While waiting for the gas to spread through the house. Kwon Taekjoo moved to the front door. After inserting a small piece of iron into the lock and turning it a few times, the lock clicked open.
"I'm going in."
"Understood. G1 processing with entry."
After one last scan of the area, Kwon Taekjoo opened the door and stepped inside, making sure the Hinges didn't creak.
Kwon Taekjoo switched on the flashlight mounted to his rifle and quickly studied the interior of the house. His specialized goggles made the search easier, projecting a 3D map of internal layout as well as his current position.
Moving with impeccable precise, he navigated from the living room to the master bedroom. Inside, the store owner and her partner lay unconscious side by side. He thoroughly searched the room for any other presence, even peeking, inside the wardrobe, but found no traces of anything unusual.
Kwon Taekjoo exited the master bedroom and entered the adjacent room. He paused at the sight of the little girl sleeping there. It wasn't surprising that he had heard sharp breathing.. the girl still had tubes connected to her nose.
The sedative he released earlier likely hadn't fully affected her. Should he remove the tubes now? He hesitated, reluctantly to carelessly handle someone as young and delicate as her.
" Sunbae, did you clear the area?"
"…yes, mostly."
Kwon Taekjoo quietly withdrew from the girl's room carefully closing the door behind him to avoid any potential disturbance.
In order to find a connection to the "electric hammer" Kwon Taekjoo had conducted a background investigation on the family living in the house. They had lived here for generations. The parents had two older sons, along with the youngest daughter, who suffered from congenital respiratory failure. The eldest died in a car accident, while the other had gone missing.
Kwon Taekjoo had been closely monitoring the store, keeping an eye on it in depth, but had found no one else besides the couple and their daughter. A series of tragedies had left the three of them as the only remaining occupants.
But now, as he stood inside the house, Kwon teakjoo couldn't shake off a strange feeling of unease. There wasn't a single family photo in sight. The same applied to any personal belongings of the deceased or missing son.
Kwon Taekjoo's mother had been unable to get rid of the belongings of his late father and brother. In their home, there were numerous family photos displayed on the walls from years past.
Of course, everyone dealt with the loss of a love one in their own. Way, and not a lot of people handled it like his Mother. But while it was understandable in the case of a deceased child, the house seemed too devoid of any trace of the missing son.
Another suspicious lingered in his mind. Perhaps the belongings of the two son's never left because they were still being used-by them.
The fiber-optic cables scattered everywhere. The excessively high security measures, the identification of the hacker's residence by the NIS's espionage team and even the circumstances of the missing family members…
It all confirmed his suspicions. If the Cuba government was indeed protecting the "electric hammer" then it would have been easy to hide them under the guise of being dead or missing, thus evading any investigation.
"Where are they hiding?"
Kwon Taekjoo slowly began searching the entire house. According to what he could deduce, the hackers' hideout was hidden within the house, somewhere they could operate without attracting the attention of others. The house only had one floor, so the only possible location was the basement.
First, Kwon Taekjoo needed to find an entrance to the basement. He did a 3D scan of the interior structure, searching for any access points. Someone had been hiding here in secret for years without raising suspicion among the neighbors.
The entrance would have to be somewhere inconspicuous, easy to overlook, even if discovered by accident. Kwon Taekjoo scanned the 3D map again. His glaze locked onto the pantry inside the kitchen. It was too narrow, surrounded by walls on all sides, making it impossible to see from outside
Kwon Taekjoo headed straight for the pantry. It was sealed with the same material as the wall, so if it weren't for the 3D map, he would have walked right past it without noticing.
To inspect the pantry's contents more closely, he flicked on a lighter. The flickering flame kept tilting to one side, apparently affected by a light breeze- although there should have been no airflow in a wall without cracks.
With certainty in his movements, Kwon Taekjoo removed the cleaning supplies and flour stored in the pantry and placed them on the floor. Then, he ran his hand over the deep counters.
Suddenly, something snagged against his hand. Instantly, he pulled at it, causing the entire pantry to fall forward with loud thud. Behind it was a steep stone staircase leading downward.
"I found their little rat hole."
"G1 confirms discovery of hidden passage."
"I'm going in. Stay put unit I call you."
"G1 proceeding with hidden passage entry. Standing by. Sunbae, please be careful."
After Yoon Jongwoo's final words of caution, Kwon Taekjoo turned off the transmitter. He gripped his rifle tightly, ready to fire at any moment, and descended into the darkness.
When he finally reached the bottom of the steep staircase, another fort stood before him. On the other side was most likely the hideout of his targets. As if preparing for a possible confrontation, he switched his goggles to thermal imaging mode and attached a small grenade to the door, which would immediately blow the lock once activated.
After taking a deep breath, he detonated the grenade and fired a stray bullet through the broken gap in the door. The bomb he had tossed acted as both a smoke screen and tear gas.
Everyone in the room burst into coughing fits, stumbling blindly as the air filled with a sharp, stinging gas. From their silhouette, Kwon Taekjoo counted at least five people.
"Cough… it's an intruder!"
One of them managed to slip past the chaos, rushing toward the exit with a knife in hand. As they got close enough for Kwon Taekjoo to make out their figure, he sidestepped and grabbed their arm, he snapped the wrist, forcing the knife to drop, and swiftly struck the back of the man's neck as he lost his balance.
With a sharp blow to a pressure point, the man collapsed, unconscious.
The next moment, the room erupted in a hail of gunfire. Bullets zipped through the thick clouds of smoke. Kwon Taekjoo pressed himself against the wall, waiting for the barrage to subside. Soon the attackers halted, seemingly trying to pinpoint his movements.
Seizing the opportunity, Kwon Taekjoo fired back in the direction of the incoming shots. Unable to respond, his opponent crumpled to the ground with a cry.
Once the gunfire ceased, Kwon Taekjoo stepped into the room. The smoke had significantly cleared by now. Through the fading haze, Kwon Taekjoo could make out the figures of several young men sprawled on the floor, as well as a small boy huddled behind behind them hands covering his ears.
He couldn't have been older than fifteen or sixteen. His face was smeared with tears and snot from the effects of the tears gas.
The boy started at Kwon Taekjoo with a terrified expression. He bore a striking resemblance to the shop owner's daughter with the nasal tubes. Could this be the missing second son? Behind the boy was a series of computers and a storages unit capable of holding an enormous amount of data.
"Oh, wow"
With technology becoming more Accessible to younger generations around the word, Kwon Taekjoo had heard that the average age of hackers was getting younger.
Still, he couldn't help but let out a sigh of disbelief at seeing a boy so young involved in a cyber gang that bad threatened national security.