“Impersonating the Black Lion? Honestly, these thugs these days have good intelligence.”

Lieutenant Colonel Oh Gi-cheol of the Special Crackdown Operations Command muttered, tapping the burn scar on the back of his hand with a pen. Across from him, Cheon Geon-young was checking the latest news.

A battle between psychics. No casualties, but significant damage to surrounding buildings.

Several pieces of information caught his eye. A report followed that the Protection Bureau had been dispatched for cleanup, but no psychics were apprehended.

The kids who hang out in the black market fight there often.

An official from the Protection Bureau had said that in a video conference. It was the tone of someone saying they would handle it themselves, so there was no need for the other side to get involved. Oh Gi-cheol yawned widely.

“Aren’t you tired, Gun-young? I feel like I yawn five hundred times the next day just from doing patrol in the evening. I must be getting old.”

Oh Gi-cheol gave a worried look to the man who held two jobs that ordinary people would find difficult to do even one of.

“You don’t have to come in on weekends. Even though intelligence missions seem physically easy, from the moment you open your eyes in the morning until you fall asleep, there isn’t a moment when you’re not on edge.”

“I’m fine.”

Fine, my foot.

He clicked his tongue, but Cheon Geon-young replied that he would handle things here as well whenever he had time. It was an attitude that felt almost stubbornly diligent. Having glimpsed the childhood that lay at the root of that behavior, Oh Gi-cheol couldn’t simply be happy about it.

“Is Black Lion the place they call Orca’s natural enemy?”

“I hear those two are in a fierce turf war in the no-man’s-land these days. Honestly, psychics are all at the level of animals...”

Suddenly, Oh Gi-cheol trailed off and looked at the other man’s face. Cheon Geon-young wore a comfortable expression, without a hint of displeasure.

“Generalizations aren’t good after all, are they? I know, so don’t nag.”

“I have no intention of doing so.”

“You’re bland.”

Looking at the expression of the young man whose thoughts he couldn’t fathom, Oh Gi-cheol was filled with a complicated feeling.

The sole survivor of a serial murder case.

That was how he first learned the name ‘Cheon Geon-young’.

It was Oh Gi-cheol himself, chasing the ones who killed his wife, who had discovered the name.

His wife, who had briefly worked in Ark’s research team in the past, had died around the same time as Cheon Geon-young’s parents.

Suicide by setting fire to the house. The police who investigated had reached that conclusion. It was an unacceptable result. Oh Gi-cheol’s wife had occasional nightmares even after retiring. She would be afraid, saying she couldn’t erase what she had seen at the research institute from her memory.

A cover-up.

A thunderous intuition made him protest like a madman, but the investigative authorities remained silent. Oh Gi-cheol was called here while he was quitting his job and digging into the case alone.

It was the Great Rift Special Forces Unit, belonging to the Special Crackdown Operations Command on Rifts. There, Oh Gi-cheol met an S-class psychic. Kwon Hyuk, a figure not publicly known.

Kwon Hyuk was secretly gathering people. They were all people who had lost their families around the same time. Cheon Geon-young, who had lost his parents in a murder disguised as an accident, was also there.

“He’s the same as when he was a kid. Only his body grew.”

He let out a sigh and muttered to himself. It wasn’t a scolding, but rather a feeling of pity.

“I think I should have sent you back then. No matter what Kwon Hyuk said. To make a fifteen-year-old monitor his own grandfather. And not just any old man, but Chairman Cheon.”

“Wasn’t it because he was the Chairman that he thought my surveillance was necessary? Considering the espers around my grandfather, it was a reasonable instruction.”

“That many?”

“There were many unregistered espers.”

Oh Gi-cheol made a disgusted face. He clicked his tongue without trying to hide his frustration.

“It’s also true that our investigation has progressed thanks to you. Just joining Ark alone, and then manifesting as a guide at such an opportune time.”

“I’ve been lucky for the first time in a while.”

“How is your second job? Does the hypothesis we established seem to be true?”

“I got the impression that it’s not a clean organization, considering how hard they try to promote their image.”

“Their image-making is quite good.”

Oh Gi-cheol gave a hollow laugh.

At the time, there were many who strongly opposed Chairman Cheon’s grandson getting involved in the work. A kid who was so young, in such important matters? There were also valid suspicions that a boy who grew up without parents wouldn’t properly report his grandfather’s wrongdoings.

There were also not a few who tried to vent their anger towards Chairman Cheon on Cheon Geon-young. The boy, who took all the accusations head-on, simply proved his worth. After borrowing a lighter, he unhesitatingly set his own hand on fire.

An experiment subject that Professor Yoon and Chairman Cheon had put much effort into.

Cheon Geon-young, after his shocking self-introduction to the horrified adults, declared that without him, they would never know what those people had done. After that, no one raised objections.

“Are you going to attend the meeting?”

Oh Gi-cheol, who had gotten up holding an empty coffee cup, asked. Cheon Geon-young also stood up and nodded.

“Oh dear, our S-class is going to torment the kid again.”

“Do you still see me as a child?”

“Son, it’s been eight years since you were fifteen. It feels like your entrance ceremony was just yesterday. You used to chirp like a chick, and now you’re acting like an adult just because a little time has passed?”

“I’ve been big for a chick from the start.”

Cheon Geon-young, who had been hit on the back by Oh Gi-cheol, wore a wronged expression. Like someone who gives medicine after causing pain, Oh Gi-cheol vigorously rubbed the spot he had hit with his palm.

A small number of elite agents gathered from organizations under the government that dealt with psychics. Kwon Hyuk, an S-class, was the representative of the new organization. Cheon Geon-young, who was scheduled to be assigned to the Great Rift Special Forces Unit, also had his affiliation changed as he went on an infiltration mission.

Changcheon. Neither the official mark nor the organization’s name was disclosed to the outside.

Therefore, those involved called this organization, created for intelligence operations and special warfare operations related to rifts, the Silent Sentinels. Agents belonging to Changcheon who entered headquarters all wore the mark of the existing Great Rift Special Forces Unit, not the organization’s mark.

Cheon Geon-young and Oh Gi-cheol, who had arrived at the massive conference room after a long time, sat down in their designated seats.

All electronic devices were confiscated upon entering. Yet, not a single piece of material that could reveal the organization’s true nature was attached to the walls.

“They’re going to make us memorize everything again.”

Oh Gi-cheol frowned. When everyone was seated, the representative, Kwon Hyuk, appeared last. The remaining personnel tensed up. The oppressive aura Kwon Hyuk gave off was always heavy.

Kwon Hyuk, who looked like a model of a well-disciplined soldier, opened his mouth.

“There are new members.”

People nodded as if they roughly knew. Kwon Hyuk’s gaze turned to the new employees sitting close to each other. They still had awkward expressions.

“We wouldn’t have given a proper explanation before the verification was complete.”

Kwon Hyuk asked for the understanding of the other personnel and continued. The experiment that Ark had been conducting on psychics for a long time. That was how the story began.

“The serial murder case we are investigating is connected like a spider web, centered around the experiments Ark conducted.”

The new employees were busy alternating their gaze between Kwon Hyuk and the screen behind him.

“The tentative name of the experiment is as follows.”

The first page of a report appeared on the screen. Part of the paper was torn.

[PROJECT G]

That was as far as the recognizable alphabet went. As Kwon Hyuk turned his body, the light from the screen cast a deep shadow over his sharply lined face.

“The victims of the serial murder case were mainly people who were involved in the project and had resigned from Ark.”

Oh Gi-cheol, who had been listening to the explanation, forcibly lowered his gaze to the report. The hand holding the paper was trembling.

“Accidents or suicides. The investigative authorities at the time consistently closed the cases. Those gathered here know that the truth is different.”

Not believing, but knowing. Conviction was evident in Kwon Hyuk’s words.

“We do not know the success of the experiment. Most of those who could tell us about it are deceased. However, thanks to the existence of a survivor and the belongings of the victims, we were able to infer one of the enemy’s goals.”

At the word ‘survivor’, Oh Gi-cheol raised his head again. The employees sitting far away cautiously shifted their eyes to check Cheon Geon-young’s reaction. He maintained an indifferent attitude, as if it were none of his business.

“To create espers who do not need guides.”

One of the newly arrived espers opened his mouth and looked dazed. Espers without guides? What did that mean? Another esper was repeating the words.

“It is a project to create psychics completely free from pain.”

As Kwon Hyuk continued to speak, the new recruits listened to the explanation about the ongoing operation with blank faces. As soon as the meeting ended, they poured out words like a machine gun to their colleagues next to them.

“Isn’t Ark an organization that prevents such things?”

“Didn’t you hear the worst-case scenario? Ark might be the main body of Orca. That’s the kind of thing that would get criticized even if it were made into a movie and taken down from streaming sites.”

After glancing at where the new recruits were sitting, Kwon Hyuk, who had been talking with his subordinate, noticed Cheon Geon-young trying to leave and instructed him to go to the situation room.

Cheon Geon-young bowed his head to indicate his compliance. Entering a room filled with monitors legally surveilling someone, Cheon Geon-young waited for Kwon Hyuk.

Soon, his superior appeared. He entered the administrator’s office with a window, along with Cheon Geon-young. Kwon Hyuk, having closed the door so that the conversation couldn’t be heard from outside, asked a question.

“Did you have enough time to decide?”

Having checked the other person’s expression, Kwon Hyuk sat on the desk with a face that said there was no need to answer.

“So you need more time.”

“Colonel.”

“I took off my uniform when I created Changcheon. It’s not an organization with only soldiers here, so stop calling me that.”

Kwon Hyuk said it like a joke.