Chapter Index





    Ch.156Chapter 156. The Full Story (2)

    “Senior! What on earth is going on?”

    “Oh, you’re here?”

    Juliane rushed into the office, panting heavily.

    Her superior greeted her indifferently before immediately returning to examining documents.

    Looking around, she saw all employees were busy answering phones or working frantically.

    “The Special Investigation Committee has made a breakthrough.”

    “What is it?”

    “The organization behind the research team we’ve been chasing. It was Allison Hospital.”

    “…!”

    A research team that mass-produced clones and conducted human experimentation.

    Just when the investigation had been stuck in the mud trying to find who was behind it, a breakthrough came from an unexpected place.

    “W-what… Then those bastards… don’t tell me…”

    “Yes. They were kidnapping orphans, extracting spinal fluid and stem cells to cultivate clones. Then they sold those clones to research teams conducting all sorts of brutal experiments.”

    “…”

    Juliane was left speechless.

    That would mean the men who kidnapped Jinsoo’s daughter and staged a truck accident were hired by Allison Hospital.

    And that child, who was transferred to Allison Hospital immediately afterward…

    “Urgh!”

    “Hey! Don’t throw up in here!”

    After dry heaving, Juliane hurried back to her desk to review the files again.

    Children subjected to drug clinical trials, children used instead of ballistic test dummies, children used to study the harsh environments of space…

    As she examined the various cases, Juliane felt her head spinning.

    The thought that one of these might be Jinsoo’s daughter made her feel like something was rising up from her stomach.

    ‘No. That can’t be.’

    It couldn’t be.

    It just couldn’t be.

    It shouldn’t be.

    Juliane quickly opened the search warrant documents forwarded by the Special Investigation Committee.

    Finding Mari Kim’s name in them, she scanned the documents with eagle eyes.

    Mari Kim was processed as having her body entrusted for organ donation.

    If organs were donated, there should be records of the recipients, or if they weren’t donated, there should be storage and disposal records.

    But in the documents, there was no record of Mari Kim after her death certificate.

    Mari Kim had simply “disappeared” from the world.

    “This is insane…”

    Juliane bit her lip as she ruffled her hair.

    How on earth was she supposed to explain this to Jinsoo?

    Should she tell him that his daughter was actually reborn as a clone and sold around the world to become the hobby of rich perverts?

    Blood droplets burst from her severely bitten lip.

    “Get your husband’s DNA. Hair, snot, whatever. We need to compare it with the seized clones.”

    “Yes…”

    Juliane collapsed onto her desk with a weak response.

    She had thought it would be satisfying.

    She thought she would feel relieved once she uncovered the suspicious characters and revealed the secret behind the deaths of Jinsoo’s daughter and wife.

    But even with just the tip of the iceberg revealed, she felt suffocated.

    She regretted, just a little… just a tiny bit, that she had opened this case.

    ***

    The US Navy had successfully cut off the tail.

    In the end, the Special Investigation Committee failed to prove the connection between the Navy and Allison Hospital.

    Judging by the dozens of former military personnel who suddenly died in accidents, it seemed the Navy had responded quickly and calmly.

    Meanwhile, endless filth kept emerging from the severed tail.

    Like peeling an onion that never ends.

    -What happened with the DNA you took?

    -We’ve compared everything but haven’t found any matches yet. Maybe Mari was never cloned.

    I read and reread the text message from Juliane.

    Apparently, none of the clones secured by the Justice Department were suspected to be my biological child.

    I wondered if that was really true, but soon gave up and concluded that I had to trust Juliane completely.

    If I couldn’t trust Juliane, who could I trust?

    -What about the possibility that Mari is alive…

    I pressed the backspace key and deleted everything I had typed.

    It was a foolish question.

    If there had been any sign of that, Juliane would have rushed over with a smile to tell me.

    She probably didn’t mention anything about Mari’s survival because there was only bad news.

    Besides, is there even a way to survive after having your spinal cord extracted?

    “Cuss.”

    “Hmm?”

    When I peeked into the living room, I saw Cuss sitting on the sofa, focused on the television.

    She was completely absorbed watching penguins waddling around.

    “Dinner’s almost ready, set the table.”

    “Oh! Got it.”

    Cuss ran over, brushing past me, and reached for the utensil holder on tiptoe.

    Cuss decided to take a few more days off from school.

    It seemed better for her to return after I received my not guilty verdict.

    In a way, Snyder’s scheme was half successful.

    He had managed to keep Cuss from attending school for a while.

    Of course, Snyder himself facing controversy over sexually harassing a housekeeper wasn’t part of his plan.

    “The chopsticks. They don’t match…”

    “What does it matter if they don’t match? As long as they function, isn’t that enough?”

    “It looks uncomfortable.”

    “I’m not uncomfortable.”

    “I am. They should match… for peace of mind.”

    “…”

    Suddenly I wondered what I was doing.

    Abandoning my real daughter and doing what with this strange kid…

    Such terrible thoughts, the kind only the lowest scum would have, crossed my mind.

    “Ah…”

    My vision blurred and tears started streaming down.

    I hadn’t felt like crying at all, but suddenly tears poured out without warning.

    Was there something wrong with my tear ducts?

    I was hurriedly wiping away my tears, trying to smile so Cuss wouldn’t be alarmed.

    “Jinsoo…”

    Before I knew it, Cuss had come across the table and was hugging me.

    How dare this kid climb on the table.

    I should scold her.

    I should, but my throat kept tightening up, preventing me from speaking.

    “I saw the news, Jinsoo.”

    “…”

    “I’m sorry. Your daughter probably left this world peacefully, without pain.”

    “Thank you…”

    I hugged Cuss.

    And buried my face in her cool neck, crying for a long time.

    My daughter.

    My only daughter.

    I held her tight, determined never to lose this precious daughter of mine again.

    I won’t lose this one, ever.

    I can’t go through this twice…

    “Cuss.”

    “Yes?”

    “Will you call me Dad?”

    “No. It feels cringy.”

    “Yeah…”

    Thanks to Cuss, my tears subsided a bit.

    Indeed, we could never become a family in the true sense.

    Just like mismatched chopsticks could never go well together.

    I stroked Cuss’s hair and slowly steadied my breathing.

    “I love you, Cuss.”

    “Why so sudden?”

    “You’re supposed to express it regularly. Otherwise, love grows cold.”

    “Is that a rule? Then I love you too, Jinsoo. As much as the sky and earth.”

    “Pfft… Where did you learn to say that?”

    What does it matter if we’re a fake family?

    What does it matter if we’re mismatched?

    Cuss was right.

    As long as it functions properly, that’s all that matters.

    If we share warmth and love with each other, how is that different from a real family?

    “Aren’t you hungry?”

    “Yes, I’m hungry.”

    “Then let’s eat now. I overreacted.”

    I placed Cuss on the other side and decided to eat.

    I picked up the chopsticks.

    The mismatched chopsticks that Cuss had set out.

    ***

    “Come in.”

    “Mr. President.”

    The White House Oval Office.

    The door opened and the FBI Director entered.

    He handed some paper documents to the President and stood in front of the desk.

    “What’s this?”

    “Three years ago, there was a spaceship that returned infected by an alien creature, wasn’t there?”

    “I think… there was.”

    “Test results show that creature was simply a host. There must have been a separate parasitic organism. We suspect it might have been a ‘Slasher’ parasitizing it.”

    “Slasher…”

    While he might not remember the incident from three years ago, the name “Slasher” was vividly familiar.

    It was an alien parasite discovered 40 years ago that had taken a researcher at a space station as its host, eaten his brain, and settled inside his skull.

    The creature pretended to be human while killing people one by one on the space station.

    It even framed other humans as murderers, getting them executed through votes.

    In this way, it killed people, created culprits to be executed, and repeated the process until it became the sole survivor of the space station.

    Everyone was shocked and trembled at its high intelligence and cruelty.

    After space forces stormed the station and killed it, new guidelines were even established.

    Guidelines stating that alien parasitic organisms, even if they were species not reported to academia, should be prohibited from research and immediately incinerated.

    “Three years ago, there was a silver-haired girl on the same spaceship as that creature. The girl went down to Earth and was receiving treatment in Florida when she suddenly disappeared. We’ve had no news of her since.”

    “The Slasher is inside that girl?”

    “That’s our suspicion. We analyzed murder cases that occurred after the girl disappeared from Florida. There are a total of 8 cases where witness reports of seeing a silver-haired girl near the time and place of murders overlap. The geographical distribution is like this.”

    “…”

    As the President turned the page, a map of North America appeared.

    Eight dots stretched like a line from Florida toward the west.

    It meant that the silver-haired girl, parasitized by the Slasher, had killed at least 8 people while heading west.

    “Since then, there have been no overlaps between sightings of a silver-haired girl and murder cases, suggesting she either died early on, moved to another host, or… is quietly hiding somewhere.”

    “Hmm… Is tracking possible?”

    “If it has moved to another host, tracking is virtually impossible. Still, assuming the latter possibility, we’re searching LA and San Francisco, but I’ve come to ask for your opinion on what to do if we find it.”

    Though he called it an opinion, he was essentially asking for orders.

    However, if those orders violated the law, the Director had no obligation to carry them out.

    So now he was only asking for an opinion, not an order.

    Reflecting that opinion in the operation was entirely up to the Director, as was all responsibility for it.

    After a moment of silence, the President spoke.

    “Kill it and incinerate everything. Make sure not a single larva remains. And I’d prefer if it were done quietly.”

    “Yes. Understood, Mr. President.”

    The response came without a moment’s hesitation.


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