I left the hotel and headed back to the warehouse.
The air changed the moment I stepped out through the hotel doors.
Dull explosions rumbling in the distance continued to shake the night air.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
The shelling had not stopped.
Even as I got into the car and moved out,
the sound never ceased.
It wasn’t lights that rose into the sky, but flames.
Smoke was blanketing the city,
and sirens wailed from every direction.
But I had no intention of stopping.
Now that it had begun, I would see it through to the end.
I had to rip it out by the roots.
When we arrived at the warehouse, an Obsidian Unit confirmed us from afar and opened the door.
The moment I stepped inside,
the air changed.
The acrid smell of gunpowder filled the warehouse.
Inside, it was a complete battlefield.
Allen’s voice rang out,
and the sound of mortars firing followed.
The Obsidian Unit moved like machines.
They carried shells, adjusted coordinates,
and fed rounds into the barrels.
They fired, and fired again.
As I entered the factory,
Chen Zhihao, Allen, Sin Junggi, and Toto approached.
“Most of Rodrigo’s base has been destroyed.”
Allen reported.
“As we continued the attack, we discovered tunnels underground. We’re collapsing those as well.”
I liked that.
Things like tunnels had to be destroyed on sight.
Only then would there be no trouble later.
“However, the place where Rodrigo is seems much sturdier. I think we’ll have to use that one.”
Allen turned his head.
At the end of Allen’s gaze stood Nemesis, already prepared for launch.
Amid all this chaos,
only that place was quiet.
It felt as though silence had settled there.
I naturally walked over beside Nemesis.
Seeing Nemesis changed my thoughts a little.
“Will this be enough?”
Allen looked slightly flustered at my words.
“What do you mean by…”
“No, isn’t it too close from here? Will a bunker buster even be effective at such a short distance?”
Allen seemed somewhat taken aback.
At that moment, Sin Junggi, who was beside him, answered.
“Of course its effectiveness will drop.”
“Then isn’t it meaningless?”
“On the contrary, it’s better.”
“Huh?”
“If this Nemesis falls properly, it will penetrate far too deep. That would actually reduce its effect. Since that place isn’t very deep underground anyway, this is just right.”
“Is that so?”
My doubt was resolved.
“Yes. We’ve already locked in the coordinates.”
“The location?”
“Rodrigo’s mansion.”
“After it explodes, we’ll be able to confirm Rodrigo’s corpse, right?”
“That will be difficult. When Nemesis explodes, everything nearby will collapse completely. It will be hard to search for Rodrigo inside the collapsed tunnel. And even if we find him, the body won’t be intact.”
At Sin Junggi’s explanation, I thought for a moment.
Whether it was right to blow Rodrigo away like this.
Blowing Rodrigo away with Nemesis would be fine,
but at the very least, I wanted to confirm his end.
I had to finish this with certainty.
“Then don’t hit the mansion with Nemesis. Hit the area around it. Block his escape routes.”
“Yes?”
“We’ll confirm Rodrigo’s final moments ourselves.”
At my words, Chen Zhihao nodded as though he understood what I meant.
“You mean you wish to confirm Rodrigo’s death, correct?”
“That’s right.”
At my words, Chen Zhihao checked his laptop and shouted.
“We’ll correct the coordinates. Coordinate correction.”
“Coordinate correction.”
When Chen Zhihao shouted,
the Obsidian Unit repeated the order back and adjusted the coordinates.
The coordinate correction did not take long.
I held the detonator for Nemesis, which was ready.
I looked down at the detonator,
then held it out to Sin Junggi.
“You press it.”
“Yes?”
“You should be the one to finish this.”
“……”
Sin Junggi said nothing.
Then he slowly accepted the detonator.
He stared at it for a long while.
Then the look in his eyes changed.
It was the face of a man who had made up his mind.
Sin Junggi shouted loudly.
“Ten seconds until Nemesis launch.”
He shouted in a clear voice.
Every movement inside the warehouse aligned with that single command.
“9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Launch.”
Sin Junggi pressed the button in time with the countdown.
Whoooooosh.
With a heavy vibration,
Nemesis rose.
The massive lump of metal tore through the air as it shot upward.
It flew toward the night sky over Tijuana.
*******
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Rodrigo sat blankly inside the bunker, listening to the sound of shelling.
There was nothing to do, and nothing he could do.
He could not go outside, and no one was coming.
Communications had been cut,
and all that remained was electricity barely maintained by the generator.
Rodrigo sat there blankly,
waiting only for the situation to end.
That was when it happened.
Suddenly, silence arrived.
The sound of shelling that had been pounding nonstop stopped.
Huh?
He doubted his ears.
His heart began beating a little faster.
‘Is it over?’
Had the army begun suppressing them?
A flicker of expectation passed through him.
By now, the army should have arrived.
No, they were late.
They should have come long ago.
“Yes. Let’s end it here.”
Rodrigo spoke quietly.
But.
That expectation did not last long.
Kuuuuuuung.
A sound completely different from anything so far rang out.
It was not a dull artillery blast.
It was far deeper,
and far heavier.
It was the sound of an explosion of a different existence altogether.
In that instant, the entire bunker lifted.
“…What the hell!”
Rodrigo flinched in shock.
The walls rang, and the ceiling trembled.
The floor sank slightly.
Rodrigo instinctively leaned against the wall.
“N-no. This isn’t right.”
It was a bunker with walls over one meter thick.
A bunker built to withstand any situation.
And yet that bunker was shaking.
Even when shells had fallen earlier, all he had heard was the sound;
there had been no direct impact.
But this was different.
The ground was shaking.
Then came the sound of something compressing in an instant before bursting apart.
He did not know what that explosion was,
but it was truly an impact that felt as though it would destroy the bunker.
Something was definitely wrong.
It seemed like part of the bunker had broken.
For a moment, it became difficult to breathe.
It was stifling.
Hope disappeared.
His expression returned to that first blank look.
He crouched down again.
All he could do was wait until the explosions stopped.
There was nothing he could do.
********
Nemesis fell.
Near Rodrigo’s mansion.
The warhead that burrowed into the ground generated an enormous shock.
Kwaaaaaang.
The earth shook.
Dirt and concrete surged upward.
That was not the end.
Another explosion occurred somewhere unseen.
It collapsed the underground tunnels,
and stole away the oxygen within them.
Now there was no path of escape.
Every exit had been blocked.
“Let’s go too.”
We headed straight for Rodrigo’s mansion.
.
.
.
“Get out. We move on foot.”
On the way to Rodrigo’s bunker by car,
we got out and began walking.
The vehicles were meaningless now.
Because of how much shelling had poured down,
the place had completely lost its shape.
The roads were split open,
buildings had collapsed,
and the wreckage was piled up in layers.
The cars could go no farther.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
We slowly advanced while checking our surroundings.
Meanwhile, Sin Junggi was scrambling our location with Phantom Grid 2.0.
That was also why the army had still not reached this place.
When we arrived at Rodrigo’s mansion,
the bunker entrance was easier to find than expected.
Everything around it had collapsed,
but the bunker alone was barely holding out.
That made it stand out all the more.
There was only one entrance.
I stood in front of it and asked.
“Can you open it?”
“We can open it, but… time is the problem. If it isn’t opened from the inside, it will take at least two hours.”
Allen said.
“What if we blow the door with explosives?”
“No good. It’s a steel door. That won’t break it.”
Allen touched the door and answered.
There was an entrance.
It could be opened.
But time was the issue.
I shook my head.
We didn’t have that kind of time.
Rodrigo could hold out inside,
but we could not.
The more time passed, the more disadvantageous it became for us.
Scrambling our location with Phantom Grid was only a temporary measure.
We couldn’t rely on that forever.
We had to deal with Rodrigo quickly and return home.
That was when a faint whirring sound came from somewhere.
Following the sound,
we found a ventilation fan still running between the collapsed structures.
I pointed at it and asked.
“That’s connected to the bunker, right?”
“Yes. It is. It seems the bunker’s internal air purification system is operating.”
“Let’s use that.”
We tore out the ventilation fan.
A thick duct was revealed.
It was an intake passage leading into the bunker.
A very important passage that supplied air to the bunker.
We placed tear gas canisters inside it.
The canisters rolled into the duct.
White smoke began to fill the duct.
The intake vent was still alive.
Which meant
this tear gas would be sucked straight into the bunker.
And when I judged that enough tear gas had seeped in,
around the time the canisters had nearly finished spewing gas,
“Block it.”
We blocked the intake vent itself.
Now the inside of the bunker would be filled with tear gas.
Oxygen would be lacking.
‘Let’s see how long you can last.’
.
.
.
Inside the bunker.
Rodrigo, who had been sitting against the wall, suddenly felt something strange.
It felt oddly difficult to breathe.
It was stifling.
As if there wasn’t enough oxygen.
Like he had altitude sickness.
And then.
An unfamiliar smell began to spread through the air.
It was not the smell of gunpowder from the shelling.
It was spicy and stinging.
It was not simple pain.
The moment he breathed it in,
his nose and throat felt as though they were on fire.
A burning sensation seemed to spread through his insides.
It was as if wire were scraping his airway and lungs.
It was unbearably painful.
He wanted to rush outside immediately, but he endured.
There was no place safer than here.
If there was a safest place in Tijuana, it was this place.
If there was anywhere he could hold out until those bastards disappeared, it was here.
And yet.
It was hard to endure.
No, he could not endure it.
He wet a cloth and covered his nose and mouth, but it was useless.
The gas he had already inhaled was tormenting his internal organs.
It was painful enough.
His skin hurt as though it were burning.
He could not open his eyes.
And, most decisively,
there was no oxygen.
It was difficult to breathe.
His head spun, and his vision wavered.
“Hah… hah… I… I have to open it.”
It felt as if his breath would be cut off.
Rodrigo staggered toward the door.
He grabbed the handle, but he could not open it.
He simply kept hesitating with his hand on the handle.
This kind of gas could not have occurred naturally.
Someone had clearly forced it in.
And there was a very high chance that someone was the Alex Group.
That meant those bastards had come nearby.
‘If I go out, I die.’
Even knowing that, he had no choice but to go out.
The inside of the bunker was that agonizing.
He could not breathe.
He had to breathe to live.
He regretted it.
When he built the bunker, he should have invested more money in the air-conditioning system.
He had thought it wasn’t important.
He had thought it was wasting money on something useless.
Back then, he had thought the filters were too expensive.
So he had not installed anything like filters,
and he had never imagined it would lead to this.
The bunker he had entered in order to survive
had become a tomb that trapped Rodrigo inside.
No matter who was outside, he had to get out.
He could not die like this in here.
He released the lock and pushed the entrance door.
Something was blocking the front, and the door would not open.
“Uaaaaaah!!”
He squeezed out every last bit of strength he had and shoved with all his might once more.
Only then did the door move.
Rodrigo pushed hard against the door again.
He put the strength of his whole body into it.
Creeeeak.
A gap barely wide enough for one person to pass through was made.
Rodrigo barely forced his body through that gap.
And then he collapsed right there.
Rodrigo’s memories ended there.
.
.
.
“He’s coming out.”
Chen Zhihao, who had been watching the bunker entrance, called out in a low voice.
The door moved,
but because of the debris piled up in front of it, it did not open properly.
Once more
The door writhed, and Rodrigo appeared.
At the same time, he collapsed in a heap.
Obsidian ran toward him.
.
.
.
“Coming to your senses?”
I patted Rodrigo’s cheek to wake him.
Rodrigo barely managed to regain consciousness.
When he saw me, he was startled.
“You…”
Rodrigo stared at me, eyes wide.
“You… you bastard. The representative.”
“Representative?”
“You’re the Alex Group’s representative.”
“Eduardo didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That my name is Alex.”
“What?!”
“I’m sure I told him. That my name is Alex. Seems like reports don’t get passed along properly here. Your chain of command is a mess.”
“What? You’re Alex?”
I grumbled,
but it didn’t seem to reach Rodrigo’s shocked ears.
He seemed shaken by the fact that I was Alex.
He looked crushed by the realization that this had been set up from the very beginning.
He tried to say something,
then lowered his head.
His expression was that of a man who had given up on everything.
Even breathing looked difficult for him.
Rodrigo spoke in a small voice.
“Just spare my life. I’ll give you anything you want.”
The first thing Rodrigo said was abjectly servile.
It was hard to believe those words had come from the king of this city.
“Money, factories, drugs, routes, people… I’ll hand it all over. Just let me live.”
Rodrigo’s eyes were serious.
I let out a faint laugh.
I glanced around and said,
“It’s all already collapsed. What are you going to hand over? You don’t have anything.”
“…”
Rodrigo looked around with wavering eyes.
There truly was nothing left around him.
If there was such a thing as a ruin, it was this place.
Rodrigo spoke again.
“I have money elsewhere. In Mexico, and in Brazil and Colombia too. If I say the word, I can have it brought here. So… just spare my life.”
Rodrigo’s voice was desperate.
He spoke as though pleading.
Seeing him like that, I sighed before anything else.
“No, I mean, if you were going to hand it over this easily, why did you get so greedy?”
“…Because I could see it.”
“What?”
“Because I could see it. Because it looked like I could have it. Because everything looked easy. Because it felt like if I just got rid of the one man in front of me, I could have everything.”
Rodrigo spoke as if he regretted it.
But in an instant, the look in his eyes changed.
“Use me. I’m still useful. I know this side of things well. I’ll do it all. Leave it to me. You can just sit back and take all of this. Mexico, South America. No, even the United States. How about it? Not bad, right? I’m telling you, I’ll give you everything you need.”
Rodrigo spoke pitifully once more.
It was a sorry sight, but there was nothing I could do for him.
“I know you’re useful.”
I spoke quietly.
“But I don’t need South America. I don’t need you either.”
“Huh?”
“I’m sick to death of all of this now. I just want to live in peace with my people. What I want isn’t money or power. It’s peace and rest. In that sense, you’re the worst possible existence. Someone who causes trouble wherever he goes. So I don’t need you.”
At my words, Rodrigo lowered his head.
He seemed to realize there was no point in saying anything more.
I took out my gun.
But Sin Junggi approached.
Sin Junggi carefully took the gun from my hand.
I looked at Sin Junggi’s face.
There were too many emotions hidden in his expression to read.
Anger and sorrow, revenge and emptiness all seemed to show at once.
The gun in his hand trembled.
But the muzzle was aimed precisely at Rodrigo’s forehead.
Sin Junggi said nothing to Rodrigo.
He simply looked at him with an unreadable expression.
And then, bang.
A single gunshot rang out in the night of Tijuana.
With that, everything came to an end.