The Blue Velvet Trap - Chapter 40

「The pretty one is more prim than she looks, eh?」

The guard who had been gawking at Cedine approached, saying he’d handle the body search. Cedine waited for him to get close, then twisted his arm as soon as their bodies touched. She pulled out the pen tucked in her researcher’s gown pocket and stabbed it into his neck, causing the drug inside the pen to spread and slow down the guard’s movements.

The guard pointing the gun didn’t react immediately to the sudden turn of events. It took him more than 3 seconds to decide to pull the trigger, during which time Cedine discarded the front part of the pen and shot a needle towards him. Unfortunately, the needle containing the drug hit his cheek instead of his neck. The guard grimaced at the sting and immediately pulled out the needle.

By the time he threw the needle to the floor, Cedine was already right in front of him. It took only a few seconds to disarm him, knock him unconscious, and subdue the third guard. The fourth guard used his head a bit more.

「I surrender! I surrender! Okay, okay, just go!」

The guard knelt down. With his arms raised above his head, he said he would wait like this until Cedine left. He begged her not to shoot him with the poison needle. The drug in Cedine’s pen momentarily paralyzes the body and causes loss of consciousness. It’s not some deadly venom extracted from a poisonous snake. But the opponent seemed to believe his colleagues had died from a deadly poison.

‘Well, might as well let him keep believing that.’

Cedine ordered him to lower the gun to the floor and push it towards her. The guard obediently followed her instructions.

「Now lie face down on the floor.」

「Okay. I surrender. I surrender.」

After confirming that the guard was lying face down on the floor, Cedine was about to shoot her last needle at him. However, a split second faster, the guard pulled out a pistol from his chest and aimed at Cedine.

In that instant, someone appeared out of nowhere, twisted the guard’s wrist to disarm him, then grabbed his neck and twisted it.

Crack.

There was a chilling sound of a person’s neck breaking. Cedine alternately looked at her husband who had suddenly appeared and the corpse with the twisted neck, with bewildered eyes.

“Ivlik…!”

Cedine pointed at the dead guard with her hand.

“What are we going to do now?”

“My wife complains even when I save her.”

“We could have just knocked him out, you know.”

“Why should I knock him out when I can kill him?”

“To minimize civilian casualties…”

“Is this guy a civilian? No, Cedine. I know this bastard. He committed murder, pinned it on his subordinate, then killed that subordinate citing military law. He was bragging about it like some heroic tale… You can’t imagine how much I wanted to kill him during the four months I worked here.”

Cedine noticed the bloodstains on Ivlik’s uniform. It couldn’t be the blood of the guard who just died with a broken neck. Then the only possibility left was the group that had taken Ivlik away.

“I guess there were quite a few people you wanted to kill besides this man?”

“Of course. Luckily, six of them were hanging out together.”

“Did you kill them all?”

“They dared to say they would r*pe you in front of me.”

“That’s enough.”

They could have died easily and quickly, but they chose pain instead. Cedine could guess how things had unfolded without hearing more.

“First, I’ll cut them here so they couldn’t make a sound.”

Ivlik brought his hand to his neck. He probably meant he had damaged their vocal cords.

“After that, the c*ck they dared to imagine putting into Cedine, I peeled it layer by layer…”

Cedine’s hand hurriedly covered Ivlik’s mouth. Ivlik then mimicked peeling an apple with a knife. Her husband’s face looked quite refreshed after satisfying a long-suppressed desire.

Cedine was at a loss for words. In any case, the people were already dead, so what could be done? Moreover, time kept ticking away while she was doing this with Ivlik.

“Alright. Let’s hide the guards somewhere out of sight for now.”

Two minutes after Cedine had signed out on the departure log and left the research institute, Ivlik came out, showing his face with a split lip, saying he was going to get treatment before the hospital closed. The woman at the entrance checkpoint, who had a particular fondness for handsome men, clicked her tongue. She sympathized with Ivlik, asking if the newcomers’ hazing still hadn’t ended.

Cedine and Ivlik moved separately to the train station. Cedine drove a small economy car near the train station and parked it in a shaded area. Before taking out the disguise props from her bag, she looked around. Fortunately, no one was looking this way.

She leaned towards the passenger seat and took off her glasses. She put on a golden wig with voluminous curls, then drew a beauty mark near her mouth. She also applied a reddish lipstick. By the time Cedine raised her head, she had transformed from an elite researcher with light brown bob hair to a girl who seemed to enjoy dressing up.

After changing her coat and shoes, her disguise for the train ride would be complete. Cedine got out of the car with a small travel bag she had prepared before going to work today. She left the bag containing her researcher’s gown, glasses, etc., under the seat.

Before heading to the train station, there was somewhere she needed to go first. Cedine entered a relatively large and busy post office near the station. She told the clerk she needed to send a telegram to her cousin in Franche. The clerk with a mustache seemed a bit tired from the unending stream of customers even in the afternoon.

“The basic limit is 20 characters, and the rate for international telegrams is different.”

She showed the telegram content to the clerk who was giving instructions with a bored expression. The clerk mechanically entered the content without even being curious about what it meant. As it exceeded the basic 20 characters, Cedine paid a considerable fee and left the post office.

The telegram will be delivered to their home country through an agent in Franche. Since it’s a translation into Franche of content that has already been encrypted once, someone who simply knows Franche can read it but won’t understand what it means.

Cedine found Ivlik waiting for her inside the station. He had already disguised himself as a businessman with combed-back golden-brown hair. The two purchased train tickets and moved to the platform. When crossing the border midway, they had to show their passports at the checkpoint, and of course, the passport Cedine presented was not for Sophia Becker but for a different identity.

“What is your relationship, are you married?”

The checkpoint soldier asked, looking back and forth between Cedine and Ivlik. Cedine clung to her husband, linking arms with him. Ivlik answered in fluent Republic language. He exuded the attitude of a businessman to the bone, seeming to take everything in stride.

“Yes, I run a film production company, and this is my wife and the star actress of our company.”

“An actress? What has she been in?”

“Have you seen ‘Madame Butterfly’? How about ‘Full of Sun’? ‘Proof of Passion’?”

With each movie title Ivlik mentioned, the soldier shook his head with his mouth tightly shut. But when a certain title came out of Ivlik’s mouth, his eyes widened.

“You’re saying your wife was in ‘Dr. Caligari’s Secret Room’? But her face and name…”

“Unfortunately, she didn’t get the lead role in that film, only a minor part. I could only contribute part of the production costs, so I couldn’t push too hard.”

“I see. Oh, I understand…”

“Both of us need to work harder.”

The soldier’s attitude noticeably softened. He must have been an impressed viewer of that film. The soldier, who had been checking IDs with an overbearing attitude from the start, even slightly tipped his military cap to Cedine and Ivlik before they got off the train.

The train started moving again. With a sense of relief at having overcome a hurdle, Cedine rested her head on Ivlik’s shoulder. If there had been no other passengers in the compartment, she would have quietly said one thing.