Chapter Text
January 5th, 1990
The kennel mansion
Jaehyun's gaze narrowed as he stepped into the dark bedroom, Louis being ever the impatient one who refused to wait until tomorrow to review the newly manufactured samples stood over his desk with shaky breaths that served as the only indication of his presence if it wasn't for the lamp settled down on the surface of the wood.
"You're here," the old man's voice wasn't any softer than the underlays of his shallow breath as he attempted to multitask although his eyes failed to focus under the blinding blue light.
"I had a talk with the Park Kwangho," After the deep breath Louis' winkled ears had managed to filter through the following sound of the younger man's jacket shifting against his limbs - he had expected at least a straightforward, positive update on the land they had agreed to use as a controlled settlement for their following project due to its proximity to the corporation's headquarters and the fact that it had rather.. already corrupted residents who could be the perfect host for their self powered. Instead, he received one of those creepy prologues Jaehyun usually used to deliver an unfortunate message softly.
"Sad news?" Louis breathed out, a wrinkled hand dotted with deep brown coloured freckles that arrived with old age reached out to the tube connecting two interactive substances.
"Sad news is.." Despite the old man's weak capability of hearing muffled or low noise, he could almost hear the officer's boots tapping on the wooden, uneven boards that served as a floor next to his ears, little did he know - not only his ears were weak enough to be useless, but his senses are soon demolishing too.
Jaehyun stood painfully close, and what was closer was the tip of the blade tight in his grip directed and pressed against the Louis' lower back - ready to pierce through his organs.
"The land is not for sale." He spoke up,
"Not for sale? We had an agreement, I—" His breath hitched at the sensation of the blade forcing him to pin his body against the hard wood behind as soon as he turned around.
"Tell me, was I merely a mid-man for you to confirm the deal with the Park family?" Louis had grown closer to embracing the tone Jaehyun had spoken in than his smily face that was capable of making anyone forget who he truly was, which was more notable about the man than the polished look he wore and the appropriate way he voiced his words out. But he had to admit, this tone was foreign.
"He told you.. but you wouldn't understand!" Louis' voice cracked as soon as his shout hit a note outside his weak vocal range. "It was to become a god, to create a new world with an advanced race of human beings..!"
Jaehyun's eyes narrowed, "The right to become a god.. only one worthy of being a god deserves that right." He spoke painfully slow.
"The right.. with Sunghoon, I have that right." He drew the blade further before diving it into his chest.
—
July 26th, 2017
As a senior researcher linked to projects as early as 2009, Sooha bore witness to many failed projects, among them stood out the most brutal one, a project her father had left behind unfinished before his death was declared, in which the objective was to bioengineer a memory harvesting organism with the weapon being a parasite, an engineered virus that can extract and store then replay people's memories, it always sounded absurd and uncanny to her, until she saw for herself. And at times shaped like vesselsoft's research division including a too young junior operator Sooha, the unfortunate and traumatic events resulted the position she was in now. She officially left the division soon after a stall in another project and began work as a spy, leading to a career in the biohazard security division, eventually with her being its captain.
She could've most definitely ended up with a different, less stressful career in something related to mycology. But she had no choice as a certain founder under the name Park Jongseong insisted that she joined the corporation to assure the fact that all the operations and murders she had witnessed -accidentally- were in safe hands.
So now, with all the blood flowing through her veins, she made subconscious taps on her keyboard that resulted nothing but an insertion of random letters into her reports that she had no idea how to finish a few seconds before she got smacked on the back of her head with an file labeled with the signature of none other than the corporation's own director. William Kim.
Her eyes caught the person's figure, Jake. no more seconds were wasted before she cursed him under her breath and directed her eyes back to the open file which the subject was an Investigation into unexplained events in northeastern Louisiana.
With the primary objective being to conduct reconnaissance and assessment of a series of potentially hostile events occurring in the northeastern mountainside of the region by the border.
Sooha work for Vesselsoft, a corporation that publicly registered itself as a pharmaceutical research entity but maintains operations in bioweaponry development, just because.
And her, being the great operative she was holding qualifications as a virologist and former commissioned bioengineering officer has been assigned lead investigative authority under direct orders from Dr William according to the file in her hand.
She's always thought employees who complained about hating their boss were exaggerating.
The summarised paragraph that served as the chronology stated that Initial traces of biological activity were detected by officer.. she can't manage to spell his name during an unsanctioned observation of a village by the border separating two states.
And the immediate escalation of internal security protocols at the concealed headquarters resulted in small unit task forces with four to six personnel each deploying for field inspection but all units failed to return and are presumed compromised with only one agent returning. Sim Jake. Wow.
«We will be departing soon, prepare your gear.»
— Dr. William.
The bold letters stared at her stubbornly and she almost considered rubbing her eyes once to twice to confirm that this wasn't some sort of nightmare.
But her being sent as the last resort was logical enough to her. Sooha had been engrossed into an endless mud of files during the winter, the young operative act as if she were a child gaining consciousness for the first time as she attempted to find any possible connection to her late father's unfinished projects.
Sooha's eyes scanned the file handed to her by none other than her co-worker- Jake, a senior field operative of a special service division.
The said man's level clearance was no joke, he was authorised for direct contact with classified bioweaponery threat intelligence but it was merely a cover role of logistics and diplomatic liaison for interregional operations,
because in all honesty, Jake was a coward. He was rarely assigned to handle operations such as the one listed in the drive manual on the screen of Sooha's laptop as his last notable mission being recorded deployment with a task unit sent to the village where the mysterious events occurred. And mission ended with total loss of team,
Probably due to his bad luck.
And so Jake listed as presumed KIA but secretly reassigned to intelligence only work due to incident sensitivity.
It was abnormal to Sooha how Jake was the only one who survived among the five officers sent to the foggy mountains to inspect something suggested by the special investigators as a rival company's secret bioweapon making.
One would presumably assume he worked for the suspected rival company, which was the reason he was currently the talk of the department.
She fumbled against the files scattered across her desk, Jake standing behind her with a nervous look.
And as her hand fell on the file,
The file stated the team composition with captain Elias Korrin as tactical commander, lt. Kim Jieun as long range engagement fighter.. Sgt. Sangwon Rhee as heavy weapons specialist..etc.
Too many names.
Her eyes squinted subconsciously as she read the through the agent's reports and descriptions of the field.
According to the file, lt. Kim reported visual contact with humanoid figures exhibiting erratic movements at an unknown ridge point with no heat signatures detected. And upon hearing the news of the operation's results as she entered the department, Sooha expected the suspects of such abnormal incidents to be ones of a rival corp. After all, practicing genetic mutation in a far foggy village was a smart idea. Unlike vesselsoft's decision of building high grounds with a thousand stairs and elevators, one slip leading you to a hot pool of acidic substance.
All of these predispositions seemed painfully familiar to her, she remembers reading something related to this while going through the notes her father had left behind but she can't quite place a finger on it.
"Sgt. Rhee engaged one entity at close range. She said.. Subject displayed extreme non human skeletal structure." Jake spoke up for the first time since he handed her.. or smacked her with the file.
She ignored his rather useless information before smacking her lips in dismissal as she read further.
Communications blackout were initiated which led to the drone feeds to be corrupted by unknown interference pattern.. odd, with the help of a series of secret pharmaceutical corporations with the same intentions as Dr. William's- they thought such a thing couldn't happen after all the satellites they had built. What was more disturbing is the fact that all team members except Jake were declared MIA. Jake's body cam feed recovered later, it felt scripted how the body cams got redacted except jake's last evidence of environmental distortion and appearance of multiple unidentified redacted objects and entities.
"What did they look like..? The mutants." She spoke up indifferently, her hands fumbling through the papers.
"Tall and.. pale?"
She crunched her face at his obvious response.
"Yeah, that's written here. I need more details."
"They looked like werewolves." He almost stuttered while saying that and Sooha started doubting if he really was involved.
"You were the only one who came back."
"That's what they tell me."
"Tell you? You don't remember?" She turned around with a pair of squinted eyes eyeing him.
"I remember enough. There were sounds.. a lot of voices."
"Whose voices?"
"The ones who killed the captain and the others." His eyes met hers for the first time since he handed her the pile of files, currently placed on the steel desk.
"The file says they were abnormal entities, bioweapons.. agents."
"They—"
"Do you really think a bioengineered mutant can talk?" Sooha paused, spinning her chair enough to fully meet his figure, the said man stood awkwardly by the entrance of her office.
"I don't know."
"Ask Taki to make a dossier entry for my departure, I'll go see for myself."
"Taki is missing too."
"Make it yourself then."
Her eyes scanned his body as he turned around to leave the department depth, Jake stepped out of the department corridor, the glass doors closing behind him with a click. His boots made a loud thudding sound on the tiled floor, the boy's stride was slightly quickened, he was in hurry and everyone suspected him, not that they could fire him anyway. The standard field uniform clung to his frame as the radio unit was fastened at his right hip, the wire snaked upward across his torso and looped neatly toward the receiver near his collarbone.
His right hand settled on the radio with his thumb brushing over the worn rubber of the push to talk switch. Without breaking stride he brought the receiver close to his mouth with the stretched coil bending tightly between his hand and his shoulder.
"Clear," he said in a low tone, looking around in nervousness.
A faint click answered him followed by a voice that carried static along its edges.
"Status?"
Jake kept walking with his eyes forward past the unlit hallway leading to the storage bays. "His daughter has seen the files. She's reading too much into the report, though."
There was a pause on the other end. "And?"
Jake's jaw tightened slightly. He lowered his voice in hushed disbelief, glancing toward a passing staff member before speaking again. "What do you mean 'and'?"
"Is she coming?" the voice asked.
Jake's grip on the receiver shifted, knuckles pale. "Yeah.."
"And William?"
"Sunoo is still trying," Jake said,
A pause longer this time. "We just need the corp to fall into line, the Park family is tired of working in the shadows."
Jake slowed his steps, approaching the turn toward the west wing. "That's not the hard part." He lowered the receiver slightly, "You can't just get rid of her."
The other end stayed silent,
"She'll join us if she has to," Jake thought he heard the faint trace of a laugh voiced out by a foreign voice before the channel cut. He clipped the receiver back into place, squared his shoulders and kept moving down the hall towards a certain doctor's hall.
He stared at her shadowed figure through the glass doors. Her body standing tall against the clumsy way she carries her weight as she walked in circles while reading the file in hand.