The next day, 8.30 A.M.
(Y/N)'s POV
"Okay, Tae Joon. What's the plan?"
"According to the information I got, the goons I managed to track were hiding in an abandoned house, around Yeongdeok." Tae Joon hopped off from his seat and rolled the whole map of Yeongdeok area and every single detail from every corner, revealing every single detail in the area with a large photo of the house being pinned right next to the spot we were going to approach.
"At Yeongdeok? Just how far did they go and why there? Heard it's kinda haunted at that house." Jonathan asked for confirmation.
His answer got an A+ from the hacker with a single snap. "Yeah. And this makes our job even easier." Hearing such strange thing, me and Jonathan turned to the person who just spelled the outrageous word.
"What? How?" we asked at the same time.
Instead of explaining directly, he got back to his futuristic PC and typed some keys on his keyboard, revealing another whole map of east part of South Korea on one of the screens.
But something was different about this map. It had... many dots on some places in the entire maps. Clearly different from the printed paper we saw on the table.
"These dots are the position of every CCTV in the whole Yeongdeok area. Every corner, every building, we got it... here." Tae Joon finished as he backed out a little, letting us look at his crazy job of his. "And you may look at Yeongdeok part..." His eyes dived into the map, looking every single detail he needed to find and pointed it with his finger. "Here."
He pointed at the Yeongdeok haunted house area... We could see the entire perimeter of the house where the assholes ran to. The area looked a bit darker than the rest of others, and... where the CCTV were much fewer than the other part of this city. It was... almost one to none. "If the recons there are low..."
"And if it's an abandoned, haunted building..." Jonathan continued my speculation...
"Exactly." Tae Joon suddenly intercepted while putting a tailcoat with a suit inside. "The suspect of our presence would be almost none. So, we almost do not need to worry about leaving any evidence to go there." He finished the briefing while fastening his gloves and grabbed a mask before putting it on his coat.
[Tae Joon's mask: Oni mask (Has an attachable Tactical Visor)]
After one subject was enlightened, another one came in and made our head do some brainstorming. What is he-? "Tae Joon... what are you doing?" I asked for another enlighten.
"What do you mean 'what am I doing?'" he looked like he was as confused as us. As if he was asking my unprofessionality.
Staring at his friend, he crossed his arms in confusion. "You, dressing up like that... it's not even winter yet and you wanna act 'hohoho' now?" Jonathan showed his confusion like I did earlier.
Well, I was right, right? It wasn't even snowing here. Hell, even if the whole world was out of snow, this wasn't the time for Christmas stuff right now.
He walked toward his wardrobe and opened it, revealing so many jackets and gloves and... many masks?! "What are you thinking? We're going on an operation here! We can't go out there with our casual pajamas."
Ooo... got a point... Jonathan's head seemed to had the same idea as mine as he nodded his head while putting an 'Ooo... okay' face.
And from the sum of the clothes in his wardrobe, I could only ask myself. What was he doing exactly, as his job? Clown?
"Here, you two. Put these on."
[For (Y/N)]
[ForJonathan]
"Jesus, you have these kinds of things?" Jonathan was so surprised that his eyes were wide opened.
"No time to waste. Use it, now! We need to be hurry before they reposition again. If that happens, there's no telling whether I could track them down or not." He quickly walked out of the room like someone who was late to go to their work, and gave us a little 'warning' to be hurry. "When you're done, go to the living room. And be quick!" His voice echoed across the room.
Talk about an intensive cosmetic for a hacker. Hacker should be only... sitting in front of a computer and... eat some noodles, right?
Not going to a photoshoot and posing all days with these... attributes...
Had no time for explanation, I quickly unzipped the coat I had on my hand and started putting it on. And as I expected...
It... it's a bit oversized.
After we put our jackets on, we were finally ready for action. Or so we thought. So we walked to the living room to see Tae Joon... loading a gun?!
"What the-" before I got to exclaimed, Tae Joon quickly pushed his hand against my mouth and shut me up.
"Quiet, pabo (idiot)! These are not firearm!" Shutting me quickly, He quickly pulled some empty magazines from one of the drawers and began loading some more. "These are non-lethal pistol, with solid plastic caliber."
We looked around to see two more guns were on the sofa. I guess the rest were for us... "D-Dude, I don't know..." Jonathan showed his disapproval of how Tae Joon worked things out. "Meaning?"
He seems surprised with this Tae Joon... don't tell me he doesn't know anything about this~
"What do you mean?" he loaded his gun with the magazine and put it inside his jacket.
Holy shit. Just... holy shit. "W-We're gonna kill someone?"
Tae Joon turned to me with his 'what?' expression carved on his face, making the thing I said sounded bad. "Which part of non-lethal do you not understand?"
Tae Joon's POV
"I-"
Ugh, jebal jom... (for God's sake...).
"It's called non-lethal because it's less killing than the real gun. Understand? We have no time to be sentimental over here. The operation is about to start and we have to make our move before they do..."
I tried to be as patient as possible, because I never let my target go away. After they took my sleeping hours to look for all of them... for this namja agi (baby boy).
"But... do we have to?" First, I was low on sleep. Second, he kept bugging me ever since the first time we met. Third, he was mostly our main reason my activities were bordered by a small amount of time.
When I turned to him to snap, I looked directly into his eyes... and they told me... the same thing I had when my parents were dead right in front of me...
Fear of taking action... lack of knowledge and experience... and hesitation on hurting others to protect himself...
He was just like me... fourteen years ago. And I was about to let this happen again, when I swore to myself that I wouldn't let anyone experience it again...
"*sigh* for God's sake..." I dived into the cabinet full of weapons, lethal and non-lethal... melee and range, which were all left by my father when he died...
Machete? Too lethal, he'll cry like cutting yangpa (onion). Knuckle duster? More suitable for Jonathan and his big fat fists...
Ah!
"Here."
"Stun baton?" He asked as he held a grip of the baton I lent him. Oh great, he knew it. At least... I thought he was going to say 'flashlight'.
"It's easy to use. And effective for short range battle. I believe you've been in a fight before?" he nodded with hesitation on his act. "Good."
There was no way he would ask me to do this if he didn't get caught in a fight. Or at least, the chance was small, according to my experience. Since people hire me through the dark web for their own vengeance against this and that.
And why would someone fight back for vengeance if it wasn't because they got into a fight? But for someone who had experience in hand-to-hand combat...
Seems promising alright...
"Okay, as for me... Before I managed to give the dusters to Jonathan, he already snatched them. "Aww yeah... this looks just fine." With a smirk, he attached the pair of the dusters into his fists Well, it goes according to my prediction, I guess.
Boxing plus knuckle dusters, whoever met this guy's fists would end up not having teeth for the rest of their lifes
Okay... (Y/N) got his baton, Jonathan was ready to punch some saekkideul (assholes). Well, as for me, I guess a black belt taekwondo would be enough.
But if the enemy got too far and had firearms... the thought made me consider my option on bringing a little long-range firepower. And it was a must, since we had no idea what kind of assholes we were dealing with...
"Every one of you will still bring the gun. Just use it as your last card if you really don't want them." I handed both to the crying baby and the thug with his knuckle duster punching to the air. "Or just in case they're bringing guns or whatever."
Even though this was new to them, Jonathan accepted it and put it inside his jacket, of course. But (Y/N) looked hesitant at first... but slowly while staring at the weapon, he managed to get a grip of it.
"(Y/N), it's only a gun that won't kill somebody. Just don't point it to the head, of course." I had to reassure him. Eoliseog-eun il-i il-eonagi jeon-e (Before something stupid happened). No one is getting killed today nor tomorrow.
That was my principal as a leader who had a crew to lead.
Even so, he nodded (still hesitantly, we still had no time.) before our time was up. And... sibal (fuck), I almost forgot.
"You two, here."
I handed both Jonathan and (Y/N) something important. More important than anyone could had realized. Their faces could use some... cover.
[(Y/N)'s mask: Faceless mask]
[Jonathan's mask: Skull mask (Steampunk)]
3D printing could be very, very useful for something such as making mask. You could say that this was one of the reasons I could say such thing.
If any of you ever waited for a mask to be made for the whole week, my job would be literally finished it all night. Who needed sleep anyway?
For a man who had lost his majority of sleeping time, there was one thing I could say... sumyeon-eulo jiog-e (to hell with sleeping).
But as for Jonathan's, I could believe this. But I couldn't find the right mask for him. Luckily, when I was diving and kept digging on my wardrobe that was now messy, I found this mask that I made for the first time. God, you had no idea how proud I managed to craft this mask.
Like a memento from the past...
As their hands touched the mask, I slightly pulled the masks closer, instantly pulling them with the masks "Whatever it takes, don't let them know you. Got it? No matter what."
I had to be serious here, since this was the first rule of being a hacker. They knew you, you were done for. End of story.
They nodded and gave me their 'okay'. And I had no choice but to trust them. Like I said, running short on time.
"Okay. Put it on when I tell you." I tidied up the scattered weapons on my cabinet and closed it while they were looking at their masks, examining it. I made sure no weapon was scattered around when someone came in. The next thing I would be hearing was the sound of police sirens. "And one last thing."
When they were busy, I had to interrupt them one last time. Before we were actually going, as this was as crucial as our mask. "After we're out of this room, we won't be calling each other by our name. We need our own codenames."
And for this one, it might sound new to both Jonathan and the namja agi (baby boy). "For example, I use 'Crypto' as my codename. It's safe and abstract. I use it whenever I need to do this thing." I finished the explanation as quick and understandable as possible.
Jonathan seemed to catch up faster than (Y/N) as he looked like he came up with something... chujabhan (nasty). "As for me... hmmm..." but he was dumber than him in terms of thinking after doing something.
"Hmm... Reaper?" I quickly suggested something stupid out of my head. Stupid enough that he would take it as his codename like a little child being baited by a large number of balloons and candies.
I was really afraid that he would take up to a millennium only to come up with a suitable name.
"Oooh, that sounds fucked up... And it sounds epic! I'm Reaper!" Yeah. See, it was stupid enough! He was happy, I was satisfied. And we had no time wasted in any argument. Win-win.
"Now, for you..." I turned to (Y/N) who was STILL looking at his mask. I could say that this one needed more thinking than 'Reaper'. Well...
But if we were to find something out of that mask, it was too abstract... "Zero." The (Y/N) finally spoke up of something interesting... something good after many seconds of silence.
And I had to admit, it was quiet entertaining, and he had an impressive way of choosing his name. I didn't know why it was good for him, and that was exactly what made him impress me.
Guess he wasn't staring at that mask for nothing.
"Okay. Zero, Reaper. Let's start this thing and finish without dying."
And so, the operation began. Before we got out, I managed 'something' on my computer that'll get us out of here safely. Without screwing this while we were here, at least.
3 hours later
Zero's POV
Our car stopped a hundred meters from the house we were about to raid. The house was dark, and we could see why people were staying away from this 'haunted' house.
Which was a perfect reason for someone to hide in it.
Well, we made sure that no one was around our parking spot too. Would be ugly to let someone see us in our masks, right? And it would be too stupid if we were to say something like going to animal party.
Or at least, those were things Tae Joon would say to us. "Okay, Joon. We're here. Are we busting our way or what?"
"For the fifth time, my. name. is. Crypto!"
Did he say the fifth time? Yeah. It was the fifth time he said OUR name like 'screw nicknames, let's reveal ourselves'.
I knew that this was part of the habituation with our secret identity and how important it was in our current mission.
And we could only imagine how he would reveal himself in front of everyone like it was his first day of school. Added with some additional information like his credit card number.
"*sigh*... Crypto, what do we do now?" I corrected Reaper's sentence with the proper way of saying our names. For now.
"First, we need to see where they exactly are right now." Crypto put off his seatbelt while tapping something in his phone and pulled something from his pocket.
The thing was, it was too weird, small, white, and... it had camera? W-what was that, a flying camera?
"What is that?" I leaned forward to see the little device in his gloved hand while waiting for his answered. That I didn't get sooner before I knew it.
He stretched the propeller thingy from the camera before he answered my question without even a single word coming out of his mouth as an explanation.
A drone? I was really surprised that I managed to recognize it, for someone who didn't see this kind of things so often in my daily life.
Crypto taped his phone a few times, beep beep bop, he managed to do something. Somehow. The... camera-thingy... it started to hover on his hand.
"Joh-eun (Good)." He then held the... camera (?) and guess what he did to it...
He threw it outside the window! "Wha-" of course we became panic of what Crypto did to the poor little drone. It hadn't even flown yet!
But when I leant against the window to see outside, I heard a vague sound of propeller spinning above the ground with a drone... flying in front of my face!
"Well, boys... Meet the 'All-seeing Eye.'. A.S.E., for short." Crypto put up a satisfied smile that he managed to impressed us before flying the drone around the car.
Well I'll be damned...
"We'll have to recon up first. Then we could tell how we'll approach them." He swiped his thumb again his phone as the drone began to move toward the designated area.
Well, it was a good thing we had drone though. Drones wouldn't get spooked at all in terms of... entering a haunted house. Not to mention that this was the actual haunted house.
Me and Reaper began to leant toward Crypto out of curiosity of how the hacker's drone really worked. Since it was our first time doing this thing, we could say that this was really really impressive.
As the drone was about five meters away from the building, he stopped the drone and began tapping something again, changing the scenery on his phone. "Switching to thermal view." All of the sudden, the view that was once colorful and clear turned into these kinds of color where logic and magic couldn't connect in my head.
"What did you-"
"Joyonghi jibjung hae (Quiet, I'm trying to focus)." He cut me off with his usual cold tone before moving the drone again with his phone. Well, I tried. But I wouldn't nudge him with another question. Cause this hacker's focus seemed really intense, yet very fragile.
And the drone began to continue its flight toward the house. But something was different about the view.
The view where it showed the pink color of the house, suddenly turned into dark purple with... a gold yellow tints that looked like... people...
So this is the thermal vision...
"Four, five... hmmm, maybe up to ten people. I don't know whether they're armed or not. But be careful." He informed us as he controlled the drone to move around the perimeter, trying to look for something else.
For another five minutes of scouting the perimeter, he finally stopped and positioned the drone just enough to view the whole house from the front of it with four people on the second floor.
He was finally satisfied with the view before putting his phone back on his pocket and pulling his gun from his jacket. Meaning, we were ready for action...
We hopped out of Jonathan's car as I put on my hood from my long, oversized jacket and readied myself for the stuffs in front of me. And my preparation was finished with a mask attached to my face
Just wait, Rosie. This will be over soon...