“There! That part! Rewind it.”

  There was an irrepressible excitement laced in Scott’s voice.

  The air inside the JSTR office at the airbase was thick with tension,

  like a bowstring drawn to its limit. Having returned from their mission,

  Scott and his agents were gathered in the conference room, their eyes fixed on the massive monitor covering the wall.

  The screen captured the chilling atmosphere of the interrogation room the record of the day Jun-ho had faced the extraterrestrial being,

  ‘Illik.’ The footage showed Jun-ho, who had been maintaining his silence, suddenly erupting in fury at Illik’s arrogant demeanor.

  Then, in the midst of pouring out his intense emotions, Jun-ho abruptly clamped his mouth shut and spat out a strange phrase that felt completely out of place.

  “Cogito, ergo sum.”

  A clear Latin sentence shattered the silence.

  In moment, Scott sprang from his chair as if propelled by a spring, pointing a finger at the monitor.

  “That look just now, and that sentence! Don’t stop, keep playing it back. Now!”

  Scott’s shout echoed off the office walls.

  The look in Jun-ho’s eyes on the screen flickered back to life, as if etched onto Scott’s retinas.

  “Look closely, everyone. Spouting those words at that exact timing... no matter how much I think about it, isn’t it strange?”

  Scott scanned his team, shaking his head with a gaze full of doubt.

  The afterimage of Jun-ho on the monitor remained hooked at the edge of his vision.

  “I agree. In my opinion, it’s a clear message.

  Given the flow of the conversation, there was absolutely no reason for that expression to come out,”

  one of the agents chimed in with a voice full of conviction.

  He paused the screen and added,

  “Cogito, ergo sum. That Latin... it’s like a secret code known only to those two no, between Jun-ho and that alien entity.

  It might even be a sign to confirm each other’s existence.”

  Scott crossed his arms, lost in thought. A taut tension settled over his thick, muscular arms.

  “Jun-ho went back to Korea, right?

  Can we arrest him immediately and extradite him here?”

  The air in the room grew cold at the low tone of Scott’s voice.

  However, the agent beside him shook his head with a rational composure.

  “Chief, that’s practically impossible. No clear criminal charges have been proven,

  and we still lack definitive evidence that he is colluding with the extraterrestrial. A forced detention carries too much risk.”

  The agent paused for a moment, looking Scott straight in the eye to drive the point home.

  “Above all, you must consider the diplomatic relations with South Korea.

  He isn’t just some ordinary civilian; he’s a former Vice Minister.

  If we touch him without following official procedures, it will turn into an international incident.”

  Scott nodded slowly as if conceding the point.

  The rational advice seemed to have cooled his overheated head.

  “Fine, you’re right. First, track down Jun-ho’s current whereabouts.

  Then, contact him as politely as possible and request that he visit the United States once more.

  Oh, and this is a classified matter. Do not—under any circumstances—notify the South Korean Ministry of National Defense.”

  Scott murmured quietly, hardening his resolve. A chilling intuition brushed against his spine;

  Jun-ho was more than just a contact for the extraterrestrial being he could be a substantial threat to American national security.

  He had to quietly and firmly bring Jun-ho under his control.

  Just as he was about to leave the office,

  Scott stopped in his tracks as if something had just occurred to him and turned around.

  “By the way... that truck driver, she’s here, isn’t she?”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Yes, we’ve brought her in, but...”

  The agent trailed off, looking uneasy.

  “We can’t hold her for long. There isn’t a single official ground for detention.

  If she starts demanding a lawyer, things are going to get messy.”

  “I know. That’s why we need to move fast.”

  Scott replied nonchalantly, loosening his tie slightly. His gaze sank into a sharp, cold focus.

  “The driver who was with Illik until the very end. Where is she now?”

  “Ah... she’s currently at the safe house.”

  “Move her to the interrogation room immediately. I need to have a little chat with her myself.”

  The click of Scott’s dress shoes shattered the silence of the hallway as he made his way toward the interrogation room.

  —-------------------

  Accompanied by an agent, Scott pushed open the heavy steel door of the interrogation room.

  The moment he laid eyes on the truck driver sitting across the table, he nearly froze in his tracks.

  ‘My God... this isn’t the face of a truck driver.’

  Scott swallowed hard, masking his internal shock.

  The agent beside him maintained a poker face, but his slightly trembling pupils betrayed that he shared the same disbelief.

  She was dressed in faded jeans and a rugged denim jacket over a plain black t-shirt—the quintessential attire of a long-haul trucker.

  Yet, the aura that radiated from her was so alien it felt surreal. Her skin was pale enough to appear translucent,

  her features strikingly sharp, and her cold gaze commanded the entire room.

  It was as if Ava Gardner from her 1950s prime had stepped through a black-and-white screen and into a modern-day interrogation room.

  Swallowing again, Scott met her eyes and spoke softly.

  “Ms. Lisa... all you need to do today is answer a few simple questions. Then, you’ll be heading home.”

  “I understand,” Lisa replied shortly, looking him straight in the eye.

  “Ms. Lisa, please tell me everything that happened from the moment you met that woman in the Mojave Desert, without leaving out a single detail.”

  Scott’s low voice broke the silence of the room.

  Lisa remained relatively composed.

  She calmly recounted the events, starting from her initial encounter with Illik to the tense moment when the extraterrestrial being stepped out of the truck alone to confront the police.

  The meeting in the desert had been brief, and Illik had been a woman of few words.

  There was an incident at a rest stop where some men threw crude insults, but Illik had simply ignored them and returned to the vehicle.

  There had been no significant conversation; it was mostly Lisa talking to herself. Beyond that, nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

  Lisa told Scott the truth—but only the "surface-level" truth. She kept the most critical detail buried deep:

  the fact that Illik had synchronized a silver sphere with her and ultimately placed it in her hands.

  —-----------

  Even though they had only been together for a few hours, Lisa felt a strange,

  deep-seated bond with Illik, as if they were old friends.

  What angered her most was the attitude of the authorities.

  She could not comprehend why the police and ICE had blocked and attempted to arrest someone who had committed no crime.

  To her, it was a blatant abuse of power.

  The fact that she was being detained at a foreign airbase in Las Vegas for interrogation only fueled the fire of her resentment.

  Yet, Lisa did not let her anger show. She offered only dry,

  hollow answers to Scott’s piercing questions,

  keeping the intimate connection she shared with Illik and the whereabouts of the silver sphere buried deep within her heart.

  “Ms. Lisa, I’ll ask you one last thing.”

  Scott leaned forward, pressing his upper body deep toward the table. His fierce eyes dissected every micro-expression on Lisa's face.

  “Why do you think Illik stepped toward the officers like that?

  That reckless behavior, as if she were reaching for a weapon... are you sure she didn’t say anything to you right before she stepped out of that truck?”

  To Scott, this was the greatest contradiction of the case.

  Despite having every opportunity to surrender, she had taken a dangerous path,

  almost as if she were inviting death or mocking the law. Lisa responded with a steady, unwavering voice.

  “I don’t know. I can’t wrap my head around it either.

  I told her clearly—we should go out together, get on our knees, and stay still, and nothing would happen. But she ignored me,

  jumped out first, and charged at the officers.

  I have no idea why she made such an extreme choice.”

  Lisa’s answer was smooth and devoid of any fluff. Scott, unwilling to let go of his suspicion, drove the final wedge.

  “I see. Then let’s confirm this once and for all.

  What was the very last conversation you had with her? And did she... did she happen to hand you or give you anything?”

  Lisa’s heart flickered for a fleeting second, but her expression remained as calm as a still lake.

  In her jacket pocket, she could almost feel the thrumming of the silver sphere, now synchronized with her own cells.

  “No. She didn’t give me anything. As for our last words... well, I think it was just a simple goodbye.”

  —--------

  In the end, Scott had no choice but to let Lisa go.

  Despite hours of interrogation, there were no cracks in her testimony, and his legal grounds for detaining her had completely evaporated.

  Yet, as he stood alone in the interrogation room Lisa had just vacated, Scott’s mind felt as if it were wandering through a thick fog.

  ‘There’s a piece of the puzzle missing. I know it.’

  Above all, Illik’s death made no sense to him.

  How could an extraterrestrial being who had captured the world's attention fall so helplessly to mere police gunfire?

  There was no reason for her to die, nor was it the right situation. If she had invited death,

  perhaps it was because that ‘body’ was merely a vessel meant to be exposed to the world via live television.

  If so, had Illik hidden another version of herself somewhere else?

  Was it Lisa? But Lisa was an American citizen with a verifiable identity.

  Ultimately, all his questions led back to Jun-ho. He had to find a way to extradite him back to the U.S.

  "Wait... the bodycams!"

  An exclamation burst from Scott’s lips, shattering the silence.

  A flash of inspiration struck him like lightning.

  "Hey!"

  Scott immediately called over an agent, his eyes gleaming with renewed sharpness.

  "The bodycams on the officers who confronted Illik there must be footage of the front of the truck.

  Scrape every bit of that bodycam data and get it back to the base now!"

  As soon as Scott’s orders were given, the agents sprang into action.

  If they could get footage recorded from the officers' perspective rather than a third-person view,

  they might be able to spot Illik’s subtle movements in front of the truck.

  Scott was certain: the final piece of the invisible puzzle was hidden somewhere within those shaky frames.

  Lisa climbed into her massive truck, which had been parked in the base's secure zone.

  The heavy roar of the engine echoed through the quiet facility, but her mind was too numb to even process the noise.

  Leaving the base behind, the truck sped down the endless stretch of asphalt toward Las Vegas.

  A heavy fatigue settled over her hands as she gripped the steering wheel. All she wanted was to rest at a hotel in Vegas.

  She just wanted to sleep.