"Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!" Ethan growled in his car, banging the steering wheel with his hands.
"Why is he not picking up the call?" he shouted. Ethan was trying to reach Ivor.
"What the fuck just happened?" he muttered.
The case of Yara Choi had been simple. It was too easy. Even a new lawyer, with no experience, could have won the prelims—until the prosecution brought up a discreet piece of evidence.
Technically, it should've been rejected; the evidence was not shown to us. But the judge was somehow biased. He allowed the prosecution to proceed, since the evidence had just been discovered.
It directly connected Yara Choi to the case, making her a prime suspect. The burner phone that was used to contact Evelyn at the time of the murder was bought via crypto to cover up the tracks.
The alias used to buy that phone was Kara Sato, an alias Yara once used when starting off her career—only a few people knew about that. Not only that, but the necklace Yara wore was bought under the same alias. Only Yara and her fashion designer knew the password to that account.
And that wasn't even the crazy part yet. When the evidence was presented, Yara's fashion designer was set to be summoned in court. The hearing was halted until the next day. However, Kaiyu Park, her fashion designer, whom the prosecution had gone to visit, was found dead in his apartment.
His body was fresh—he hadn't been dead long. And an even crazier thing was that Yara's manager, Jae-Woo Han, and her ex-boyfriend, Jin-Ho, were also reported dead.
All three of them died at the same time, with a single bullet to their heads.
"What the fuck is even going on?" Ethan muttered. Due to the continuous deaths related to the case, the court halted the hearings until everything cooled down and the investigations were complete. The case would only resume with concrete evidence.
It might seem off, but Ethan thought someone orchestrated all of this just to prevent the case from moving forward. Even Eun-Ji, in her entire career, had never witnessed anything like this before. The most she'd dealt with was harassment, sexual assault, murder, or scoop cases. But this... this was on another level.
To stop the case, they removed every possible angle to pursue, except for Yara herself. So whoever is doing this is either on her side or hates her enough to want to see her suffer.
And Ethan was in his car for a reason. Since he wasn't a major part of the case, he hadn't requested, nor received, any protection. Eun-Ji was under protection at her office, but Ethan was not.
He glanced at the side mirror of his car. Behind him, a black Rover was parked. It had been following him all the way from the courthouse.
"Man, fuck this!" Ethan pressed the button and revved the engine of his car. "I should've bought a gun."
The car sped up quickly, thanks to its sports sedan build. His destination wasn't far—the police station. He called the police while in pursuit, speeding through the streets and ignoring the traffic lights.
----[Baekho Gyeodae's Base]
The ground quaked beneath us as the shockwave made us fall back. For a brief moment, all that existed was noise, fire, and the raw force of destruction.
A chopper rose up from behind the camp, with two men in lightweight vests and rifles in their hands, sitting on either side. Two descended to the ground with ropes and began finishing off those who had been injured by the explosion.
The leader of the camp, who was beside us, couldn't process what had just happened in that brief moment. My gunshot wound from before started to hurt again. Regardless of the pain, I quickly got up from the ground, pinning his hand with the gun down. Jinsoo got up and kicked the man in the jaw.
His kick was powerful enough to dislocate his jaw and knock him unconscious. Taking the gun from his hand, I checked the bullets in the mag and reloaded it.
"Your brother never said you were this crazy…!" Jinsoo shouted as he stepped inside the tent. He opened the crate, took out two AR-15s, and passed one to me.
He grabbed four extra mags and handed two to me.
"There are more coming this way, behind the tent," Jinsoo shouted as the chopper passed by us. It was heading toward the first part of the base.
"That's one way to make an entrance!" the two armed men from special forces shouted. "I'm Basilik," one of them said, giving his alias.
"Echo!" the other said.
"Just call me former captain if you will," Jinsoo replied.
"What about you?" they asked, looking at me. I loaded up the AR and pointed at the unconscious leader on the ground.
I ended his life with two shots to the head.
"Me? Call me the Lawyer!" I said.
"Alright, Lawyer, let's begin the sweep. We don't want to spend a lot of time here," Basilik said and took the lead.
"Let's go! Let's go!" Taking the lead, Basilik and Echo moved forward.
Jinsoo took cover behind the left crates with Basilik. Echo and I were on the right.
"Alright, now hold until the other side takes charge," Echo said. By "other side," he didn't mean Basilik but the ones who went with the chopper behind the camp.
After a moment, the sound of rotor blades cutting through the air resonated across the area. This phase was important. Barbaric, yes, but it was the only chance. There were eight cages lined up one after another, guarded by ten men. All of them were scared from the explosion and shockwave.
A sniper positioned on the other side took his first shot. One by one, the men began to fall, their bodies crumpling silently to the dirt. Their attention shifted to the chopper above.
Diverting their focus to the chopper, they all aimed at the sky.
"Now, move!" Echo shouted as we moved in, firing continuously. It was as if time slowed, and gunfire erupted. The guards by the cages couldn't process it. The back of their skulls, the backs of their heads, were filled with bullets before they even had a chance to react.
A clean sweep of the camp—sixty men down in under ten minutes. The chopper descended, and the captain of the squad looked at all the cages.
Inside each of them were naked women, with no sheets to cover them. Most of them were sick, maybe on the verge of death, bruises all over their bodies.
"This is sick," he said. "We don't have the capacity."
"Don't worry, we can have more cars here," I replied.
"You mean those bombs, Lawyer?" he asked.
"The explosives are in the bags only. We drop them off here, destroy everything, and get the women out safely," I paused.
"There are more people on the way here," I said.
"Who?" the captain asked.
"We need a new captain for the ship," Jinsoo replied.
(Chuckles) "Aight then. We drop the bags here, take the women out safely. We'll keep company in the air."
"What? Just this?" Echo asked.
"What do you mean?" Jinsoo asked.
"That was rather quick," Echo said.
"Thank your third member," Jinsoo said, as the third member of their squad, the sniper on the chopper, raised the tablet controlling the cars.