Ch.125Over there! (5)

#125

Originally, they had planned to center their operation around Himena rather than Dexter, but following Dexter’s reasoning that less attention would be drawn to an attendant than to the safety inspector themselves, Himena decided to attract attention.

‘I think one of these doors might have something worth disguising.’

As Dexter walked down the corridor, he spotted a suitable-looking door.

[Changing Room]

‘This is it.’

After glancing around, Dexter entered the changing room and saw partitions along with what appeared to be dozens of metal lockers.

‘That door over there seems to be for women, so this must be the men’s changing room.’

Dexter gently pulled on the door of the nearest locker.

-Clank.

‘They may have good external security, but they don’t protect the lockers with ironclad security.’

The locker was incredibly flimsy.

The lock was similar to those used in schools or prisons, attached to the handle.

Dexter gripped the locker frame with one hand and the handle with the other.

“Hup!”

-Clang!

Dexter applied force to the locker handle and pulled, tearing off the lock mechanism attached to it.

After examining the clothes inside, Dexter was somewhat disappointed by the smaller-than-expected size.

“This is a bit small.”

After unfolding the clothes, Dexter put them back in the locker and closed the door.

He pressed the torn and bent parts with his fingers to restore them to their original state, making the damage nearly unnoticeable at a glance.

After going through several lockers, Dexter finally found a white lab coat that somewhat fit his build.

‘But why would there be white lab coats in a factory?’

Based on his locker raid, it seemed to belong to someone who wasn’t a doctor or factory worker, but rather some kind of researcher.

Wearing the white coat, Dexter put on thick-framed glasses and looked in the mirror.

He did look like a researcher, but something was still missing.

‘Need to make my hair look more nerdy.’

Using wax from the locker, Dexter flattened his styled hair and created a 2:8 part, then hunched his shoulders and back as much as possible.

Checking himself in the locker mirror, Dexter nodded in approval.

‘Now I look more like a researcher.’

Satisfied with his appearance, Dexter left the changing room and entered a door labeled “Production Line 1,” then began looking around.

To Dexter, it looked like an ordinary factory with standard equipment for parts production and assembly, no different from what one might see on the news.

Dozens of workers wearing white coats and hygiene caps were assembling circuit boards despite the hot weather, while security guards and supervisors monitored them.

A security guard with a pistol at his waist glanced briefly at Dexter’s conspicuous appearance but said nothing. However, a supervisor reacted differently.

“Hey, you researcher! R&D is on the third floor, what are you doing here?”

As the supervisor, who wore an orange ID card unlike the other workers, approached him, Dexter spoke in a flustered, intimidated voice.

“Ah, I’m sorry! I’m new today…”

“Take that elevator over there to the third floor where R&D is located! Don’t you know you’re not supposed to enter the production line without authorization?”

“I-I’m sorry.”

As Dexter bowed his head and scratched it awkwardly, the supervisor seemed unable to say anything more and turned away with a sigh.

‘Now’s my chance.’

“Is it over there?”

While pretending to point toward the elevator, Dexter snatched the orange ID card from the supervisor’s chest.

“Yes, over there!”

“Th-thank you.”

“That guy really doesn’t live up to his size.”

Dexter bowed his head apologetically, pocketed the stolen ID card, and headed toward the elevator.

‘So it’s this way.’

Following the supervisor’s directions to the elevator, Dexter was greeted by a firmly closed door.

The door handle had a lock that could be unlocked by scanning a card, with various colored stickers attached.

‘Green, orange, red.’

When Dexter held the orange ID card against the lock, the door opened with an electronic sound.

‘They wouldn’t have put stickers the same color as the cards for no reason… Must be access permissions based on card color.’

If his guess was correct, there would be places the production line supervisor was allowed to enter, and places they weren’t.

For now, he pressed the elevator button for the R&D floor as the supervisor had mentioned, and soon the elevator doors opened.

But as soon as the doors opened, Dexter was startled.

“…Are you a new researcher?”

A woman and a man, both slightly shorter than Dexter, were looking at him.

“Y-yes, I am.”

Dexter was somewhat surprised by the woman’s appearance.

Like him, she had thick black straight hair and gave off a unique, unforgettable aura.

She wore a form-fitting black dress that made her look completely out of place in a factory, with pale skin that seemed to have rarely seen sunlight, covered in colorless makeup.

The only part with color was her thin lips.

‘I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere before.’

Moreover, there was a strong scent coming from the woman, not an artificial fragrance like perfume or deodorant.

‘This scent is also familiar…’

Despite the sense of déjà vu from both her aura and scent, he couldn’t quite place it.

“Move aside.”

As Dexter continued standing dumbfounded in front of the elevator, the woman glared at him with displeasure.

“……”

While Dexter hesitated on how to respond,

“…You don’t understand? This is a first.”

The woman, eyeing Dexter suspiciously, simply pushed him aside lightly and left.

But Dexter almost lost his balance the moment she pushed him.

‘Wait, she pushed me?’

Dexter wasn’t shocked by her rude behavior, but by the fact that he nearly lost his balance and fell from her push.

Even Himena, an OSA-trained field agent, was no match for Dexter, so he hadn’t expected such strength from a model-like woman.

‘What is this place, anyway?’

Deciding to focus on infiltration for now, Dexter put thoughts about the woman aside and took the elevator to the third floor where R&D was located.

-Ding.

Dexter arrived at the third floor with the elevator’s arrival sound.

As soon as the doors opened, he surveyed the corridor and doors that were, like the first floor, filled with an almost maddening amount of white.

‘What’s with this place?’

Moreover, as if someone constantly cleaned it, there was no trace of dirt or fingerprints, just like on the first floor.

While Dexter wasn’t particularly messy, if he had to work in such an overwhelmingly white place, he’d probably deliberately leave a footprint on the wall just to break the monotony.

‘It lacks humanity…’

Shaking his head as he looked around, Dexter spotted someone who looked like a researcher similar to his disguise.

The hollow-eyed researcher was trembling as he walked down the corridor, not even glancing at Dexter as he passed by.

Reaching a water dispenser at the corner, the researcher poured himself a cup of water, drank it, and then crumpled the empty paper cup.

Still clutching the crumpled cup, he began to tremble violently.

“Fuck, fuuuuuck!”

With a sudden outburst of profanity and stomping his foot, the researcher turned his head sharply to look at Dexter and said:

“You, you, you… new, are you new?”

“Y-yes, I am…?”

Seeing the researcher staring at him with trembling eyes reminded Dexter of William, the independent researcher before he received treatment.

“This, this fucking place… I, I shouldn’t have come here just because they offered good money!”

“W-what happened to make you say that?”

“The drug, that motherless drug… Lewis, Jamal, even Suzuki… they all… they all disappeared somewhere…”

Though the researcher’s words were confusing, Dexter caught what seemed to be a meaningful word.

‘Drug?’

This was naturally the first time Dexter had heard about this.

“Stimulants, LSD, opium, morphine, heroin, meth… we’ve tried them all… you bastards… leave me alone…”

Hearing the researcher’s words that sounded almost like sobbing, Dexter pondered deeply.

‘Those are all psychotropic substances.’

Everything the researcher mentioned was either a drug or something close to it.

Dexter decided to drop his awkward newcomer image and approached the researcher, patting his shoulder and saying:

“Let’s take a break, senior.”

“Break? A break? No, no, that won’t do… what will the lab director say…”

“Let’s go to the break room first. Where is it?”

“Over there…”

As the staggering researcher pointed to a door, Dexter supported him with an arm around his shoulders and headed toward the break room.

Inside, several researchers were already sitting on sofas with haggard faces.

The researchers didn’t seem to care whether Dexter came in or not, and were just drinking liquid from paper cups with expressions of distaste.

“Ruben collapsed? Just leave him on the sofa.”

A female researcher sitting on a sofa glanced at the researcher Dexter had brought in.

When Dexter looked at Ruben after hearing this, he saw that Ruben had already passed out with his eyes closed.

“Seems like they’re recruiting a lot of new people these days.”

“Look at Ruben’s state. Can’t manage without new recruits.”

The researchers’ tone was cynical, and they remained indifferent despite seeing the unconscious Ruben.

“You seem new, what’s your specialty?”

When one of the researchers addressed him, Dexter mentioned the first field that came to mind.

“…Botany.”

“Botany, ha. They really are bringing in all sorts of people. All this just to create one addictive drug.”

One of the researchers looked at Dexter with disdain.

“I heard most of the first-round test subjects failed.”

“That’s why they bring in scraps like this. Ah, if only Ruben hadn’t collapsed, half my work would be reduced. Crazy bastard.”

The researchers in the room, except for Dexter, were all from the same R&D department, but they weren’t colleagues in the true sense.

They didn’t even maintain professional relationships, let alone any sense of camaraderie.

‘This might actually work out well.’

Dexter thought that even if he deliberately showed hostility or did something strange, the researchers would probably not care as long as he didn’t interfere with their work.

It was an optimal situation for infiltration.

‘They seem to have such good external security that they can’t pay attention to internal matters.’

Whether it was a short-term or long-term operation, based on what Dexter had observed so far, this place seemed likely to collapse within a few years.

After scanning the researchers around him and confirming they still had little interest in him, Dexter carefully left the break room and headed to the R&D lab where the researchers worked.

When Dexter entered the R&D lab, he found it hard to believe it was related to gaming consoles, with numerous glass test tubes and experimental equipment scattered around.

Like the researchers in the break room, exhausted researchers were busily moving around, conducting experiments or inputting data into computers.

Dexter looked around, trying to find Ruben’s workstation.

‘That researcher was definitely working on something related to drugs, so if I can extract data from his workstation, that would be good.’

The problem was that with everyone moving around chaotically, he couldn’t tell which desk was Ruben’s.

“Excuse me, where is Ruben’s desk?”

Having no choice, Dexter asked one of the nearby researchers.

The researcher was focused on dropping medicine onto a white lab rat with a dropper.

“Get lost.”

“…Pardon?”

The researcher holding the dropper looked at the surprised Dexter and said in an annoyed voice:

“I said get lost, idiot. Can’t you see I’m experimenting?”

Staring blankly at the researcher after the sudden insult, Dexter couldn’t hide his astonishment.

‘What a bunch of assholes.’

All the researchers here seemed to have terrible attitudes.