How Long Do I Have To Keep Running? (Irene x Male Reader)

Chapter 4: Changes to the Plan

You were not expecting to get involved with KrugerSec in Korea. You didn't even know they had set up a station here in Korea, yet here you were, hiding behind a trash can to lure them away from the corrupted cell tower.

'The fuck do I do now?'

As you and Icarus were in the same area now, the BeatLink for you two would work now. You connected to the network in desperation.

"Icarus?"

"(Y/N) what's up?"

"We got trouble off of Lotte Tower. They've taken a cell tower nearby and god knows what they're gonna achieve if they get ahold of the actual tower itself."

"Wait slow down. You're telling me KrugerSec got to goddamn Korea before we did?"

"Seems they're a step ahead of us. We can't let them get far otherwise we lose the war."

"If we get involved we give away our motives too. I don't think they're expecting us to be here. If we blow our cover, not only do we risk losing ground but we also risk the lives of civilians. The only government we ever had was KrugerSec so clearly they're gonna have some allies higher up. We shouldn't be here (Y/N), we need to be careful."

Icarus' words rang in your ear as you processed what you just heard. Everything he said was absolutely spot on as you knew the chances of getting through this without consequences were little to none. Succeeding wasn't the hard part, leaving no traces was. Whatever you did was going to leave something for KrugerSec to track.

You had an idea though.

"I'm going off the Grid."

"Entirely?! Faith can't get to you on the BeatLink, if you go off the Grid I can't get to you either! How the hell do you expect this to work if we can't even communicate?"

"Just trust me on this. I know enough of the language to survive, plus I have fam here. I'll do this mission, go into hiding for a few weeks then come back."

"How? Your ticket's scheduled for 4 days' time. If I come back by myself Faith's gonna think you're dead. You don't even have a phone."

"Plastic told me that computers can connect to the BeatLink without leaving traces on the Grid. I just need to upload some sort of software to it and we're golden. I bought the flash drive with me. PC gaming cafés are everywhere, I'll be fine."

"Are you really willing to risk uploading a virus to a computer that thousands of people are gonna use? You're not thinking rationally here (Y/N), take a step back and retrace your steps. What about financially, how are you going to survive here? I know how much you hate freeloading."

He knew you too well. If you wanted something, you preferred to work for it rather than it be handed to you on a silver platter.

You also had to take into account that you would essentially have to balance three characters. Your Runner character, the character your family knew and a Korean civilian character.

This was going to be tough.

As you were thinking Icarus' voice cut in.

"What If you make a separate bank account in Korea under a completely new identity? We'd have to go to Dogen for this but given your history with him, we should be able to make you a new person."

"That would imply I'd have to move here though."

"Which leads me to my next point. What if you stay there as our beacon of communication until it's safer to return home?"

SURPRISE SURPRISE!!! I finished chapters 3 & 4!!

Now, I will be entering an indefinite hiatus due to finals. I will be spending zero time writing and all of it writing papers and studying. I sincerely apologize for this but it's a necessity because well, I'm not tryna fail lol.

My next update will most likely be a oneshot, so when my hiatus ends I'll get to work on that.

Little bit of a shorter chapter here but a necessary conversation between the two of you.

If I'm being completely honest here the quality of my writing has suffered massively since my hiatus and I sincerely apologize for that. I definitely rushed this but I was running out of ideas.

As always, remember to vote, comment, and enjoy your day.

ICW11 OUT