Itzy had become the most famous band in the world. But fame had left Yeji bored and disillusioned. As if they had been waiting for this moment, Britain's covert intelligence agency, MI6, recruits the young star and trains her to be the most dangerou...
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Three months later.
Yeji & Ryujin have confessed, and are a couple. When they gathered the other girls to tell them about their relationship, they got a few words out before Chae said:
"Shut it. We've known the whole time. You have no idea how much we've gone through making sure you two have time alone at the dor+m."
"The whole thing is kinda gross," Yuna said. "I mean, you're both so old. Yuck! That's why I stopped listening at the door."
There was a collective eye roll.
. . . . .
Yeji, in a black power suit, is having coffee with Radius at the restaurant of an expensive hotel in Dubai. She squints when she looks outside. It's a brand-new city, but the sunlight is still the color of ancient sand, a light yellowish hue that Yeji finds beautiful.
"You left a bit of a mess at the Louvre," Radius began. "But I understand. You had to take them out in a room the size of a phone booth."
"What's a phone booth?" Yeji asked.
"My god, you're so young, I hate you," Radius smiled. "They were glass boxes, outdoors, connected to landlines and they required coins to operate."
"What's a landline?"
Radius sighed, leaned forward, and put her forehead on the desk. "Ok, ok, let's get down to business." She motioned the waiter to bring them coffee. "It took about a week to safely disarm the zero-point-energy weapon. Paris will never know how close they got. Also, thanks to your coffee pot trick, Verlaine will be having a closed-coffin funeral. I'd like to say 'You used excessive force' and frown, but instead I'm going to say 'You used excessive force' and smile. You're embracing the mindset you need to survive in this."
She continued. "Next, you're going to the Himalayas. We've picked up traffic indicating that a small contingent of a radical Chinese militia are planning to attack targets in Nepal, starting with tourists at Everest Base Camp. They're hoping to be mistaken for Chinese PLA soldiers, therefore starting a war."
Yeji frowned. "I don't want to see anyone hurt, ever. I mean, I don't want to see any good guys get hurt. But it is a little hard to get sympathetic about people who've paid $75,000 each to climb a mountain that's been climbed like 4,000 times."
"Honestly, Vector," Radius said, "The tourists aren't the main concern. We believe the militia are planning to destroy the Khumbu Ice Fall."
"What's that?"
"It's a titanic glacier composed of blocks of ice the size of small office buildings. As the glacier slowly moves downwards, these blocks of ice tumble and crash. The energy releases are staggering. But this group plans to blow this glacier up. The result would be a cascade of millions of tons of ice flowing downhill. Base camp will disappear. At a lower altitude, the ice will begin to melt, and cause an 'inland tsunami' to race down hill, wiping out every village in its path. Tens of thousands of people will die, and the ecological and climate impact throughout Asia will be catastrophic."
