Chương 8: INTERROGATION
"Come on, let's start again. State your full name."
In the midst of a dark and antiquated room, two men were seated across from each other on either side of an imposing metal table.
Despite its small and simple appearance, the room was clean and orderly. It featured only a large, sturdy metal table with two chairs at each end.
The walls of the room, aside from being polished and sparsely painted, revealed their thickness and robustness, as if to assert that its construction was no trivial matter.
Additionally, on one of the walls, a large mirror was embedded, akin to those found in famous observation rooms like Gesell chambers. However, it was evident that this mirror was not easily breakable. It was a room specifically conditioned for interrogation.
"I've already told you, Lieutenant, my name is Robert. Jovanovich is my paternal surname, and Lee is my maternal surname."
And within this very room, a genuine interrogation was taking place. The person asking the questions was none other than Lieutenant Kang, who appeared slightly frustrated and tired as he glanced over documents in a classified folder.
The other individual was the subject who had been found amidst all those dead beasts.
"Are you a foreigner?" asked Lieutenant Kang.
"I already told you I'm not. I was born in Seoul. My Resident Registration Number is 2900339455687. My father was the foreigner, a Russian citizen named Vladimir Jovanovich from Vladivostok. My mother is Korean, named Lee Hee-soo, residing in condos in the northern part of Yongsan-gu."
Robert's answers caused Lieutenant Kang to stop reading the papers and stare intently at a monitor. It was a polygraph monitor, connected to a person to determine, based on their heart rate and respiratory rate patterns, if they were telling the truth during an interrogation.
Although not the most effective method for extracting information, they refrained from using drugs like sodium thiopental, the famous truth serum. Despite being an interrogation, the South Koreans still held onto some 'decency'.
This machine was connected to Robert's chest and arms, who was also securely chained to the metal chair, as if he were a highly dangerous prisoner.
"What were you doing Friday night in the Satae-ri military zone?"
"You know, this is just too much. I know I drank too much and was really drunk, but that's no reason to detain me and question me like this. I didn't do anything wrong! At least let me call my mom, she must be worried about me."
Robert exclaimed indignantly at the treatment he was receiving.
"You're not in a position to demand anything right now. We found you in a restricted area near the northern border, so just answer the question."
Lieutenant Kang showed no emotion at the young man's response. His stoic expression indicated he wasn't playing games.
"Phew... fine, I get it. I don't know why you want me to repeat it if I already told you, but okay," Robert sighed in defeat. "I had been celebrating with a group of high school friends for one of their birthdays. I don't know when it happened, but there was a moment when I wandered away from the rest, going deeper into the woods. It was then that everything went crazy."
"What do you mean by everything went crazy?"
"Didn't I already tell you earlier? Lightning started falling from the sky all around me, until one of them seemed to strike me. That was a fucking terrifying experience! All I know is that I woke up later in the hospital where you guys had me."
The lieutenant alternated his gaze between the young man in front of him and the polygraph monitor, silently setting aside all the papers he had been reading until recently.
For a moment, the room fell silent, with only the rhythmic movement of the polygraph needles audible.
"Do you really expect me to believe that? You're telling me you're the son of a foreigner but were born here, that you were in a restricted area drunk even though you're underage, and a lightning bolt struck you?"
Lieutenant Kang responded sarcastically to the boy's words.
"And what do you want me to do? I know it sounds stupid, but that's what happened. Yes, I know I made a mistake by drinking while underage and entering a restricted area without permission, though I don't remember that because I was drunk. But I can tell you for sure that the lightning strike is completely true. Now call my mother; I'm a minor, so I have the right to have one of my parents informed despite being detained."
Robert replied with a hint of exasperation upon hearing the tone his interrogator used.
The lieutenant, with an incredulous expression at the boy's words, fell silent again while observing the polygraph in operation.
Externally, his attitude conveyed military hardness and distrust towards the boy's words, but internally, his thoughts were different.
Things were more complicated than they seemed.
When they found this individual, they quickly transferred him to Seoul Military Hospital, where he was kept under custody until he woke up. Meanwhile, his fingerprints were analyzed to determine his identity.
However, they found nothing in the national databases, so his identity had to belong to a foreigner.
Was he a spy who had infiltrated taking advantage of the current situation in the country?
What the hell was he doing amidst the mutilated bodies of those beasts?
Many questions nested in the lieutenant's mind, unsure how to proceed in this case. Dealing with this individual was already enough after experiencing the appearance of these horrible beasts.
By the time the boy woke up, he had already been transferred to a military base and was obviously interrogated, but this brought more doubts than answers to the tormented mind of the lieutenant.
Firstly, this individual spoke perfect Korean, specifically the dialect of South Korea, which is difficult for any foreign agent trying to infiltrate the country.
Even his appearance, with foreign features but also Asian traits, made his identification more difficult.
Moreover, the way the subject initially spoke was so normal that they did not detect any lies in what he said.
Yes, he appeared visibly nervous, but it was more due to the shock of waking up in a strange place than lying, at least according to the doctor who attended to him.
Added to this, according to his medical report, he was suffering from severe dehydration and malnutrition, as if he hadn't eaten in days.
If he had said he was lost in the forest for a week or more, his version of events could have matched his physical condition.
No decent spy would reveal a non-existent identity in the country they are trying to infiltrate, let alone claim to be a mixed-race citizen, unless they considered it a good deterrent technique.
Did this guy think South Korean intelligence was a joke?
Did he think giving a foreign name could throw them off?
Thanks to quick information cross-referencing with NIS intelligence reports, it was determined that the name Robert Jovanovich did not exist in the civilian archives of either South Korea or the Russian government.
By law, children of foreigners must be registered in both South Korea and their parents' home country.
On the other hand, the names the boy had given, supposedly belonging to his parents, did exist, but their situation did not fit the boy's description.
Vladimir Jovanovich, according to Russian records accessed by the NIS, was indeed a citizen of Vladivostok, Russia, but had died approximately ten years ago.
Lee Hee-soo, who was the name of his supposed mother, was indeed a South Korean citizen, but she did not live in apartments in the Yongsan area; she currently lived in Busan city and was not married.
Apart from this, all the names he had given actually existed, and they correlated with the physical description the boy had given of each of them!
The address where he lived, the friends he had, the description of the streets where he supposedly lived, the people he had met, the schools he had attended... everything was so natural.
Even the preliminary reports from the NIS had confirmed that, besides the names and documents given by the boy, all the places mentioned had been described with uncanny accuracy, only achieved by those who had lived in those places for many years.
Not even the polygraph had marked anything abnormal with each answer the boy gave.
Furthermore, from the medical examinations he underwent, it was true that there were large amounts of alcohol in his blood, so his claim of being drunk was apparently true.
It was as if everything the young man was saying was true, or he believed it was true.
Perhaps he was a spy who had been conditioned to pass the polygraph test? He didn't know for certain.
This prevented Lieutenant Kang from sending the boy to be locked up in a maximum-security prison.
The second thing that prevented Lieutenant Kang from categorizing the boy as a criminal was the event that occurred two nights ago.
He had not been given much information about that infernal event since most of the reports that the high command had about that event were classified, even for someone as involved in special forces as he was.
All governmental apparatus, both civilian and military, were on alert due to several unusual movements from the hidden forces of neighboring countries.
While South Korea was not a nation of great military importance to the rest of the superpowers surrounding it, the recent event had put the country in the international spotlight.
And from what Lieutenant Kang had seen with his own eyes, that great meteorological phenomenon had brought bad consequences.
The fact that horrible beasts appeared out of nowhere in the forests of Korea meant that the storm had somehow altered the local predators, mutating them or turning them into those grotesque creatures.
This was truly horrifying, as the storm had encompassed the entire country, and the consequences for the 51 million inhabitants were something he did not want to imagine.
However, the Korean population was fine, both in the south and in the north, and even the vast majority of animals were fine, so the theory of mutation caused by the storm was very distant.
Rather, another theory about the appearance of these beasts was gaining strength, a theory that was somewhat wild if thought about logically, but even the high command seemed to be taking it into account.
On the internet, many theories circulated about what had caused such a climatic event on the Korean peninsula.
From theories blaming the US government for using weapons capable of creating ecological catastrophes, to fantastic things like portals to other worlds and dimensions.
More and more conspiracy theorists were joining these kinds of fanciful thoughts, abandoning reason and strongly criticizing the explanations given by the South Korean government.
And what if these theories weren't so false?
Those horrible beasts, which only appeared in fantasy and science fiction stories, appearing out of nowhere...
Could it be possible that they had been transported to this world... from another reality?
And if so, is it possible that this boy in front of him had also suffered the same fate?
"Oh... I think I'm becoming stupid," Lieutenant Kang shook his head as he gathered all the papers scattered across the table and organized them.
Suddenly, he saw a particular sheet within the folder in his hands and instinctively glanced at the large mirror on the side of the room.
He could only see both his reflection and that of the boy he was interviewing, but his gaze fixed on a specific point, as if he could see through the glass, to the other side of the room.
"Those damn bastards... I'm sure they're watching everything from the other side," the lieutenant muttered to himself.
He pulled out a laminated sheet and placed it face down on the table, catching the attention of the boy in front of him.
"I'm going to show you something important, and I want you to answer me as truthfully as possible. Your freedom will depend on your answer and how true it is. Remember, we are monitoring everything you say or do, so if we detect a lie, it will be your end. Understood?"
"Damn man, you really want to scare me, don't you?" Robert replied sarcastically but visibly became a bit anxious. "Come on, go ahead. I don't know what that could be, but I'll tell you everything I know, just as I've been doing."
Lieutenant Kang just stared at the boy intently while keeping an eye on the polygraph monitor, which, throughout both the first and this interrogation, had always indicated everything normal, without any disturbance.
Was this boy really telling the truth?
Was it possible that this young man, who claimed to have been struck by lightning, was from somewhere else, just like those beasts?
Lieutenant Kang shook those questions from his mind and simply turned the page to show it to the boy.
"Huh? What the hell is this?" Robert exclaimed upon seeing the contents of the paper.
It was just a blank sheet of paper, with a small paragraph that initially seemed incomprehensible.
The boy looked at the paper for a moment, furrowing his brows as if he didn't understand a damn thing it said.
After a moment of silence, Lieutenant Kang sighed and tried to take the paper off the table.
"Hold on, I'm still analyzing it," suddenly Robert, who had his gaze fixed on that sheet of paper, spoke.
"Do you really understand this?" Lieutenant Kang had no hope that this boy would answer truthfully.
"Did you forget already? I told you I was one of the four selected from all of South Korea who participated in the 2016 IOI (International Olympiad in Informatics) held in Kazan. Although we didn't win, we placed third among eighty participating countries, so cryptic algorithms are something I'm familiar with."
The boy's response left the military man speechless. He glanced again at the large mirror and the door of the room, as if expecting a response from the intelligence agents on the other side of the glass, but nothing happened.
He sighed inwardly and left the paper on the table.
"Could you bring me a sheet of paper and a pencil so I can better handle this? Oh, and if it's not too much to ask, I'd appreciate it if you could release one of my hands so I can hold the pencil."
Lieutenant Kang just stared at the boy for a moment, then gestured with his hand, giving the order to the soldiers outside to get what had been requested.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"What do you make of all this, Ijin?" Standing in front of a large glass pane, Lieutenant Kang spoke while his gaze focused on what was happening on the other side.
"This is so confusing, even downright crazy... but the current facts are hard to ignore," Yu Ijin, the teenage mercenary standing beside the lieutenant, responded in a neutral and calming tone.
"Yeah... I believe so too, this whole thing is a complete mess."
On the other side of the glass, you could see the interrogation room where the lieutenant had been until recently. Now, only a very focused Robert could be seen scribbling on a piece of paper.
Unlike during the interrogation, his hands were now free, allowing him to hold the paper with the cryptic paragraph in one hand while writing many letters and words with the other. However, he was still strapped to the metal chair, with the polygraph cables connected to his body.
"I want to believe this boy is someone like you, someone who suffered due to an external situation and was exposed to a reality other than his own... but the security of our country right now prevents me from being lenient," Kang said.
Ijin didn't say anything in response to the lieutenant's words, but internally he agreed. He knew what it was like to be ripped from one's lifestyle and thrust into a strange, alien scenario, subjected to pressing situations.
But unlike him, this man named Robert was in an apparently much more serious, even unbelievable situation. However, despite the incredibility of his version of events, Ijin was sure that this guy was telling the truth... at least partially.
He didn't know why, but after listening to the two interrogations the mixed-race boy had undergone, Ijin's intuition told him that what Robert was saying was what had happened.
Sure, he might be a real spy, but everything he said, the way he said it, the detailed descriptions of people, was not something a spy could have figured out on his own, not even the NIS could have.
Lieutenant Kang also knew this, so he was still unsure how to proceed with this boy's situation.
"By the way, where are those two intelligence agents?" Lieutenant Kang asked, looking around. When he left the interrogation room, he did not find the two NIS agents who had requested to hear the first interrogation and who had asked him to show that plastic sheet to the interrogated person for the second interrogation.
"They received a call and left. They said they would be receiving their chief director," Ijin replied calmly.
"Huh? Their chief director, don't tell me..." Lieutenant Kang was visibly surprised to hear this, as it only meant one thing.
'Lee Byung-hong, that old hunting dog... What the hell does he want in this place?'
If the actions of the NIS agents who came to the military base due to recent encounters by special forces already seemed strange to him, the presence of the director general of that agency meant nothing good.
"Does the presence of the intelligence agency director mean we're in trouble?" Ijin asked, seeing the lieutenant's face sour.
"It's not that it means trouble... but I think I need to make a call to my superior. I don't have the rank to attend to someone of his caliber," Lieutenant Kang spoke sarcastically as he pulled out his cellphone to make a call.
The NIS was a nest of rats that had no consideration for anything or anyone. Due to the need to encompass and control everything, this agency had extended its tentacles in the shadows throughout the governmental and even military apparatus.
That's why, despite the information about the discovery of the beasts being classified, NIS agents showed up once everything was transferred to the military base.
If anything interested them in this entire mission, it was most likely the existence of those huge beasts, not the presence of a possible captured spy.
However, the interest of these agents was... peculiar, to say the least.
While some of the agents stayed with the rest of the commandos to inspect the bodies of those beasts, the two senior agents expressly asked to be mere observers of the interrogation of the subject found.
Furthermore, these same agents, after listening to the first interrogation, expressly told Lieutenant Kang to listen carefully to every detail of what the boy had to tell him in the second interrogation, not dismissing his claims as false, no matter how crazy they seemed.
They also gave him that plastic sheet with the strange and cryptic message and told him that, when he finished interrogating him, he should ask him to try to decipher the document.
"Why were the agents of the National Intelligence Service, who were supposed to conduct the interrogations in this case, leaving all the work to the military?
Was it because the military had found him? Not a chance.
NIS agents could be arrogant, but not stupid; they knew something the military didn't.
Suddenly, a group of people crossed the hallway, heading towards where Sergeant Kang was about to make a call. Director Lee Byung-hong was accompanied by the two agents who had previously supervised the interrogation, along with four more agents. A military contingent accompanied the NIS agents.
Lieutenant Kang was initially surprised but then smiled faintly and pocketed his cellphone. The other contingent included Kim Geun-joom, the Commander General of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces, and several senior officers, as well as members of the military police.
"Lieutenant Kang Ham-Chan, good to see you again," General Kim greeted first when the group reached their destination.
"Greetings, General Kim, good to see you again," Lieutenant Kang replied, assuming the position of attention and saluting. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Director Lee. I hope to assist you in any way I can."
"Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant Kang. General Kim has spoken highly of your unit and missions, as well as the new member you've incorporated," Director Lee greeted calmly, his gaze briefly passing over the lieutenant's shoulder to the boy behind him.
Ijin, who had been silent all this time, also assumed the position of attention and greeted, "Pleased to meet you, Director Lee Byung-hong, General Kim Geun-joom. My name is Yu Ijin, a member of Sergeant Kang's unit."
While Ijin wasn't military, he wasn't foolish enough to not understand the current situation. The two senior officers nodded at the brown-haired boy's greeting, giving him only an evaluating look. Ijin being found on an overseas covert mission was peculiar, but it didn't warrant much attention from them at the moment.
Now, what mattered most was...
knock, knock, knock
"Hey, anyone there?"
Suddenly, knocking sounds came through the glass from inside the interrogation room. Everyone turned their gaze towards the glass, seeing Robert, the boy still seated and bound to the metal chair, seemingly looking at the mirror on the other side as if searching for an answer.
knock, knock, knock
"Hey, I managed to decipher something from this thing, but now I'm getting hungry. Could you bring me something to eat? Just not hospital food, that stuff is awful."
The boy on the other side banged the metal table again as he spoke.
"Director..."
"Yes, I know."
Suddenly, one of Director Lee's companions spoke, seconded by the old agent who maintained composure despite hearing something that possibly meant something phenomenal. On the other hand, General Kim also remained impassive at the words heard, but like Director Lee, he knew it held great significance.
"So, that's the lost boy, huh... I think we should go in and have a serious conversation to tell him the truth about his situation, don't you think, General Kim?"
General Kim simply nodded in silence, gesturing with his head to Lieutenant Kang, who understood the message and turned to open the door to the room.
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