Chapter 10 — Life, Awaiting Approval

Chapter 10 — Life, Awaiting Approval

Just as 'Operation Esther's Ark' for Lithuania was secretly loading its first shipment of aid, a quiet ripple disturbed the main screen of Kai's 'Revelation Computation Unit.' At the very top of the 'Global Humanitarian Crisis Alerts' list, curated by his AI, Micah, a previously unknown name began to flash with an ominous red light.

'The Republic of Safran.' It was a small island nation in the South Pacific.

Micah: "Master Kai, this information was just updated. The secondary damage from Super Typhoon 'Seraph,' which recently struck the waters around the Republic of Safran, appears to be far more severe than initially projected. Over 80% of local communication networks are down, and power supply is virtually non-existent. Confirmed fatalities are already in the hundreds, with an estimated tens of thousands displaced. Access for international relief organizations has not yet been established due to severe weather conditions and the local government's apparent inability to control the situation. Of note… fragmented visual data has been secured showing a small-scale protest in front of the Safran branch of 'Surety Corporation,' the largest local general insurer. Data packet loss is high, so the image quality is poor, but the desperation on the ground is palpable."

Kai magnified the satellite imagery of the Republic of Safran on the holographic screen, alongside harrowing footage of the coastal villages ravaged by Typhoon 'Seraph.' Uprooted palm trees lay strewn like matchsticks, homes with roofs torn off or walls collapsed exposed the brutal nightmare of the storm, and a vision of people adrift on the vast ocean, clinging to small lifeboats, unfolded precariously like an old black-and-white film. A deep furrow of anguish creased his brow. This was no simple natural disaster. Beneath its surface, as always, lurked the shadow of another 'Black Horse' – one born from human greed and systemic failure.

Beside him, Lilith's face also hardened as she watched the screen. Her AI, Cassandra, was simultaneously collecting and analyzing related data, projecting the findings onto her retinal display.

Lilith: "Surety Corporation… As I recall, they are a major local partner, essentially a subcontractor, for 'PanGlobal Reinsurance,' one of the world's largest reinsurers. The typhoon damage has likely far exceeded their projected payout limits, and it's highly probable PanGlobal is delaying payment authorization or, worse, invoking obscure exemption clauses to evade responsibility. Meanwhile, the golden hour ticks away… and people are dying. Just like… just like the methods we've seen before, the ones where they feast on the bloody tears of others." The end of her voice trembled minutely with fury.

Just then, a short video clip from a Safran local news broadcast, barely recovered by Micah, flashed onto Kai's screen as an urgent bulletin. The quality was still atrocious, but its content pierced their hearts more sharply and cruelly than any high-definition image could.

(News Footage: In front of the half-destroyed Surety Co. Safran branch building. Rain is lashing down violently.)

Days had passed since Typhoon 'Seraph' had ravaged it, but the coastal village of Safran was still far from recovering from its deep wounds. Uprooted palm trees lay scattered powerlessly along the roads, and houses with torn-off roofs or collapsed walls starkly exposed the brutal nightmare of the storm. Instead of the bright laughter of children, the air was filled with the deep sighs of adults and the arduous sound of hammering for reconstruction, but even that often drowned in a precarious silence. Everything was lacking; everything was desperate.

Despite all this, for young Rael, the day his father, Tommas, returned was the only festival that made him forget all the world's sorrows. As soon as class ended, Rael shot out of the classroom like a bullet.

"Papa!"

At the end of the pier, over the seawater that had surged in with the debris left by Seraph, wrecked fishing boats, barely maintaining their form, floated precariously.

Rael, leaping over a pile of buoys strewn about like discarded rags, stumbled and nearly pitched headfirst towards the sea. In that instant—an unpredictable, yet still ferocious, gust of wind left by 'Seraph' picked up a shattered fragment of a boat's steering mechanism lying on the pier and violently slammed it into the child's small side. Clutching his school uniform, now stained with blood, Rael was eventually found and rushed to the hospital emergency room.

The ER was a warzone. The doctor, glancing at a chart, shook his head.

"There's bleeding, but he's conscious for now and stable. However… if we don't receive payment guarantee authorization from Surety Corporation, the company you're insured with, the surgery will have to be put on hold. The scale of the typhoon damage is so extensive, it seems they too are waiting for final directives from their primary reinsurer, PanGlobal. Until the paperwork is completed…"

For the past five days, Tommas had frantically navigated a hellish labyrinth of paperwork and robotic responses, with his son's life hanging in the balance. 'Under review,' 'Will contact after confirmation,' 'Awaiting directive from superiors'… only those cold words deepened the abyss of his despair. And on the dawn of the fifth day, Rael, gasping for breath on his hospital bed, suffered a seizure and finally, quietly, succumbed to septic shock from peritonitis. The delayed time had cruelly extinguished the last spark of life from the boy's small body.

Tommas: (To the camera, his lips bloodless, yet as if howling to the entire world) "Do you see this! Is this what you call justice! That damned piece of paper, that goddamned approval, approval, approval! Who the hell are you, you insurance bastards, to approve or deny my son's very life! Bring back my son! Was my child's life worth less than your filthy profits, you sons of bitches!"

His cry was a spark. People in similar plights, who had lost everything to the typhoon and had been waiting endlessly for days and nights in front of the Surety Corporation building for their insurance payouts, instantly became a tidal wave of fury, surging towards the building.

"Bring back my child! Is my child's life worth less than your profits, you scoundrels!"

"You swallow our blood-earned insurance money and kill us twice, you murderous corporation!"

"We didn't sign a contract, we signed our own death warrants! PanGlobal or Surety, you're all just minions of the devil!"

Someone, in desperation, screamed and threw a stone. A building window shattered with a deafening crash, and the agitated crowd began to pour uncontrollably into the building. In the ensuing melee, a man fell down a flight of stairs, blood blooming from his head. By the time the police arrived, the scene was already a maelstrom of chaos. That evening, the Safran regional news reported the incident prominently, headlining it:

"Tragedy Born from Insurer's 'Conditional Justice' – After Major Disaster, Another Innocent Victim Arises Amidst Complex Tangles of Liability Between Insurers and Reinsurers. Enraged Citizens Attempt to Occupy and Set Fire to Insurance Building…"

In his Parisian hideout, Kai set down his now ice-cold coffee cup after watching the news footage transmitted holographically. His eyes blazed with a cold fury that transcended mere sympathy, a rage that seemed to pierce through the entire rotten system. Words like shards of ice dripped from his lips.

"In the end, within that system, Rael was simply 'written off' (Write-off: an accounting term for treating an item as a loss and removing it from the books). Calculated as one among countless variables, and then just… discarded. Like a defective product."

Lilith's voice was as cold as ice, but its edge was as sharp as a well-honed blade. She met Kai's gaze directly, her voice low, yet filled with a resolve that could overturn worlds.

"The 'logic of the system' they revere most… Heh, how truly repulsive. But if we can insert just one tiny grain of sand, like the 'Kaunas Model(Kaunas Model)' we intend to experiment with in Lithuania, into its intricate gears, perhaps we can bring the entire colossal machine to a halt, or even force it into reverse. In Rael's name, and in the names of countless other nameless souls, we will gift their sturdy fortress wall its first fissure, a very deep and very clear one."

For the first time, a smile that was different from before, one that was almost cruelly cold, touched Kai's lips. His eyes were already calculating his next move, no, the move after that. This was no longer a game of profit. This was war.

"Agreed, Lilith. Deep within that 'Fortress of Numbers' they believe to be most impenetrable, right into the very control code where their avaricious heart beats, we will implant an indelible 'Virus of Death.' For a monster that feeds on human suffering, there can be no end more exhilaratingly terrifying than the horror of its own heart stopping."

Now, moving beyond simple relief or systemic improvements, their full-scale counterattack against the unseen empire, 'Babel,' was about to begin. To rewrite the laws of justice with blood upon contracts stained with bloody tears. Upon the game board they had set, the deadliest and most brutal, yet perhaps the most beautiful, game was about to commence.