Ch.186Careless Whisper! (4)

# 186

A few days later.

“They serve meals on airplanes, don’t they give anything here?”

“Is your first comment on a spaceship about in-flight meals?”

Dexter frowned at Emily’s terrible reaction as he took the four women on a spaceship flight, leaving Earth and reaching approximately geostationary orbit.

“Is there really nothing to eat on this nice spaceship?”

“There is. But it’s not the space food you’re imagining.”

“Isn’t it the kind you put in a microwave and it goes whoosh and comes out?”

“That stuff is expensive. There are some MREs though. Check the cabinet with the knife and fork drawing—you’ll find a few in there.”

“Cheapskate.”

While Emily, curious about eating in space, went ahead and opened the cabinet to take out a preserved meal, Judy was staring wide-eyed with her mouth opening and closing.

In contrast, Jesse was rummaging through various parts of the spaceship while also looking at the space scenery outside, clapping by herself or taking selfies with space as the background.

Himena, being on her second flight, was contentedly watching Dexter drive the spaceship from her seated position and enjoying the view outside.

“You said this was a new spaceship, right?”

“It hasn’t been out that long, so yes.”

“So this is what a new spaceship smells like.”

“This tastes weird.”

“That’s because it’s just a cheap protein block with a disgustingly long shelf life.”

“Uh, uh-uh-uh…”

‘Next time, I’ll just bring one person at a time.’

They weren’t all showing the same reactions, but everyone was busy and restless with the excitement of leaving Earth for the first time, making Dexter dizzy as he tried to drive.

After about 30 minutes, when everyone had become somewhat accustomed and quieted down, Judy was the first to speak up.

“…Did Dexter really spend 15 years in space?”

Dexter nodded at Judy’s question and said:

“I worked my ass off for 15 years to get where I am now. The story about working as a correctional officer in New Mexico was obviously a lie prepared by the OSA.”

“And this OSA, the Office of Space Affairs, is where Ms. Himena works?”

“That’s correct.”

Judy looked back and forth between Dexter and Himena before exclaiming loudly:

“How could you hide that?! So I wasn’t being oversensitive or seeing things—it really was aliens that caused what happened to me? And you didn’t even tell me properly?!”

Himena gave Dexter a meaningful look, and after acknowledging it, Dexter turned on autopilot mode, reached under Judy’s arms, and lifted her up.

He returned to the driver’s seat, sat down, and placed Judy on his lap. She turned her head sharply and shouted at him:

“I’m not a child!”

“I know, I know. I’m just trying to calm you down.”

“No, how… Even if you two kept it from me, how could Jesse and Emily not tell me either?”

“Dexter told us not to tell you.”

“And I wasn’t asked about it.”

Jesse offered an awkward smile, seeming apologetic as she spoke to Judy, while Emily mumbled with a protein block in her mouth.

Judy snorted at the sight but then, realizing she was in Dexter’s arms, sighed and said:

“Why do I always get angry when I see Dexter? I just want to comfort him for suffering alone in space for 15 years.”

“That’s because I did make you angry.”

Dexter was already somewhat aware of Judy’s feelings.

She had been close to him before Jesse and Emily, but she was the last to join the group and the last to learn Dexter’s secret, which made her feel like she was the lowest priority and caused her anxiety.

But it wasn’t possible to go back in time and establish a relationship with Judy first, and there were limits to what Dexter could do.

Dexter simply embraced the sullen Judy with one arm and said:

“I never intended to keep deceiving you, and I always wanted to tell you—I want you to know that.”

“I know. I’m just upset at myself for not being able to accept it gracefully.”

Judy buried her face against Dexter’s chest and stroked his thick arm, speaking in a small voice:

“I think I’d just rather… look at space right now.”

Dexter gently kissed the top of Judy’s head as she gazed out like a cat watching a fish tank.

“…Why did you kiss the top of my head?”

“Because you’re cute?”

“You have strange tastes. I guess that’s why you’re with me.”

“But Judy is cute.”

“…Don’t say things like that when other people are around.”

Judy pushed Dexter’s face away with her hand, seemingly embarrassed.

“Why are you only taking care of Judy?”

“Since I was the last to receive love, I should get as much as the rest of you got.”

At Judy’s confident statement, Emily put another protein block in her mouth and said nothing.

“Don’t bully Judy, Emily.”

“I wasn’t bullying her.”

“Judy just wants some of Dexter’s love. It’s not nice to interfere with that.”

“…Jesse, your tone is bothering me.”

“Me? No way. Would I tease Judy? She’s a proper adult.”

“Stop teasing Judy.”

“Geez, I need to find my own Dexter to defend me too.”

Judy seemed to have cheered up a bit from Jesse’s unexpected joke, as she smiled slightly while getting down from Dexter’s lap and returning to her seat.

“Let’s go eat something delicious when the flight is over. Debra told me about a good pizza place recently.”

Pizza is a food with relatively few divisive opinions.

Everyone except Judy nodded or said it sounded good, and Judy also gave a small smile.

Seeing Judy smiling, Dexter circled the Earth once more before returning.

While it wasn’t as moving an experience as it had been for Himena, it was satisfying in its own way.

However, peace couldn’t last forever.

As soon as the five of them disembarked from the spaceship after their space flight, Himena’s phone started ringing.

“Yes, Libero speaking… What? Oh, I was just in space with Agent Hughes… What? What did you say? No, now… When?”

Himena’s voice and expression quickly became urgent as she answered the phone, initially with a friendly smile.

“Ah, sh— No, I wasn’t saying that to you… Should I come with Agent Hughes? Yes. Oh… I understand. I’ll head there this evening…”

Himena ended the call politely, but as she put her phone in her pocket, she stomped her feet and shouted with intense emotion:

“You stupid fucking idiots!”

The four people around her all turned to look at Himena as she suddenly hurled curses at the sky.

“What’s wrong? Did someone scratch Himena’s car?”

“Goodness…”

“She curses well.”

Himena suddenly crouched down on the hangar floor, hung her head, and said:

“Dexy, we’re fucked…”

“Why?”

“Rascal was supposed to be transferred to Guantanamo today…?”

As soon as he heard the name Rascal, Dexter looked flustered and gave Himena a distorted smile.

“That’s not it, right? Himena, please tell me it’s not what I’m thinking, okay?”

‘Surely they wouldn’t have released a spy we just caught?’

While Dexter was trying to think as positively as possible, Himena continued with an expression that looked like she might cry at any moment:

“Some guys in black clothes subdued our agents and kidnapped Rascal…”

Dexter was speechless too, and after putting his hands on his waist and staring at the hangar ceiling, he blurted out what was rising from deep inside him:

“What stupid fucking idiots!”

Jesse, who had a general idea of the situation, wore a dumbfounded expression, while Judy and Emily, who had no idea what was going on, were just confused by the expressions on the three people’s faces.

* * *

The Special Activities Team (SAT), an organization under the OSA’s Space Covert Operations Division that handles security for important matters, had also participated in Rascal’s transfer to Guantanamo detention center.

Dexter and Himena had intended to give the team leader in charge of the transfer a piece of their mind, but when they saw the team leader’s miserable condition before them, that thought vanished.

The team leader’s left arm and left leg had been amputated, leaving empty spaces on the hospital bed.

The one positive thing was the team leader’s attitude, smiling and welcoming the two despite having lost an arm and a leg.

“I hear they’re going to make me high-performance prosthetics because of this incident.”

“That’s… I don’t know what to say…”

Unlike Dexter, who couldn’t continue speaking, the SAT team leader waved his right hand dismissively and said:

“Director Kwan says we were hit by a new weapon called a hand cannon. Fortunately, the team members weren’t badly hurt except for me. If anyone had died, I wouldn’t be able to smile like this because of the guilt.”

Himena thought it strange that the team leader was smiling despite having his arm and leg cut off, and she looked at him with an odd expression until she noticed Dexter staring at her and quickly corrected her face.

Himena, who had reviewed photos of the scene on her phone on the way, recalled the large crater that had made the intact road impassable and asked:

“Since you’ve already testified to the investigators, I won’t ask about that, but did you notice anything unusual?”

“The operation had a high security clearance, though less secretive than when you two caught that bastard Rascal. Even we only received the route briefing right before departure, but somehow heavily armed personnel were already waiting for us.”

The testimonies of the team members that Himena had reviewed before coming to the hospital were not much different from what the team leader said.

Both Dexter and Himena were thinking along similar lines.

“What’s the possibility of an information leak?”

“Even if the transfer was leaked, the specific route and stops would only have been shared on the day of, as the team leader said.”

“Then there’s only one answer.”

“Huh?”

“They tracked him in real-time.”

“We disguised ourselves as ordinary vehicles for security purposes. How could they track us in real-time?”

“Just implanting a GPS device in Rascal’s body would solve that. The signal might not work underground, but it would transmit on the surface.”

For security reasons, they only revealed the route to Guantanamo detention center on the day of transfer, but they didn’t take roundabout routes or detours for security purposes.

“Was the vehicle used for transport equipped with electromagnetic shielding?”

“Basic shielding functions should have been operational.”

“Was there any equipment-related information among what Rascal sold?”

Himena answered Dexter’s question with a troubled face.

“He admitted to leaking several things… He said he didn’t even know what equipment it was and just leaked everything as the general told him to.”

“Either they discovered a vulnerability in the shielding or they developed technology to penetrate it and implanted it in Rascal.”

Dexter sat down heavily in the hospital chair with a bitter expression, and Himena looked at him with her arms crossed and said:

“Is there no way?”

“When was Rascal last interrogated?”

“Probably yesterday?”

“Then we should look at yesterday’s interrogation results. If he knew he was going to escape from OSA, he might have behaved differently.”

‘But if Rascal was broken out without his knowledge…’

From that point on, they would have to struggle again to find even the slightest clue.

‘These people really don’t make life any easier.’