My fever lasts a week. I’m transported to the NSK’s military hospital in Gangnam immediately upon arrival in Neo Seoul, excused from school due to “injuries sustained in combat.” I don’t know this until after the fact. I’m mostly delirious until the fever breaks, kept on sleep-inducing drugs.
Alex visits when I’m more lucid. “You look awful,” he says, walking around my bare hospital room.
I don’t respond, too relieved that he’s healthy enough to insult me. The last I’d seen him, he’d been broken on the floor.
He grimaces. “I’ve been cleaning up the colonel’s mess. Luckily, the mission ended up a success even if it began as a disaster. Oh Kangto is in custody, on his third round of interrogations. The old bastard won’t give anything up.” He walks over and crosses his arms. “Actually, that’s why I’m here. To see if you’ve recovered enough.” He glances away. “I have a favor to ask.”
When he doesn’t elaborate, I say, “What?”
“Oh Kangto won’t respond to any of the standard methods of torture. They want to use the Helm on Ama, but you saw how that went last time.” He hesitates, obviously not used to asking favors. “She doesn’t want to do it. She’s afraid. I thought maybe you . . .”
“I’ll do it,” I say, “but just so you know, I scored poorly in interrogative methods.” It was one of the few classes at the academy that I almost failed in. Apparently I’m bad at dissembling, which is ironic, because my whole identity is a lie.
“I think out of all of us — you, me, Koga, Tsuko, whatever — you’ll be the one the rebel talks to.”
“Really?” I ask, genuinely surprised. “What makes you think that?”
Alex looks at me hesitantly, as if anticipating a negative reaction. Immediately, I know why he’s asked me. I scowl. “Alex, just because I’m from Old Seoul doesn’t mean I speak a different language than you.”
“Whatever,” Alex says, cracking his knuckles. “The rebel won’t talk to anyone. He hasn’t spoken a word since we brought him in. He just sits there and takes it all, the beatings, the hot iron, the fast-acting poisons, the electrocution. The old man’s a stone wall. I need you to breach it. I’ll be back to pick you up at 2000 tonight.” Alex walks to the door. “Get dressed. Take a shower. You may look better than Oh Kangto, but that’s nothing to be proud of.”
■ ■ ■
Alex isn’t late to pick me up. He brings us straight from the hospital to the Tower. My fever might have broken, but I’m not fully recovered yet. I keep my movements slow, close to my body, careful not to open up any sealed wounds.
I follow Alex to a basement room of the Tower guarded by two soldiers. The guard on the right nods at Alex and scans his wrist across a panel to open the doors, revealing a small viewing room that looks through a glass window into another — an interrogation room.
I’m not surprised to see Tsuko by the window, watching Oh Kangto through the glass. Beside him stands Colonel Go Woojin. The third person in the room I am surprised to see.
“Are you feeling better?” Sela walks over to me with a look of concern in her violet eyes. She blinks, and her irises turn sky blue.
“I am.”
“Congratulations on your capture of Oh Kangto. I saw the footage. You were very brave.”
I grimace. I saw the footage as well, when I’d been lucid enough to work the tablet attached to the hospital bed. The footage aired to the public included a clip of me getting beaten into the ground by the UKL rebel, complete with a voiceover explaining my existence as a “young, brave soldier of the NSK.” It then proceeded to show my rescue by Tera, another “soldier of the NSK.” It hadn’t released her association with the project.
The footage cut off right at the moment when Tera turned on the NSK soldiers, protecting Oh Kangto so that he could save my life.
I look past Sela and through the window. The old rebel sits in a metal chair behind the glass, a black bag over his head. His wrists are cuffed to the metal table in front of him with silver bands.
“How long has he been sitting like that?” Alex asks.
“Two hours,” Sela answers. “He hasn’t moved.”
I frown. “Who was the last person to speak with him?”
“I was,” Colonel Go says.
“The colonel asked questions” — Sela nods at the older soldier — “but the rebel didn’t respond to any of them.”
“Which is why we should use the weapon,” Colonel Go demands, “Bring it in and use the Helm.”
Alex grits his teeth. “Her name is Ama, and she wouldn’t be able to read him after the torture you put him through. Ama’s a mind reader, and you’ve ensured the rebel hasn’t a mind to read.”
The colonel growls. “You insolent bastard. I don’t care if you’re the Director’s son. You can’t speak to me like that. We’ll bring in this Ama and put it to actual use.”
He signals for the guards, but before they can approach, Tsuko raises a hand, stopping them. Slowly, he turns his head to stare at the colonel. He doesn’t say a word. After a drawn-out pause, the colonel lowers his eyes — a strange sight, considering the colonel’s advanced age compared to Tsuko’s youth.
“My apologies, General,” the colonel says.
I’m surprised at Tsuko’s reaction. Either he’s angry at the colonel for his massive blunder in the north, resulting in the casualties of hundreds of soldiers, or he’s protecting Ama. Maybe both.
There’s an undeniable connection between Ama, Tera, and Tsuko, a shared history. But what, I don’t know. Or when. It’s common knowledge that Tsuko was “found” by the Director at a military orphanage in Taipei. When could he have come into contact with Ama and Tera? Unless it’s true that the “common knowledge” is actually fabricated knowledge, and there’s more to Tsuko’s murky past than what the public was given.
I surface from my thoughts to find Tsuko watching me.
“I was informed that you would conduct this interrogation,” he says. “Is it true you’ve earned high marks in interrogative procedures?”
“It’s true,” I lie.
Tsuko nods. “Good. Interrogate Oh Kangto with any means possible. This man is responsible for the deaths of thousands of NSK soldiers. I will not be denied his full confession and the names and whereabouts of every single traitor beneath his command.” He reaches to pick up his medaled cap lying on a table, then turns to Alex. “After Soldier Lee conducts the interrogation, send the traitor to my facility.” Placing the cap atop his head, he exits the room, trailed by the colonel.
Left alone in silence with Alex and Sela, I sigh. “Let’s not interrogate him and say we did.”
Sela giggles.
Alex frowns. “We’re being monitored,” he says, his eyes moving to the camera in the corner of the room. “And Sela’s here to write up an account of the interrogation. Try not to do anything to get kicked out of the Tower.” He hands me an earpiece, which I plug into my left ear. “I’ll relay to you the questions you’re to ask him.”
I move to the door separating the viewing room from the interrogation room and stop before the threshold, turning to Sela. “Can you release his cuffs?”
Sela widens her eyes, then nods. “I will.”
The door opens, and I walk inside.
The interrogation room is significantly colder than the viewing room. One lone camera at the back tracks my movements. The silver cuffs release with a click.
I wait a minute, but when the old rebel doesn’t make a move to take the black bag from his head, I pull it off him and toss it to the floor. Then I circle the table and sit in the chair opposite him.
Face-to-face, I can see the damage wrought by the days leading up to this meeting. There’s a long, charred scar that runs across his face from his left temple, across one sealed-shut eye, through his flat, reddened nose, and down to his gray-stubbled chin. The other wounds, although fierce in their own right, seem insubstantial compared to this blatant marring.
I swallow and look down, feeling strangely ill at ease.
“Talk to him,” Alex orders in my ear. “Make him feel comfortable with you.”
I take a breath, then blurt, “Tell me the names of the leaders of the UKL.”
Alex groans in my earpiece. “You weren’t kidding when you said you sucked at interrogations.”
The old man stares at me blankly from out of his one working eye.
“Are you thirsty?” I ask, and then say loudly, “Maybe he can’t speak. His mouth is too dry.” I turn my head to look directly at Alex and Sela behind the one-way mirror, going against the idea that you’re not supposed to talk about the criminal while he sits in front of you.
Oh Kangto and I wait in silence for several minutes before Sela enters the room and puts a steaming mug of barley tea in front of the man.
He doesn’t even glance at her. Just stares at me. He doesn’t pick up the mug of tea.
“Nice,” Alex drawls into my earpiece as Sela shuts the door behind her.
Another couple of minutes of silence pass before I work up the will to speak.
“You look more like a harabeoji than an ajeossi.” These are the brilliant words that come out of my mouth — he looks more like a grandfather than a middle-aged man. According to our records, Oh Kangto is a little older than the colonel, somewhere in his mid-sixties. The mountains of the north have not been kind to this man. He looks like he’s much older, his hair completely gray, with drooping bags beneath his eyes. His face is a mask of wrinkles. I’m surprised he endured even one beating, let alone the countless beatings I know he’s suffered.
“My harabeoji was a lot like you,” I continue. “You two would have gotten along. You’d have sat there and said nothing to each other for hours straight, and after you had left our home, my harabeoji would have turned to me and said, ‘He is a good man.’ Of course, my harabeoji died when I was very young, so I didn’t know him too well. Maybe he would have said, ‘He is a boring man.’” I shrug. “I guess we’ll never know, will we?”
When the old man doesn’t answer, I answer for him, my voice quiet in the still room. “We won’t ever know.”
I’m getting tired of this. The old man isn’t going to speak. He’s just going to stare and stare and step on me with the force of his gaze.
“Are you going to tell me where the rest of your rebels are? Are you going to name the agents in your organization who’ve infiltrated this city? The traitors hiding amongst us? Are you going to confess your plans, the ones you have to destroy the NSK?”
The old man doesn’t even blink.
I turn away from him, looking pointedly at the one-way mirror of the interrogation room, and shrug. This was obviously a bad plan.
I’m about to stand when the old man creaks forward in his chair. “Ah,” he breathes huskily, his voice thick with age and pain. “Hyunwoo-yah. I’ve missed you, my comrade.”
I freeze where I sit. My heartbeat doubles in my chest, and my numb hands slide against the metal arms of the chair.
“Hyunwoo-yah, where have you been? We scoured the land for you. We looked everywhere for you. I felt your ghost at my bedside at night, asking me, Why? Why? Oh, Lee Hyunwoo, where have you been? And your lovely wife. And your son. Forgive me. Forgive me.”
The old man begins to cry, tears seeping through both his working right eye and his broken left. “Hyunwoo-yah, forgive me. I did wrong. I made you stay with me when you should have gone with her. She would have kept you warm. She would have healed all your sorrows. She had scarless hands. It meant she was safe.”
He turns from me, looking off into the distance, looking at something only he can see. “The winds are frigid in the north, and the wolves howl for my blood.”
I shake my head. “There aren’t any wolves in the north.”
“Yes, there are. Hungry, cruel predators. They’re nothing like the tigers that used to roam Mount Baekdu in the old days. Those noble creatures protected us from our enemies. We were never afraid, because we knew, we knew we were beloved.
“Hyunwoo-yah, isn’t it strange? I’ve reached this old age, older than my halmeoni was before she died. She was so wise, my halmeoni. I don’t feel wise, Hyunwoo-yah. I feel tired and bitter and cold. I miss the days of my youth, when I was a boy in the city. All my friends and I cared about was how sweet the watermelon was in the spring, and in the summer, how much fun it was to play muk-jji-ppa in the park. And all we shared was everything. They’re all gone now.”
The old man wipes tears from his face, the wetness of them mixing with the dried blood of his wounds. “I never could beat my halmeoni at muk-jji-ppa. She had quicker hands than me.”
He looks down at his hands, gnarled with age and weathered after many winters in the north.
Something snaps inside me, watching him watch his hands. Maybe it’s that he’s mentioned his halmeoni, and I have a weakness for halmeonis. Maybe it’s that he knew my father before my father left, before my father met my mother. Maybe it’s because he’s old, and he’s suffered, and no man deserves such cruelty dealt upon his body and his mind. There’s an anger bottled up inside me, and I don’t know where it’s come from, or why it’s even come at all. Why it won’t leave.
I stand and place my palms on the metal table, feel the bite of the cold steel. “Why are you doing this?” My voice comes out harsh, cracking. “What makes you hold your tongue, old man?”
Oh Kangto looks up at me, his one eye finding mine. I read pity in his gaze, pity for me. It goes straight to my soul. I pound my fist on the table. “Speak!” I scream. “Just tell them what they need to know, and they won’t hurt you anymore!”
In my ear, Alex finally speaks, his voice muffled. “Ask him where his comrades are.”
“Where are your comrades, Oh Kangto? Where are they hiding?”
Oh Kangto lifts his head, his tears getting caught in the lines of his face. He presses his hands against his heart. “Right here,” he says, his lucid voice now sure and strong. He reaches his gnarled grandfather hands across the wooden table, placing their scarred palms over mine. “Right here.”
He smiles at me, a sad smile. “Who guards the mountain in the north, Lee Hyunwoo?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, my voice foreign to my ears, weak and tired.
“You know, my son.”
The door of the interrogation room opens. “We’ve got what we need,” Alex says, stepping through. I nod, shakily getting to my feet. I don’t know what they got out of that, but I’m done.
In a moment of suicidal adrenaline, I turn to Oh Kangto and bow at the waist, showing him a deference I actually feel for once.
“Did I mention the whole thing was recorded?” Alex asks once the door closes behind us.
I look away from him and through the interrogation window. The old rebel has his face in his hands. He’s weeping.
“Jaewon, I’m serious. This won’t look good.”
“Why not?” Sela chimes in, patting me on the back. “Lee Jaewon was acting.” She laughs. “Jaewon-ssi, I want you to be in the next drama I star in. You were amazing. And you even got Oh Kangto to talk. No one else has. And he’s revealed something huge. The name of a potential rebel. This Lee Hyunwoo person. True, Lee Hyunwoo is probably dead, seeing as Oh Kangto thought you were his ghost at first. But we know that both he and Lee Hyunwoo used to live in the city, the old city. He’s confirmed there are rebels in the city, or at least, they began there. We thought the UKL had most of its operatives situated abroad, backed by foreign powers, but if they’re across the river, they’ve been working right beneath our noses. We can root them out quick and bring an end to this rebellion once and for all!”
Alex and I both stare at Sela, stupefied expressions on our faces. This is the most I’ve heard her speak.
She laughs. “I can go on and on about subjects I’m passionate about. Do you think they’d let me participate in Oh Kangto’s transport to General Tsuko’s facility?”
I blink, surprised she wants any further part in all of this. Apparently, she’s more bloodthirsty than I thought. Or more ambitious than I thought.
“I don’t see why not,” Alex answers slowly.
“Oh, good,” she sings. “I’ll escort him, then.”
Alex must have signaled to the guards that we’d finished the interrogation, because five of them march through the doors. They remove Oh Kangto from his chair, shackling him with electro-braces.
The old rebel doesn’t make a move to stop them. He doesn’t even look at them. Or me. He passes right by me, unseeing. It’s like his mind has fled, his one eye roving without focus.
Something in me knows he won’t speak again. He had only spoken to me because he had mistaken me for my father. He’ll go to Tsuko’s facility, and they’ll torture him until he’s dead, never learning a thing beyond what he revealed in his strange confession to me, of a cherished boyhood long ago.
“Are you all right?” Alex asks, watching me. “Maybe you should go back to the hospital.”
I shake my head, turning to head out of the room and out of the Tower. Alex’s advice is good, but I have a different idea of what will make me feel better.