Chapter 343

The Alpha who had abducted Malcolm had fixed one of Malcolm’s wrists to the car handle with handcuffs. Thanks to that, Malcolm had not been thrown out of the vehicle. Although his wrist and shoulder blade had been shattered, that at least had kept him from suffering injuries severe enough to put his life in immediate danger.

After searching the Alpha’s pockets and finding the handcuff key, Baekgyeong bent down and crawled into the car. He unlocked the handcuffs restraining Malcolm’s arm, carefully pulled his crumpled body out, and laid him on the ground before asking,

“Are you conscious?”

“Ugh... it hurts. ...Hurts so bad I could die.”

“Of course it hurts.”

At the faint trace of laughter in Baekgyeong’s voice, Malcolm muttered a curse.

“Hah, haa... because of the pain, my body... I can’t move it. Hospital, get me to a hospital...”

“We can’t take you to a hospital.”

At Isaac’s words, Malcolm suddenly burst into tears.

“Huuugh... goddammit, hhh... my luck...”

He tried to sob like a child, but he could not even cry properly, because whenever he took a deep breath the pain struck through his whole body like lightning. Between those short, broken breaths, only shattered groans continued.

“It’s... not fair. If I could’ve just... hhk, just held on for three months, hhh... that’s all I needed.”

“If you held on for what?”

Siron crouched beside Malcolm and asked as he looked down at his sweat- and tear-soaked face with a sympathetic expression.

“My pension... if I’d just held on another three months, huuugh... my pension...”

It was not the answer he had expected, but it was tragic enough. Deeply sympathizing with Malcolm’s grief, Siron replied,

“That’s... a serious problem after all.”

Malcolm kept crying like a child. But they could not afford to waste time letting him work through his grief. In the process of trying to make contact with Malcolm, they had killed two Alpha. They had to dispose of the bodies before dawn broke.

Isaac asked Malcolm, who was rambling from the pain,

“Where is the item you were going to hand over to me?”

But Malcolm seemed too tormented by pain to think carefully about Isaac’s question. In the end, Isaac brought an injectable fast-acting analgesic from the car, took off Malcolm’s shoe, and checked the position of the vein on the top of his foot.

“I’m going to give you a painkiller.”

Belatedly coming to his senses, Malcolm mumbled and asked,

“I-is it a narcotic? ...No, no... can’t do that.”

“It’s not a narcotic, so relax. ...Well, there is a chance your heart could stop.”

Fortunately, Malcolm’s heart did not stop. He only suffered from terrible dizziness. While waiting for the drug to take effect, Isaac pulled the upper body of the corpse out from where it was wedged between the car and the tree and searched its pockets. A gun, a phone, and a car key were all the man had on him. The vehicle seemed to be rented; in the glove compartment was a pamphlet explaining vehicle use and return procedures.

Isaac held the man’s phone up and tilted it toward the light. Smudges remained along the pattern-lock path. After several attempts, he succeeded in unlocking it.

The man apparently deleted the call log the moment he finished each call. The call list was empty. The text message box had also been completely erased. But several notes remained in the memo app.

Jackson dispatch confirmed

Manhattan, Greenwich Village, Greenbox Mail Center, P.O. Box 14821

Malcolm Knox, to join Angela Knox in Midtown West

Track vehicle movement route, WXC-9146

22:36 confirmed entering New Jersey Turnpike

03:58 crossed Delaware state line

...

11:52 captured on CCTV in Harford County section

14:03 confirmed vehicle stop location in Ocean Park

Siron, who had pressed close to Isaac and checked the messages with him, said,

“Greenbox Mail Center. This looks like a postal box. I guess what Jackson said was true.”

Before Isaac killed him, Jackson Cliff had said he had sent a Memory Card to a postal box in Manhattan. He had said that inside the Memory Card was material on politicians, journalists, and public officials bought by Hybris, material they would never want revealed.

“The postal box in Manhattan. I’m the only one who knows that box address.”

Jackson Cliff had said that only he knew the address of the box where the Memory Card had been placed. But that secret had already been broken. The data had passed to Malcolm Knox, and Hybris, having discovered not only the box address but also the whereabouts of the data, had begun following Malcolm.

Feeling puzzled, Baekgyeong asked Isaac,

“But why would Jackson send the Memory Card to Malcolm?”

“We’ll know if we ask Malcolm.”

Siron lightly touched Malcolm’s shoulder and asked,

“Malcolm, is the medicine kicking in a little? How do you feel? Does it hurt less?”

“Goddammit... feels like I got tossed around in a drum washer.”

“The fact that you can even come up with a comparison like that means you’re much better. This is urgent, so I’ll ask this first. Where’s the Memory Card you were going to give us?”

“Memory Card...?”

Malcolm looked up at Siron with uncertain eyes, as if wondering whether the drugged haze had made him hear wrong.

“You said you had something to give us.”

“Well... yes, I did, but, ugh, it’s not a Memory Card, haa... it’s a Laptop.”

“What?”

Baekgyeong shot to his feet.

“A Laptop? What do you mean?”

“I’m the one who has no idea what... haa... you people are talking about. What the hell is a Memory Card?”

Weakened by pain, Malcolm looked as though he were about to cry again as he asked.

From the start, Malcolm had said he was giving them “data.” And both a Laptop and a Memory Card were means of storing data. The three men belatedly realized that Malcolm had meant data stored on a Laptop, while Isaac, having no way of knowing such a Laptop existed, had immediately understood Malcolm’s words as meaning a Memory Card. It had all come from that misunderstanding. Isaac asked,

“What data is on the Laptop?”

Malcolm looked silently up at Isaac. He was still suffering terrible pain, yet he was also thinking something over with great care.

“Before that. Let me ask just one thing. That thing you’re looking for... that Memory Card. What’s on it, haa... what exactly is on it?”

Isaac did not rush to answer. Depending on what he said, Malcolm might open his mouth or shut it. Malcolm had approached them using “data” as bait even though he knew they were at war with Hybris. More than that, he was holding something Hybris urgently needed to recover. Isaac finished the calculation in his head and answered truthfully.

“It contains material exposing Hybris corruption. Material gathered by a Hybris insider.”

“By insider... you mean Jackson Cliff?”

“Yes.”

At Isaac’s plain answer, Malcolm’s gaze deepened. This time Isaac asked,

“And what data was on the Laptop Jackson Cliff gave you?”

In the darkness, Malcolm stared fixedly at Isaac with bright, gleaming eyes, the whites shining pale, and then said,

“Help me... sit up.”

Isaac carefully raised Malcolm’s upper body and helped him lean his back against the car. Perhaps because of the painkiller, the pain had eased a little. In a much more comfortable tone than before, Malcolm began explaining how he had come into possession of the Laptop.

The beginning of the story was his eldest daughter, Angela Knox. After divorcing her ex-husband, Angela Knox had moved back into Malcolm and his wife’s home with her two children. Suffering from depression, she joined a group psychotherapy program called People Who Overcame Grief, and it was there that she came to know Jackson Cliff.

From the start, the two had felt a powerful attraction to each other, and before long their relationship moved several steps beyond that of therapist and patient. Angela gave birth to a child named Joshua with Jackson, and Jackson Cliff, so that Angela could raise Joshua in a stable environment, got her an expensive condo in Manhattan overlooking Central Park and even arranged bodyguards for her safety. Not often, but whenever circumstances allowed, he would fly to Manhattan to see Angela and the child, spend a day or two with them, then leave again.

But recently their relationship had been cut off all at once, as abruptly as if someone had sliced it through with scissors. Jackson had evaporated from the lives of Angela and Joshua. All he left behind was a warning that if his relationship with Angela became known outside, the lives of mother and son would be endangered.

Then one day, when Angela had begun to feel a dim anxiety about Jackson’s true nature, he sent her a gift. It was a ticket to Switzerland and a Laptop.

Jackson could never have anticipated it, but the gift he sent ended up in Hannah’s hands instead of Angela’s. Hannah, Angela’s mother and Malcolm’s wife, received it in her place while Angela was at work. Curious as she always had been about what kind of man Joshua’s biological father was, Hannah took the ticket to Switzerland and went to the appointed place. There, she witnessed Jackson Cliff being kidnapped while surrounded by enormous men.

The story had taken a turn none of the three had expected. Siron forced down the urge to point out the age gap between Angela and Jackson Cliff and focused on Malcolm’s story. But another man who had been wondering the same thing apparently had no intention whatsoever of hiding his curiosity.

Squatting in front of Malcolm, Baekgyeong rested his outstretched arms on his knees and scraped at his nerves.

“So your daughter was dating someone old enough to be her father.”

Malcolm glared at Baekgyeong with visible displeasure.

“If I ever met Jackson Cliff, I’d beat him half to death.”

Unfortunately, Malcolm had forever lost the chance to beat Jackson Cliff half to death. Jackson Cliff had died in the underground drainage tunnels. Baekgyeong barely forced down the truth surging up to the back of his throat. If he said that the man who had killed Jackson was right here with them, there was no telling where the situation might go.

Looking down at Malcolm, Isaac asked,

“Did you know Jackson Cliff was connected to Hybris?”

“...I swear I didn’t. I only found out recently.”

“Jackson Cliff, or rather Joseph Elliott, entered and left Somora Prison while approaching Gezar Bazelli. He got help from him in increasing the Alpha Trait Holder population.”

With a face that showed he had truly known nothing, Malcolm said,

“That must have been before I was appointed warden. And until you told me just now, I didn’t even know Joseph Elliott and Jackson Cliff were the same man. Everything I know about Joseph Elliott came from things I picked up from Gezar Bazelli’s interview.”

His words sounded true. Even if they were lies, it did not matter. All that mattered was whether they could get the data from the Laptop Jackson had allegedly handed over to Angela Knox, data beyond what the Knox father and daughter could possibly handle.

“All right. Malcolm Knox. What data is on the Laptop?”

At Isaac’s question, Malcolm’s whole air changed. With a face that had forgotten pain, he stared straight through Isaac. It was the look of someone who wanted to be careful beyond careful, as though searching for some flaw hidden inside Isaac.

“It contains cryptocurrency.”