Rainbow City

However, the Emperor Penguin factory mainly produced canned fish, corn, peaches, beef, and pork, but their breeding facilities were unknown. Cows and pigs were susceptible to the Adam virus, so their locations were kept strictly confidential for security reasons. For a while, the mass production of meat was blocked.The noble families gained their current power because the two original Masters each gave them authority to create their own factions. Rainbow City as it is today was built by the meeting of leaders who wanted to maintain the system and those who wanted to prosper their families.After becoming a Master, Choi Hoeon gradually tried to reduce the power of the noble families. However, the strong resistance from each family made it impossible to push forward forcibly. Even a Master would find it difficult to maintain his position if all the families turned against him.[A reward will be given to citizens who bring fake vaccines to the regional centers of Rainbow City. We must unite to drive out the rebels.]Leaving the echoing broadcast behind, Choi Hoeon walked calmly to the Master’s room on the top floor. Although all the bodies had been cremated to prevent the spread of the epidemic, the corridors still smelled of blood. Standing in front of the room, Choi Hoeon placed his hand on the recognition pad.[Opening. Welcome, Master.]The double doors opened one after another, and the advisors and generals were already seated at the round table.The world’s population had drastically decreased compared to before Adam appeared, so the military forces had to be equally reduced. The total number of generals in the city decreased from about 300 to 150, then to 50, and currently included around 40, encompassing generals, lieutenant generals, major generals, and brigadier generals. Of the three total generals, two were present.They waited for the Master to sit down, and none of them spoke first. Choi Hoeon sat in the chair pulled out by an advisor and placed his clasped hands on the table.“Report.”The general in charge of the Yeouido area stood up from his seat.“Five 20-story apartment buildings and seven food storage facilities in Yeouido were completely burned down, and no casualties have been confirmed. It is suspected that the rebels committed arson.”“What about Dr. Seokhwa and Major Kwak Soohwan’s movements?”“They were last seen moving towards the West Sea, beyond Yeouido. They are expected to have left the city by now.”“Good.”The general of the Yeouido unit did not fully grasp the severity of the situation. He thought it was enough to push out the rebels and execute the citizens who rose against them.What he overlooked was that although rebel activities had been constant, there had never been a coalition of this scale before. Moreover, they now had the powerful weapon of the vaccine.“Do you know why I decided to make you my people?”“Because we are loyal subordinates to the Master.”“No. It’s because you’re stupid.”The general’s face turned red with humiliation. Although the Master ruled the city, he was much younger than the general.“Master! Aren’t your words too harsh?”“General Choi, it’s you who are speaking too harshly to the Master!”An advisor raised his voice in anger. The others at the round table were busy watching the Master’s reaction.“Honestly, who is responsible for Yeouido being in this state? And it was also the Master who gave Yang Sanghoon the position of controller, wasn’t it? We wasted precious time because he disrupted the military.”“I admit it. I didn’t expect Major Yang Sanghoon to be that brave. But I clearly instructed to monitor Major Yang Sanghoon, and that was your job, General Choi.”Even though he was a controller, the general was not pleased with the idea of tailing a mere Major.“I will take my men, sweep the areas where fake vaccines have been distributed, and eliminate everyone related to the three families. That will settle the matter.”“General Choi, do you think the people outside are easy and foolish? The majority of citizens will soon be convinced that this vaccine is real. Because it is real.”The Master’s shocking revelation left the generals and advisors speechless.“Did you just say… real vaccine?”The advisor looked distressed.Rainbow City had been maintained through control and coercion. The key to making this possible was a being called Adam. If Adam no longer functioned as a source of fear, the citizens would inevitably reject the control.“Of course, the developed vaccine is for the original Adam virus.”Choi Hoeon picked up a remote and turned on the screen on the wall.“However, a new mutated Adam virus has also emerged.”The screen showed an Adam killing another Adam.Seokhwa watched the leaders broadcasted through Mother without blinking. He felt like he might throw up.They were despairing over the real vaccine and rejoicing over the news of the mutated virus… the leadership was truly repugnant.“Heh, nothing has changed at all. Actually, if things had changed, the city would have collapsed and entered a new regime by now.”The old man, who was only glancing at the screen, took a swig directly from a vodka bottle. One of his hands trembled significantly, not from alcoholism, but from the aftereffects of electric torture.“Hey, doc, how are you feeling?”The old man grabbed Seokhwa’s forearm with his wrinkled hand. His body temperature was still higher than that of a normal person.“Not good.”“I like that your answers are straightforward. So, how many nosebleeds have you had today?”“Still okay.”Seokhwa wondered if his survival with the mutated Adam virus was due to his different body temperature. The old man gave a vague answer that it might be possible. As always, it was their job to find the truth to support their hypotheses.“What the hell did this bastard hoard all this stuff for? We should just burn it all.”The old man looked disdainfully at the expensive minerals, fresh water, gold bars, and Rainbow City’s currency that Second had amassed. They were on Dangsa Island, a small island off Haenam, not Udo.Most of Dangsa Island had become an uninhabited wasteland, with only a few abandoned houses scattered around. In the middle stood a low, wide prefab container house. It wasn’t a bunker built by the Second Master’s family, but a laboratory Second had built over a long time, hidden from prying eyes. It was also where researchers had committed their butchery, leaving unidentified bone fragments piled up in the sand behind the ruins.Seokhwa turned on his phone, unlocked it, and opened the photo album. He stared at a picture of them together, then swiped through the photos. Some were blurry from being accidentally taken, and one was a frontal shot of him, confidently smirking as if to tell Seokhwa to look at it whenever he missed him. Looking at these pictures made Seokhwa feel a bit less anxious.“That bastard Kwak has a terrible mouth, but at least he’s good-looking.”“He looks even better in person.”The old man shook his head.Seokhwa and the old man left Captain Kim on Dangsa Island, while Jo Un and Yang Sanghun were sent back to the city. They needed to inform Kwak Soohwan that their final location had changed.Through the Mother system, Seokhwa could access updates about the rebels. He was sure that Kwak Soohwan, having joined the rebels, was safe. He hadn’t heard any news of the rebels being suppressed or captured.He placed his now-locked phone on the Mother control system desk. Six monitors displayed real-time feeds from various shelters.Mother, an AI built by Second, had its flaws. This was why Choi Hoeon had previously managed to hack the Mother system. There were two versions of Mother that Second had built over his lifetime; this one was the earliest model. While it couldn’t issue commands, it still had surveillance and message broadcasting capabilities.Second had taken every technology he could for himself without sharing anything with the citizens. It was well known that the doctors who helped build the Mother system disappeared without a trace. The Masters controlled communications for safety reasons and prevented the proliferation of intellectuals, leading to an illiteracy rate of around 70% in the city.Checking the time, Seokhwa drew blood from his arm and divided it into five glass tubes. He pressed a disinfectant pad firmly against his arm to prevent any of the dangerous blood from spilling.Bang!The sudden explosion startled Seokhwa. He turned to see the old man also staring at the screen of the Mother control system. The source of the explosion was not Dangsa Island, but the Yeouido shelter displayed on the monitor.Seokhwa switched the other screens to the Yeouido shelter, displaying the top floor hallway and the roof. The roof was calm, so he changed the screen to below the 50th floor. A group of armed individuals was swiftly entering the top floor. Each of them had an emperor penguin emblem on their backs, and unfortunately, the hallway had no audio support.The man walking at the far end looked too familiar. He wasn’t armed and wore black clothes from head to toe. The man, with a submachine gun slung over his shoulder, suddenly turned his head.Seokhwa felt as if he made eye contact with Kwak Soohwan in real life.“Major…”The moment he loaded and fired his gun at the surveillance camera lens, the screen went black.***Nine hours earlier, in Weihai City.Moo… Moo-ooo…They were scheming, but Kwak Soohwan was taken aback by the loud mooing of cows outside. The stench of cow dung was so strong that it penetrated his mask.The barracks, meant to house fifty strong adults, were overpowered by the smell of cow dung and the mercenaries’ sweat. Kwak Soohwan thought it was still better than the stench of rotting Adam.Lee Heechan crossed his arms and listened to Kwak Soohwan with a look of dissatisfaction.“Rainbow City has a force of about ten thousand, but excluding the riffraff, there are probably fewer than a thousand competent soldiers. They can’t concentrate all their forces on Yeouido. However, since Choi Hoeon is focusing on defending Yeouido, there will be S-class guys there.”Kwak Soohwan, who had crossed the Han River at night, had to observe the situation at the shelter with suspicion. Choi Hoeon, who had released Adam to nearly annihilate the shelter, had soldiers now working hard to disinfect the shelter filled with corpses. They could have abandoned that shelter and moved elsewhere, but they hadn’t.“Why would Choi Hoeon defend Yeouido instead of Jeju Island?”Lee Heechan also found it puzzling.“Probably because the snake’s pit is there.”Master Choi Hoeon executed or relocated the existing upper class in Jeju and Udo to the mainland. He left some troops in Jeju to control it like the mainland, but he personally operated only in the city center. Despite concerns from the leadership, he moved the master’s residence from Udo to the Yeouido shelter, making it clear that Yeouido was his top priority.“Is that bastard really going to do what I’m thinking?”“Well, it’s probably something stupid. Just the fact that he moved the central facilities from the island to the mainland indicates that. It’s easier to spread the virus on the mainland than on an island.”“Is he trying to spread the Adam virus?”At that moment, another long moo echoed.After meeting with Violet unit members at the Gwacheon shelter and passing through Incheon, they arrived at a cattle and pig farm. Even Kwak Soohwan, the controller, didn’t know this location. It was an old piece of Chinese land that jutted out after crossing the West Sea from Incheon.Although it took a full day to arrive by ship, Lee Heechan didn’t bring the slaughtered meat directly to hide the location of the farm, opting instead to detour to Pohang before unloading.She had known from the beginning that the Union was collapsing. In exchange for occupying part of the former Union’s territory, she had promised the safety of residents within a 3km radius. No Adam had ever crossed the fortress painstakingly built by the Emperor Penguin family. In a way, she was like the lord of a small castle, but it was only possible because of the money supply from the city.When Kwak Soohwan wrinkled his brow at the cow’s moo, she slammed the table.“Isn’t that too much speculation? No matter how crazy that bastard is, would he go that far?”“Is this Major a natural mutant?”“What?”“I’m asking if you were born through genetic editing.”“Are there natural mutants in the city?”Lee Heechan sarcastically added that he was one of them too.“You know Choi Hoeon is mentally unstable, right? Did you know he’s the son of Doctor Wonho?”She crossed her arms and stiffened.“Dr. Wonho?”“Yes, he’s Dr. Wonho’s son. Dr. Wonho was one of the people who created Eden and, as you know, he was also the doctor who created mutants.”Choi Hoeon is that man’s son? She knew the Union had collapsed, but she hadn’t been able to look into the inner workings of the city.“Why do you think he’s called Serpent? He’s carrying on Dr. Wonho’s legacy.”“Wait a minute.”She finally uncrossed her arms and touched her forehead.“Then why is Choi Hoeon so obsessed with you and Dr. Seokhwa?”She knew he was desperate to find Kwak Soohwan and Seokhwa, who had left the city. If it was simply to chase fugitives, he wouldn’t have kept them alive when they appeared in the city.“He’s not obsessed with me, he’s obsessed with Dr. Seokhwa. He’s just looking for me because he thinks I’ll be with Seokhwa.”“So why? Does he want to gather mutants to create an army?”“It would be better if that were the case. It seems he wants to leave only the perfect mutants alive and kill everyone else.”Lee Heechan let out a sigh of frustration.“Do you know why Dr. Wonho was executed?”“Because he was a rebel?”He answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.“That’s the official reason.”Lee Heechan continued, pressing her aching head with both hands.“Dr. Wonho was deeply immersed in mutant research. His parents were infected with the Adam virus. Major Kwak, neither you nor I have lived through a time before the Adam virus. But Dr. Wonho experienced both eras. He dreamed of a world without the virus more than anyone else, and maybe he hoped for a generation stronger than the virus.”If Wonho were alive, he’d be around eighty. He must have lived in a time without Adam.“He supposedly killed his parents with his own hands. Imagine, now we know a lot about Adam, but back then, there wouldn’t have been any information. One day, your parents suddenly turn into monsters and attack you, so you kill them to survive.”Imagine? It was already a harsh reality for Kwak Soohwan. Pretending to be indifferent, he gripped his thigh tightly.“He probably went half-mad from that point.”“Skip the sentiment. Just tell me why he was executed.”Lee Heechan clicked her tongue at his rude remark.“He implanted the Adam virus into mutants. Not only that, he experimented with highly lethal viruses, like Ebola, on newborns. Dr. Jinyeon Lee, who uncovered this and stepped down from his research position, was the one who revealed it.”Wonho should have been executed then. But Jinyeon Lee had stepped down, and Wonho continued as a doctor for a long time.“Why wasn’t he executed then?”“The city wasn’t keen to kill Dr. Wonho outright. Honestly, the city didn’t care how mutants died. There were even those who supported his research. In the end, Dr. Wonho was executed because of Dr. Oh.”“Dr. Oh? Oh Yangseok?”Because of that old man? Kwak Soohwan looked completely baffled.“Yes, Dr. Oh Yangseok. Dr. Oh found out about Wonho’s insane activities. He was a man of principle. He didn’t resort to inhumane acts to develop vaccines. But his son was different. He was deeply influenced by Wonho’s ideology, which was rooted in a religious belief in Eden. Dr. Oh was convinced that Wonho had corrupted his son, so he denounced him as a rebel, like cutting off a diseased limb. The city also saw Eden, which had grown larger, as a threat. With Wonho now old and no longer useful, it was the perfect time to execute him.”Lee Heechan, looking exhausted, slumped into a chair in the barracks.‘You foolish friend. Why didn’t you tell me? Why are you making me regret now?’‘My sins are great. They are so great that I deserve to die, yes.’‘I also feel deeply sorry for you, Major Kwak.’This was Oh Yangseok, who used to babble and cry drunkenly every time he drank. I always thought it was just the ramblings and complaints of an old man…What exactly did Wonho not talk about that made Oh Yangseok regret so much? And what was he sorry about to me?“Chaeyoon was safe because she was my child. They wouldn’t dare experiment on my child. Do you really think you’re a natural mutant?”“Dr. Kwak Jaewon, did you know about Dr. Kang Seon too?”She let out a sigh as she parted her lightly closed lips. They were the city’s doctors who gave Chaeyoon to me, who had half given up on getting pregnant.“Of course, I knew. But Dr. Kang Seon said all his children were dead. But I had a feeling that wasn’t true when Dr. Oh Seok became your guardian.”Oh my…Lee Heechan, who had been talking, realized something he had overlooked until now and brought his hands together to his nose. It looked similar to praying, but it was more of a sigh.“Major Kwak Soohwan. You said you came from outside the city, right? The couple raised children who should have been guaranteed a future outside. I thought it was because they were against city ideology… But no, you were the key.”She scrutinized Kwak Soohwan’s face sitting across from her. She couldn’t clearly remember the faces of the two doctors even when she tried. All she vaguely remembered was that both had a tall and impressive presence. Why did they smuggle their children out of the city? At the time, she thought it was because of the second child. Since the child was born with an incurable disease, she thought they’d be disposed of in the city. So she assumed they raised the children outside the city, but that assumption was wrong.The first child they left behind was here now, and had become a true threat to the city.“Come to think of it, the world is really strange. Everyone said humanity would be destroyed by nuclear weapons. But look. Humanity’s very existence is threatened by an invisible virus. Yes, visible threats can at least be prepared for. Now I see the two doctors succeeded in blinding everyone.”“What do you mean by that?”“Your parents sent you outside the city to protect you. Because you were a perfect mutant. Don’t you even think you are perfect yourself?”The parents concealed the truth by sending Kwak Soohwan out of the city. Because they knew Kwak Soohwan was a perfect mutant.If Wonho or the city leaders had known this fact, Kwak Soohwan would have become a living sacrifice for the city. He would have been dissected alive as research material, spilling countless amounts of blood.He had also realized this. At times, he resented his parents, and some days he thought his brother was a hindrance that kept him from being free.“It wasn’t me who sacrificed, it was my brother who sacrificed because of me.”Muttering to himself, he couldn’t even blink.“Was it just your brother?”It was a tone full of sorrow. But it was too cold to be called consolation.“Do you know how much Oh Yangseok cherished Dr. Seokhwa? Do you think he cherished him just because he was a chief researcher? Oh Yang Dr. Seok probably had a glimpse of the truth. Maybe he stayed silent for a long time, thinking it wasn’t his business. He only stepped up after his own son ended up like that, didn’t he?”“……”“Why do you think Dr. Seokhwa is so weak? Because he is a flawed mutant? Then why did Dr. Lee Jinyeon lose her position and become a whistleblower? And why are you not flawed?”They had experimented on the newborn Seokhwa with the city’s tacit consent.It was me who was born from Seokhwa’s sacrificed body.“……Does Dr. Seok know?”“Why are you asking me? You know Dr. Seokhwa better than I do. But I don’t think Dr. Lee Jinyeon would have told her child the truth. If it were me, I wouldn’t have.”He couldn’t keep the promise to go to Seokhwa in three days. Seokhwa must be waiting impatiently, but he had no choice but to send him to the Russian old man because he couldn’t do anything for him. His clenched fist turned white from the pressure.He didn’t care what the crazy researchers did. His remaining goal was only to ensure Seokhwa’s safety and eliminate Choi Hoeon. Other thoughts were unnecessary. They would only get in the way of reaching Seokhwa.