TCWGRF 28

It had been a long time since he had been aroused by someone, or forgotten the passage of time and immersed himself in the act itself. Even now, as he was listening to Sarah’s report on the new operation he had ordered, his excitement simply would not cool down.

Ever since coming to the city, and since being taken in by ‘Lot,’ Samuel had always controlled himself.

Although he did choose to form physical relationships with partners who moderately desired him, he had never been turned on by the prisoners locked in the basement, so this was certainly an exceptional case.

If he had to attach a reason to his arousal, could it be because contradictory emotions toward that young man had suddenly surged within him?

He was annoying enough to make him want to kill him, yet the way he desperately clung to him and cried as if Samuel were his only savior in this world was not bad.

It was irritating that he had asked him to find a non-existent person with an obvious lie, but it was interesting how he had thrown his own body at him, trying to accept him somehow, in order to hide that fact.

When he came to his senses, Vincent, the rebels, and his intuition, the original objectives, were gone, and he found himself actively searching for a new use for the prisoner.

Originally, this was nothing more or less than a brief amusement, a minor confirmation process.

He had only taken a momentary interest in the ‘bait’ that had exceptionally caused confusion in the operation. Because he might hold some small clue to wiping out the rebels within the city, and because he had drawn attention so perfectly that it was too much to be considered a coincidence.

All he had to do was gain his trust by pretending to grant his request, and then just wait without doing anything. He could just leave him to be pushed to the brink and destroy himself, then appear at the very end to offer a sweet proposal or watch what he would choose, and that would be the end of it.

The prisoner, guilty as charged, took off his own clothes and clung to Samuel, urgent yet clumsy. He spread his legs as if he liked it, ate reluctantly, and yet, because he was not submissive, he only haltingly recounted his circumstances after being slapped across the face.

An errand boy from a rebel camp, a fool who rashly entered the city to find his friend, an idiot who was used by the rebel ‘head’ whom he had unexpectedly never even met before.

‘It’s quite strange. No matter how I try not to connect it, it ends up coming back to this.’

The more he mulled over Isaac’s story, which he heard belatedly, the more bizarre it was, just like the moment he first saw him.

Until the interrogation began, he had thought this was just a process to make a shackled prisoner aware of his place, and that it would have no value as information.

The story that the rebel leader visited every year on the birthday of someone named ‘Asher’ was fresher than expected.

It could be a coincidence, but on the same day, a man of the leader’s stature visited a camp that was not even large, and did so regularly.

As far as Samuel knew, he was not a man who created specific patterns. He was busy covering his tracks to avoid revealing his identity, and most of the rebel comrades captured so far did not know their leader’s face. They were only aware of a rough age range, guessing he was in his 40s or 50s.

Why did he visit that place, of all places, on the same date?

It was already March, so nearly three months had passed since December 14th.

Samuel easily recalled that around that time last year, the activities of the rebels within the city had become blatantly conspicuous. It was also around then that he had devised the plan to revive the Neighborhood Watch and expel the rebels, while easily rooting out the spies.

‘Perhaps he was thinking of annihilating the rebel information network with his own hands.’

It was possible that all of this was Vincent’s plan from the beginning. The idea that he had set the stage with the intention of leaving the city in the first place felt more persuasive.

Among the yet unsolved mysteries was the one concerning his final destination.

Since he had the sewer blueprints, Vincent could go anywhere he wanted. In other words, there was no way to even guess where he might have gone. That was why the search had run into difficulties and was eventually halted.

What if Vincent had headed for the camp where Isaac was?

It was far from the city, but not an impossible distance. Hiding his identity while walking with a limp, it was a distance he could have more than reached by now.

December 14th was long past, so there was no guarantee the rebel leader would be there. Therefore, there had to be another reason to go there. A clear and desperate reason.

‘What a coincidence. A very big one at that.’

While thinking that it might be an excessive leap of logic, it is at times like these that a thing called intuition raises its head and writes a plausible script in a corner of one’s mind.

A script born from assumptions that perhaps all of this is connected, that it is not just a simple coincidence.

When he assigned roles one by one to the unknown figures whose full aspects he had not yet grasped, the rebel leader, Vincent, his wife, and his son, a rather plausible stage was set up in Samuel’s mind. It was as if the missing pieces were finally taking shape and beginning to fit together clumsily.

“We have deployed Security Department informants throughout all sectors for the execution of the new operation. Before long…”

“…It seems we’ll have to halt that operation.”

At her superior’s sudden order, Sarah, who had been reporting with confidence, questioned him with an uncharacteristically puzzled face.

“Sir? But.”

“Instead, find the doctor who delivered Vincent’s ‘son.’ If not a doctor, a midwife, anyone who saw the newborn in person will do.”

The new Superintendent General and his adjutants had no time. They had to actively deploy the maximum number of personnel right now to capture as many rebels in the city as possible. Only then could they save face in the upcoming regular report.

The entire Security Department had been played by a single man, and an operation that had been prepared for months had come to nothing, so it was only natural for her superior to be obsessed.

Sarah, too, would not have given up if she could have caught him, even if it meant searching every sewer, if she could have found even one tiny clue.

However, the situation did not unfold as they wished, and the task of tracking the movements of Vincent and his dead family was halted. This was due to the concern that persistently digging into a specific individual could leak internal affairs to the executives who had their eyes all over the city and were not favorable to the Security Department.

“Superintendent General, that matter is…”

“I know. That there’s a risk of being discovered.”

“……”

“I don’t need anything else. A physical characteristic that distinguishes him from others, and the date he was actually born, not the one on paper. Find out only these two things.”

Though questions still remained here and there on Sarah’s face, like an elite military police officer trained to regard the chain of command as life itself, she did not ask any further.

“Ah, one more thing. Whether that newborn’s corpse was actually received at the Sector 26 crematorium.”

The most competent adjutant in all the city’s departments, Sarah dismissed the questions within her as soon as her superior finished speaking by clicking her heels together.

Then, after giving a disciplined salute, she disappeared out of the office with quick steps to carry out the order. If her own guess was correct, before long, she would bring back results exceeding what her superior desired.

“Haah, you’ve found him, sir.”

The void left by Sarah’s departure was replaced by Walter, who had rushed over upon being hastily summoned.

“There’s a friend we need to find secretly.”

“A friend, sir? Ah, don’t tell me you mean the fake one named ‘Luke’ from before?”

Unfortunately, Walter had not forgotten the name that had sent him on a wild goose chase.

He had prided himself on being quite seasoned in this field, but being blindsided by a prisoner with an innocent face and making a mistake a rookie officer would make was a rather bitter memory.

“No. This time, it’s the ‘real one,’ with no room for doubt.”

There was an unexpected, very important person in this city. If he were alive, he had to be found before anyone else, and even if he were dead, his body or at least the circumstances of his death had to be in his hands, a formidable figure who might be able to shake the rebels to their very roots.

‘I hope he’s alive, if at all possible.’

The moment the prisoner tied up upstairs learned that his friend was alive, how desperately would he cling to him? Samuel was already looking forward to that moment.

While the high sun crossed the curtains and swept across the floor of the official residence, Isaac lay sprawled motionlessly on the Superintendent General’s spacious bed.

The people who had swarmed in to clean did not dare touch the bed and tiptoed back out, and he still had not regained consciousness, so it was fair to say he was half-dead.

Around dusk, his eyelids finally flickered and his lost mind briefly returned to roost, but he was tormented by a sense of powerlessness, feeling as if he could never get up unless someone came and helped him, so all he did was shed silent tears.

He could not do anything, nor did the thought of having to do something even occur to him. He just wished that everything he knew would end all at once, right here. That life and death could both be erased with the single click of a button, like turning a room’s light on and off.

If that happened, he would be able to forget the sticky traces left by another on his body and the fact that he could not remove these shackles and run away, and he could distance himself from the guilt of having sold out Asher to save himself.

“Heuk…”

But reality was not so easy. When the sun set completely, the Superintendent General would return again and rummage through his body, his guilt, and even the sensations he did not want to know, leaving nothing behind.

A few days ago, right after the brief interrogation and the disgusting act of excretion had ended. The Superintendent General, already dressed in his white uniform, had been looking down at Isaac, who had faintly regained consciousness on the sofa.

‘Now, tell me about Asher.’

He had immediately asked for ‘Asher’s’ description. When Isaac hesitated and could not answer readily, the man had twisted the corner of his lips upward and described the pain and tortures ‘Asher’ might be experiencing using words that were as true to life as possible.

‘If you won’t talk, then I’ll just have to find out myself. Won’t I?’

It meant he would find out if ‘Asher’ was among the prisoners captured in the basement, even if he had to torture them himself.

‘N-no. Anything but that, please…’

If before he had been afraid that he might be dead, that he might not be able to meet him because he was dead. Now he was afraid that he might be alive. He was so terribly scared that he might be in a state of neither living nor dead, with the control over his own life snatched away by another.

The beatings he had suffered were truly nothing. The Security Department possessed techniques to slice living flesh, to tear along the grain, and to pierce through skin without killing a person.

Imagining Asher tied to a cold steel chair, waiting for someone’s salvation, made his heart feel like it would not just shrivel up but plummet to the floor and shatter into pieces.

So, while reluctantly telling him about Asher, he once again cried his heart out, begging him to please save him.

The Superintendent General, indifferent to whether the prisoner cried or not, once again forcefully turned his body over and rammed his hotly engorged member in up to the root.

For several days, whenever Isaac cried and pleaded, instead of giving a definite answer like he would save him or that he understood, he would smirk and repeatedly pound into him until he fainted, then ejaculate.

In this way, the longing for survival, an indescribable fear, and self-loathing became a tangled heap that clogged his chest, then melted in the man’s fishy bodily fluids and trickled out of his body.

Should he call it a blessing? Isaac felt hollow, as if everything inside him had melted away, leaving only an empty shell. With an unknown confidence that he might be able to take his own life now, he bit his tongue harder one more time with his canine teeth, but as expected, he could not die.

“Ahahaha…”

So, for the first time since coming to the city, Isaac chuckled softly. He just wanted to laugh, because he could not die, because he was still foolishly afraid of dying.