RAINBOW OF TEARS
SEOUL – RAINBOW TAXI, EN ROUTE TO NOWHERE
The silence in the taxi was a living thing. It wasn't the tense quiet of their first rides, nor the contemplative calm of their later drives. This was the thick, breath-held silence of a sanctuary being breached, of two people crossing a line they could not uncross.
Park Min-Ji sat in the back, staring out at the passing city as if seeing its bones for the first time—the alleys behind the glitter, the service entrances to the palaces. Min-Hyuk drove, his mind a storm of conflicting protocols.
Instant Calculation: Probability of her being tracked via phone, personal tags, or facial recognition from the villa's external cameras: 74%. Her uncle's resources were vast. Standard evasion patterns would be anticipated. Sub-Mind Archive scrolled through urban hideouts, dead drops, and black-market identity protocols, but each was calibrated for victims of injustice, not fleeing chaebol royalty.
A chime, soft and distinct from the taxi's systems, sounded in his inner ear—a sub-dermal implant linked to a frequency only one other entity used. The Delta Black Line.
His blood ran cold, then settled into a glacial focus. This was a different tier of reality breaking in.
"Change of plan," he said aloud, his voice betraying nothing. He took a sudden, sharp turn down a narrow access road beside the Cheonggyecheon stream, the taxi's tires bumping over cobbles.
Min-Ji lurched, grabbing the seat. "What's wrong?"
"Your uncle's teams will have the main arteries and known safe houses monitored. We need to disappear." He pulled into a darkened loading bay beneath a modern office building, the entrance shielded by a retractable security grate that began to descend behind them. "This is a private garage. We switch vehicles."
He exited the taxi, moving to a nondescript service elevator. He placed his palm on a seemingly blank panel. A biometric scanner glowed blue, and the doors slid open to reveal not an elevator car, but a steep concrete ramp leading further underground.
"This is… not a taxi company garage," Min-Ji stated, following him, her eyes wide.
"No."
At the bottom of the ramp was a small, clinically clean bay. Parked there was a vehicle that looked, at first glance, like a standard black Hyundai Genesis sedan. But to Min-Hyuk's enhanced senses, the details sang a different song: the reinforced line of the chassis, the slightly thicker glass, the absence of any manufacturer's insignia. It was a "Ghost Car," a product of Rainbow's B3 workshop and a budget that defied explanation.
"Get in," he said, opening the passenger door for her. He slid into the driver's seat. The dashboard lit up not with a navigation screen, but with a tactical display—a map of Seoul with layered threat overlays, fed from Go-eun's network.
As the Ghost Car ascended a different ramp and emerged into an alley three blocks away, Min-Hyuk activated the secure channel in his mind.
[Delta Black Line. Authentication: Min-Hyuk. Voiceprint confirmed. Status: Covert Evasion. Request: Clean Sweep Protocol, Urban Package. Asset: One high-value non-combatant, Seoul.] He thought the words, the implant translating them into a compressed data burst.
There was no verbal reply. Only a confirmation ping on his display—a small, black triangle icon that appeared in the corner of the tactical map. Operation Delta was online.
---
INNSBRUCK, AUSTRIA – 15 MINUTES PRIOR
Marco was in the operations room of a chalet overlooking the snow-dusted Alps, reviewing satellite imagery of a high-value target convoy in Moldova. His face, a topographical map of scars and calm intensity, was lit by the blue glow of monitors.
The alert came not as a sound, but as a specific, searing vibration from the comms unit fused to his sternum. Delta Black Line. The one line that overrode everything.
He was on his feet in an instant. "Luca, Erik—stand down the Moldova op. Pass it to the Kiev crew. This is primary." His voice, a graveled baritone, carried absolute authority.
Around the room, nine men—the most lethal constellation of talent money could never legally buy—snapped to a different kind of attention. The relaxed posture of professionals off-mission vanished, replaced by the coiled readiness of wolves on a fresh scent.
"Sebastian," Marco barked. "Access the Seoul underworld channel. We need a clean room and a zero-profile exit for one VIP, yesterday. Budget is no object. Use the Japanese fixer, Yagami. He's discreet."
Sebastian Krüger, a man with the mind of a chess grandmaster and the morals of a spider, was already typing, his screens flooding with encrypted broker feeds. "Yagami confirms. He has a 'white cell' in the Seorae Village diplomatic quarter. Six hours of guaranteed opacity. Price: two hundred thousand Euros, cash or crypto."
"Authorized."
"Julien," Marco turned to the Frenchman, Julien Moreau, whose talent was becoming a ghost in any system. "I need you inside the Korean National Police traffic grid and the Luxe Plaza Group's internal security feed in ten minutes. Create a blind spot along a route I'll send you. Then insert a looped ghost-log of the target's personal vehicle returning to her Gangnam tower."
"Oui, mon commandant." Julien smiled, a cold, technical thing, and began his digital symphony of lies.
"Victor," Marco said to the English transport specialist. "The extraction route. We need a cascade: car to boat to private hangar. Plan for Incheon, Busan, and Jeju options. File false flight plans with three different corporate jets."
Victor Hale nodded, opening multiple maps. "On it."
Marco looked at the faces of his unit—Luca Romano cracking his knuckles, Erik Volkov checking a sidearm out of habit, Nikolai Petrov calmly adjusting the scope on a rifle that wasn't there. They were his hand, wielded by the mind of a man currently driving a ghost car through Seoul.
"Listen up," Marco said, his voice filling the room. "The Principal is in play on his home turf. Our job isn't to go in guns blazing. Our job is to be the silence around him. We are the locked door no one knows exists. We are the erased camera footage. We are the current that carries him to safe harbor. Do not fail him."
There were no cheers, no grand speeches. Only ten slight nods. Absolute loyalty, purchased not with money, but with a debt that could never be repaid. They were Operation Delta. And their only true client had just called.
---
SEOUL – SEORAE VILLAGE, THE "WHITE CELL"
The Ghost Car descended into the underground parking of a bland, high-end apartment building in the diplomatic enclave of Seorae Village. The gate opened not to a keycard, but to a sequence Min-Hyuk input from the car's system—a one-time code generated by Julien Moreau's hack.
They took a private elevator directly to the top-floor penthouse. The door opened to a space that was the antithesis of Min-Ji's world: minimalist, sensor-controlled, and utterly anonymous. No art, no personal effects. Just soft light, soundproofing, and a wall of monitors currently showing feeds of the building's perimeter and the empty garage.
"This is a safe house," Min-Ji said, her voice hushed. "A real one." She turned to him, her composure finally fracturing. "Kim Min-Hyuk. A lawyer. A taxi driver. A… man with access to intelligence agency safe houses. Who are you?"
He faced her, the sterile light etching his features. He could lie. He could deflect. But the garden, the hand on her back in the shadows, the racing of his own heart—they had made lies feel like a betrayal.
"I am someone who has built layers," he said, each word deliberate. "Some to help people the law forgets. Some to protect myself. And some…" he glanced at the black triangle icon now pulsing softly on his watch, a Delta confirmation signal, "...to ensure that when the monsters come, I am not the only one who can fight them."
Her phone, which had been clutched in her hand, buzzed. A notification. She looked at it, her face pale. "A text from my head of security. My car and driver returned to my tower twenty minutes ago. I am supposedly in my penthouse, safe for the night." She looked up at him, awe and fear mingling in her eyes. "You can rewrite reality."
"Not me," he said. "But I have friends in very dark places."
He walked to a secure terminal in the wall, typed in another code. A screen lit up, showing a complex, multi-layered exit plan. Car routes to three different ports, flight paths, logistical chains. The work of a world-class military unit, condensed into an escape menu.
"This is the hand in the dark," he said softly. "You asked for it. Your uncle plays with corporate knives and hired thugs. The people who work for me deal in wars. You can stay here, safe and unseen, for six hours. Then we move you. To Jeju, maybe. Or out of the country."
She stared at the screens, at the proof of a power that dwarfed her family's wealth. It was terrifying. It was the only real safety she'd felt in weeks.
"And what then?" she asked, the heiress thinking ten moves ahead. "I run? I hide forever while my uncle cannibalizes my grandfather's life's work? While he turns 'Luxe Horizon' into a weapon for men like Kang Deok-su?"
Min-Hyuk was silent. The lawyer in him saw the legal dead end. The vigilante saw a corrupt man who deserved to be on their revenge list. The man in the garden saw a woman he couldn't bear to see broken.
"You have another option," he heard himself say. "You don't run from the fight. You change the battlefield."
She stepped closer, her gaze locking onto his. "How?"
"You have access. Board minutes, hidden accounts, off-book deals with men like Kang. You have the keys to the castle." He paused, the final line hovering between them. "Rainbow Taxi… we deliver revenge. We punish those the law protects. But we need evidence. We need a guide on the inside."
The air left her lungs in a soft rush. He was asking her to become an informant. To betray her own blood. To weaponize her legacy against itself.
"That's… treason," she whispered.
"It's justice," he countered, his voice unwavering. "The kind that doesn't come from a courtroom. The kind that can actually protect what you say you want to build."
Tears, those rare and explosive "queen's tears," welled in her eyes but did not fall. She was at the cliff's edge, the safe, gilded cage behind her, a terrifying, righteous void ahead.
The secure terminal beeped. A new message, from Sebastian Krüger via the Delta channel, translated on screen: "Yagami reports heightened surveillance net around all private airfields. Uncle is paranoid. Moving the extraction window forward. Decision point: in 90 minutes."
The clock was no longer ticking. It was hammering.
Min-Ji looked from the screen to Min-Hyuk's face, searching for the lawyer, the driver, the soldier, the man. She found them all, fused into a person who was her only possible compass.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, a swift, decisive motion. The vulnerability burned away, replaced by a cold, gleaming resolve. The heiress was gone. In her place stood a queen ready to burn her own castle to save the kingdom.
"Tell your friends in the dark," Park Min-Ji said, her voice ringing clear in the sterile room, "that their package is not ready for shipping. The package has decided to stay. And she has a delivery of her own to make."
She walked to the terminal, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. "What do you need first?"
A slow, grim smile touched Min-Hyuk's lips—the first real one she had ever seen. It transformed him entirely. He picked up a secure, untraceable phone from the console and dialed the B2 command center.
"Sung-chul-ssi," he said. "We have a new client. And she's bringing the blueprints to the dragon's lair. Prepare the Proteus system. We're going to need a very specific face."
In the Alps, Marco received the update. "Principal has secured the asset. Asset is transitioning to ally. Stand by for intelligence package." He relayed the orders. "Stand down the extraction. Shift to intelligence support and remote overwatch. Nikolai, Mateo—you're on the next flight to Seoul. Low profile. The Principal is digging in. We are his shovel."
The Rainbow Taxi team, watching from their underground fortress, saw the new data stream begin to flow—encrypted financial trails, secret board memos, the hidden architecture of Park Yong-sik's empire. Min-Hyuk and Min-Ji stood side-by-side before the monitors, silhouetted against the glow of the evidence that would become their weapon.
The safe house was no longer a hiding place.
It had become a war room.
[End of Episode 6]
[Status: War Footing Activated]
[Delta Black Line: Active / Standing By]
[New Alliance Forged: Park Min-Ji → Insider Asset]
[Target Designated: Park Yong-sik & Kang Deok-su Network]
[Next Phase: Infiltration & Asset Acquisition (The Proteus Gambit)]
[Next Episode: The Double & The Ledger.]