The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

"Disguise ourselves — meaning?"

Han Soeun asked back.

Kang Taemin jutted his chin toward Lee Jinwoo's terminal.

"Use the terminal."

"What you just said... you mean hack Deputy Director Park Wonjin's terminal?"

Lee Jinwoo's eyes went round, and Kang Taemin nodded, unmoved.

"Isn't that your specialty."

"Hacking the Deputy Director's terminal — if we get caught, we're finished..."

Lee Jinwoo swallowed hard.

But the hesitation didn't last long.

Suho's life was on the line.

Ah, whatever. If we get caught, the Director will figure something out!

Once his mind was made up, he ran straight to his desk and dropped his hands onto the keyboard.

"Deputy Director Park Wonjin's personal terminal has pretty tight security... but if we go through the institute's internal network, I can crack it."

Tada-tak! Tada-da-dak!

Lee Jinwoo's fingers started moving so fast you couldn't see them.

"Route around this... open the back door... gotcha."

Eyes glinting like he was about to be sucked into the monitor, he muttered lines of code no one could follow, at a frantic pace.

How long went by, he couldn't have said.

At last, Lee Jinwoo brought down the enter key like a finishing blow.

Tak—!

"I think we've got it!"

"How'd you do it? You hacked it?"

Han Soeun asked, impressed.

Lee Jinwoo pushed his glasses back up and grinned.

"Taking over the whole terminal would be way too risky, security-wise. So instead — just one thing. I only lifted the text message line."

He pointed at the tangled signal flowchart on the monitor as he explained.

"From now on, any message that gets sent to the Deputy Director from Hwang Dushik's number, that signal comes into my terminal before it ever reaches the Deputy Director. In other words, I'm intercepting the letter in the middle."

Grimly, he added:

"And... I can send a reply back to that bastard as Deputy Director Park Wonjin."

"Yes! Then let's try it right now!"

Han Soeun bounced with excitement. But Lee Jinwoo shook his head, keeping his calm.

"No, not now. We have to hit him when he's at his most desperate. In a bit there's Chief Kang and Park Suho's virtual training session, right? Let's start then."

A little later. Right in the middle of Suho's virtual training session, Lee Jinwoo cast his bait.

[Get in touch.]

The line snapped taut instantly.

[Yes, Deputy Director.]

As if he'd been waiting for it, Hwang Dushik poured out a stream of complaints — Kang Taemin had him boxed in, he couldn't do anything.

Checking the message from the control room, Lee Jinwoo turned to Han Soeun.

"What do you think? He's asking us to pull Chief Kang off him."

Han Soeun thought for a moment, then grinned.

"Actually, this works out. Let's just pull him off."

"Why?"

"Suho's got the necklace now. If Chief Kang stays glued to him, that guy'll keep looking over his shoulder and won't show his real face. Let's set the stage for him instead. Let him strut around all he wants, and dig his own grave."

"Oh... that tracks."

Lee Jinwoo nodded and sent a reply back, imitating Deputy Director Park Wonjin's speech patterns.

[That, I can handle for you.]

After that, everything went exactly as they'd designed it.

Once Kang Taemin was gone, Hwang Dushik went wild like a fish that had found water.

Lee Jinwoo matched him step for step — even doctoring Suho's biometric data to stage a fake crisis — and Hwang Dushik had walked up onto the executioner's block on his own two feet.

"So, Senior Hwang? Have fun playing spy?"

Lee Jinwoo snapped his fingers.

At that, the giant screen in the training room came to life with a massive playback of the ugly, unvarnished face Hwang Dushik had just been showing the virtual Park Wonjin.

["Did you see just now?! Park Suho! That little kid's biometric data — cleanly hit 'zero'!"]

On-screen, Hwang Dushik was practically spraying spit, face crazed with mania.

["Project R is going to be in an uproar now! A key test subject dying — they'll be tearing themselves apart trying to figure out where the blame lands. And every last bit of that blame..."]

["...will land on the Director, Chae Junhyeok — busy playing house instead of managing his test subjects! He's finished, I'm telling you!"]

His own voice, thundering through the room.

Listening to that raw, unvarnished confession, every scrap of color drained out of Hwang Dushik's face until it went dead white.

"How could you..."

Suho's small body was trembling with betrayal.

"Use me to... hurt the Director...!"

I quietly laid a hand on the small shoulder of the boy, who didn't know what to do with the guilt and the fury.

And, hoping the child's dangerously overstrained heart would somehow settle, I patted his shoulder slowly, with weight behind it.

Poor kid.

He was already a child carrying so many wounds.

And now, to be betrayed by an adult he'd trusted.

The pity turned, before long, into a cold fury I couldn't hold in.

"So to sum up."

I jutted my chin toward the frozen Hwang Dushik on the monitor.

"That bastard used Suho to take a swing at me, and turns out he was a rat Park Wonjin planted?"

"Yes! That's it! An especially vicious spy!"

"Is that so..."

I picked up the control room mic.

"Ah, ah. Mic check."

At the sound of my voice coming through the speakers, Hwang Dushik's shoulders — standing in the middle of the training room — jerked up.

"Hey, Hwang Dushik."

"...!"

"Setting a stage this grand — I trust you're ready to face what comes after?"

I tightened my grip on the mic and ground the words out, low, like a beast growling.

"..."

"When you dared to reach into my territory and lay hands on my doll... that means you came in with at least your life on the line, doesn't it?"

That low, chilling verdict was, for Hwang Dushik, no different from a death sentence.

"H-hyk...!"

His face twisted into something hideous with terror.

"Uwaaaaaargh—!"

He lost his reason and bolted, wild, for the exit.

Watching that pitiful back running away from me, I gave the order in a low voice.

"Sihyeok. Get him."

The moment the words left my mouth—

Kwaaang—!

The shadow under Hwang Dushik's feet reared up like an enormous hand.

"Kraaargh!"

The shadow snatched the screaming Hwang Dushik by the ankle and hurled him like a sack straight into the far wall of the training room.

Kwang—!

"Krh-ak...!"

Slammed into the wall, Hwang Dushik let out a pained groan and slid down onto the floor.

I wanted to put him through worse right that instant, but what to do with him wasn't for me to decide.

I slowly turned my head and looked down at the small child beside me.

"Suho. What do you want to do?"

"...Huh?"

"That trash there. How do you want me to deal with him."

I jutted my chin toward Hwang Dushik, crawling on the floor, and put on the most indifferent voice I could.

"You're my doll, right? Owners give their dolls whatever they want. If you tell me to kill him, I'll kill him — if you ask me to let him live... well, I'll let him live."

"..."

At my words, Suho bit down hard on his lip.

The child looked down at Hwang Dushik, groaning and writhing on the floor.

"...The Director..."

His voice trembled with anger.

"...He tried to hurt the Director."

Suho looked up at me.

There was a firm resolve in his eyes.

"So... he can't be with us. A bad person like that... can't be by the Director."

At my kid's admirable answer, I snorted a laugh and ruffled his messy hair, more roughly than usual.

"All right. I'll cart him off far enough that we never lay eyes on him again."

I gestured with my chin at Hwang Dushik, sprawled on the floor, and gave Kang Taemin a short, cold order.

"Throw him out of the institute."

"Understood."

Without a word, Kang Taemin went down to the training space below.

He slung the unconscious Hwang Dushik over one shoulder like a sack and walked out of the training room without looking back.

Not death, not revenge — exile.

It was mild, but it was the most Suho-like decision.

"Number One."

"Yes, Director."

"Suho and Sihyeok are both worn out... take them to the containment room."

"Yes sir! Come on, kids."

Lee Jinwoo and Han Soeun nodded and led the children out of the training space.

Tak.

The control room, empty now with everyone gone.

Only then did I sink, with a heavy exhale, back into the chair.

"Haah...."

Barely back from Jeju and hit with a surprise on this scale before I could even catch my breath.

My head was spinning.

Even so... to think Suho would end up using his ability like that. And a combo technique with Yul? Ha...

I clicked my tongue in disbelief.

It was a way through the problem that hadn't shown up even in the original novel — genuinely, absurdly good.

Those kids — are they actually geniuses? How on earth did they design a combo like that in such a short time?

To have solved the puzzle of Suho's ability so decisively — flawlessly, at that.

My eye was right after all. I really did hire one hell of a staff.

The satisfaction lasted only a moment. Once the tension eased, exhaustion hit me hard.

"Ugh... let me get some rest too, first. I'm dead tired."

I clutched my throbbing head and staggered toward the Director's office.

The dark, cold floor of Training Room 5.

"Uh... uhh..."

Feeling the taste of coppery, sticky blood pooled in his mouth, Hwang Dushik barely came back to himself.

A splitting headache crushed his brain, but even with his eyes open, there was nothing to see.

A thick blindfold was covering his eyes completely.

He twisted his body on instinct, but his arms and legs didn't so much as budge. His whole body was bound tight to a cold metal chair.

"Hey...! Anybody here?! Damn it! Untie this!"

He shouted until his throat felt like it would tear.

But all that came back was the empty echo of his own voice, ringing off the walls of an empty training room.

That was when—

Tuk. Tuk.

Breaking through the dead silence, a heavy, regular rap of sound.

The hard-soled dress shoe of a man striking down against the concrete floor.

Someone was walking toward him, very slowly.

"W-who...? Who's there?!"

No answer.

Tuk. Tuk.

A steady rhythm.

Hwang Dushik's mind spun frantically.

Who? The Director? Or one of those Chiefs? Lee Jinwoo? Kang Taemin? Just who—!

Tak.

The footsteps stopped right in front of his face.

The presence of someone he couldn't see, looking down at him.

Choking silence.

Unable to even draw a breath, he trembled and lifted his head toward whoever stood invisible in front of him.

Then, from above, a low, hard voice drove down like a dagger.

"Useless."

"...Huh?"

Hwang Dushik's thoughts stopped.

He knew that voice. Very well — a voice he'd heard many times before.

"Wh-who — ?"

Skhh—!

Before he could even get the word out.

A cold metal syringe punched roughly into the carotid artery at the side of his neck.

"Kh... uk!"

The instant the cold liquid hit his heart through his vessels, an awful burn — as if every blood vessel were being eaten through by hydrochloric acid — swallowed his whole body.

"Kh... khaaaaa...!"

He couldn't even manage a proper scream.

Only a raw, hoarse rasp scraped out, as if his vocal cords were melting from the pain.

"Khu... khrrr...!"

His body thrashed as violently as a fish yanked out of water.

The convulsions were rough enough that the chair he was bound to rattled.

In the pain of muscles twisting on their own and bones feeling like they were splintering, his consciousness came apart in ugly pieces.

He convulsed and clawed at the floor a few more times, and then went slack... and did not move again.

The dark, quiet space.

Tuk. Tuk.

The man's footsteps kept the same steady rhythm they had come in with, and — as if nothing at all had happened — walked leisurely off, back into the dark.

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