Itzy had become the most famous band in the world. But fame had left Yeji bored and disillusioned. As if they had been waiting for this moment, Britain's covert intelligence agency, MI6, recruits the young star and trains her to be the most dangerou...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Caution: Strong violence.
Yeji couldn't understand why the mission briefing was happening in the back of an Uber, but that was Radius' issue, not hers. She was a complicated woman. But it was fun to see Rome.
"Vector, great work in Berlin," Radius said, "Our boots-on-the-ground agents have confirmed that Raskolnikov's network has collapsed. They're doing better at killing each other in power grabs than we ever could. We've also rescued almost 100 traumatized young women from that bastard. The world isn't going to miss him. Also, not sure if you saw, but you were on the inside cover of Vogue in that dress."
"Inside cover? Who was on the cover?"
"Yuna."
"I can't compete with that. Good for her!"
Radius smiled. "No one could compete with that woman. I'm straight and I want to kiss her and bake her an apple pie. The attention you all generated on the runway pushed Raskolnikov's 'disappearance' off the top of every news site in the world."
"But now for your mission," she continued. "You're going to Paris. There's a group of anarchists who have gotten their greasy hands on a terrifying new weapon. It was designed by a disgraced scientist from MIT. What he built is called a Zero Point Vacuum Weapon. I'm not a scientist, but I'll try my best to explain. Believe it or not, empty space is not empty. There's a constantly bubbling soup of what are called virtual particles. This scientist - Jules Verlaine - found a way to increase the energy of these quasi-nonexistent particles using extremely strong ceramic magnets and near-absolute zero temperatures, and how to keep them in that excited state. But at the push of a button, he can cut off the energy that maintains the system, and the particles become virtual again, and the volume of space they occupy instantaneously goes to almost zero. So when it's triggered, the bomb acts almost like a mini black hole. Not only does matter get sucked into it, but it actually sucks in space and time into it as well. The upshot is that this device is about 750 times more powerful than the biggest hydrogen bomb ever built, the Soviet Tsar Bomba."
She continued. "Your mission, I'm sure you've guessed, is to eliminate Verlaine and the anarchists, gather intelligence on his network, and disable the bomb. If you find Verlaine, kill him. We'll take it from there."
"If Verlaine designed it, who's the leader of the terrorists?" Yeji asked.
"An anarchist named Anthony Hopper. I especially dislike him because he doesn't let anyone ever call him Tony. This is what gets me. He's Canadian. How the nicest country on Earth produced this guy is a complete mystery to me, but here we are."
"Do Hopper and Verlaine get along?"
"They hate each other, but have to work together. Verlaine needs a network to move the weapon, and Hopper has the network but doesn't understand the science," Radius explained.
"Do I have a cover?"
"No. You'll be nobody. No records, no ID. We can't use Itzy for every mission, so we're going to change your appearance. Get ready to go blonde."
