on.”
“The servers are divided into three locations. One local one here, one in Dubai, and the main server is in Europe.”
Tap-tap.
Tap-tap.
Tap-tap.
Every time Victor spoke, the sound of keyboards being struck rang out.
Victor’s gaze turned that way.
“Where?”
When I spoke, the gaze that had shifted behind me returned to me.
“Switzerland.”
Victor answered.
“It is Switzerland. Confirmed.”
Chen Zhihao’s voice came from behind me.
To be honest, I was not very curious about things like that.
What I was curious about was—
“The reason you killed Dennis.”
Victor’s eyes shook for a moment at the question.
Soon, he spoke in an unconfident voice.
“We needed Phantom Grid. We needed Phantom Grid, but Gavin failed to purchase it, so there was no choice.”
Victor lowered his head.
“You could’ve just paid for it. It’s not like he said he wouldn’t sell it. Is it right to try to steal something that was put up for sale?”
“Gavin tried to do that. But Gavin was eliminated too.”
“Gavin’s death confirmed.”
The verification team was checking Victor’s words in real time.
Even if Victor wanted to lie, he could not.
“Then who told you to steal it? Who told you to kill Dennis?”
“They didn’t say to kill him. They said to capture him alive. They said we had to obtain Phantom Grid.”
“So I’m asking who gave the order.”
“I don’t know that either. Seeing as Matteo came personally from headquarters, I think it was probably a response at the headquarters level.”
“Who is Matteo?”
“He handles overall operations at headquarters. Though he’s in charge of overall operations, he often handles important operations personally.”
I smelled something.
Matteo.
I had to catch that bastard.
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. He told us to find Phantom Grid and disappeared. He’s probably at a casino or drinking somewhere.”
I glanced back once.
Even though I had not said anything,
Chen Zhihao and the verification team were already typing on their keyboards.
“Checking casino CCTV.”
“Checking VIP lounges and bars.”
“Cross-referencing hotel guest lists.”
A report came in after only a moment.
“An individual believed to be Matteo has been found at Resorts World Sentosa.”
“It’s Crockfords Premier, located on the tenth floor of the resort.”
“It’s a VIP-only casino.”
“Hah.”
A hollow laugh escaped me.
He killed one of our family, and now he was hitting the casino?
In this situation, he was sitting there squeezing cards?
Rage surged up in me for an instant.
But I continued forcing it down inside.
The more it was like this, the less I could afford to get worked up.
I had to look at the situation calmly.
“We’ll bring him here within thirty minutes.”
Scott and Allen were already prepared to move out.
It seemed like they were ready to go capture Matteo at any moment.
I could not leave something this fun to just these guys.
“Let’s go together.”
We headed straight for Resorts World Sentosa.