NOVEL WEB Chapter 50: Everything is Already Too Late
Carefully raising her gun and aiming it between the old man’s eyes, Louise asked.
[……May I ask your name, Grandpa?]
[Asking that now doesn’t have any point, “Louise-san”. Everything is already too late.]
Louise raised an eyebrow.
Even though she was now wearing the ID with another person’s name that she received from her informant, this old man called her by that name without any hesitation.
[It’s up to me to decide if it’s already too late…… You knew all along huh. Good grief…… How stupid.]
[No, no. You don’t need to be discouraged. Of course, I didn’t know about this from the beginning. It was just that I asked about you from your friend earlier.]
[I don’t have any friends.]
She has been living as an agent in another country with which she has no connections with, so she doesn’t have any friends, even as a cover.
[Oh my, I’m sorry about that. If he’s not your friend, I suppose he’s more of a business associate then.]
What the old man was pointing out was perfectly conveyed to Louise.
That the operatives established by other countries had been caught.
It was possible that he was simply bluffing, but standing before the old man’s boundless demeanor, it’s hard to believe that he was lying.
[So, what are you planning to do?]
[What do you mean?]
Louise is more than a little annoyed by the old man’s attitude, which showed no sign of agitation in spite of the gun pointed at his head, and she felt he was a little creepy.
(All this must be because of this damned creepy darkness .)
[Are you stalling for time because backup will be here soon? Or perhaps, you’re going to let me go?]
[Ahh, I see…… So that’s what you mean. The answer is neither. After all, everything is already too late.]
[I heard you the first time!]
Louise shouted, and at the same time, the pistol she was holding opened fire.
Psshhh!!! The flashlight on the table shatters with a cracking sound.
With the only light source in the place lost, both Louise and the old man were covered in complete darkness.
[Everything is already too late.]
As he heard Louise’s footsteps as she ran away, the old man murmurs in a low voice that others cannot hear.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Relying on the glow of the red emergency light, Louise was weakly running down the passageway.
“In any case, I have to get away from this place first.”
As is usual for an undercover agent, she had a perfect memory of the passageways of the facility where she had obtained prior information.
In addition to that, escape itself isn’t difficult if she just traces back the route guided by the old man.
“No, I can’t. The security will be waiting for me there.”
Louise calmly revised her plan based on her situation and calculated the best escape route.
The disposal facility has a circular shape with a diameter of 1km, so the circumference is approximately 3 km.
It’s inconceivable that MCTBH, a mere private company, would have enough personnel to guard the entire perimeter of the facility while attending to the joint European inspection team.
Inevitably, the security team’s strategy would have to consist of pursuit by a small group of elites and ambush the intruders through key points.
“If that’s the case!”
Louise quickly stopped climbing up the aisle and plunged into a side path.
Louise has her own advantage.
It’s location.
Being near the center of the facility, she can force the guards located in the outer circle to move a large distance away just to move a small distance in the inner circle.
In extreme cases, if Louise were in the center of the circle, she would only have to turn the other way to force the guards on the outer circle to move more than 1.5 km to ambush her.
If she could successfully find a sideways passage and keep moving through that path, she could take advantage of the suit’s ability to block the surveillance cameras’ tracking and nullify the guards’ ambush from a distance.
“Now all I need to do is disperse the tracking team.”
How formidable could their tracking team even be?
In Japan, the possession of firearms by civilians is restricted.
It’s difficult to imagine that MCTBH’s security, a private company, would have firearms, even if they were military personnel dispatched by the government to guard the radioactive waste in this place.
If so, even if she came into close contact with the security, the small pistol in her hand would give her a tremendous advantage.
In essence, she doesn’t even need to be concerned about the pursuit team.
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She can escape from here.
If only that creepy old man wasn’t chasing her……
Louise shivered in the darkness.
The reason why she had shot the flashlight instead of aiming at the old man was partly to dazzle him, and partly because she had calculated that killing people would make the authorities much harsher when pursuing her after she escaped from this facility.
However, there’s also the fact that at that time, she actually might have felt an overwhelmingly irrational fear that perhaps “bullets wouldn’t work on that old man”.
“It must be because of this repulsive darkness.”
Louise scolded herself for having unknowingly stopped her steps and started running again.
No, she tried to run but……
“What…… is this?”
The passageway she was about to take was completely blocked off.
Before her path were countless drums piled up, blocking her way.
As she involuntarily backed away, a voice called out to her from behind.
It was the familiar voice of that old man.
[Like I said, everything is already too late.]