Chapter Text
Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, Republic of Korea
6 years ago
A black sedan cut through the fields on the outskirts of Jeonju. It was a breezy afternoon in late winter, and the sun shone bright and unseasonably warm in the pale blue sky, hinting at the coming spring. In another few weeks, the cherry blossoms would begin to bloom back in the regional city. But the car was headed in the other direction, moving deeper into the South Korean countryside.
Despite the relatively pleasant day, the man who rode in the front passenger seat of the sedan paid little mind to the outside world. Instead, he focused on the display of a military-grade rugged tablet, perusing a classified case file. His thumb remained in constant contact with the fingerprint scanner; even lifting it for a second would disable the screen.
By all appearances, he was a man who was extraordinary only in his incredible ordinariness. He was of the average age, average weight, average height, and average build for men found in South Korea. Nothing about him, from his facial features to his mannerisms to his haircut, stood out. He was a person difficult to describe beyond vague and nebulous impressions, and all too easily forgotten. The first face to be lost in a crowd.
The driver license, credit cards, and a handful of miscellaneous receipts in his wallet all identified him as Park Jinho, a fairly average name. Also found in his wallet, the pictures of his wife and school-aged children offered a small glimpse into his equally average family. A badge tucked into the inside pocket of his suit jacket indicated he was a Superintendent with the Public Safety Bureau of the Korean National Police Agency.
All of it was fake. Park Jinho was a simple fabrication. He did not exist.
Officially, the man himself did not exist at all. All evidence of his real identity had been expunged from public records by the Company years ago.
"Turn left ahead," he told the driver, his voice as average as the rest of him.
The Company also did not exist. Nor did the driver. Nor the sedan. Nor the tablet. Nor the case file the man studied.
Soon, he hoped, the girl in the file would no longer exist, either.
He scrolled through the case summary on the tablet. Twelve days ago, a freak wind storm struck one of the nearby high schools. There was no logical explanation for the phenomenon. The weather that day had been clear and calm, with no major instabilities predicted in the atmosphere. Meteorologists were baffled by it.
Nevertheless, the inexplicably violent microburst had caused significant damage to the school's outdoor spaces and some of the smaller structures. Images of the aftermath showed flattened trees, demolished equipment sheds, and the twisted remains of the perimeter fencing. All of the windows in the buildings facing out onto the athletics field had shattered. The wind speed required for such destruction was equivalent to an EF-2 tornado, making it one of the strongest downbursts ever recorded.
Unsurprisingly, a number of the students and staff were injured, most superficially. But one girl, the one in the file, went missing. Her name was Jung Wheein.
Five seconds of especially shaky video footage captured by a cellular phone showed her at the center of the event. The man watched it repeatedly on the tablet, and went so far as to step through frame-by-frame in order to absorb every single minute detail. Recorded at a distance, she was difficult to see, a small figure hunkered down in a squat and shielding her head with her arms while the skirt of her uniform whipped around her. The clip cut out when the student filming dropped their phone, leaving the girl's fate a mystery.
Fearing the worst, emergency services personnel had scoured the wreckage and the area surrounding the school grounds for nearly three days without stopping, but they did not find her. When there were no more stones left to overturn, they handed the search over to the local authorities, who analyzed the scene with a fine-toothed comb, looking for even the smallest signs of her remains.
They, too, found nothing.
The investigation into the girl's disappearance then turned to other potential explanations. On the surface level, she was a bright and hard-working student, a former class president who was well-liked among many of her peers and teachers. But beneath the veneer, a shaky, broken home life involving an especially messy divorce raised suspicions. Her father was detained and questioned, but ultimately released.
Her teachers and a shy, soft-spoken boyfriend also had very little to offer, resulting in more dead ends.
She was classified as a missing person, circumstances unknown. The investigation was still ongoing.
Five days ago, the Company sent a small team of agents to perform a discreet investigation of their own. That investigation included keeping tabs on all of the girl's classmates by tapping their phone lines, observing their internet usage, and tracking their movements.
Since the event, one of the girl's closest friends had become unusually quiet, turning inward on herself. Each day, the friend took to riding her bicycle around for long spates at a time, sometimes hours on end, even when it rained. It was, many no doubt thought, an attempt at processing her grief.
The Company agents, however, had observed that these seemingly aimless trips sometimes included a stop at an abandoned house in the hills of the countryside. They had also observed that the friend's backpack would look quite heavy whenever she entered the house, but usually appeared lighter upon leaving.
That house was the man's destination.
"Stop here," he instructed, when they first reached the hills.
The driver pulled over onto the uneven shoulder, and the man stepped out of the car. He slipped on a pair of nondescript sunglasses, and shrugged his shoulders back to settle his suit jacket more cleanly over the hidden holster for his M1911 pistol.
The gun, as well as the experimental ultralite ballistic vest prototype that he wore beneath his dress shirt, were far from ordinary. But they were, potentially, necessary.
A strong breeze ruffled invisible fingers through the man's hair as he took in his surroundings. Here, at the edge of the backcountry, small, terraced fields fit together with copses of trees like irregular puzzle pieces, wild and woody. There was plenty of cover for anyone who might be watching.
"Wait here," he told the driver. "Be ready for anything."
Then the man continued on foot, hiking the twisting road up the hill. The mostly leafless trees cast fingerling shadows across his path that swayed with each gentle sough of the wind. He passed by different homes, sturdy and unassuming in their construction, and paid special mind to any visible windows and doors. A couple of dogs barked at him, warning him not to come too near their properties, and one old woman watched him from her stoop. But otherwise, he was alone.
By and large, it was a peaceful place. The man would have liked to return later in the year sometime, to see it when everything would be green and shaggy and vibrant with barely tamed summer growth. But that, he knew, wouldn't happen.
Near the crest of the hill, a small butterfly wobbled past him. Having emerged from hibernation early, the simple Asian comma was a festive speck of orange against all of the lingering shades of winter brown.
He followed it to the house.
Set back from the road, the single-storey brick building appeared quite humble in size, although getting an accurate read on its exact proportions was somewhat difficult; having been abandoned more than a year ago, it was largely overgrown with dormant vegetation. Still, the man assumed that it couldn't boast much more than a single bedroom.
The Asian comma came to rest on one of the window frames, landing just above a cluster of new, leafy shoots climbing upwards from the trunk of a creeping vine. The man was surprised to see ragged edges and holes already in the leaves, clear indications of hungry caterpillars at work, despite the season.
He caught a flash of movement through the window, there and gone.
Pocketing his sunglasses, he proceeded to the front door of the house. A set of old windchimes hung from the eaves beside it, and they tinkled frantically from a sudden gust of wind as the man stepped inside.
The place had been cleared of furniture some time ago, and the modest living room stood empty and cold. The light switches didn't work, not that the man had expected them to. For safety reasons, the electricity had been shut off quite a while back.
Still, there were subtle signs of recent habitation, if one knew what to look for. The room had been swept out and cleared of things like cobwebs, and a few broken panes in the windows were papered over with cheap cardboard and bubble wrap to keep out the draft.
In the bedroom, the signs were much more obvious. A couple of notebooks. A pair of shoes. A sleeping mat and a pile of heavy blankets, all neatly folded. And a half-empty box of single use, long-lasting heat packs from a convenience store.
No electricity meant no heat. It was probably freezing at night. Especially if the girl didn't know how to properly tend a fire.
Checking the closet, the man found a few articles of clothing appropriate for a teenage girl, including the components of a school uniform. The skirt and cardigan both looked slightly tattered and dirty, but the other clothes appeared fairly clean.
With the only possible hiding spot in the room cleared, the man backtracked and headed for the kitchen. Although all of the appliances had been hauled away, even the stovetop, the cabinets and counters still remained. He considered them impassively, noting a couple of empty tupperware containers. Outside, the wind picked up again, blowing hard enough to rattle the windows and set the chimes jangling.
Clearing his throat slightly, the man moved farther into the kitchen, and leaned back against one of the counters, tucking his hands into the pockets of his pants. He glanced at the cabinet doors under the sink, and then looked away.
"I know you're in there," he said. And, after a moment, he added, "And I know what's happening outside right now with the wind is you."
The windows rattled again, the wind keening low. He waited patiently.
When it was clear the man wasn't going away, a small voice finally drifted out from the cabinet:
"I can't control it."
The girl sounded tired, defeated and miserable. And afraid.
"I know," the man said. "That's part of why I'm here. We may be able to help you. Would you like to come out, so we can talk?"
"No," she said.
"Okay," he said. And waited again.
The girl's curiosity got the better of her eventually. Wary, she asked, "Who's we?"
"The Company I work for," the man answered.
"What company?"
"The Company," he said. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you what it really was."
After a beat, she said, "Try me."
The man smiled slightly, detecting a hint of teenaged sass in her tone.
"I work for an intergovernmental agency that's trying to keep the world safe," he said.
"Like the UN?" the girl asked.
"Sort of," he said. "We're not exactly in the public eye. And we deal with a lot less red tape."
After another long beat, she said, "You're right. I don't believe you."
The man chuckled quietly. They fell into the next stretch of silence. When the wind gusted again, making the roof of the house creak, he knew she had something to say, even before she said it.
"Am I in trouble?" she asked, her voice even smaller than before.
The question was much more loaded than she could know. The man hesitated before answering, thinking about what to say.
"No," he said. "But you may be in danger. If we know about you, other people do, too. Bad people."
She let out a small scoff, and asked, with a touch of brittle disdain, "And how do I know you're not one of them?"
By using such an overly simplistic term, the man had insulted her intelligence, he realized. She was almost an adult, not a child.
"You don't," he admitted, intent on not making the same mistake again. "If I did have an ulterior motive, I could tell you anything you wanted to hear to get you to trust me. So you shouldn't. There's no real way for me to show you, unless you actually come with me."
Another stretch of silence followed. The wind shook the trees outside.
"What will you do if I tell you to go away?" she asked.
"We'll continue to watch you, until a decision is made on the appropriate next steps," the man said.
Tentative, she asked, "What does that mean? What kind of steps?"
He took a deep breath, and explained, "We could decide to watch you in perpetuity, and do nothing more. That observation may or may not include intervening in the event that someone else tries to recruit or abduct you. Depending on what happens in the future, we could decide to bring you in against your will at any time, for both your own protection and for the protection of the public. Or we could decide that you're too dangerous in any capacity, and choose to eliminate you."
The house shivered from the substantial blast of a sustained gale. The windows not only rattled, but flexed from the force, and the air stirred within the kitchen as the wind squeezed its way through the cracks.
"I didn't mean to hurt anyone!" the girl cried, her voice especially thin and high.
"I know," the man said, remaining calm.
"I'll stay away from everyone–"
"That would be very difficult without the Company's help."
Over the crazed jingling of the wind chimes and the keening air, a tinny crash sounded outside. The man straightened and drew his pistol in one swift motion, taking aim just as someone burst in through the door.
It was another teenage girl. The close friend. Her school uniform and jacket were slightly disheveled, and she breathed heavily, as if she had been physically exerting herself. Through the open doorway, the man could just see the teen's bicycle laying on its side, the front wheel still spinning, having been carelessly discarded in her haste.
Bearing a fierce scowl, she brandished a stick in both hands as a crude weapon, looking for all the world like she wouldn't hesitate to use it on the man, despite being so much younger and smaller than him. When her gaze landed on the gun, however, her eyes widened slightly as she recognized it for what it was.
She gripped the stick tighter.
"Leave her alone," the friend demanded, a ferocious determination overruling both her fear and her common sense.
Heart of a lion, this one, the man thought.
The stick was far from intimidating, little more than a branch that had been freshly snapped off of a tree. But the man paid it very close attention, watching as tiny green buds appeared all over the bark, pushing out delicate new leaves that unfurled around her fingers.
Interesting.
On seeing him notice this, her expression hardened further with a tightening of her jaw.
"I'm here to help," the man said, lowering his gun.
"My ass! Where is she? If you did anything to her, I'll–"
"Hyejin! I'm here."
The girl in question finally clambered out from the cabinet under the sink. Once she got to her feet, she took a couple of steps towards her friend. But then stopped to gawk at the pistol.
"Wheein! Are you okay?" the friend asked, side-stepping over to close the gap between them.
Blinking profusely, still boggling at the firearm, the girl said, "I'm okay, I– Is that a real gun? Why do you have a gun?"
From the corner of his eye, the man registered something outside one of the windows moving counter to the direction of the wind. He turned his head to look at it fully just as a stun grenade came sailing in through the open front door.
"Down!" he commanded the two girls, moving to shield them.
He also tucked his face into the crook of his elbow, protecting his eyes. The flashbang went off with a tremendous thunderclap and a blinding burst of light. Deafened by the shrill ringing in his ears, the man lowered his arm in time to see three people dressed in black tactical gear rush the door. Their faces were hidden by balaclavas, and they bore MP5 submachine guns.
Bringing up his pistol, he fired two shots on the leading assailant, hitting him squarely in the chest with the first and his neck with the second, dropping him. One of the windows exploded inwards as a fourth assailant opened fire from outside, and the man felt multiple rounds thump into his back. Though stopped by his vest, the impact of the bullets was still strong enough to hurt, and he grunted, staggering a step.
The second assailant through the door slammed into the man, crashing them both into the cabinets.
The wind speed picked up dramatically outside, and the whole house rocked and shuddered. The fourth assailant, plus a fifth, tried to brace themselves as the air whipped around them, a fast-rotating vortex beginning to form with the small building at its center.
Struggling with the second assailant, the man pulled the trigger of his pistol repeatedly, clipping him in the thigh. Each shot sounded like muffled, dull whumps to his still ringing ears.
The girls huddled together in the corner, shrieking, and the third assailant went after them. He grabbed Wheein by the arm, and started to drag her away, but Hyejin held on. Beneath his feet, there was a deep rumbling they all felt more than heard, and the floor ruptured open. Tree roots surged upwards, years and years of growth happening in a bare handful of seconds. They slammed the gunman into the ceiling and pinned him there like a broken marionette.
Outside, the vortex churned into a full-blown whirlwind, horrible and growling low like a demon. The remaining windows of the house burst, glass flying everywhere, and the tiles on the roof were shucked away like so many fish scales, hurled across a neighboring field. One of the gunmen outside was thrown off his feet, similarly launched. Corrugated metal panels, ripped loose from a nearby shed, crashed into the other one.
"Wheein!" the man shouted over the terrible roar. "Wheein, you have to stop it!"
The second assailant rammed his weapon into the man's gut, and hobbled back a step to take aim. But then the ceiling peeled away above them, and the wind funneled into the kitchen, howling. It slapped into the gunman, and he lurched backwards, the chattering submachine gun spraying wildly. Realizing they were the bigger threat, he turned his attention to the girls, stumbling towards them with the gun raised. He swung it down to bash Wheein on the skull. Her knees gave out from the blow.
The wind died abruptly, the destructive funnel spinning out of existence.
"Wheein!" Hyejin cried, catching her friend.
Before the assailant could turn around and finish him off, the man lifted his pistol and shot him in the head.
The lifeless body dropped.
Breathing hard, the sound loud in the strangely quiet aftermath, the man ejected the empty magazine from his pistol and slammed a spare into place. After, he pulled out his cellphone and hit a single button.
"We need clean-up," was all he said.
Then he pocketed the phone again, and pushed off from the cabinets with a grimace to check on the girls, stepping around the tree roots stiffly. Hyejin kept a groggy Wheein propped up while she came to, and they both clung to each other.
The man did not ask if they were all right. It would have been a stupid question, given the circumstances. They were both beyond terrorized.
"Any injuries?" he asked, instead.
"You're bleeding," Hyejin said, a crease appearing between her brows.
Belatedly, the man followed her gaze to see the blood dripping down his hand. He flexed his fingers, and discovered he had taken a bullet to his upper arm in all of the chaos. Something the vest couldn't stop.
"I'll be fine," he said.
"Are they dead?" Wheein asked, staring at one of the bodies. "You killed them?"
"Yes," the man said. "We need to leave. You need to come with me now."
Turning their stares on him, the two girls hesitated.
"They will not stop coming. For either of you," he said. "People like these will never stop. You will never be safe. Neither will your families. They will go through them if they have to."
Frowning, the teens exchanged a look. Hyejin's expression was one largely of confusion and worry. Which was not surprising, given she had missed out on their earlier conversation. But Wheein looked resigned.
"You'll protect them?" she asked.
"Your families? The Company will do everything that it can," the man said.
"Okay," she said, her voice quiet and watery. "Okay."
He nodded, and said, "As soon as other agents arrive, we'll move."
The man took up watch by the front door. It was possible there were more gunmen waiting for them outside, for all he knew. But he and the girls wouldn't have to wait long for back-up. Two minutes, at the most, for the car to arrive.
"Excuse me, sir?" Hyejin asked. "What's your name? I mean… what should we call you?"
He looked over his shoulder at them. So far, the man had done his best to be as honest as he could with the two girls. Having their trust was important, and spinning lies would only be detrimental to that, potentially creating problems for him and for them. Using his current cover name of Park Jinho felt wrong.
Looking back out the door, he thought about it.
"You can call me Mr. Ambiguous," the man said.