The SVT Files

000

Agent Choi knew it was an emergency when he was yanked from his task to sit in front of a desk of messy paper and smouldering cigarette butts. No matter how many times it happened, Agent Choi always felt his stomach toss in every direction.

"Hello sir."

"Choi," the man said gruffly, waving a cigarette. "Hope you didn't have anything that's important."

"Actually sir, I was working on -"

"It's already been moved, I was just asking to be nice." A thick sheath of papers were dropped in front of Seungcheol with a red stamp emblazoned on the cover. "This is your briefing. From this point onwards, this mission will be your sole focus. Tap into your resources - everything we have is readily available for you, and nothing is out of your reach. Considering you knew many of the subjects at one point or another, you'll just need to track them down."

"Yes sir."

"You know the consequences if you fail. Dismissed." Seungcheol nodded as he was thrown back into his time, the robot blinking at him.

"Welcome back Mr. Choi. Operatives -"

"I know," Agent Choi replied, already grabbing his bag, shoving the briefing into it. The robot nodded, him smiling at her. "I'll catch you some other time. Thank you CARAT."

She nodded again, and the agent waved his hand in a rectangular pattern about the size of his body. Quickly, the air seemed to fold on itself, distorting the view of the world beyond the door. Agent Choi stepped through the distortion, feeling his insides scramble then rearrange as he stood in an office bathroom, no one else to be seen. It was the same time, he realised as he checked his watch before turning to the mirror to fix his suit. Sometimes when his boss pulled him into his dimensional hole of an office it messed with the timing, but he'd only been there for a minute.

Walking out of the bathroom, Seungcheol nodded at a few of the workers before entering his office, closing and locking the door. This office was one of many that the agency had, meaning he had a nice shielded office for his needs. Now, the need was to see what this mission would be, and how quickly he could get it done. Agent Choi had other priorities, like long lasting missions that had been dragging for the better part of a year.

Breaking the seal and opening the folder, Agent Choi's eyebrows raised immediately at the first page in handwritten code. It was one he knew, he'd developed it, but only he knew it. He'd always put his encrypted files like this - but that wasn't his handwriting.

He started on his decoding process, humming softly to a song as he did so. When he was finished with the first page, he reread the code to make sure it wasn't wrong, then read the translation again.

Cheol,

It's me. Well, when you read this, you won't know me. But you taught me this code to write in case I needed it - and I need it. Project SVT is a mistake. Plain and simple, it's a mistake. I don't know if I can trust you enough to tell you that, but I'm hoping that I can reach you in an universe that you'll listen to me. If you succeed, you'll still fail. So fail. Do everything in your power to fail this mission - I know you've never failed one before, but I promise you, this needs to be the first. And now I know you're wondering who I am, why should you trust me, and what is going on.

You trusted me enough to teach me your code. Let that be a testament.

Signed,

Yours.

Agent Choi read it over again, frowning. He'd learned to not take future notes without some suspicion, but this one had seemed to cross dimensions too.