Phoenix

20.

Jin and Arya both were speechless.
Seeing their startled stares, Dr. Donnen said, "I am sorry, young man, I can't tell you much about the eleventh Uno. I don't know anything at all about it actually to tell!"

"If you don't know anything," Jin said, "then how come you know that there is an eleventh Uno?"

"Yes, Mr. Kim. We have another one.
I have no doubt about that. Although I couldn't make others believe my theory."

"If nobody believed it, why do you?"

"Because I got proof of that."

"Didn't you try showing that proof to everyone else?"

"I couldn't make it clear, Mr. Kim.
There was evidence when I saw it.  But when I went to show it to the rest, the evidence disappeared."

Jin was a little annoyed, "speak clearly, Doctor. What is the proof?
How did it disappear?"

"It will be difficult for you to understand the technicalities, so for your understanding, let me make it easy," Donnen said, "four years ago,
I found evidence of the presence of an external user in our cyberspace. That user was using Uno-code."

"No one else noticed?" Arya wanted to know.

"No," said Donnen, shaking his head.  "I wouldn't either. The thing is when I went to check the security of our internet connection at the end of our meeting, I accidentally discovered it. There was one more entry outside of the eight of us in the digital log."

"You didn’t show that to everyone else?"

"I went to show them, but that user deleted all the records even before I could."

"Then?"

"At the next meeting, I created a tracer worm in Uno-code To find out the location of the mysterious person. But that user disabled the tracer worm."

"With Uno-code?"

"Yes," Donnen shook his head.

"Still the rest of Unos didn't believe you?"

"No. They thought the worm was destroyed spontaneously...they thought that probably there was a flaw in my program."

"But what was the reason for such disbelief?" Jin frowned.

"It was understandable, you know. If I were to be in their place, I wouldn't believe it either," said Donnen, "isn't it really impossible for there to be the eleventh Uno? We are the creators of the code, we are the developers- we are everything related to this code.
No one can be Uno without learning from us. But we were committed, we did not teach the code to anyone. Then how come there will be another Uno just out of the blue?"

"That's right," said Arya. "Even for the sake of argument if we assume that there is indeed a second-generation Uno, there is still a problem, sir. How is it possible for that person to ace the original Uno? That person could destroy the tracer worm you made and even destroy data from digital logs...while being one of the creators of Uno-code, you even couldn't show someone the digital footprint of an external user!"

"Why did I say it was a big mystery?" 
Dr. Donnen smiled bitterly, "not only there is an eleventh Uno, but also I believe that mysterious Uno is the strongest Uno in this world!"

The two assassins were closely monitoring the feed from the closed-circuit TV camera monitors mounted on the walls of the operations center.
Suddenly Alpha-One was startled,  three people were seen on a screen in that corner, emerged in conversation.

He looked at the old man's face, then said in an excited voice,
"Got it! That guy!"

Turning his head, Alpha-Two also saw the picture. He said, "you are right.  That is our target."

Alpha-One read the text in the corner of the screen, "Nine-D. Find out where is that, quickly."

The second killer turned the page by picking up a guide from the side of the console.
"It's the office of the facility's security chief."

"What is that guy doing there, leaving behind his lab work?" Muttered
Alpha-One picking up the map and looked at the office location. Then he faced his companion, "initiate phase two."

Alpha-Two shook his head and stood up. 
He had a specially made haversack under his clothing which couldn't be understood from the outside.
From that, he took out two gas masks, one for the leader, the other for himself.

Then he took out three narrow tubes — each one was one foot long and  looked like a mini cylinder for holding compressed air. Just above the head, the filter used for the circulation of air in the ceiling was there. Standing on the chair and reaching for it, Alpha-Two took a small screwdriver out of his pocket and opened the filter.

"Would three tubes be enough?" said Alpha- One standing in front of the power console.

"Of course," replied Alpha-Two. 
"The air volume inside the dome has been calculated already. So I have brought more than necessary."

"Good."

"Don't forget to turn off the emergency lighting."

"I won't," said Alpha-One and pressed a few buttons on the power console.
Then he said, "are you ready?"

"Absolutely." Alpha-Two wore a gas mask on his face.

Alpha-One also wore a mask and said, "On my Mark...three, two, one — now!"

In one sweep, the second assassin opened the mouth of the tubes. with a hissing sound, light green gas started coming out of them. He threw it inside the ventilation duct.

 Mixed with the airflow of the shaft
after a while, the gas will spread throughout the dome. 

Alpha-One shook his head, then pressed a button on the console.
Immediately, the entire research facility plunged into complete darkness.
There weren't any sources of light anywhere in the facility.
The emergency back up power sources were also shut down. So everything around was emersed in pitch back darkness.

The assailants took two Uji submachine guns hidden under the jacket and took out their
night-vision goggles out of the  haversack.

Alpha-One said in a calm voice, "mark the time. We'll be out in three minutes."