"Yeah. So you’re the fearless bastard who thinks he can grab Vice by the leash and shake him around?"
Brick’s arrogant question broke the heavy silence, and Ji-hwan curled one corner of his mouth.
"I don’t know about grabbing him by the leash."
"That trash is dying today. You two probably think the same thing, don’t you?"
Ji-hwan said it because he knew exactly how things would end for the two men who would one day spill each other’s blood for Maelstrom’s throne, right here, ten years from now.
But Royce reacted differently.
Royce shot a sideways glance at the low-level gang member who had led them here and was now trembling like a leaf.
Then he looked back at the nonsense spewing from the man in front of him.
Royce didn’t think twice. He decided to blow the heads off both the idiot who’d dragged them here and the bastard in front of him who was clearly pulling some kind of stunt.
Click.
"... ?"
But before the muzzle could even come out, an embarrassed metallic sound slipped through Royce’s torn lips.
The wrist he’d tried to draw with wouldn’t budge, as if it had been pinned under a slab of steel.
At some point, Ji-hwan had closed the distance, and his thick hand was brutally pressing down on the chrome back of the hand that had been reaching for the gun.
Speed that seemed to vanish and reappear in the blink of an eye. Royce’s grotesque red multi-LED eyes flashed wildly.
Instinctively, he clenched his remaining left chrome fist. He meant to crush Ji-hwan’s face in one shot.
Then, in that same instant, the tip of the sharp dagger in Ji-hwan’s other hand slid coldly into the gap beneath Royce’s artificial neural system, right under his jaw.
A razor-thin position. One hard push, and the whole throat would be gone.
Ji-hwan’s lips parted, and his low, rough voice pressed down on the air.
"Royce. You’re not that necessary."
"You fucking bas..."
The fierce momentum of the man who’d been reaching for his gun froze in an instant, and the two men were on the verge of exploding.
"Wait."
"Why did you come looking for us?"
Brick stepped in to block them. Ji-hwan glanced at Royce, who was glaring at him like he wanted to kill him, and spoke.
"You know there’s a bomb planted here?"
"Bullshit. You think that kind of cheap trick will work on us?"
A sour sneer slipped out between Royce’s torn lips.
But Ji-hwan kept provoking him with the ease of someone who had expected that reaction.
"Strictly speaking, it’s not a bomb. But you do know there’s an old main gas line buried under this place, right? If you don’t even know that, you’re really stupid."
Royce’s multi-LED eyes flickered irritably.
Just as he started to raise his fist in a rage, Brick stepped in again.
"Why bring that up? That line’s been shut down for ages. It should be useless."
"The pipe may be shut, but they never drained the gas out of it."
Ji-hwan cut him off cleanly, and a deep shock crossed Brick’s hardened face.
"What?"
"You don’t have to believe me. But if I’m right, the consequences end with all of us dying here."
Ji-hwan threw the two frozen lieutenants a short, simple choice.
"Just open a path for me. I’ll take the boss’s head and get out. After that, do whatever the hell you want. Tear each other apart, fuck around, I don’t care."
"If you’re lying, I’ll make you beg me to kill you."
Royce ground his jaw and spat out the threat viciously.
"Do whatever you want."
Ji-hwan ignored the warning completely and didn’t even give him a look.
Brick and Royce locked eyes in silence, then each synced up their private comm frequencies and began a covert exchange.
Ji-hwan waited patiently for their conversation to end.
How much time passed? After the call ended, Brick clicked his tongue and spoke.
"You’ve got some serious balls. Who the hell are you?"
"Huh?"
Ji-hwan frowned. Then a short laugh burst out of him in disbelief.
"Ha. Didn’t know that."
Information about himself. That pathetic coward Vice had clearly kept his own identity locked down tight, too scared to let his subordinates get rattled, and had been the only one carrying it around, trembling all by himself.
Ji-hwan lifted his chin and asked,
"You really don’t know who I am?"
"Cut the bullshit and say it now!"
Royce barked in an irritated metallic voice.
"The guy who’s been making your lives hell for the last few days is standing right in front of you."
The moment those heavy words dropped, even Brick’s usually rational face was painted with shock and began to shake.
But Royce was driven by instinct before reason.
Click-!
With a rough mechanical snap, his chrome hand swept up from his waist and the muzzle locked onto Ji-hwan’s forehead in one clean motion.
Deep in Ji-hwan’s dark eyes, a sharp red glint flashed.
At the same time, the muscle fibers all over his body swelled as if they were about to burst, and a deep crimson haze began to boil furiously over his skin.
Facing the gun aimed at him, Ji-hwan said flatly, in a dry voice stripped of all warmth,
"Go ahead. Shoot."
Royce’s grotesque lens trembled just as he was about to pull the trigger.
"What... ?"
"What flies off instead will be your neck."
In front of that frozen killing intent, in the split second while Royce’s lens quivered over the gun barrel, Ji-hwan had every intention of taking his head clean off.
Anyway, this was ten years in the future. If Royce died here, some other lunatic would just take over Maelstrom’s vacant seat.
And with Brick standing beside him, who would go on to run Maelstrom well all the way until 2077, Royce wasn’t exactly necessary to him.
As for whatever happened to the story after his meeting with V, that was someone else’s problem.
Just as Ji-hwan’s hand was about to slash through the air and move for Royce’s throat,
"Cut the crap, Royce."
With a heavy grinding sound, Brick shoved himself forcefully between them and stopped him.
Royce still had plenty of use left. And more than anything, the man in front of them was not someone they could kill easily.
In that hair-trigger standoff, Royce, who had been aiming his gun with a vicious snarl, suddenly twisted his face into something grotesque and laughed.
"Kekekeke!"
Click.
As if he had never drawn a gun at all, Royce casually shoved the pistol into the pocket at his waist.
"Shit, I almost really died messing around just now."
At that twisted, over-the-line joke, Ji-hwan let out a short, incredulous breath and cut the output of his body enhancement back down.
"I was already planning to tear that coward apart with my own hands anyway."
Royce, having tucked away his pistol, ground his jaw and spat out his hatred for Vice.
Brick added context.
Back when the previous Maelstrom boss had raided a Militech warehouse, that pathetic bastard Vice had found Militech’s secret military weapon in a corner of the storage area: a massive exoskeleton called Centaur.
"That bastard burned the previous boss to ash with it. Then he swallowed this whole Maelstrom."
Royce and Brick had seen through Vice’s cowardly nature and had been quietly sharpening their own chance to stage a coup and cut his throat, waiting for the moment he let his guard down.
When their information exchange ended, with Brick and Royce quickly laying out a plan to disrupt the base’s security network and open a route, Ji-hwan turned away without another glance, as if there was nothing left worth hearing, and headed deeper inside.
"Dirty business. Never want to see you again."
"Right back at you, asshole!"
Royce’s filthy curse scattered into the dark of the abandoned factory.
Ji-hwan kept his mouth shut and quietly watched the backs of the two lieutenants as they disappeared into the darkness.
All that remained was a short wait. Leaning against a corner wall, Ji-hwan waited for the signal from his enemies.
The scene shifted to the large break area for Maelstrom’s mid-level lieutenants inside the All Foods meat processing plant.
It was a powder keg, with the faction loyal to Vice and the faction following Royce and Brick mixed together in a precarious balance.
Kreeeeek.
As the heavy steel door opened and Royce strode in with irritated steps, one of the lieutenants who’d been snickering in a corner of the break room stepped in front of him.
The bastard was a nasty little lackey who always licked Vice’s boots and took every chance he could get to put Royce down.
"Hey, Royce. What’s with that face? Boss beat you up again?"
It was a taunting remark. But instead of getting angry like usual, Royce just kept his mouth shut and stared at the man’s face as if he meant to bore a hole straight through it.
Only silence answered him, and the lieutenant, suddenly awkward after his own jab, furrowed his brow.
"Shit, I’m asking if your ear implant’s busted! Are you ignoring me?"
Just as the man started to step forward angrily, a grotesque curve formed between Royce’s torn lips.
"I was looking for someone to use as a fireworks display."
A dry voice.
"Lucky for me, you were right in front of me."
The lieutenant’s eye lenses flickered with confusion, as if asking what kind of bullshit that was.
"Uh... ?"
Before that stupid exhale could even cut the air, Royce’s chrome hand shot out, shoved a viciously large hand cannon under the bastard’s chin, and pulled the trigger at once.
Tatatatang!!
The next sound was the blast, and when the man’s skull burst like a watermelon, crushed gray matter and red fluid rained down over the ceiling and walls.
"W-What the hell is this insane shit!!"
The Vice faction lieutenants, their faces splattered with blood, jumped to their feet in shock.
Then Brick appeared behind Royce with his own men behind him and spoke up.
"You all thought the rumor about bombs under this factory was bullshit, didn’t you?! It’s real!"
Brick’s voice, usually so concerned for his crew, rang out, and Royce, whose reputation was lousy but whose charisma surpassed Brick’s, added one more line.
"You gonna die under that bastard Vice, or are you gonna live?"
At Royce’s incitement, the eye lenses of the gang members in the Royce-and-Brick faction all flashed viciously in unison, and the faces of Vice’s people went ash-gray as they sensed something was badly off.
"You, you traitor bastards! Shoot them all!"
With a frantic shout, gun barrels spit fire.
Tatatatang!! Kwaang!!
Inside the cramped break room, a mad firefight exploded, and no one could tell friend from foe.
Plasma flames shot up, severed chrome arms and red fluid sprayed everywhere.
Kwaang!!
"You traitor bastards! I’m telling Boss Vice everything!!"
And in the middle of it all, one of Vice’s lieutenants crawled through the bodies of his crushed comrades, screaming in rage.
Royce slung the blood-dripping hand cannon over his shoulder and drew a grotesque smile.
"Yeah. Go tell your daddy."
He cleared the path with his gun and let the bastard run.
The scene shifted to the main bunker at the deepest part of the base. Vice’s encrypted comm terminal was ringing loudly.
On the hologram linked to it, the face of the subordinate who had just fled appeared in a panic.
[B-Boss! Royce and Brick, those crazy bastards, started a revolt!!]
The subordinate on the screen didn’t care whether Royce was watching him from behind or not. He kept barking into the air in a frenzy.
[You traitor bastards! When the boss gets here, you’re dead meat!! Boss, hurry and—!]
Taaang-!
The subordinate’s skull burst like a watermelon, red fluid covering the hologram lens, and the screen cut out for a moment in grotesque static.
From upstairs came the faint vibration of rough gunfire and screams.
Grinding his teeth, Vice spat curses at Royce and Brick.
"You fucking animals...!"
Vice’s mind tangled itself into knots.
He knew better than anyone how vicious those two were, ever since the days when he had crawled under them.
The two of them commanded followers with overwhelming charisma inside the gang. He had kept them alive because he knew there would be fierce backlash if he purged them immediately, but he had always planned to tear them apart when the chance came.
And if things ever got truly bad, he had intended to drag out that "weapon" currently under repair and burn them to ash with it.
But now the situation had twisted into something far too urgent.
The repeated failures of the lieutenants he’d sent to raid Dakota’s garage. The severed connection with the giant corporation Zetatech that had been backing him. The rebellion sparked inside the base. And above all, the presence of the unknown hunter Ji-hwan, who had already come for his throat outside the stronghold.
A cliff edge with nowhere to go.
Terrified, Vice sucked in ragged breaths, then seemed to make up his mind and strode out of the bunker.
He arrived at the deepest secret hangar.
There, in the stench of thick oil, a massive steel structure crouched, bound in layer after layer of heavy chains.
Countless Maelstrom technicians were hanging off the giant armor, throwing sparks as they frantically tuned and adjusted its parts.
Militech’s massive military exoskeleton, Centaur, the weapon that had once crushed the former boss and handed Vice the throne.
A grotesque metallic sound slipped through Vice’s torn lips.
"Yeah."
The shell of the coward, trembling in fear, peeled away, and madness filled the space it left behind.
"I’ll kill them all."
The lenses covering his face blazed with vicious red light.
Kwaaaang-!
A heavy explosion shook the ceiling. The fireworks of rebellion that Royce and Brick had launched were turning the entire factory into chaos.
Ji-hwan turned his back on that roaring vibration and slipped into the underground where no light was allowed to reach.
His target was the unknown abyss not shown on Dakota’s schematics: the third basement level.
At a corridor corner thick with the stench of oil, one gang member on guard with flashing red multi-lenses lifted his head at the blast from upstairs.
In that moment, Ji-hwan’s thick hand shot out of the darkness and brutally clamped over the bastard’s jaw and the back of his head.
Crack-!
With the sound of bones grinding apart, the man’s neck bent grotesquely.
"Uh... ?"
Several steps away, another leftover gang member snapped his head around at the sound.
Swaaaat-!
The sharp dagger that had left Ji-hwan’s hand tore through the air and violently pierced the man’s open throat and skull.
"Grrrkk..."
The sound of liquid boiling. The body, unable even to spit out a dying breath, lost its balance and toppled onto the dirt floor.
Thud-!
The corpse hit the ground with a heavy jolt, and Ji-hwan silently lowered the first man’s body to the floor after tightening his grip on him.
At the echo of that thud, Ji-hwan held his breath and pressed himself against the cold wall, waiting for anyone drawn by the noise.
Tadadak, tak!
Then the harsh scrape of mechanical joints came charging down the corridor from the far end.
"Shit, there’s a riot upstairs! What the hell are you doing down here? Move it!"
The leftover group spat curses into the air and swept right past the blind spot where Ji-hwan was hiding.
The furious explosions and civil war upstairs had swallowed every little sound below them.
Once the footsteps had fully faded, a tiny breath slipped through Ji-hwan’s tightly closed lips.
"Hoo..."
Good. He hadn’t been trailed.
Royce and Brick, the two mad lieutenants, were pulling the base’s attention upward exactly as planned. All that was left now was the fight with Vice.
Ji-hwan kicked off the ground and shot even deeper downward.
At last he reached the deepest part of the factory, the third basement level.
A secret space that did not exist in any data. At the end of the corridor, where the heavy air pressed down hard, a massive alloy steel door stood firmly in his way.
Vice’s final abyss.
Ji-hwan tightened his thick, bone-hard grip around the cold handle of the steel door.
Kreeeeek-.
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