by Axie Oh
Her husband takes notice of her distraction. He turns and circles an arm around my mother’s waist. She drops my hands.
“Ah, my wife’s son,” he says. He’s a man in his late forties. He’d met and fallen in love with my mother when she’d worked as a lounge singer in one of the river bars in Neo Seoul. I can’t blame him for loving her. Can I blame her for leaving me? She couldn’t have brought me with her, not unless her husband had adopted me and put me on his family register, but he’d refused.
“The prodigy,” he says, “a soldier in the Tower.” He rests his hand on my shoulder. “We’re very proud of you.”
I ignore him and look at my mother. “How is my brother? How is Jaeshin?”
“He’s well.”
“You didn’t bring him.”
“It’s a party, and he’s so young.”
“I want to meet him.”
I can tell I’m making her nervous. She keeps shooting looks at her husband. “Jaeshin’s at home,” she says.
My hands curl into fists at my side. “Home. I don’t think you’ve ever told me where you live.” In the letters you never send.
She blanches. “It wouldn’t be safe . . .”
“You know where I live.”
Finally her husband interrupts. “Jaewon-ah, you know why we can’t tell you. You only have yourself to look after, but there are four of us.”
“You think I’m going to break into your house in the middle of the night?”
“No, of course not,” my mother rushes to say. “It’s not like that. It’s just . . . the people you associate with. They’re dangerous. Gangsters.”
I blink rapidly. She forgets that she abandoned me to those gangsters. Is this how she sees me? Forever one of them, no matter how far I’ve come. The sounds in the room become muted. My mother opens her little pocket purse and fishes around inside, pulling out several hundred thousand won bank notes. “Please, take some . . .”
I feel numb as I watch her grapple with her purse. Noticing the curious stares we’re attracting, her husband grabs her wrist and pulls her hand out. His face is reddening at the unwanted attention, and he whispers something into my mother’s ear, causing her to flush in embarrassment.
A surge of anger rises in me, at him for being embarrassed at all for anything she could do, at her for believing I would take her money, but most of all at myself — for caring.
I swallow the thick lump in my throat and do the only thing I can in this moment. I smile, my most brilliant one — the one I share with my father.
My mother sucks in a breath.
“Mother,” I say, “I’m a prodigy, remember? Someone worth something. I don’t need your money.”
I bow to her and leave, not caring that people are pointedly looking now.
The music has stopped, and Sela watches me from the stage. “Jaewon-ah!” she shouts, and her voice carries through the mike. She’s coming down from the stage, but isn’t making good progress through the crowd, and I walk on, pressing the button for the elevator. I groan in relief when the metal doors open. I back into the corner and sink to the floor as the doors close on Sela’s face.
Ten years, and I still feel the same as when I was just a boy, eight years old and desperate for her love. Worthless, like I’m charity to her, the biggest mistake of her life.
* * *
■ ■ ■
By the time the elevator reaches the ground floor, I’m a mess. The doors open, and I step out. A man waits outside, a red moon stitched to the lapel of his black suit.
God, will this night never end?
“The boss wants to see you.”
He leads me outside. It’s raining now, which I hadn’t known from my view above the clouds. The man holds an umbrella over me as we walk to a parked black town car. He opens the door, and I step inside. Leather seats face one another across a low table. Since the far side is occupied, I take the seat closest to the door.
The man shuts it. Across from me sits Park Taesung. The pebbled sounds of the rain are a melancholy backdrop to our meeting. Placed on the low table is a decanter filled with a golden liquid, two crystal glasses, and a bowl of ice.
Park Taesung leans forward, picks up a pair of silver tongs, and meticulously places three shards of ice into two separate glasses. He then fills each a quarter full from the decanter. He hands one to me, and I knock it back. The liquid tastes like smoke and wood.
“Lee Jaewon,” Park Taesung says, “you’ve been busy.”
I wonder what he’s referring to. It’s been a long day. Does he mean my run-in with Red Moon’s low-level thugs, my date with Tera, my fight at the Silla hotel, my visit to the Director’s home, my reunion with my mother?
I put the glass on the table.
“It’s late,” I say, and look out the window. The rain blurs the lights, making it look as if the city is melting. “What do you want?”
“You’ll have heard about the arrest. Of the Proselytizer.”
I grimace. “No.” It must have happened sometime while I was at Alex’s house, or I would have seen it on the billboards. Unless it wasn’t broadcast.
“They killed the man this afternoon, without trial.”
A feeling of loss hits me at this news. I might not have followed all the theories online about him, but there were many who took strength in his slogans, like the girl in the hot dog joint and the girl on the Skytrain. “That was quick.”
“They got what they needed from him. They interrogated him, and he revealed a critical piece of information: the location of the leader of the UKL’s base. Tsuko was called to the war front earlier today. They’re going to send an alternate team, which will include Tera and you.”
“You’re a sponsor. You’re not on the Board. How do you know all this?”
“Money. Spies. Threats. Power. They all go a long way in getting the information you want.”
Want. The word makes me think. “What do you want? You’re a gangster. You’ve profited in this war — dealing in illicit Enhancers, weapons, information. This project could end the war. It’s a threat to everything you represent.”
“An end to war,” he repeats, holding his glass of whiskey in one hand, circling his finger along the rim with the other. “And how exactly do you end war?”
“When one side surrenders, or when the cost outweighs the gain.”
“That might be how you end one war, the one we fight today, but how do you end war entirely? The First Act of this ‘Great War’ created the Neo Council. The Second Act cemented the Council’s rule over both East and West. And now we’re in the Third Act, in which resistance organizations like the Free Chinese Men and Women and the United Korean League fight for a return to the original order. It’s a great circle. So tell me, how do you end war?”
“You can’t.”
He leans forward in his seat. “You can, by eliminating both sides through a third party.”
“You’re going to destroy the Neo Council and the UKL?” I ask in disbelief. “With what army?” Red Moon might be East Asia’s most powerful crime syndicate, it might have the resources and the manpower, but it’s not a military organization with structure, trained soldiers, and God Machines. It’s a bunch of gangsters with a bit of tech. He needs an army, and not just any army, but one more powerful than the combatants he hopes to overtake.
And then a thought strikes me. “The girls. That’s why you’re kidnapping them. For this purpose.” He wants to create an army of soldiers like Tera. Maybe he’s been buying weapons instead of selling them. And unlike Dr. Koga, who allows Tera and Ama small freedoms, Park Taesung would brainwash the girls, torture and mold them until they were true weapons in every sense of the word.
“Ah, I knew you’d figure it out quickly.”
I lean forward. “It’s wrong. What you’re doing. They’re children.”
I expect Park Taesung to slap me for my disrespect. Instead, he laughs. “Weren’t you a child once? Was it wrong what I did to you?”
I lurch back. “This has nothing to do with me. I knew what I was getting into.”
“At eight years old? Because if taking these girls from their homes and forcing them into a life they didn’t choose for their own is wrong, then was it wrong what I did to the son of the man who was once my closest friend?”
“Don’t say it. Don’t speak his name.”
“Lee Hyunwoo trusted me to take care of you and your mother, and what did I do? I forced your mother into an impossible choice: leave you behind and live or stay with you and die. I forced you into my gang, where you were starved and beaten, where you were forced to fight for your life. I did all that, to the son of the man who was once like a brother to me.”
And that’s what I could never understand. My whole life, he’s tortured me. My whole life, he’s taken the people I love from me. My mother. Young. I don’t understand it. How could someone my father loved so much bring me so much pain? I look at Park Taesung, his cruel, terrible face, etched with so much history of hatred. Was my father wrong to love him?
And then I ask a question that breaks my heart. “Did you always hate him?”
“I hate him as much as you hate him.”
But I don’t hate him. I almost say the words.
There’s a glimmer of knowing in Park Taesung’s cold eyes. What is he playing at? Was this a trick? I don’t know if it’s my injuries or the whiskey or the day, the night, my mother, my father, him, but I feel like I’m dying inside.
“It’s almost over, Jaewon-ah. All our suffering. There’s just one more thing to do. Bring Tera to me and let me show you a new world.”
I look up. “Tera?”
“It’s easier to harvest the Enhancer serum from her than create it ourselves. She holds the key in her blood, the only one to survive the physical Enhancer treatment.”
“That’s why you’re telling me all this. You think I can get her for you.”
“You were the best Runner in my gang. You could get anything. Even a beautiful girl locked in a Tower.”
“This isn’t a fairy tale.”
“No, it’s not,” he says. He knocks on the window, and the door on my side opens. The powerful sound of the rain rushes into the car. “This is our reality, one we need to shape for the betterment of our future. Bring Tera to me, Jaewon, and you and the rest of this godforsaken city will have one.”
24
The Mission
Park Taesung’s tip about the UKL proves correct when I’m called to the Tower the following evening. I meet Tera in the upper floor of the GM hangar, which opens up to a docking bay. Powerful lights flood the open space. Two mid-size carriers are priming for departure, loading up basic ground and air GMs.
Less than twenty-four hours since finding out the location of the UKL hideout from the Proselytizer, these ships will take off in an attempt to capture a living legend: Oh Kangto, leader of the UKL and a veteran of all three Acts of the War.
The guards who had accompanied Tera bow and leave us. I was sent a brief overview of the mission on the way over here. It’s a classic search-and-destroy. Root out the rebels and take hostages. The expedited nature of the mission is to prohibit the rebels’ catching wind of it and either preparing a defense or fleeing farther north into the Neo State of North China. Their base is supposed to be located across the border.
Tera and I have orders to lend support but not engage in any direct combat unless specified. Technically, Tera is a weapon that hasn’t passed inspection from the Neo Council and is therefore “unauthorized for combat.”
“You’re an illegal weapon,” I joke. “How does that make you feel?”
Tera rolls her eyes. We move up the gangplank to board the first carrier. Tera and I are both dressed in the white-and-black uniforms of the NSK, identifying us as soldiers, if not our rank and purpose. Koga must have given notice that we’re acting as free agents for the duration of this mission, because none of the officials we pass give us undue scrutiny.
I think of Koga’s words to me last night — how he’d chosen me for the project because I’d tested high in “empathy.” I’d recoiled at the word. It was instinctual. My father was once called a good man, a kind man. Men who are good and kind don’t live very long. But maybe that’s why I need someone like Tera to protect me.
I look up to see Tera eyeing me curiously over her shoulder. “Why do you look like that? What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
Koga was right about one thing. Tera and I do make good partners. In the restaurant, when Seungri had aimed the gun at Ama, Tera had called out to me. After the fact, I realized she could have been killed in the blast of the gun. But in that moment, I trusted her to know what she was doing. And she trusted me enough to stop her attack on Seungri and fight against the Enhancer’s powerful hold on her.
A low rumble sounds as the carrier’s engine starts up. Overhead, the captain orders all personnel to stand by for takeoff.
We go from the outer boarding area to the interior halls of the ship, bypassing a camera crew dressed in civilian clothing. War correspondents. Their bright laughter cuts through the stale air. I wonder if they’re war casters, reporters who specialize in documenting war in a stylized form for the consumption of the public. War casters were the reason that ace pilots even existed in the First and Second Acts of the War, presenting the pilots as celebrities, their statuses determined by their kill count and number of battles won.
They’d become less so in the Third Act, when the battlefield switched from pitched ground and aerial battles between government-sanctioned military forces to guerilla warfare, making it difficult to a) film and b) film in a way where the “right” side looks like heroes and not villains. It’s hard to make a GM devastating forests in order to rout out rebels heroic, especially as often there are civilian casualties.
One of the reporters catches me watching them. I tap Tera on the shoulder and pivot through a doorway.
There’s a brief feeling of weightlessness as the ship starts to ascend. It’s a smooth takeoff, and Tera and I don’t break stride as we make our way to the bridge.
We check in with the man heading the operation, a decorated Second Act war colonel named Go Woojin, currently in command of the NSK’s auxiliary forces stationed outside Neo Seoul. Apparently he has a score to settle with Oh Kangto, hence his involvement. He’s a powerfully built man in his late fifties, barrel-chested and tall. When he’s introduced to Tera, his eyes widen. He gives her a not-so subtle once-over, obviously in disbelief that a girl of Tera’s size and stature could be a dangerous weapon.
“They want to fight this war with children,” he says beneath his breath. Louder, he shout-speaks, “I allowed you onto my ship because the NSK Board authorized your presence on this mission, but I won’t be needing you.” He gives me a cursory glance. “Either of you. If the Neo Council discovers we’ve put an unsanctioned weapon into combat without its express authorization, it will be considered a violation of the Neo Charter. I don’t want to hear of either of you leaving this ship. We won’t be resorting to Koga’s . . . experiments to catch the old rebel leader. War is about honor, not politics and guerilla fighting and tricks.” He sneers this last word for our benefit.
We’re dismissed. One of the colonel’s soldiers leads us to a room at the back of the carrier. It’s small, with side-by-side beds that also function as escape capsules. The doors close behind the soldier, and Tera collapses onto the left bed.
“The Board wants me to have battle experience in order to pass inspection at the Neo Council, yet in order to have battle experience, I need to fight, but I can’t because I haven’t passed inspection.” She sighs, reaching out to pull the blanket over her shoulder, cocooning herself. “Adults are confusing.”
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She turns to face the wall, adjusting the blankets over her face so all that I see are the wisps of her hair peeking out from the top like winter grass.
“Do you want to fight?” I’m genuinely curious. Her greatest fear is losing control of her powers and hurting others. But if she were given the choice, would she fight?
I always thought that if I were to fight, it would be because I was paid to do it — mercenary of me, perhaps, but in a military state, you don’t need a reason to fight. You fight and kill because you’re told to, because there’s someone standing on the other side of the line that your government deems adverse to its establishment. It’s no different from being in a gang, except it pays better.
“I don’t know,” Tera says, her voice muffled from beneath the blankets.
“What would you do if they sent you into battle?” If she were to go into battle, I’d have to follow as her partner. It would be the first for both of us, outside of a simulation.
“Who would I be fighting?” she asks.
“The rebels, I guess.”
“I feel like,” she says slowly, “if I was sent into battle, I’d just want to fight everyone.”
That sounds dangerously close to Park Taesung’s plan of a third party to destroy the main combatants. I briefly consider telling Tera about my meeting with my old gang boss, but she wiggles on the bed, distracting me.
“How is Alex?” she asks. “Ama’s been worried sick.”
“I called him this morning, but he didn’t answer.” I’d thought about taking a cab out to his place, but I figured if he wouldn’t answer my calls, he wouldn’t answer the door. He must be all right in the physical sense. Maid-and-butler bots are designed to assist in all medical situations and have a built-in alert to the nearest hospitals in case of emergencies.
“I told Ama to be careful. Even if others can’t read her mind, her feelings for Alex are as clear as day in the way she looks at him.”
