The faint scent of disinfectant lingered in the sterile air, clinging stubbornly to the dull walls of the hospital room. The late afternoon sun pushed its way through the half-closed blinds, scattering thin, pale beams across the floor. The room itself was quiet, save for the soft rustle of a nurse carefully unwrapping the bandages looped tightly around Sergey's arm.
He sat on the edge of the bed, his posture stiff, eyes locked on the peeling, beige wallpaper as though it offered some kind of answer to the mess his life had become. His bare arm, now free of the bandages, looked pale and worn—skin stretched thin over the deep, ugly bruises still healing underneath.
The nurse clucked her tongue softly, giving his arm a gentle tap.
"Alright, you're not fully healed yet," she warned, her voice low but firm, as though she'd given this speech one too many times. "Don't go pushing this arm around like you're indestructible, understand? You need rest, not heroics."
Sergey didn't argue. He gave a small nod, his lips pressing into a thin, silent line. The weight of defeat sat heavy on his chest, more painful than any injury stitched into his flesh.
The door creaked open just then, breaking the silence.
Eun-jae stepped inside, his figure shadowed against the fading sunlight pouring in from the hallway. In his hand, he carried a rolled-up piece of cardboard, the edges slightly bent from how tightly he was gripping it. His hair looked a little damp, and his face was pale, as if he'd been running around for hours — or thinking himself sick.
Sergey turned his head slowly, eyes dragging toward him, his voice dry and low.
"Ah... you're finally here," he muttered, trying to sit up straighter, though his body protested with a sharp pang. "The nurses said you were gone for hours. Damn, you look like shit. Pale as hell. You sick or something?"
Eun-jae blinked, as if the question barely registered in his mind.
"No. I'm fine," he replied, his voice soft, but strained. His fingers flexed around the cardboard in his hand, knuckles pale from the pressure.
Sergey let out a weak scoff, the corner of his mouth twitching up in a bitter smile.
"Could've fooled me," he mumbled, shaking his head slightly.
Eun-jae didn't respond. Instead, he walked closer, his shoes making soft, dull sounds against the tile floor until he stood right at the edge of Sergey's bed. His gaze dropped for a second, staring at the bruises on Sergey's exposed arm, then at the faint trembling in his fingers, before slowly meeting his eyes again.
"So that's it, huh?" Eun-jae asked quietly, his voice almost too even — too calm. "You're just gonna leave? Just pack up and walk away like none of this happened?"
Sergey looked at him, blinking slow, his face as unreadable as always.
"What am I supposed to do?" he asked, his voice flat, empty, like all the fight had been drained out of him. "The mission's over, Eun-jae. We failed. There's nothing left to chase."
His gaze drifted toward the window, where the sky had started turning that deep, heavy shade of blue that always came just before nightfall.
"I'm going home," he added after a pause, voice quieter this time, almost like the words hurt to say out loud. "And you should go back to Korea. There's nothing here for you either."
Eun-jae felt his throat tighten, his fingers curling a little tighter around the rolled-up cardboard.
"So you're just gonna end it like this?" he asked, his voice rising, sharp edges starting to show underneath the calm. "After everything? You're just gonna walk away?"
"What do you want me to do, huh?" Sergey snapped back, the first real spark of emotion breaking through his exhaustion. His hands clenched around the edges of the bedsheets, knuckles paling, shoulders stiff. "You think I'm some kind of machine? That I can just keep going even when there's no point?"
His voice cracked a little, heavy with frustration and the kind of quiet despair he hadn't allowed himself to admit until now.
"It's over," he muttered, softer this time, his gaze dropping to his lap. "It's fucking useless."
The words hung in the air like smoke from a fire that had long since burned out. Neither of them spoke for a long moment. The only sound was the distant beeping of machines in the hallway, the world outside moving on as if their failures meant nothing.
Eun-jae stood there, frozen, staring at the man sitting on the hospital bed — the same man who had once felt untouchable, unstoppable, unbreakable. And now he looked like a ghost of himself, buried beneath bruises, bandages, and regret.
"...It's not useless," Eun-jae finally said, his voice barely above a whisper. "You didn't come all this way for nothing."
But Sergey didn't answer.
Not at first, anyway.
His silence stretched on like an eerie lull before a storm, his expression unreadable, as if he were weighing the weight of the universe in his mind. Then, with a slow and deliberate motion, Sergey reached for the cold, black metal of his gun. The click of the safety being switched off echoed through the dim, lifeless room like the toll of a funeral bell.
And then — the barrel pointed straight at Eun-jae.
The steel glinted under the faint light, unforgiving and merciless.
"I just had one mission," Sergey finally said, his voice disturbingly flat, like the words were pre-recorded and emptied of any emotion. It wasn't anger. It wasn't hate. It was worse than that. It was indifference. Mechanical obedience.
The words hit Eun-jae like a slap, pulling him out of the foggy cloud of panic. And suddenly, as though a veil was lifted, memories surged back into his mind.
'Oh right... now I remember,' Eun-jae thought bitterly, the puzzle pieces sliding into place. His mind replayed that conversation — that casual, chilling warning Caesar had tossed at him once. The same Caesar who could grin while playing both savior and executioner.
His words echoed sharp in his memory:
"Your own superiors and allies want you dead."
Eun-jae had brushed it off back then, thinking Caesar was, as usual, just feeding him another twisted mind game. He hadn't believed him — not fully. Back then, it sounded like typical Caesar-grade manipulation, designed to mess with his head. So, he hadn't even listened. Or rather, he hadn't wanted to listen.
But here he was now, staring down the truth through the barrel of Sergey's gun.
Swallowing the hard lump forming in his throat, Eun-jae wet his cracked lips, forcing the question out.
"Who sent you... Korea? Or Canada?" His voice came out strained, like the question physically hurt.
Sergey tilted his head slightly, his expression lazily amused, as if Eun-jae had asked about the weather.
"Can't tell. Just following orders," Sergey replied with a half-shrug, as though that excused everything, as though murder was just another checkbox in a day's work. And with the same casualness, he lowered the gun back down, sliding it back to his side like the conversation was no longer interesting enough to warrant holding a weapon.
Eun-jae blinked, disbelief flashing in his eyes. "Come on... Can't you just do this one thing for me?" His voice cracked at the edges, equal parts desperation and exhaustion.
Sergey let out a humorless chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. "Why do you even want to know? Everything's over now." His lips curled into a smirk, a dark, twisted one, as if the concept of 'over' was the punchline to some private joke only he understood.
"Everything isn't over. Don't you get it?" Eun-jae shot back, his voice sharp with defiance, but his body betrayed the truth — he was barely holding himself up, knees weak, adrenaline burning out fast, leaving only fear and fatigue behind.
Sergey scoffed under his breath, but his gaze sharpened as if he was reconsidering the situation. "Well, if you insist..." He sighed dramatically, as if revealing state secrets was just another minor annoyance.
"The orders were from Korea."
Eun-jae's heart clenched, but Sergey wasn't done.
"...Well, Canada promised me the funds, so." He lifted his hands in mock surrender, the confession rolling off his tongue like it meant nothing at all.
Eun-jae's eyes widened, the realization slamming into him like a freight train. His breath hitched as the walls seemed to tilt around him.
His mind spiraled with unanswered questions, but Sergey's next words cut deeper than the gun ever could.
"Which makes me wonder — what the hell did you do, that your own people want you dead?" Sergey asked, genuine curiosity flickering behind his otherwise detached stare.
Eun-jae lowered his head, his body finally giving in to the weight of it all, and dropped heavily into the nearby chair. His hands dangled between his knees, limp, as he tried to force air into his lungs.
"I don't even know... why." The words tasted like ash in his mouth, barely audible, soaked in confusion and bitterness.
His thoughts tumbled into chaos.
'Why the hell would they want me dead? I was the target all along, wasn't I? The moment I step back on home soil, I'll drag the answers out of them myself. But before that—'
A stray memory clawed its way to the front of his mind, one he couldn't shake.
"The woman Caesar killed... the lady at the party," Eun-jae muttered, piecing it together aloud, the dots connecting slower than he wanted. "She might've been important. Too important. If she was even there, at that kind of party... she had to be from some powerful family. Maybe even more than that."
Sergey folded his arms across his chest, exhaling like this whole situation was a joke that had gone on too long. "Believe me or not, but that was the work of the Karpov-Troitsky."
Eun-jae's head jerked up, that name sending a fresh spike of adrenaline into his system.
He stared off, his mind racing. "Karpov-Troitsky... I heard they were developing an Exocet-class missile. They call it 'Voron' — The Raven. At first, I thought the entire operation was connected to Seraphim. That's why I followed Caesar blindly, like a goddamn fool."
His fists clenched tightly, his nails digging deep crescents into his palms as the shame settled in.
Meanwhile, Sergey was piecing things together in his own head, the cogs finally turning.
'So that psycho — Caesar — dragged Eun-jae to a party full of political sharks and elite monsters, fully aware he was a foreign spy... leaked sensitive intel about an active weapons program... and then casually murdered the wife and daughter of a high-ranking politician, all just to secure his place at the table, pretending to be Eun-jae's partner in crime...'
A cold shiver ran down Sergey's spine as the realization wrapped around him like a noose.
'Not even that psycho would walk freely out of this,' Sergey thought, the words lingering bitterly in his mind like the taste of bad vodka.
His voice broke the silence, rough and low, barely more than a mutter. "I'm not even sure that bastard can walk away from this one."
Eun-jae, still slumped in the chair with exhaustion practically stitched into every line of his face, lifted his gaze. His eyes were dull but sharp, like a dying fire still clinging to its last embers.
"What if he can't get out of everything he's done?" Eun-jae said quietly, his voice lacking the usual sarcasm or fight — just raw, bitter curiosity. It wasn't a question. It was a thought. A terrifying one.
Sergey's head tilted slightly, his brows knitting together in confusion.
"What do you mean?" he asked, the unease creeping back into his voice. It wasn't often Sergey felt out of his depth — but this conversation was quickly digging him into places even his cynicism couldn't protect him from.
Eun-jae leaned back against the battered chair, exhaling slowly as if the next words might choke him if he rushed them.
"For example... he has Seraphim."
The name alone seemed to shift the air in the room. Sergey's breath hitched, his expression twisting into something between disbelief and outright rejection.
"Huh?" he scoffed, shaking his head like Eun-jae had finally lost it. "How the hell is that even possible? You're talking about Seraphim — the weapon Russia and Korea practically tore themselves apart building. You expect me to believe they'd just hand that over to that bastard? He isn't even in his mid-twenties. No connections. No rank. Just a smiling devil in a suit."
But Eun-jae didn't flinch.
Instead, with the calmness of a man who'd long since accepted the absurdity of the world, he reached for the worn-out cardboard folder resting on the table beside him. Without a word, he tossed it onto Sergey's lap. The folder landed with a dull slap against the fabric of Sergey's coat.
"Take a look," Eun-jae murmured.
Sergey's fingers hovered over the edges for a second, hesitant, as if the thin, ordinary cardboard might bite. When he finally flipped it open, his eyes scanned the contents — and his casual smirk faded fast.
Inside were photographs. Documents. Autopsy reports. Unfinished articles that had never made it to publication. Government files, blacked out with thick redactions. But the truth still bled through.
Every single person listed, every engineer, scientist, strategist — anyone who had any direct involvement in the creation of Seraphim — all of them had died. All on the same day.
And not just random deaths, either.
Car crashes on clear roads. Gas leaks in sealed apartments. Heart attacks in young, healthy men. Mysterious poisonings disguised as food poisoning. Accidents too perfect to be coincidence. Deaths too synchronized to be fate.
"They all died," Eun-jae said, his voice low but cutting. "Mysteriously. Same day. Some were listed as 'accidents.' Others... well, their families were told it was natural. The reality? Caesar told me himself — they were all murdered."
Sergey's fingers tightened around the folder, the paper crinkling slightly under the pressure. His throat felt dry, and his voice came out flat, as if his mind hadn't fully caught up.
"So what you're saying is... they were all silenced."
"Yeah," Eun-jae confirmed. "Every last one of them."
The room felt heavier now, like the walls themselves were holding their breath. Even the faint buzz of the broken ceiling light sounded louder in the silence that followed.
Eun-jae's gaze flicked to Sergey's, dark and knowing. "Just think about it for a second. If Seraphim had really failed — if the project was a bust — they wouldn't need to cover it up. They'd just scrap it, move on, save face. But this? Killing everyone involved, wiping out the trail? That only happens when something's worth hiding."
His voice dropped even lower, barely more than a whisper. "The name Seraphim alone is enough to shake the world. Just the mention of it sends whole governments scrambling. The fact that both of us are sitting here right now, breathing, after brushing so close to it — that's not luck. That's proof. Proof that the thing isn't some myth. Proof that it wasn't a failure."
Sergey leaned back, his mind racing in circles, connecting dots he hadn't even seen before.
"So... what you're telling me is, Seraphim wasn't a failure," he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. "It was never completed."
Eun-jae nodded slowly. "Exactly. The news about it 'failing' was just a cover story. A lie dressed up in official statements and press releases. The real project — whatever stage it reached — didn't fail. It just... changed hands."
Eun-jae let the silence simmer for a moment, his words settling like slow poison in Sergey's mind. He leaned forward slightly, his elbows resting on his knees, his fingers loosely laced together as if piecing the whole conspiracy together right there in his head.
"Just imagine it for a second," Eun-jae said, his tone calm, but every word hit like a nail to the skull. "They announce to the world that Seraphim was a failure. That the project was scrapped. That everything was over. But think about it — if it really was a failure, why the hell would they bother silencing every single person who worked on it?"
He shook his head, a grim smile curling on his lips.
"They wouldn't. Simple as that. Dead men don't leak secrets, sure — but this wasn't just about hiding the outcome. This was about erasing the entire existence of the project. Like Seraphim was never born in the first place."
Sergey swallowed hard, staring at the folder on his lap, the names and faces now feeling like gravestones in a war he hadn't even realized he was standing in.
"So they ended up…" Sergey started, his voice low, almost hesitant, as if the words themselves could summon ghosts.
Eun-jae finished the thought for him, cold and sharp.
"Yes. Killing everyone." His voice lacked any drama — just a cold statement of fact. "Every single person. Engineers. Scientists. Field testers. Logistics managers. Hell, even the drivers who hauled prototypes across the border. Anyone who could leak the information, or worse, recreate the damn thing... they all had to go."
He leaned back, rubbing his temples, trying to chase away the migraine that had been building since the moment Caesar's name first came into the conversation.
"Because if one of them managed to walk away — if even one person slipped through the cracks — Seraphim could resurface. Or worse, someone else could rebuild it from scratch. They weren't just killing witnesses, Sergey. They were burning the blueprint."
Sergey sat there, his mind spiraling into the kind of paranoia only spies and killers understood. His eyes narrowed, sharp, calculating.
"They would've had to take out a hell of a lot of people at once," he murmured, mostly to himself. "That's not something you leave to chance. Someone had to orchestrate it. Someone high up."
Eun-jae tilted his head, already knowing where this was heading.
"So," he prompted, "who do you think pulled the strings?"