Having been deemed no longer a suspect, I am released from the police station. I am exhausted and in dire need of a shower, but I can’t go back to my apartment – not just because it is currently warded off by yellow police tape, but because I have no intention of ever returning there after seeing the crime scene photos. As far as I’m concerned, that apartment and everything in it can burn.
I go outside and breathe the icy morning air. It freezes my lungs, but I prefer it a thousand times to the stagnant, suffocating air of the police station. My driver is standing by the car, shifting his weight and shivering. He smiles kindly at me, but I know that if he could afford to, he’d scream at me to get in the car before he freezes his nuts off. Having nowhere better to go, I ask him to take me to the office.
Around noon, I’m informed that the kidnappers’ car was found abandoned in a ditch near Mount Seorak, three hours’ drive northeast from Seoul. The team that found the car reported that the upholstery was drenched in large quantities of blood. They are now reasonably certain that Mi-Ok is no longer alive.
They are wrong, I say to myself.
She is alive; she has to be.
Several search and rescue teams have been dispatched across the mountainous terrain, but it is snowing heavily on the mountain, and avalanche warnings are in effect. The search is being conducted under quickly deteriorating conditions. Even I am forced to realize that, if she is out there, the chances of finding her alive are getting slimmer with each passing moment.
I can’t sit here in my comfortably heated office with my thumb up my ass.
In several hours my office is transformed into an operations HQ, replete with the best minds I manage to recruit. Private investigators with international connections, elite ex-military and ex-government specialists, search and rescue consultants, even a terrorist negotiation expert. They all know their job and aim to finish organizing as soon as possible to head out to join the search teams on Seorak.
My phone rings. Looking down at the screen I see an unidentified number. When I pick up, for a while, all I hear is white noise.
“Reception here’s pretty bad.”
I recognize the voice instantly and signal the appropriate members of my team, who quickly put on headphones and start recording.
“Jeremy.” My voice is thick with rage and frustration. He chuckles.
“Please, call me Alan.” I spot a note of derision which makes me feel like even more of an idiot than I already am.
“That photo in the police database is terrible. You have to admit, I’m so much better-looking in real life.”
“Motherfucker. When I get my hands on you, I’ll go Picasso on that pretty face, you piece of shit.”
“Well, I’m not that worried. You really won’t be getting your hands on me. No offense – many have tried and failed.”
“Unless you have connections with the space program, I will be. If you’re anywhere on this fucking planet, be certain that I will find you.” I’m dead serious. I won’t rest until he pays for what he did.
“Oh – speaking of putting hands on people, guess what I’m doing right now? Just staring at your girlfriend’s tight fucking body.”
“You psychopath. Motherfucker. I’ll kill you.” My jaw is clenched so hard I can barely speak.
“Funny you should say that when your sweetheart is teetering on the brink between life and death, and… let’s say she’s leaning toward the ‘deathier’ side.”
This must be the psychological warfare I’ve been hearing so much about. I struggle to stay focused, to not let him throw me off balance.
“You know, if I had a heart, I’d pity you right now. You must be going out of your mind.”
I remain silent. Where is he going with this?
“Hasn’t life already taught you how painful it is to lose someone you love? Didn’t you know that if you fell for her, nothing but pain would come of it? And still, fall you did. Well, it took plenty of effort on my part, let me tell you – a lot of careful planning. But now I have the woman you love. And I can kill her, very easily, if you don’t do exactly as I say.”
“I hate to disappoint,” I say, “but that girl you’ve dragged to the mountains is hardly ‘the woman I love.’” I try to break past the crippling fear and sound casual, unruffled – maybe I can convince him that he can’t use her to get to me.
“Oh?” he says, mockingly. “I also remember you telling me that you don’t know her. Never play poker, buddy, because your lying skills are simply the worst. You love her. You love her like I love myself – and I love myself a lot.”
“You’re a better con man than I am, I’ll give you that. But you’re barking up the wrong tree with this girl.”
He laughs viciously. “You let this girl into your apartment. That’s all the proof I need. After all that stubbornness. After all that pedantry about no woman ever setting foot in there, like some squeamish virgin fretting her first dicking. Really, she was… kind of like your first, wasn’t she? She practically deflowered you.” I glance at the team listening in on the headphones, and I swear I can see them choking down laughter. He’s humiliating me. I want to murder him.
“I told you,” I raise my voice, “I don’t love her.”
“Yeah… but you do. That much was clear back in the Octagon, when you were about a second away from peeing a circle around her like some fucking Chihuahua in heat. And then later, after the whole near-rape thing, you wanted to skin me alive when you caught me sneak a peek at those perfect tits of hers. I’m actually looking at them right now – I think they’re what I like the most about her. I can frankly stare at them for hours.”
“You’re disgusting. You make me sick.”
“You’re being kind of ungrateful, you know that? You should be thanking me. If it weren’t for my brilliance, you wouldn’t even know she exists.”
“You’re delusional.” No one knows how I found her. She’s my secret, my wonderful bug.
“I’ll let you in on a little something. I’m the genius who created the one-four-two virus. Get it? One user for two people. Yeah. Yeah. I created the bug that let you penetrate her Bubble, rummage through her thoughts, peep into her innermost feelings.”
I swallow audibly, too stunned to respond. File 142. Fuck.
“Your dad installed it – he thought he could contain it to a test environment, but once he let it out, he couldn’t get rid of it. Guess who was also responsible for that small bit of coding mastery? Go ahead, guess.”
That’s why my father asked me to delete the file. He knew.
“Impressive matchmaking,” I say acerbically, “I never imagined you’d go to such lengths just for the sake of my love life.”
“Well, if you wanna extort someone you need them to care about something. About themselves, at the very least. It was hard work, getting you there.”
“So what exactly are you extorting from me today?”
“I actually want to offer you a fair deal.”
“You’re extorting me. There will never be anything fair about this deal.”
“You get the girl back. You guys live happily ever after and have a drove of shitty little offspring. I’ll even let you keep your control of Bubble – all I want is free access to the core. You’ll still own half the world – I’ll just—run it. And no one has to know! It’ll be our little secret. And just to sweeten the deal – she’ll still be a virgin when you get her back. Giftwrapped, for you to open. Consider it an early wedding present!”
A vein is hammering against my temple, so violently I think it might burst.
“What do you intend to do when you have access?”
“You’re smart enough to figure that out yourself, but… fine, I’ll save you the effort. I’ll patch up the virus and upload it. The new version will allow me to create a shared user with whomever I choose. I could read the thoughts of my
competition and crush it. I could shift government-level decisions and destroy corporations. I could start wars. I could blackmail absolutely anyone. I could, in fact, pretty much control the world. Can you imagine that kind of power?”
I can. And that’s why I can never let that happen.
“Before I decide, I want proof that Mi-Ok is still alive like you say she is,” I try to stall for time.
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid this is strictly cash, not credit. Access to the core systems first, please.”
Shit. He’s insane. He has me trapped. I’m running out of time.
“You were a slow kid, yeah? Too slow to save your mom. But you’re a grown man now. Are you really going to let another woman you love die because you were too slow to decide?”
I know he’s just trying to fuck with my head, but the hard lump in my throat is proof that he’s succeeding. He knows exactly where to push, how to hurt me.
“I gotta say, I liked you much better when you were a fellow heartless sociopath. I’d let her die if I were you – you probably know this. But you aren’t me. You would never give up on someone you love – especially when she’s your first love.”
I realize that he’s right. Mi-Ok is my first love. When I met Lee Sung, I was mostly overwhelmed by her beauty; she served as a shiny thing to wear on my arm. In retrospect, a nice Rolex would have sufficed. Before I went to propose, I managed through much effort to convince myself that what I felt for her was the closest to love I could ever hope to experience. I now know that what I’d felt for her then was in no way similar to love.
Mi-Ok had brought my dead heart back to life. When I’m with her I feel like I’m skydiving. Something ignites inside of me. It’s something well beyond sexual desire – a powerful need to be near her, to care of her and make her happy. I feel needed and at the same terrified of losing her. It is an assemblage of emotions I’ve never felt for anyone but her.
“You know the best thing about first love?” he mocks, chuckling into my ear. “The first time you truly love someone, you’re certain that you’ll feel that way forever. You’re absolutely sure she actually is that fucking perfect, that your heart will always beat for her like you’ve just run ten miles. Then one day the house of cards you’ve built around her comes crumbling down. All her charm dissipates like it was nothing. By the second time you fall in love, you know it’ll pass. It’s exciting, but it’s no longer magical. I tell you this, not to convince you that Mi-Ok isn’t worth the deal, but to show you how certain I am that you’ll take the deal no matter what I say. Mi-Ok is your first love. You’ll do anything to save her. Am I right?”
He knows me too well. That’s the problem with kind strangers. You feel like you can tell them everything, every intimate detail, without paying a price.
There’s always a price.
Chapter Twenty
My mother had the best smiles. She could have been smiling champion of the world.
Today I know the smiles were a mask, covering a deep, overwhelming depression. But masks only hide the truth; and at some point the lie becomes unbearable as well.
After my mother killed herself, I was furious. Indignant because she chose to abandon me rather than to watch me grow. Angry because she left me with unresolvable guilt – I felt that this was something she’d done to me because she just didn’t love me that much. But I was absolutely furious when I realized that every time she had smiled at me, she was pretending. I couldn’t forgive her for lying to me. For never believing that I was strong enough to help her, never even giving me the chance.
After that, I never took another smile at face value. I searched for the veiled falsehood hidden in every smile – if I failed to find it, I’d applaud the acting skills involved in such a perfect deception. Lee Sung’s smiles had always been unmistakably false; I found that comforting. In some twisted fashion, it calmed me, to know what she was – at least I wouldn’t be caught off-guard, like I was with my mother.
But all this was true only until I met Mi-Ok.
I think of that day I waited for her outside of the restaurant, in the rain – she thought I was some random beggar, and when she smiled at me it was the most heartwarming, genuine smile… and I knew it was unfalsifiable.
I take out the bill she placed in my hand that day and press it against my chest. I see before me the countless smiles that Mi-Ok has smiled at me. Embarrassed ones, defiant ones, funny ones, captivating ones, loving ones. They had always felt real. Always made it to her eyes, not just her lips.
Those smiles could save lives.
They could save my life.
I have to see Mi-Ok smile again. Only that smile can mend whatever’s broken in me.
“So what’s it gonna be?” The question sounds from the other end of the line, bouncing me back into the hard lap of reality. I quickly scan the faces of the special team I’ve assembled. They all look stunned. I assume it has something to do with every sliver of information ever stored on Bubble possibly falling into the hands of a psychopath. I can only hope that everyone in the room comprehends the weight of the responsibility currently resting on our shoulders. If we fail to stop Alan Beaker, he might actually end up running the world.
The guy’s a bona-fide genius. Outsmarting him will be a matter of some difficulty. A saying often attributed to Einstein pops into my head: The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits. I’ll need to find those limits.
“Tick tock. Tick fucking tock. Will you be long? Because, in the meanwhile, people are dying here.”
“Her injuries – how bad? Have you stopped the bleeding?” I have to at least try and figure out how urgent her condition is, how much time I have.
“Yeah… we’re taking good care of her. Look, it’s not like I wanted her to get hurt.” He sounds sincere for a moment, almost repentant. “Goods this valuable are supposed to be handled with extreme care. If she’d gone and died now, just as I’m about to get everything I’ve been working for – I mean, that would’ve been… unforgivable.”
Of course that would be it. He’s a self-proclaimed egomaniac. His concern for her can only stem from the potential injury to his personal gain.
“She’s lost a lot of blood. She needs to get to hospital now. If she dies there will be no deal, I promise you that.” I attempt a threat.
“I said it’s taken care of.” He sounds nervous. It feels like I might have struck a nerve. Injuring her wasn’t a part of his plan, and I have no doubt the lackey responsible is already lying in a shallow grave somewhere.
“I want proof,” I insist.
“She’s fine. And it was her own damn fault in the first place.”
“I don’t know how well that argument will hold in court. People usually aren’t held accountable for resisting the armed men trying to kidnap them.”
The bastard is laughing.
“Good god, this girl of yours, she’s a feisty one. I wish I’d hired her instead of these fucking buffoons I have working for me. Most of that blood wasn’t even hers, you know,” he sighed, still giggling. “She bit one of them, grabbed his gun, managed to shoot him in the fucking leg. Then she made a run for it and was dumb enough to jump from the second floor, right into that glass display case where you keep your trophies.”
As if I didn’t hate swimming enough.
“I saw how much blood was in that car…”
“Like I said,” he snaps, “one of my men made a mistake. Then he paid for it.”
“Fine.” I say. “Let’s do this.”
The people standing around the room do not share this sentiment. They’re signaling their unequivocal disagreement with waving arms and shaking heads and showing me frantically scribbled notes, and I don’t give a fuck about any of them, or Bubble, or the rest of humanity, there’s only Mi-Ok.
“What do you need from me?” I’m grasping for anything, any
information he’ll give me of his plan to take over the core system.
“I’ll send you a file. Just install it.”
“Fine. But before I do, you give me Mi-Ok.”
“Please. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re in no position to make demands.”
“How long will the installation take?” I try to understand how much time I’ll have to act.
“Three, four minutes.”
That’s not a lot of time at all.
“Since neither of us trusts the other, I suggest we make this a simultaneous exchange. While the file installs you hand over Mi-Ok.”
A long silence stretches from the other side and I hold my breath and pray he agrees.
“I’ll send you the details in two hours. Come alone, or I promise you’ll leave alone.”
“I’ll be waiting,” I somehow reply steadily, though my entire body shakes. I need to think.
I leave the office and stop when I notice the bodyguards following me. I turn around and stare at them coldly.
“Don’t follow me. I want to be alone.”
I must look convincing because they comply immediately, without so much as an attempt to convince me otherwise.
I go up to the roof. I find several employees up there who could not have chosen a worse day to slack off. They realize this the second they meet my gaze. The nauseating smell of tobacco smoke clings to them, making me think of my stepmother who always smells like cigarettes. I can’t stand it. At least they realize as much and quickly scatter. The smoke, unfortunately, takes longer to dissipate.
I have to concentrate before the entire world drowns in something far worse than smoke.
In my head I replay my conversation with Beaker repeatedly and soon reach the conclusion that I can’t do this alone. I really, really hope I’m not wrong about the guy I’m about to call for help.
Alan Beaker is a genius. I remind myself that so am I. Then I call Mi-Ok’s team leader and ask him to meet me in one of our more private conference rooms.
The Bubble Match Page 14
