Current Elite Guard Rank 1 for the President.
Konopleva Anastasia.
Elite Guard Rank 1.
Letter "C."
The Cheater.
A chill ran down Jeremiah's spine.
Jeremiah took a right turn, the tires hissing against the road.
"Everyone knows who he is Dreyfus. Why ask?"
Dreyfus's dead eyes flicked off the phone screen.
"Do you know his history?"
Jeremiah hesitated.
"We know he's Korean… and we know he has one eye. That's it," he whispered.
~
Dreyfus sighed.
"When he was twelve years old, he was already a chess grandmaster."
"At sixteen, he was banished from the chess world. Completely erased."
A pause.
"At nineteen, he joined a Korean boy band."
"And at twenty-one… after a scandal, the entire group and organization vanished into thin air."
Dreyfus looked out the window.
"He changed his name… and moved to the United States."
Jeremiah felt sweat gather around his neck. At age twenty-one… impossible. That can't be real.
"Did he have any combat training during that decade? At least?" Jeremiah's voice cracked, pleading, trying to debunk these ridiculous claims.
Dreyfus didn't even blink.
"None. Not one second."
Silence filled the car. Dreyfus continued, "Mr. N and I know Anastasia because we were hired to watch over a series of chess matches ten years ago. A sixteen-year-old boy challenged the number one undefeated chess grandmaster of three decades."
Dreyfus's voice dropped.
"A forty-nine-year-old man named… Gonen the Wise."
Even Annie leaned forward, hearing that name.
Dreyfus smiled
"No one had ever scratched Gonen. His intelligence surpassed legends like Magnus Karlsen. He didn't just play chess. He saw it. He saw pieces the way people see shadows in real life. He manipulated the board like it was reality itself."
Dreyfus's tone turned colder.
"Mr. N and I both played him."
"We both lost."
"I lost ten out of ten."
0–10–0.
"Mr. N managed one draw."
0–9–1.
"And that draw…" Dreyfus exhaled, "…Gonen gave it to him. Out of respect."
Jeremiah's stomach tightened.
Anne Von Cleve swallowed hard.
This was why she loved her job; hearing and witnessing things like this are experiences that normal people can never have.
"So what happened?" she asked, almost desperate.
Dreyfus's eyes darkened.
"After our matches… to warm up, Gonen, Konopleva appeared."
"They started to play."
"One game."
"Two."
"Three."
"Five."
"Ten."
"Twenty."
Dreyfus turned slightly.
"He won every single one. After the fifth match… Gonen said it."
Dreyfus's voice lowered.
"He's cheating."
"And he was right."
"We all knew it."
"Everyone in that room knew it."
"No man… let alone a sixteen-year-old boy… could do that."
"Chess doesn't rely on luck. Not twenty times in a row."
Dreyfus's expression didn't change.
"I thought… maybe it was his hands."
A pause.
"So I broke his fingers."
The car went dead silent.
"I placed the pieces myself."
"He just told me where to move them."
Dreyfus's voice was empty.
"He still won."
Jeremiah's heart skipped.
"Then I thought… maybe it was his eyes."
"So we covered them."
"Blinded him."
Dreyfus finally turned his head slightly.
"He still won."
"From that day forward…" Dreyfus continued quietly,
"…Gonen lost his mind."
"He never played chess again."
"One of the five greatest minds of the last generation was extinguished just like that.
Silence crushed the car.
"Jesus Christ…" Jeremiah muttered. "That was ten years ago?"
He swallowed. "So why are we going to see him now? Why didn't we go earlier?"
Dreyfus leaned back. "Because Gonen told Mr. N to visit him every two years, to report his findings on what possibly could have happened. Mr. N got impatient, so he started sending me instead. For ten years, Gonen has been studying the game, the rules, the laws behind it… trying to understand what happened."
Annie wiped her palms.
"Did he figure it out?"
Dreyfus smirked faintly.
"That's why we're going."
"Did he find it out?" Annie sweats.
"That's why we're going to ask. Because if I'm going to be completely honest," Dreyfus laughed, it was something he couldn't say out, but considering what happened to Mr. N the last time he encountered Konopleva. "He knows that unless he figures out his secret.... The presidency battle is over before it even started.
Jeremiah was still shocked by the story, thinking, even people like Mr. N are not the pinnacle?
Annie took a huge blow of her vape, "That information kinda scared me shitless, I don't think I'm gonna respond to him ever again."
Dreyfus wiped his mouth; he was getting hungry."Regardless, who cares for semantics? Our win condition is to find a way to defeat Elite Guard Rank 1. And that's it. That's the only thing that matters.
As they arrived at the prison, Dreyfus took out his large kitchen knife from his back pocket and held it in his mouth. He then equipped his apron.
"So let's find Gonen."