Unity Town Situation Room.
Anna and Chen Zhihao were sitting in the situation room.
Across dozens of monitors,
financial data from countries around the world streamed in real time.
On another side, for CCTV analysis,
they were in the middle of comparing people in recorded footage one by one.
TraceNet was carrying out that task.
The situation room was quiet,
but it was running without a moment’s rest.
Like a luxury watch made in Switzerland.
Quiet, yet operating without the slightest deviation.
I spoke plainly to Anna and Chen Zhihao.
“We probably won’t be able to find Adrian. He’s hidden himself too well.”
“……”
No one answered.
“So instead of Adrian, I’ve decided to find Adrian’s money.”
“His money?”
Anna asked back.
“Yeah. Adrian is isolated right now. If he wants to hide, he’ll need money. He’ll move money from paper companies, not personal assets. Or secret accounts.”
Anna nodded.
“I understand. We just have to find money that ‘wasn’t moving’ or money that ‘would be strange if it moved.’”
“Exactly. Anything connected to Parallax’s funds. Corporations, the deceased, severed accounts, dormant accounts—everything.”
“It might be small amounts rather than large sums.”
“Right. He’ll move it as inconspicuously as possible. He’ll be careful.”
“Got it.”
Anna began setting filters to trace the flow of funds.
She filtered out countless meaningless transactions.
What remained were only flows with purpose.
When Anna created the conditions,
Chen Zhihao applied the filters accordingly.
They left only the necessary records and erased everything else.
The two of them began watching the screens closely.
They used more and more filters.
More precise conditions were added.
Within the countless flows of funds,
the search began for a single alien trace.
.
.
.
Several hours later.
We were intensively checking the suspicious transactions caught by the filters.
Unnecessary transactions had been filtered out,
but even so, the amount left was vast.
An enormous volume of data poured down like a waterfall.
We were confirming each of those transactions one by one with our own eyes.
Anna, who had been glaring at the monitor for a long time, pointed to one transaction.
Then she pointed at one of them with her finger.
“Boss, look at this.”
Where Anna pointed, there was a simple account transfer record on the screen.
It didn’t look special.
It was just one transaction among an enormous number of them.
“Why that?”
I asked because I didn’t understand the reason.
“It’s a simple account transfer, but money moved from a corporate account in Switzerland. From an account that hadn’t had a single transaction in ten years.”
“An account that hadn’t had a transaction in ten years?”
The fact that there had been no transactions for ten years made me slightly suspicious.
“Yes. And they transferred exactly ten thousand euros.”
Ten thousand euros.
An amount close to seventeen million won.
It wasn’t a large sum.
It was an amount no one would suspect.
But it was also money Adrian could use to move immediately at any time.
Chen Zhihao leaned back in his chair and said casually,
“It’s a test transfer.”
Anna nodded.
“That’s right. It’s for confirmation. A test to see whether the account is alive, whether transfers work, whether withdrawals work.”
“Who’s the recipient?”
“This is also a corporation. But it hasn’t even been forty-eight hours since it was established.”
“Pfft.”
“The timing is too pretty, isn’t it?”
I laughed, and Chen Zhihao seemed certain.
It was good that he was being careful.
Hiding behind corporations to conceal himself was truly impressive.
But we had started searching for the flow, not Adrian himself.
The moment we did, everything became clear.
Almost too blatantly.
Anna continued.
“Funds came in from Singapore too. This also came from a dead account.”
“The same pattern?”
“Yes. It looks like he tested it first, and once he confirmed transfers were possible, he started trying to gather scattered funds.”
Anna answered my words.
“Why would he do that? Shouldn’t he be hiding as tightly as possible right now?”
Chen Zhihao asked as if he couldn’t understand.
“He’s preparing to counterattack.”
I answered.
“A counterattack?”
Chen Zhihao asked back, sounding surprised.
“He can’t stay in hiding forever. So he’s reorganizing and preparing to strike back. For now, he hides without getting caught, makes contact with Parallax, and finally counterattacks. Something like that. To do that, he has to prepare funds in advance.”
“He’s gathering the money that had been scattered…”
Chen Zhihao muttered.
At the same time, he continued tapping on the keyboard.
“Let’s make one assumption. Until now, he couldn’t make transactions because he was hiding, and for whatever reason, starting today he began moving in earnest…”
When Chen Zhihao pressed the Enter key, the screen changed.
A world map appeared, and suspicious transactions were marked on it like dots.
Money from Europe, South America, and Asia was converging on one place in Europe.
And there weren’t just one or two transactions.
There were more than ten.
“Are… are all of those transactions by Adrian?”
I asked in surprise.
“I don’t know for certain either. But transactions with the same pattern as the one earlier—those are all the transactions that happened today.”
Chen Zhihao said he didn’t know,
but it seemed right.
We were surprised too.
We had searched and searched, but there had been many things we missed.
But looking at it, there was something I could clearly feel.
“He looks rushed.”
“It seems so. Considering Adrian’s cautious personality, he wouldn’t have tried to carry out this many transactions in a single day.”
Given Adrian’s personality, the kind that tapped on a stone bridge several times before crossing it, he shouldn’t have made transactions like this.
He must be very uneasy and impatient.
It meant he was being chased.
Before long, our eyes turned to the map.
The place where transactions born from impatience flowed and gathered.
The place where all the funds were heading.
“Luxembourg.”
I smiled faintly.
So he was hiding there, waiting for a chance to counterattack again?
Allen, standing beside me, said,
“I’ll put the team on standby.”
“No, wait.”
“Yes?”
“There’s no need to hurry. Let’s wait until this bastard gathers all the money. It’d be better to take the money and catch Adrian too, wouldn’t it?”
I gave a slightly wicked-looking smile.
*******
At that time.
Elsewhere, Leon was making weapons.
No, modifying them.
It was President Alex’s order.
Secure weapons.
Prepare weapons to blow Parallax away.
And so Leon was modifying weapons.
He was disassembling the mortars purchased from Korea one by one, completely tearing out their interiors.
He was removing the existing explosives and filling the space with a thermobaric mixture.
Normally, turning a mortar into a thermobaric round would be impossible.
The structure itself was different.
But if you disassembled the whole thing and reassembled it, it wasn’t impossible.
The problem was speed.
It took too long to complete even one.
And this was already much improved.
Sin Junggi had said he would turn large missiles into thermobaric warheads.
But it wasn’t realistic.
They couldn’t fire missiles from Zamboanga to Europe,
and the usable spaces and regions were far too limited.
There were too many restrictions.
It was far more realistic to modify small mortars instead.
The direction was right,
but the modification time took far too long.
The pace was too slow.
Even so, they had no choice but to make them.
It was the boss’s order, and Dennis’s revenge.
If the hands were slow, they just had to increase the number of hands.
More people were brought to the modification site.
Complaints had no power.
If they had time to complain, they could make even one more.
Toto, who had been watching the scene closely, suddenly tossed out a remark.
“That’s not how you do it.”
“What?”
Leon’s hands stopped.
Toto naturally walked up to the workbench.
In Unity Town, Toto was no longer a child.
He was someone all the core members coveted.
A child who, if taught one thing, could apply it in ten or twenty ways.
And yet, a child who kept asking questions and wanted to learn.
He had already worked with Sin Junggi for a long time.
He had already grasped the basics of weapons.
Toto looked at the mortar once,
then gently ran his hand over it.
It was a touch like meeting an old friend again.
“Right now, you’re taking everything apart and putting it back in.”
“Yeah. Because that’s the surest way.”
“But it’s slow.”
“There’s no choice. That’s the recipe.”
Leon spoke in a low voice.
Toto picked up a screwdriver.
“Make the detonator separately.”
“The detonator… separately?”
“Yes. Leave the existing structure as it is and change only the ignition structure.”
Toto’s hands were already moving.
There was no hesitation.
“You don’t need to replace all the explosives. You just have to change the timing of the detonator. With a double explosion.”
Toto’s hands continued moving,
and Leon watched those hands carefully.
“You can’t make a thermobaric round with this mortar anyway. Of course, it’ll be more destructive than a regular mortar, but its operating structure is different from a thermobaric round. If that’s the case, it’s much better to leave the explosives as they are and only change the detonator. It’s efficient, cheap, and fast. The destructive power will drop a little, though. Still, it’ll be better than an ordinary mortar.”
In the meantime, Toto separated the detonator and combined a few parts that were beside him.
He created a simple circuit and ignition device in an instant.
“If you do it like this…”
Toto was fixing the device in place with the screwdriver.
“You don’t have to completely disassemble it. The speed becomes much faster too.”
Toto held out the completed mortar.
Calculations began running through Leon’s mind.
If they made them using Toto’s method,
the process of disassembly and reassembly disappeared.
The difficult step of removing and inserting explosives also disappeared.
The time would be shortened severalfold.
“But will this be okay? Will Junggi just let it be?”
He was worried about Sin Junggi.
“Teacher Junggi won’t care. Looking at the recipe, he didn’t care about the work process. He just made it while thinking only of the maximum destructive power that could be produced from this mortar. Right now, the only scenario in Teacher Junggi’s head is killing them all.”
Leon nodded.
The weapons Sin Junggi was making now were indeed more dangerous and destructive than usual.
For a moment, he thought it was fortunate that Toto was here.
“I’ll help you. Uncle Dennis was precious to me too.”
Toto said it lightly and picked up the screwdriver.
“I’ll make the detonators, so please just replace them.”
Toto began assembling the detonators.
A proper division of labor began.
On one side, they disassembled the mortars,
and beside them, they inserted the detonators Toto had made.
At the end, they assembled the completed mortars.
The work did not stop.
The flow continued.
The speed visibly increased.
Their hands began to fall into rhythm.
.
.
.
Some time later.
As Toto was heading home after finishing the work, he was lost in thought.
Can we use this?
Modified thermobaric mortars.
They were certainly attractive.
Their power was sufficient too.
But the location was in the middle of a city, right?
And a European city at that.
They were going to take out mortars and fire them in a place like that?
Toto shook his head.
It seemed difficult.
Of course, it wasn’t impossible.
If they simply took them out and fired, they would fire.
But after that?
Nothing.
The moment they fired a few shots, everything would be over.
The operatives would be arrested on the spot as terrorists.
They would probably rot in prison for the rest of their lives.
Of course, if it was the Obsidian Unit, they would do it.
But conversely, the boss would never give such an order.
So they had to think of another method.
They had to prepare another option that could be used on-site.
Wasn’t there a simpler way to use it?
He pondered.
Psssh—
At that moment, he saw someone beside him spraying insecticide to drive away bugs.
Toto’s gaze stopped.
Huh? Maybe that?
Something clicked in his mind.
With that, couldn’t he make a makeshift thermobaric bomb?
He began drawing the structure in his head.
Put a high-pressure compressed liquid and an ignition device inside the container.
During the first explosion, this would burst.
This wasn’t a real explosion.
It was merely a preliminary step to spread the liquid fuel inside into the air, to spray it like a mist.
The second stage would spark a small flame at the center.
Then it would react with the fuel spread through the air and cause an explosion.
“Boom.”
The third stage was the truly terrifying part.
The temperature during the explosion would soar up to 3,000 degrees.
That intense heat would expand the air and send out a powerful shockwave.
Strong enough to shake buildings.
And because it would use up all the surrounding oxygen during the explosion, the area would temporarily become a vacuum.
The surrounding air would be rapidly sucked into the vacuum.
If a person was nearby, even the air inside that person’s lungs would be forcibly drawn out through their mouth.
Every organ inside their body would be ruined.
Especially in enclosed places,
buildings, underground areas, this kind of bomb would display far greater power.
Wouldn’t it be even more effective in Europe?
To Toto, what they truly needed didn’t seem to be mortars,
but these sorts of makeshift bombs, even if they looked a little shabby.
Toto went to find Alex.
“Boss, there’s something I want to make. In my opinion, what we’re making right now…”
He explained the situation.
Only a very brief outline.
And just as he was about to give a detailed explanation.
“Do it. If you need anything, talk to Sin Junggi or… no, not there. He’s sensitive right now. Talk to Leon, and if that doesn’t work, talk to Simon. They’ll get you everything you need.”
“That easily?”
“You said it’s necessary, didn’t you? I think that’s right too. There’ll be another use for the mortars. Thanks for the good idea, Toto.”
Alex stroked Toto’s head once.
That single touch.
To Toto, it was greater than any reward.
His chest grew hot.
He had been acknowledged.
Alex knew his name.
Toto lowered his head without being able to say anything.
At that moment.
Something settled firmly in his heart.
He had to do better.
He felt he had to make things even better.
To protect this place, Unity Town.
And to protect Alex.