Relying on the light from his smartphone, Lee Young-jin began to advance slowly, step by step.
He shone the light here and there on the shelves, searching for an object of a familiar shape, or a new, out-of-place item in this familiar layout.
He pushed through another door.
The door, unlocked with top-level authorization, opened with a heavy weight as he pushed hard against it.
The flow of air created by his moving clothes rustled somewhere, and Lee Young-jin flinched, hunching his neck. He shone the light of his smartphone towards the sound, but there was nothing. He approached a box and opened its lid. It was filled with old documents, each dated several decades ago and officially stamped.
Suddenly, the voice of Seo Seung-hyun played in his ears.
[Lee Young-jin, listen.]
His voice, wavering precariously through unstable telecommunications.
[…Teacher will be arrested, and soon there will be a search and seizure on the entirety of IG Logistics. Naturally, the prosecution will target not drugs but documents related to Gyeongup Industries.]
Lee Young-jin stretched his hand into the box. His black eyes scanned beneath the documents.
March 18, 2008.
With each document he flipped, the dates changed.
August 1, 2007.
December 15, 2003.
2001. 2000. 1997. 1994. 1990. 1987…
“Not drugs but related documents…”
Lee Young-jin murmured lowly.
He closed the lid of the box.
Turning around, he walked back through the corridor. Then, a coughing sound came through his earphones.
[I think I’ve found something.]
Lee Young-jin instantly lifted his head.
[You can see what I see, right?]
“Right. What is it?”
He hastily took out his smartphone. It was a dimly lit room. Beyond a narrow gap filled with shelves and boxes, there was a square metal door on the wall.
[It won’t open.]
Yoon Hwa-kyeong said.
[Didn’t you say all the doors would be open?]
Lee Young-jin stared intensely at the square metal door blurring in the darkness. For Lee Young-jin, who struggled to distinguish objects in the dark unlike regular extraordinary species, perhaps Yoon Hwa-kyeong turned on his phone light for him.
Under the faint light, the square metal door became more visible.
It was a vault, about a meter in height and width. There was a large electronic locking panel on one side, but no keypad. It was clear that this was no simple vault to be opened with a password. And it was an object Lee Young-jin did not remember.
After he left the island, or after Lee Young-jin had brought it back from his second item delivery to Teacher. Or maybe after he had decided to sell Lee Young-jin across the sea. In any case, it was clear that this was another security device newly installed in this panic room afterward.
“…I’m coming now.”
Lee Young-jin quickened his steps while looking at his smartphone.
Tap, tap, tap, the sound of his steps echoed through the cardboard boxes, metal shelves, and stone corridors.
After turning twice in the corridor and passing through another door, a light appeared.
Yoon Hwa-kyeong was looking around with his smartphone in hand.
As Lee Young-jin approached, Yoon Hwa-kyeong gestured towards him. Lee Young-jin approached and knelt on one knee on the floor, placing his hand on the metal door. The smooth surface felt devoid of any temperature.
This was a door newly added after Lee Young-jin had designed the entire security system of this panic room.
Since the entire lock had been unlocked when passing through the red door, it was clear that this door operated on a separate system.
There was no reason it couldn’t be opened, but there was no time now.
Lee Young-jin’s eyebrows lightly furrowed.
Teacher had intended to dispose of Lee Young-jin, yet he had not yet removed Lee Young-jin’s security privileges for this panic room. Probably due to the hasty deal with Seo Seung-hyun, there hadn’t been time for that. Then, the access rights to this separately operated vault would depend on when it was installed. Was it before or after deciding to deal with Lee Young-jin? If it was the latter, maybe Lee Young-jin’s access would work on this separate system too.
Maybe. Hopefully. Please.
Lee Young-jin moved his hand towards the lock panel.
He placed all five fingers on the sleek glass panel and leaned in close.
The panel, designed to automatically recognize biometric information, lit up. A green light followed his fingerprint lines, and the edge of the door flashed once. An inhuman mechanical voice buzzed from inside the panel. [Top-level authorization added. Unlocking the blue door.]
“Ha, ha…”
Before he knew it, Lee Young-jin was panting.
Due to tension, both lungs had inflated to the brink like balloons filled with helium, ready to burst. Fortunately, before his ribs could deeply puncture his lungs or shatter, Lee Young-jin exhaled a long breath.
The lock panel surface flickered a few times. With a beep-beep electronic sound, the heavy sound of something moving came from inside the door. Simultaneously, with a hissing sound like air escaping, the square door began to slowly recede inward.
Grrrr, the panel made a strange noise.
Only after a gap wide enough for a person to pass through appeared on both sides of the door, which had receded into the wall, did the door stop moving.
Lee Young-jin and Yoon Hwa-kyeong looked at each other without saying who would go first.
“I’ll take this side…”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong pointed to the right.
Lee Young-jin firmly nodded.
They split up, squeezing through the gaps on each side of the door.
Of course, that acute tension snapped after 5 seconds.
The inside of the door was a small room.
Just like the thick walls they had passed through before, a square thick door had slid inside, creating gaps on three sides – both sides and the top of the door.
But there was no time to laugh or be surprised at their dumb actions of parting so resolutely just 5 seconds ago.
The small room was a rectangle, about 5 meters in length and 3 meters in width, with walls and ceilings thickly coated in lead and steel. In the center of the room was a desk-like shelf, and on it was a laptop that was turned on.
A pale light flowed from the laptop monitor.
The laptop was powered on.
Lee Young-jin’s breath halted for a second. The light from the open laptop and its monitor flickered in microseconds. Lee Young-jin shuffled forward. His feet stopped in front of the shelf. While his mind was still frozen, his body moved as trained. He placed his hand on the body part of the laptop where the battery was. A strong heat sensation was felt on the aluminum.
‘It’s been on for a while.’
Lee Young-jin thought very calmly.
‘At least more than a whole day.’
What flashed through Lee Young-jin’s mind simultaneously was the battery’s life. A primary battery that cannot be recharged. Once the battery runs out, it’s a timeout. And if he had been the developer to retrieve the item…
‘Could Teacher be the owner of the code?’
Lee Young-jin shook his head at that thought.
‘No. If so, there would be no need to drain the battery.’
Teacher was the initial distributor who introduced the item to the market. On November 27 last year, at 6:18 AM, Lee Young-jin had hacked into Seoran Defense’s intranet and extracted Seoran Defense’s top secret, known as ‘Code Zero’. Without knowing what it was or why, he obediently stole it and handed it to Teacher. Teacher sold that item for 20 billion won to someone and then tried to have Lee Young-jin retrieve it in Shanghai. And now, he was deliberately draining the laptop’s battery.
He was trying to retrieve the item, i.e., the data worth hundreds of billions, possibly trillions of won, stored on this laptop.
To the true owner of this comical code.
But why?
Why did Teacher create a fake to sell, despite having the real thing, and why is he deliberately draining the battery to return the item to the code’s owner?
‘From the beginning…’
Lee Young-jin’s thoughts traced back in time.
‘Maybe the real client was involved from the start.’
Though Teacher was the first to get the item and sell it, could he have been acting on someone else’s request?
Could the attempt to retrieve the item in Shanghai also have been at the request of the code’s owner?
Was it not merely a ploy to buy time until the battery was completely drained?
After all, once the battery is drained, the item would return to its original owner’s possession. Therefore, there was no need to physically acquire the item; simply sabotaging the auction and delaying was enough to naturally result in the item’s retrieval.
And the plan was successful.
Thanks to Lee Young-jin, who had thrown everything into chaos in Shanghai and Bogotá.
The item is here now.
Seo Seung-hyun has the code to operate this laptop, but once the laptop battery is drained, that code becomes useless, along with the countless hours and effort he has put in, and the vast amount of money surpassing billions.
Lee Young-jin thought back to the beginning of all this.
November 27th of last year.
The Shanghai auction and the HSBC underground vault.
Bogotá. The list. Drug cartels and the underworld.
Seo Seung-hyun.
He walked to the front of the laptop, where the screen was lit, and placed his hand on the keyboard. He knew nothing about this code. All he knew was that there wasn’t much time left.
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