Chapter 94: S#16. The Cave (1)
by fnovelpia
S#16.
Less than a month after moving in, the house was destroyed.
Miller, the alien werewolf hybrid living next door, crashed his spaceship into the building, breaking the wall and collapsing the ceiling.
Naturally, Miller was arrested.
He was taken away not by regular police but by suspicious men in black suits, who seemed like FBI agents or members of a secret organization.
Ellen Strode, who had been discharged from the hospital in good health, found a new home.
The second move went smoothly. It was a pretty house located in the suburbs of Tromaville.
It wasn’t a house she bought but one she rented.
They said they were going to build a new house on the site of the old one (which had been next to the house of Reiko Ishikawa and the Hyper sisters). Once the construction was complete, she would move back there.
Apparently, she felt more comfortable in the place she had lived for a long time.
Nancy had quit drinking. She had returned to her cheerful and bright self.
Everything seemed to be back in place…
…or so I thought.
“Mr. Summer?”
A man came looking for me.
Dressed in a black suit and black sunglasses, he looked like a man with bricks for shoulders.
Yet, he looked oddly familiar.
“Who are you…?”
“I’m Agent Frank from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
The man pulled a badge from his suit pocket.
The large blue letters read ‘FBI’.
I realized why he looked familiar. He was the man present when Miller was arrested.
An FBI agent showing up out of the blue naturally made me tense.
“What do you need from me?”
“Let’s talk inside.”
Before I could even invite him in, Agent Frank entered the house.
He sat at the dining table and pulled out an envelope. The front was marked ‘Top Secret.’
Agent Frank tore the envelope open like he was unwrapping a birthday present and emptied its contents.
Various photos spilled out.
“We’ve been keeping an eye on you for some time, Mr. Summer.”
Agent Frank pointed to the photos.
In the photos, I was depicted.
There was me tearing apart alien muscle monsters at the hospital.
Beating up thugs in the subway.
Getting punched by a demon girl and crashing through a wall.
Surrounded by camera-headed men.
Cutting off a vampire’s neck… and so on.
“Second-degree murder, manslaughter, aggravated assault, arson, destruction of public property, trespassing. Everywhere you go, you leave a trail of destruction.”
“They were all emergencies or self-defense.”
“The jury won’t see it that way.”
In the photos, I looked like a raging muscle-bound destroyer. With my grim appearance, I looked like the perpetrator to anyone.
Honestly, I felt a bit guilty.
Although I struggled for survival, many of my actions had gone beyond self-defense.
Agent Frank clasped his hands and rested his chin on them.
“Let’s do some simple math. If you were convicted of all these charges, how many years would you be sentenced to?”
“I don’t know. Six months in prison and one year of probation?”
“At least 1,099 years.”
1,099 years.
That’s almost the entire history of Korea from the Goryeo Dynasty to the Republic of Korea.
“There are two kinds of prisons. Places where you beg to be spared and places where you beg to be killed. If you were convicted of all your charges, you’d spend the rest of your life in the latter.”
“Are you… threatening me?”
“I’m informing you.”
Agent Frank looked at me over his black sunglasses.
For some reason, he seemed a bit nervous too.
“I know what you’re thinking. Escaping from prison would be easier than eating cake for you.”
“I haven’t thought about escaping.”
“With your superhuman strength and recovery abilities… We suspected you were a biological weapon created in Russia. We even have a department within the FBI dedicated to researching you.”
“…”
“Such power is too valuable to be wasted in a town like this.”
Agent Frank put the photos back into the envelope.
“Why not use that strength for the country?”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a job for you. Go into a cave and eliminate the enemy of the nation.”
Enemies in a cave…
“Are you talking about Islamic militants?”
Agent Frank frowned, not understanding my words.
I realized it was the 1980s. This was before the 9/11 attacks.
“I can’t go into details, but it’s a threat that could endanger the United States in the future.”
“Hmm.”
“I’m proposing a mission to eliminate this threat. If you accept, I’ll feed this envelope to a pet goat. All charges against you will become the goat’s meal.”
“Sounds good. But what if I say, ‘I refuse’?”
Agent Frank sighed.
“Is the writer home?”
“Ellen is sleeping right now.”
“That’s unfortunate. I wanted to get her autograph. I’m a fan of Ellen Strode’s work. I buy and read her books as soon as they come out and watch the movies based on them.”
What was he trying to say?
Agent Frank continued.
“But to hear that Strode is involved in tax evasion… It’s heartbreaking as a fan.”
“Wait, tax evasion? Ellen… tax evasion?”
“From the numbers, it’s clear it was an unintentional mistake. But it can be blown out of proportion.”
As I grew flustered, Agent Frank smirked with one corner of his mouth.
“What about the Hyper sisters? The authorities suspect them of manufacturing illegal drugs. No action has been taken yet. Everything depends on your decision, Mr. Summer.”
“This is blackmail.”
“Yes, it is.”
Agent Frank put the documents back inside his suit.
“If you accept the mission, you’ll never have to deal with the FBI again.”
It was an attractive offer.
We went to an ice cream truck.
The truck, painted with a bear licking a chocolate ice cream, was actually an FBI surveillance vehicle.
Inside the cargo hold were not ice creams but advanced surveillance equipment.
I sat quietly in the seat and waited.
After a while, Agent Frank returned. Next to him stood Officer Bob Bojangles.
“Officer Bojangles? What are you doing here?”
“You’ve caught me. The truth is, I have connections with the FBI.”
Bob proudly displayed his belly.
Seeing my skeptical expression, Agent Frank whispered.
“Bob is an experimental subject of the FBI.”
An experimental subject? Something like the MK Ultra project?
Now I understood Bob’s astonishing intelligence. It was impossible for a human to be that stupid.
He must have been subjected to secret experiments that damaged his brain.
“No, it’s the opposite. Bob is being given drugs to enhance his intelligence.”
“What…?”
“Bob is a reverse genius with an IQ of -9. It’s been revealed that his brain inside his skull is the size of subatomic particles.”
That made sense in its own way.
Frank subtly indicated that Bob would also participate in the mission, serving as a meat shield.
The ice cream truck started moving with us inside.
There were no windows in the cargo hold. Agent Frank didn’t tell us where we were going.
The truck shook heavily. I thought we had arrived when the engine stopped, but Agent Frank said we hadn’t yet.
I felt us lifting into the air, like the sensation of an airplane taking off.
It seemed we were being transported in a military cargo plane.
When we got out of the truck, the landscape was desolate.
A place with blowing sand, high fences, barren buildings, and armed soldiers.
“Looks like Area 51…”
I muttered to myself, and Agent Frank flinched.
“How did you know?!”
I had just guessed, but I must have been right.
Area 51—a top-secret military base located in the Nevada desert.
It was so thoroughly managed in secrecy that it sparked all kinds of conspiracy theories, from being an alien detention facility to a UFO factory.
Of course, it occasionally appeared in horror movies.
The mission was to enter a cave and eliminate an ‘enemy of the state.’ It could be an extraterrestrial being.
I followed Agent Frank into the underground base. We arrived at a conference room.
Four people were waiting for us in the conference room.
One of them was an unexpected acquaintance.
“Reiko?”
It was the medium, Reiko Ishikawa.
Reiko, seated, smiled warmly when she saw me.
“Long time no see, Summer.”
“What brings you here?”
“They said my group is a secret organization plotting to overthrow the government. I had no choice but to come due to FBI threats.”
Drawing Reiko into this raised my suspicions.
After Bob and I took our seats, Agent Frank began to speak.
“I believe you all understand the special nature of this mission. We have gathered people with exceptional abilities to protect this great country, and through a deal…”
“Let’s get straight to the point.”
The man in the cowboy hat interrupted.
Agent Frank did not show any displeasure. He just nodded and continued.
“From now on, we will use codenames instead of real names. Let me introduce the members.”
Agent Frank pointed to the man in the cowboy hat.
“Cowboy.”
The man tipped his hat. He was wearing a worn-out poncho.
He looked like he had just stepped out of a western movie.
Agent Frank’s finger pointed to a woman sitting with her legs crossed.
“Nurse.”
She was a beautiful woman, presumably a nurse.
Her nurse uniform, which was practically a miniskirt, revealed her voluptuous curves. Frank, glancing at her white, sleek legs, moved his finger sideways.
“Indian.”
An Indian man biting a long pipe.
With his closed mouth, he exuded a taciturn demeanor.
He nodded quietly when he was pointed out.
“Whisper, Cop, Woodman.”
He pointed at Reiko, Bob, and then me, respectively.
Those were our codenames.
“Everyone, place your hands on the table.”
Agent Frank instructed.
As we placed our hands on the table, a slight vibration could be felt.
It was like the tremor from a large drill digging into the ground.
“Do you feel the vibration? That is its breathing.”
“…”
“Below this base is an underground cave. Our target, the ‘enemy of the state,’ is there.”
Agent Frank brought a bag. It was a metal briefcase.
He opened it. I expected it to be full of cash, but it wasn’t.
Inside the bag were a timer and a bomb.
“We’re going to blow it to pieces.”
0 Comments