Ji-hwan stopped walking, still clutching the stiff paper envelope Mammoth had handed him.
The invitation he pulled from inside it bore the sender’s name in neat handwriting beneath a deep red seal.
Faraday
The moment he confirmed the name, Ji-hwan’s eyes narrowed.
The man who had betrayed Papa Sunrise and shoved him straight into hell. The current big-shot fixer of Santo Domingo.
"What a pain."
To dodge the Voodoo Boys’ hacking, he’d even gone so far as to use Pacifica’s analog backchannels to reach out.
It was obvious proof that the bastard had already set his sights on him. There was no avoiding this.
Ji-hwan roughly tore the invitation in half, stuffed it into his old coat pocket, and turned around.
"Where are you going?"
Mammoth, still puffing out thick cigar smoke, let out a metallic voice.
"Santo Domingo. I need to make a quick trip. Got a bike to spare?"
"Hah, this crazy bastard. You think I’m running a rental?"
Mammoth clicked his tongue and tossed a heavy metal key toward Ji-hwan.
Ji-hwan caught it easily out of the air. A geometric logo was stamped clearly into the palm of the key.
"It’s one of my babies. If you scratch it, I’ll wring your neck."
"Thanks!"
Ji-hwan gave a quick wave and left the dark corridor of the arena.
Clank. The moment he opened the massive iron door and stepped out of the abandoned building, his old terminal deep in his coat pocket gave a faint vibration.
An emergency encrypted message sent by the Voodoo Boys netrunner under Maman Brigitte’s contract.
[Sender: VDB. Warning. Five unidentified individuals entering Pacifica.]
But Ji-hwan didn’t notice that tiny tremor. As he stepped across the muddy ground and headed around the back of the ruined building, a huge silhouette came into view.
The sleek luxury bike corporate executives rode: an Arch Nazare. But this one was a vicious custom build, bolted up with matte-black armored plating and off-road suspension to support Mammoth’s massive frame.
"Real tasteful..."
Thud, thud.
Then, from across the dark alley in the rain, came strange footsteps.
Under the dim glow of a half-dead neon sign, the silhouette of a gaunt woman emerged.
A short blond cut plastered down by rain and mud. Her filthy hood was pulled low, making her look like just another Pacifica vagrant.
When she lifted her head, the light from an old streetlamp caught in her blue eyes.
Vacant eyes with no focus. She stared at Ji-hwan for a moment, then dragged her feet onward and slipped into the rain-soaked darkness.
A strange sense of wrongness.
Ji-hwan cast a brief look at her retreating back, then climbed onto the heavy bike and kicked it into life.
Vroooom-!!
The bulky frame threw off rainwater and shot violently through Pacifica’s darkness toward Santo Domingo.
The roaring exhaust faded into the distance.
Then, using the heavy rain as cover, a matte-black van with its headlights off silently took up the trail behind him.
The five-man elite bounty hunting crew that had infiltrated from Afterlife: the Viper Crew.
Inside the van, a hologram screen floated in the center of the five. It was looping footage of the rookie "K" rampaging through the Pacifica arena, overlaid with footage of the first-degree fugitive who had once run wild through a Biotechnica lab.
The netrunner Pixel’s artificial eyes flashed blue.
"Boss. Skeleton, muscle density, combat style—100% match. He’s only hiding his face with a mask. That K guy is the fugitive we’ve been looking for."
The leader, Viper, who had been staring intently at the screen, narrowed his eyes.
A target with an astronomical bounty, apparently rolling around in some backwater fight pit.
"You sure about that?"
"Come on, boss. You don’t trust me?"
While Pixel pouted, the sniper Ghost, polishing his rifle in the corner, let his lenses glint.
"Should we follow him?"
The chance to monopolize the bounty. Greed flashed across Viper’s mouth like a tear in the dark.
"Track only the GPS signal from his bike and keep your distance. We move."
A cold killing intent clung to Ji-hwan’s back. Hidden beneath the roar of the heavily modified exhaust and Pacifica’s rain, the presence of the hunters closing in was still buried in the dark.
Arroyo industrial district in Santo Domingo. The old live club Red Dirt.
Under the smoke pouring from the giant factory stacks stabbing into the night sky and the wildly flashing crimson neon signs, Ji-hwan cut the bike’s engine and got off, his coat hem fluttering.
The street vibrated with the smell of cheap synth beer and the rough curses of gang members. Ji-hwan pushed open the club’s heavy door with an indifferent step and went inside.
"Woooooah-!!"
The hard rock band’s ear-splitting performance and the cheers of the drunken crowd hit him all at once. Ji-hwan pushed through the loud, sticky mass of people and headed up to the second floor.
At the end of the soundproofed corridor, in front of the largest leather door.
At the same time, inside the room.
Faraday sat cross-legged on an old leather sofa, wearing a top-quality burgundy neo-kitsch suit and black gloves.
A hologram screen floated in the air, replaying Ji-hwan’s debut match—him dropping his opponent barehanded in the arena.
Faraday’s face-mounted four red artificial eyes greedily traced the muscles and movements of the Ji-hwan on screen.
"If only I could make a talent like that my own hands and feet."
"Boss. Your guest has arrived."
The bodyguard’s heavy voice came from outside. Faraday turned off the screen and calmly interlaced his fingers.
"Show him in."
The moment Faraday put on a friendly fixer’s smile.
Click. The heavy door opened, and Ji-hwan in his worn coat walked into the room.
"Nice to meet you, K. I’m Faraday, fixer of Santo Domingo."
"Nice to meet you. I’m K."
At Ji-hwan’s dry greeting, Faraday held out a glass of whiskey and offered him a seat.
"Make yourself comfortable. Want a drink?"
"I’m fine. Just tell me what you want."
That firm refusal, standing there stiffly and pushing the glass away. Faraday kept the smile on his face and got to the point.
"I’ll be blunt. It’s a shame to see your talent rotting away in Pacifica’s fight pits. Any interest in working under me?"
Poison wrapped in sugar. Ji-hwan stared straight into Faraday’s four red eyes and swallowed a sour laugh.
He’d probably approached Papa Sunrise with the same disgusting smile.
But Ji-hwan didn’t show even a trace of disgust. He only gave a casual shrug.
"As you can see, I’m not ambitious enough to get mixed up in something that grand."
A clear line drawn as a fight-pit brawler. Faraday didn’t let his easygoing attitude crack.
"Fair enough. I’ll admit it’s too soon for now."
"I appreciate the offer. I’ll be going then."
Ji-hwan turned without hesitation, opened the door, and left.
Only after he’d made it out of the corridor and back outside the club did Ji-hwan finally let out the heavy breath he’d been holding.
"Four eyes and they’re all full of themselves. Makes me sick."
Meanwhile, alone in the VIP room on the second floor, Faraday stared at the tightly shut door and slowly rolled his wine glass.
"He says he wants to keep his distance? What a clever little bastard."
Faraday summoned a communication hologram in the air.
"The masked guy who just left. Dig up everything on everyone he’s contacted in Pacifica."
[That failed last time as well...]
"Stop making excuses and dig."
After cutting the connection, an arrogant smirk unique to a control freak spread across Faraday’s mouth.
"In the end, you’ll crawl under my boot. When that happens, I’ll enjoy watching you struggle."
On a smoke-choked Santo Domingo night, each believing the other had been fooled, Ji-hwan’s back as he headed for his bike and the fixer’s sticky obsession, along with the hunters quietly tightening the net, tangled together in the rain.
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