Preemptive Strike
Se-gun said it as he spread a book open on the low platform. In truth, every vampire found Tetra Anax's iron grip deeply grating. Their talent for gathering and twisting information was undeniable, but no one with ambition wanted to hand them the reins of everything and simply live under their shadow.
"That said, I don't think we're in any position to sit back and trust their little power struggles to do the work for us."
"Which is why I'm going on the offensive."
"Huh?"
Leaving Kenneth gaping like a fish, Se-gun pulled out his armament. The USAS-12 — with firepower like that, it would be a nightmare in urban combat. Which was exactly what worried Kenneth Yang.
"You sure about this? Better not do anything stupid. The cops are already on edge. And that thing's loud as hell. You can't even slap a suppressor on it."
"I've got my own ways around that. More importantly — you going to teach me how to use the explosives properly?"
"C-4's simple. Fiddle with it, stick a detonator in, blow it up."
"No — I mean for efficient destruction."
"You know how to use an electric drill, right? That ought to be enough."
Even as he said it, Kenneth went over the explosives again. Se-gun already knew how to handle them — Song Deok-yeon had taught him. What Kenneth was teaching was where and how to place a charge so that it wrecked a structure most effectively.
Of course, it was a far cry from professional demolition engineering. The usual principles of bomb terrorism — collapse, then shrapnel raining down under gravity to multiply the damage — did not work against vampires. Their reflexes and mobility made escaping a collapsing zone entirely too likely. So the charges had to function more like a Claymore: C-4 plastic explosive packed with ball bearings, designed to fire them out like a shotgun. In short, it was a crash course in anti-vampire explosives.
"Damn it. Somehow I keep getting dragged deeper into your mess. The money's good, I'll give you that."
And it was. Se-gun had been hauling in vampires left and right and raking in serious cash. With so many other hunters dead, the blood supply had dried up, and that only made Se-gun more valuable. Even Bill Murray had grown distinctly friendly after Se-gun helped him out. Se-gun was enjoying an unprecedented boom.
"I'm heading out, then. You shouldn't hang around someone else's place either. Get going."
"Right. Take care of yourself."
"Don't need you to tell me."
Se-gun answered and walked outside. Business was good these days. Instead of hunting vampires, he made the vampires come to him. Fishing with his own life as bait — but so far, it had worked beautifully.
In the western sky, the sun was sinking through smog, the light slowly turning violet. Se-gun looked up at it and covered his eyes.
Ah, hell…
Maybe it was all the drugs. He saw the classic LSD hallucination: the sky melting.
A pain like something scraping out my guts dragged me awake, and it was night again. Humans or vampires — if you don't eat, you die. Was it because I hadn't taken blood yesterday? Today my whole body was empty of strength.
"Damn it."
Yesterday I had sworn I would never do that again. The oath meant nothing. I was back out on the street. To hunt humans. But weren't the ones who sat properly atop this society and rotted the world far more evil than kids wandering the alleys? Why was it so easy to unleash brutal violence on young men for no better reason than that they were convenient to hit — and so hard when the target looked older, respectable? I shuddered again at my own lowborn instincts.
"But I have to drink blood."
That was the heart of it. Somehow, I had to feed. And if that meant violence against someone else, I would aim it at people who deserved a beating. Which only raised the next problem: who, exactly, deserved it?
"Damn it."
So I brainwashed myself. I am a hero. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man — one of those Western comic-book types. No full-body tights, but a body no normal person could live with. In that case I would exercise violence in the name of justice as much as possible. I pumped myself up and went out into the street.
Next target… a certain recently infamous private school foundation. The foundation's revenue came solely from student tuition. With that money they kept founding more schools, firing teachers and professors who opposed them, wallowing in corruption and graft while stacking up academic power — the H Educational Foundation. This time the target was the chairman's family. A cleaner, surer mark. This time I would definitely drink. And take whatever cash was lying around. Not one punch and then flinching regret — I would show them what righteous retribution actually looked like.
The H Educational Foundation had been a mess lately — students protesting over faculty appointments, professors boycotting classes. But the front of the chairman's house was the picture of calm. It had to be: a line of thug-like bodyguards stood out front, enough that no normal person would dare approach.
Even now, mired in this unseemly boycott, the H Foundation firmly believed itself a prestigious private school. Through the education of the Republic of Korea, I shall carve out the pillars that uphold the nation — with that iron sense of mission, Chairman Seong Hyeon-cheol was said to suffer constantly. A man who suffered even at the wind brushing the leaves, apparently.
In any case, he loved all things that studied, and he loathed children who skipped their proper work to go demonstrate. He could not tolerate teachers who boycotted class for their own interests either — the very people who ought to have been teaching those children well.
I have never once done anything that shamed me before my own conscience. For this educational foundation — and further, for this nation — I have devoted myself wholly to building a superior educational environment. Those who seek to insult me are nothing more than a malicious minority. I place family members in key posts because they are people I can trust, and because they possess the ability; this is by no means privatization of the foundation. In fact, the income I declared last year barely exceeded twenty million won.
The same is true of faculty appointments. I am well aware that Professor Choi harbors ill will toward me, but he spent his classes airing political opinions highly unsuitable for students while neglecting actual instruction. Reappointing such a man would have been poison to our academy, and so he was not reappointed. There has been much talk of the fact that Professor Kim, who filled that post, is the younger brother of Dean Kim — yet Professor Kim is a man who has long contributed to the development of Korean culture and once served as a professor at S University.
A man who would not be out of place as president of a university still has such passion for education that he wishes to teach students on the front lines. Those who distort these facts and slander me are themselves the wicked ones who seek privatization of the academy and its vested interests!
That was the official notice Chairman Seong Hyeon-cheol had issued. Every line of it was so thoroughly correct that throngs of students ought to have been moved to admiration — and yet everyone was full of complaints. People with such negative thinking were clearly Korea-haters. The sort who decided society was rotten and hated the country on principle! Without a doubt they were radical Reds who wanted to tear the present order down and build a communist society worshipping Kim Jong-il.
Ah, if only Chairman Seong's father, back in the Japanese colonial period, had finished wiping out those Reds while working as a Japanese military collaborator — Korea might have been a finer place. Of course others called him the son of a pro-Japanese traitor and tried to pick at that, but Chairman Seong believed his father had loved this fatherland so deeply that he had devoted himself to removing, in advance, the ruffians, thugs, and communists who would ruin the world to come!
But Professor Kim was Professor Kim. Already wavering over whether to fold under a boycott of that level, and he had called yesterday — Seong was beginning to seriously doubt whether the shameless Dean Kim's brother was really the same man. Was it such a big deal that Professor Kim had lifted his teaching assistant's thesis wholesale at S University and been forced out of teaching when the assistant reported him?
As for that Professor Choi — an insufferable Jeolla-do native who opposed the military regime, who dug endlessly into pro-Japanese collaboration records, and who went around like a stalker uncovering exactly how much the chairman's family owned and what they had said under the military governments.
A vicious creature who trampled on personal privacy. In a harsh age a man might misspeak a little — was that any reason to exploit it forever, or to keep gnawing at a bit of asset management? What was so strange about buying real estate and selling it dear? (Of course, the real estate had belonged to the foundation, purchased with educational tax breaks that amounted to nearly nothing, then converted to private ownership and sold high — but that, too, was merely a form of investment.) In any case, there would always be people who simply could not stand to see someone else succeed.
"Ahem. The car just isn't moving well today. Don't you think so, Driver Kim?"
The chairman stepped down from his Equus and sighed. At his age a man ought to ride something that matched his dignity — and yet a domestic car… That alone proved what a patriot he was. Of course there was a framed personal letter from the Japanese emperor hanging splendidly in the house, but was that proof of being pro-Japanese? A real collaborator would have burned it in terror of other people's eyes. No — it was an antique of cultural value. A cultured man had a duty to pass cultural heritage to the next generation. How could he burn such a treasure for fear of a moment's public gaze?
Then he noticed a strange figure loitering at the front gate. God only knew whose brat it was — filthy as if he hadn't washed his face in a week, eyes glittering like a beast's, looking thoroughly dangerous. A real uneducated bastard, that one!
"Ah, Chairman. We'll run him off right now."
The bodyguards, full of professional zeal, started toward the vicious bastard skulking by the gate. The sort that no amount of education would fix — pure garbage. And those glittering eyes fixed on a house this fine could only mean a beggar out to shake someone down. As if there weren't already enough headaches lately, now some beggar had to loiter and get on his nerves! The chairman felt his mood souring as he opened the door.
That was when he heard it from behind — a thick, meaty thud, like flesh being struck. Seong Hyeon-cheol frowned at the sound. The kid was going to get a proper thrashing, he thought, turning his head — and froze. The bodyguards were all down. And that beggar-looking bastard, blood smeared around his mouth, was coming in through the gate like some demon crawled up out of hell.
"Urgh! Hey! Phone! Call the police, hey!"
In that instant the youth shot forward at terrifying speed, vaulted off the Equus, and cut Seong Hyeon-cheol off. Then, in a single motion, he drove a fist into the old man's face. With a wet crack Seong flew backward and hit the ground hard.
"Gaaah!"
No matter how vicious the old man might be, he was still an old man — one hit put him out. The youth worried, briefly, that drinking the blood might kill him from low blood pressure. But if he did not drink, he was the one who would die. So he took the fallen old man's arm and fed as far from the heart as he could manage — through the hand.
"Kyaaaaah!"
Sharp screams rose from inside the house; people were yelling about calling the police. He was confident he would not be caught. Had anyone ever seen Spider-Man or Batman get arrested by the cops?
"Nice!"
He cleaned out the chairman's wallet and immediately launched himself away from the scene. Originally he had meant to go inside and take the cash, but if the police arrived that would be a problem — so he settled for enough and bailed. Greed had no end.
Meanwhile, Flex Medical had gone to emergency footing. Their intelligence network used every means short of pure science fiction; any information of interest reached them almost at once. Of course no one there was unaware of the upstart named Han Se-gun who dared to plan a bomb attack against them. Se-gun had gathered explosives with considerable enthusiasm — and the moment he bought them, he had landed on a blacklist.
"This is simply incredible."
Elliot Bryce, who governed Tetra Anax's Korean branch, stared at the file on Han Se-gun in pure disbelief. He could not begin to understand what this kid was thinking, challenging Tetra Anax. Granted, for a vampire hunter he was highly capable, and still growing.
But trying to blow up Tetra Anax's Korean branch? It beggared belief. Before he could even get angry, he was simply speechless. Tetra Anax was a vampire clan, yes — but it was also a vast economic machine.
They were the world's foremost medical group, having already mapped both the human genome and the vampire genome. How could anyone fail to grasp that any act destroying this group was a step backward for human civilization itself?
He swept his long bangs aside and fixed them with a hairband.
"Why don't we just kill him right now?"
As if money were rotting from excess, young department head Shane Bryce had his feet up on the luxurious ebony furniture of the president's office. Younger brother to Elliot Bryce, this vampire belonged — unlike Elliot — to the Sepia lineage, a rare pure combat specialist within Tetra Anax, scouted after his own clan's collapse. Where the elder brother wore a capable Bohemian suit, the younger was a hippie.
Leather jacket, hair dyed in loud colors, piercings through brow and tongue — a deliberately outrageous look, with madness rolling thick in his eyes.
"Well. There are a few problems with that. Outside the Oracles, Tetra Anax's Korean branch doesn't have much personnel. And I'm not even the president — just legal counsel!"
Tetra Anax had dispatched mostly Vampire Oracles; the branch was still small, and they could not throw combat assets at every problem. Nor could they simply push the other clans that had landed Jinma in Korea into the line of fire as cannon fodder against Se-gun, could they?
"How about giving the Juk-yo vampires a shot? Hand them a million dollars and an escape route out of Korea and they'll come at him with fire in their eyes. Tell them to make it an all-out war this time."
"And the police?"
Elliot asked, looking at his free-talking younger brother with something like pride. Shane tapped at the keyboard as he answered.
"Ha. Keep those piles of shit busy with something else. Mind-control a few lunatics into staging a hostage crisis, how about that? Or just tip the cops off about the kid. Call it in on a neighbor's phone line and they've got him. His place is basically an armory, right? Am I wrong?"
"Seoul isn't Brooklyn. And Tetra Anax are rulers, not destroyers. We could use the police to nail him, but a man with automatic rifles in his house turns into a social problem. Mm? Still — using the Juk-yo vampires is a good idea. Say what you will, those bastards are demons when it comes to fighting."
Shane's face soured. He was the type who sulked the moment his own specialty went without praise. He dressed like a freeloader, but there was a strangely diligent streak in him.
"Anyway, he needs removing. This guy's already screwed up our work more than once."
Just then a soft chime sounded from the computer messenger on the ebony desk. The internal intranet was fully built out; they used digital voice messengers instead of phones. Wearing a headset in place of a receiver was a mild nuisance, but Elliot put it on without complaint.
"What is it?"
"Counselor, you have a visitor."
"Who? Tell them I'm on, ah, long-term leave right now."
"She said you'd know if she gave the name Maria."
"Ugh."
At that, Elliot found he had nothing to say. Maria — the young girl who accompanied Messiah, leader of the Damned, bound to her by artificial blood vessels.