Being Korean

We left for the North Korean embassy early in the morning on the next day.

North Korea did not have an embassy in the U.S Washington DC per se, but they did have a Foreign Consulate in New York representing their UN Interest. That Foreign Consulate did act as a de facto embassy so everyone treated it that way.

The plan for infiltrating the building was perfect. The entire squad was needed for this mission. With me, as Shade, Lynx, and Chasm taking command. Lynx had command of all the other special operatives—Hammer and Cyber, leaving the grunts under mine and Chasm's command. Three grunts each for all of us.

I call them grunts but that was just because I hated their company. These were former SWAT operatives and Spec Ops commandos. They were good at what they did—killing.

Our insertion plan was to go in as chefs and kitchen staff. Over the weekend, we'd abducted all the chefs and kitchen staff of the consulate and had gone through intensive cosmetic makeover to make us look like them. It was not surgery, just some skin grafting and face work. It could all be peeled off, but at the moment, it allowed us to fool biometrics.

I knew I couldn't warn the Pentagon of this attack like I did with the nuclear tip, which they were already calling Kali’s Message, after the Hindu goddess of destruction.

Already, Stiff's moles had reported to him that the army found out about the nuclear weapons and he was adjusting his plans accordingly. It was why he hastened with the movement of his forces at the border. Those were mercs, mercs he was smuggling into South America to create a Cartelist Coalition Army.

I had M tracking down Stiff’s moles and Mindy was monitoring the mercs movements. But I could not forewarn the Pentagon about this Nork embassy attack else Stiff would change plans. He certainly had backups, M found out through her access to Lynx’s phone, but I did not know what his Plan B, or C, were as he did not disclose them to the redhead squad leader.

We would each be arriving at the building at different times, following the schedule of the people we were impersonating. I was Park Han Pyo, a South Korean culinary expert. Who'd have thought that the Norks employed South Koreans in their offshore offices.

We were all to arrive before 08:00 and that was when I would be blowing the whistle. I could not do it before then, or risk Stiff getting word of it through his moles so I had to adjust.

I still had no idea what the core objective of this mission was. I'd tried to find out. Even Chasm was curious. How couldn't he be, this was a Level-Seven, those aren't done without a global objective in mind. But Lynx was keeping quiet about it and had sternly told us to follow orders and try not to be too curious.

It didn't matter though. I planned to be a brave cat today and I would be finding out what that core objective was.

M would be helping me. When I have that day figured out, then I will carefully leak it to the right authorities. Along with it would be the information of how nuclear weapons were made.

My Power of Magnitude may be useless at helping find where they were now, but I knew how they reached Stiff’s hands.

The nuclear warheads were from North Korea. The Norks had been arming submarines with nuclear WMDs stuffed silos. They'd had forty of such submarines. Had because Stiff had Cerberus take control of them and move them from the Arctic, where they had been, to the North Sea.

And that was where M and I lost track of them. Hopefully, the military, when I give them this info, would be able to find them.

I doubted it, but I had a last resort. If nuclear war becomes inevitable, I would drop all this cloak and dagger and set M loose on Cerberus. Stiff would finally have a confirmation that someone was opposing him.

Right now he knew, but wasn't so sure. The best he had was that there was a mole inside his organization. I'd been investigated, of course, everyone was investigated, even Lynx. Stiff was not one who believed in trust. But the investigations came back negative. Everything checked.

I knew that depending on how things went, today might just be David's last day in Stuff's organization, but I was prepared for that. All their digital systems that did not host Cerberus: their phones, laptops, computers, satellites, were already compromised and monitored round the clock by M.

Today was going to be an interesting day.

I was driving Mr. Park's car towards the embassy while M was briefing me on how the Pentagon had concluded their meeting the previous day. The meeting had dragged on into the night. I left before they finished, having needed to get some sleep so I'd be fully awake and prepared today.

“The Action Items concluded goes like this,” M informed me, as I drove through early morning traffic, “General Bradley will coordinate with CENTCOM to finalize operational details, Lieutenant Kenning will continue monitoring intelligence feeds. And General Yong will brief Pacific Command on potential regional implications. Once the briefing concluded, the generals and officials swiftly left to see to their various tasks and begin mobilizing their teams. Through the Pentagon’s communication office they finished updating their systems with the new data. And after engaging secure communication, General Reed had his aide encrypt and transmit the plan to the White House Situation Room. Eyes-only, POTUS and SECDEF. Right now the Pentagon is on active vigilance. In the shadows, analysts and operators are working tirelessly, tracking developments. The Pentagon's war room is on constant watch, ready to adapt to the evolving landscape.”

I sighed at that. This was not how things were supposed to be. Stiff was not supposed to be this much of a threat, not one I should be struggling with after becoming a Bastion. If life was fair, having M alone would have solved the issue for me.

It was not hard to end swiftly, but it was the mother of all difficulties to end him without consequences. I could just capture him and kill him. It would barely take a minute to do so with the superspeed ability of my Power of Motion.

But killing Stiff would amount to nothing. I'd gain nothing from it, not even a satisfactory revenge. He possibly had a deadman switch that could see the world go up in flames. I couldn't risk that. I had to know what his redundancies were before I moved in on him.

And the plan was never to kill him. Death wouldn't be the end for him. I'd watch him suffer for everything he did, not just to me but everyone that he's ever gone against.

He'd suffer, his reputation would be dragged down, every part of the world would want a piece of him and when he's confined to a dark pit, forever condemned to daily torture, never to see the light of day, praying ever day for a quick death—only then would I be satisfied.