Crimson Karma - Chapter 3

Raw provider: Tsalispark
Translator: Rhyme
Editor: Milac

Even for a strong young man, a sandstorm was a hard hurdle to pass safely. But Kasia, according to her training, lowered the body as much as possible and focused on reaching her target.

It reminded her of the sandstorm training about 25 years ago.

Camp X had arranged a desert training program, in which the trainees were sent into a sandstorm to fight each other.

Inside that sandstorm, where it was even hard to see their forefront, she had heard a scream accompanied with blood splashing everywhere. It was from the girl who stood alongside her but got caught by someone and was killed.

It was because of her that she could confirm the opponent, give him a fatal blow and run away from there.

In a sandstorm, it was difficult to decide who won or lost. She clenched her teeth and moved towards the base, unconditionally complying with the order.

At the base, the flag was guarded by a boy who was twice her size. She went up to him and pushed him down to take over the guard. The sandstorm slowly quieted. Looking down from the base…

‘As expected, it doesn’t feel good. To watch being appreciated needlessly…’

Kasia got rid of those miscellaneous thoughts.

She, too, felt that the mission this time was suspicious. It seemed what Commander Lambert had said was right.

In the end, she was just a ‘Tool.’

A tool had no right to question the words of its owner.

‘Maybe they just want me to disappear from here,’ Kasia guessed.

Just like the words she said to Commander Lambert, she had no intention to die willingly.

But she, with a body aged over 40, was almost past her prime. Though she could defeat any of those soldiers in a fistfight without any weapons, the whole deal would change if the opponent had a weapon.

Kasia cleared her mind and sensed her surroundings.

On her way, she saw bodies cleanly stabbed in the vital points and corpses with bullet wounds on their temples.

For Ahmad’s Camp, the number of guards seemed less. She ignored them and moved on because she, and her location, were already discovered.

To slit a throat from behind, without any hesitation, also had some limitations. Her primary weapon was a knife, specially designed for her. As she approached her destination, she had no other option than using a gun.

‘The second basement floor of this building…’

Trying to conceal her breath from her pursuers, she felt strange energy from the floor.

‘There is something underneath.’

She threw away her hope of surviving from that place. Instead, she decided to take down the building with her. She touched the protective cap of the self-destruction button on her belt and disappeared into the building with dry eyes.

One could hear gunshots being fired a while after she entered the building.

With all the screams and shouts, the atmosphere was anything but calm.

Kasia was milking every bit of her capacity. As she tussled with her opponents, her muscles were contracting and relaxing at light speed. With minimal movements, she killed her way in a specific direction.

She cut through their throats with the sharp knife she was holding, delivering them with the sensation of muscle-bone-amputation. She stabbed them deeply until they felt their lives leaving them.

“STOP!”

While she was busy eliminating and blocking the surrounding guards, from a wide room in the carter, like the second floor of the basement, a boisterous voice was heard.

Inside the room were almost 30 women, wearing hijabs. In front of them were around 10 men holding machine guns and a man looking similar to Ahmad, pointing the gun at her.

Maybe because the women were dragged urgently and recklessly thrown to the ground, their eyes were full of fear. Among those hostages, some seemed to be from the U.S.

“If you don’t want these women to die, throw away your weapon and step ahead.”

The noisy building from a moment ago nearly fell silent. The only sounds heard were the sniffs from the captive women. Though Kasia carefully checked out the man standing in front of the guards, she couldn’t completely confirm whether he was Ahmad.

He did look similar to Ahmad but Kasia found it strange that the man before her would be Ahmad. Between Kasia and her opponents were columns lined up. Kasia slowly put her weapon on the floor and raised her hand right so they could see.

She stood in their field of vision and slowly, one step at a time, walked towards them. Maybe the Ahmad lookalike was overly confident with having so many women as his hostages that she couldn’t find any guards around him.

She closed the distance between them. The man smiled more and more confidently.

“Your code name is Reaper, right? So will I become a Reaper who killed a Reaper?”

“Ahmad Ali Mohammad?”

Towards Kasia’s small question, he guffawed.

“Yes. You should feel honoured to see my face before your death.”

“…You’re not him.”

Because of his manner, Kasia confirmed her suspicion. He was not Ahmad.

With her definite words, his face distorted.

“So what? It doesn’t matter. You are going to die here today.”

He was, clearly, delusional. Even before he finished his words, Kasia disappeared from his field of vision. Instantaneously lowering her posture, she rushed towards him with high speed.

The flustered guards swiftly raised their guns and fired shots at her. The women screamed and fainted.

They expected humane feelings from the Reaper. That was their greatest mistake. For her, it didn’t matter who the hostage in the room was.

To ‘Succeed the Mission’ was her only alternative. The fake Ahmad had become her meat shield. She held him against all the incoming bullets. Her knife was faster than their bullets. She cut them down gracefully; as if performing a sword dance.

The guards panicked more as the shots from their machine guns began to hurt their associates. With the bomb, Kasia threw out, limbs of the guards flew all over the place. As for the women who were taken as hostages, they were brutally killed.

*     *     *

JUNE 13, 0600 HOURS

Pushing the darkness of twilight away, the sky brightened. Leaving the blue dessert behind, Kasia came back.

She wasn’t in good shape. Seeing her bathed in blood, it was difficult to specify how much she was hurt. It could be confirmed that the blood on her hand holding the knife did not belong to her, though her left thigh and both her arms were deeply wounded.

She roared at the soldier who pointed his gun at her and asked for her identity. Though he lowered his gun, his eyes were filled with fear. He seemed ready to raise the gun, again, at any moment.

“Colonel Roman is back!”

Someone ran into the meeting room and informed them. A silence fell over the room.

“Colonel Roman! Well done! Did you take care of Ahmad?”

Breaking the silence and welcoming her who came back from death, a general asked about the fulfilment of her mission.

“He was not Ahmad. Please cancel the bombing.”

Kasia walked step by step into the meeting room and spat out what she needed to say nonchalantly.

Among them was a man who wasn’t present when Kasia left for the mission. He was seated in a corner with two armed soldiers around him.

“Kasia Del Roman completed the mission and came back to report.”

The man who was seated silently, slightly raised his head.

“The reported hiding spot of Ahmad was not false, it was a lookalike. Anyway, he has been taken care of. I am not sure whether it was a trick to lure me out but it was more sloppy than I expected.”

Hearing her report, the expressionless man let out a long sigh.

“There is none who will say that it was sloppy.”

Click.

As soon as he finished, she felt a gun being pointed at her back. It was a small pistol connected to a silencer.

Even before entering the room, she felt the tension and acidity spewing from the room. How could she not notice such an obvious murderous intent?

“If you had died over there, how nice it would be. We wouldn’t have met like this. It would have been easy to take care of the body too…’

The man in front of her, showing her his nasty laugh and malicious glare, was Lee-In-Ja from Camp X, who always lagged behind her. Among the children of Camp X, he was quite a rare type because of his ambitiousness. Right after he left Camp X, he started to gain more power and somehow, one day, he became a person who could give her direct orders.

Kasia, as always, stared at him with her empty eyes. She felt her life fading away with the blood flowing out of her body. She didn’t feel any indignation or sorrow over it. All she thought was, ‘Finally it’s ending.’

“As always, I don’t like that stare of yours.”

Suddenly his face showed a fierce expression. He took the gun from the soldier beside him and pointed it at her.

“If you wish to speak any last words, just say. It’s okay to beg to spare you. Who knows? Maybe I’ll change my mind.”

But Kasia was mum. Maybe she, for the first time, wanted to act according to her own will.

Before entering the room, she hid a suicide pill in her mouth. Biting onto it, she slowly curved her lips and smiled at him. It was the only mercy she received, to end her life quickly without bearing any pain.

The Kasia who stood erect at gunpoint suddenly collapsed to the floor. The momentary confusion of the man wielding the gun suddenly cleared. He couldn’t control his rage and fired at her corpse.

Finally, Kasia Del Roman escaped from her ill-fated life and embraced death.

*     *     *

Death welcomed the worn-out Kasia with a warm embrace. The burning wounds, her muscles screaming with overwork, the poison she chewed… she felt nothing anymore.

‘So comfortable. So, this is death.’

It was such a warm and sweet rest to leave behind the bitter and painful life.

She felt her consciousness starting to become, well, not hers. She couldn’t feel her flesh and senses but soon got absorbed into her memories. Fear started to creep onto her when she felt her past playing in front of her.

The civil war that broke out not long after her birth, her young parents hugging the still small Kasia to seek refuge, her mother jumping into the water from that small boat beseeching others to take her safely to the other end, the soldier who reached to her promising food and education, the hellish days that started from Camp X…

And after that, it was endless slaughter.