Assault on Flex Medical
Se-gun stood atop the tilting crane, letting the hand winch feed out the wire from above.
Hissssss!
The black blade Noctis skidded down the steel frame of the crane in a shower of sparks. Exactly as planned, the crane toppled forward and smashed clean through the outer wall of Flex Medical headquarters.
"Hah!"
Like a skateboarder launching off a rail, Se-gun jumped and kicked the black blade free from under his feet, sending it streaking into the building while dust and debris still choked the air. Using the tension of the winch cable, he bled off his speed a second time and strolled casually inside after it.
"Gyaaaaaaah!"
One unlucky vampire hung impaled against the wall by the blind-flying sword. Se-gun walked over slowly and surveyed the surroundings.
Rrrrrrrumble!
The entire building shuddered from the impact of the crane. The way it shook made it clear the place could come down at any moment. Se-gun nevertheless yanked Noctis free as if it were nothing and cleaved the vampire's head from its shoulders.
"Gyaaaaaah!"
The vampire collapsed into ash with a hideous scream. That cry brought more of them swarming up from the stairwell.
"Kaaah!"
The first one to leap onto the floor was a heavyset brute carrying a massive body bunker, filling the corridor as he charged. Se-gun casually flung the black blade he had just drawn straight at the creature.
"Kh!"
The vampire twisted his head aside, dodging the terrifyingly fast blade. Yet at the exact moment it should have sailed past, Noctis stopped dead in midair and spun.
"Uwaaaagh!"
A razor-sharp cut opened across the vampire's back and he pitched forward. The others froze in shock, staring at the sword. Noctis was rotating in empty air, scattering darkness, with no hand holding it.
"Kraaaaaah."
The first vampire slowly pushed himself upright. Only then did he notice a pair of human legs already standing right in front of him. He jerked his head up on pure reflex—and found the cold metal mouth of a pistol jammed against his face.
Bang!
Se-gun pressed the Tokarev to the vampire's skull and pulled the trigger. Even a Tokarev, when it spat a bursting round packed with silver chips at point-blank range, made short work of a single vampire. Se-gun killed him, then hauled the corpse up into his arms.
Brrrrrrrt!
The vampires still trying to come down the stairs opened up with Uzi submachine guns. Se-gun used the body-bunker-toting corpse as a shield, letting it soak up the rounds while he drew the Beast from the holster on his leg.
KRA-BOOM!
The thunderous report sent four vampires flying at once. Se-gun finished them off in a single breath and turned toward the elevators. Despite the chaos, the building had been constructed so solidly that the elevator cars were still moving.
"Hup!"
He kicked the elevator doors off their tracks in one savage blow, yanked a block of TNT from the pack on his back, and dropped it down the shaft.
Clunk!
Something landed on the roof of the ascending car. The vampires who had been riding up as if it were any ordinary day looked up in startled confusion.
BOOM!
The blast and shockwave rolled out of the elevator hall and through the entire building. Se-gun threw himself sideways onto the floor to ride it out, already aiming the Beast down the right-hand corridor. A T-junction elevator lobby was always the natural rally point for the largest number of hostiles.
KRAANG!
A vampire sprinting down the hall raised his body bunker in time—but a Beast round was not something a body bunker could stop.
"Uwaaaaaagh!"
Hideous screams filled the corridor as vampires painted the walls with their own blood and meat. Using the revolver's recoil, Se-gun spun and trained the muzzle on the opposite hall.
Thud!
He kicked off a stylish interior column, adjusted his angle, and gave the vampires who had skidded to a halt a faint smile.
"Shit!"
Some tried to reverse course; a few dove for side doors. The Beast's bullets found them all the same, tearing them apart before they could react.
Whirrrr!
Se-gun spun the Beast in his grip, locked it, and popped the cylinder. Whether from the earlier spin or the simple act of extraction, the cylinder whirled like a slot machine and spat its spent casings on its own. He holstered the empty gun, stretched out his left hand, and called the still-spinning black blade back through the air.
This sword—said to have rested inside Prester John's coffin alongside sacred relics—held such vast magical power that even a complete magical layman like Se-gun could develop a feel for it simply by using it.
"Useful tool, sure. Still pisses me off knowing it's from the same lineage as Sarhyuk."
Technically it was Juyda's, but the mere fact it had come out of something called Prester John's ark was already enough to make his skin crawl. Not that it mattered. Se-gun's time was almost gone. Merely looking at the sun now hurt enough to drive him mad, and his physical abilities had already climbed to match any ordinary vampire. Today would almost certainly be the last day he lived as a human.
"Die!"
He drove Noctis straight through the wall. The office partition parted like paper, and blood sprayed from the other side.
"What the—!"
The office door burst open and armed vampires who looked nothing like office workers poured out.
Brrrrrt!
They poured concentrated submachine-gun fire into Se-gun. He crossed both arms in front of himself and simply took every round. Clad head to toe in ballistic materials, he was not going down to that level of impact.
"What?!"
Hissss!
A black line raced down the corridor. The vampires froze mid-burst the instant they recognized it—the same detonating cord Se-gun had used to annihilate the flock from the crane earlier.
KRA-BOOM!
Another explosion rocked the entire building.
Detective Jo clicked his tongue as he stared at the collapsed wreckage. There should not have been a single civilian left inside this building. A bomb terrorist had even called ahead and announced his arrival; no sane person would have stayed. So what the hell were these people still doing here?
"Looks like they never evacuated at all."
"…Pretty heavy firepower for private security."
Superintendent Hwang picked up a discarded Uzi from the floor and sighed. He still did not understand how events had spiraled this far, but the elevator hall had been completely obliterated by the blast. The precision and sheer audacity of it all were far beyond what a lone terrorist should have been capable of.
"…It's a literal war."
More explosions and gunfire thundered from the floors above. One invader, and a heavily armed private security force fighting him. That something this cinematic could be happening in real life was almost unreal.
"Wh-what do we do?"
Lieutenant Han Jeong-yeol, commanding the riot police, wore a look of pure panic. They had brought him in because he led a K-2-armed unit, but he was a brand-new lieutenant with almost no field experience. Elite police-academy graduate or not, no one stayed unafraid in a war zone like this.
"Where's SWAT?"
"Command says stand down completely. We're ordered to pull out immediately ourselves."
Superintendent Hwang exhaled a long, weary breath. An order to ignore what was happening right in front of them? How was that even supposed to make sense?
"Cut the bullshit and get up those stairs!"
The words had barely left his mouth when a sharp bang echoed from the stairwell.
"…Grenade."
"Any police casualties?"
"None of ours. But the private security…"
Every officer's face fell. The mysterious terrorist Han Se-gun had almost certainly dropped grenades down the stairwell to seal off anyone coming up from below, detonating them in midair. Elevator shafts and stairwells ran vertically through every floor; a single blast in either could devastate the entire building.
In other words, if the fighting continued this way the structure would collapse for certain, and every cop who had entered would be buried alive.
"…We're pulling out."
"Sir?"
Detective Jo stared in shock as Superintendent Hwang heaved a deep sigh. The idea that his respected senior, Hwang Seok-yeong, would ever abandon a pursuit had never even crossed his mind.
"Yeah."
If the building came down now, the body count would be catastrophic. He could not march his men into a death trap. Yet everyone understood what would happen to Superintendent Hwang if they withdrew. Upper command had told him to stand down, but it had been a radio order only—no paper trail. They could deny it the moment it became inconvenient. Pulling out now would leave Hwang holding the bag alone. The incident had already grown far too large to contain; as head of the special investigation unit, he would take the full blame.
"…Son of a bitch!"
Detective Jo bit down hard on his lower lip. The habits of bureaucracy never changed no matter how many responsible people tried to fight them.
"Get the hell out, you bastards! Our lives count for something too, don't they?!"
Superintendent Hwang clenched his teeth and ordered the full withdrawal.
"Why isn't he just bringing the whole building down?"
Elliot turned the question over carefully. Demolishing a structure with bombs alone was difficult unless they were planted inside, yet after the crane strike Flex Medical headquarters was already little better than a ruin. External force alone could finish it. And still Han Se-gun had chosen to go inside.
"…Of course. Format every computer. The mainframe too. Wipe every backup! Snap the hard drives clean in half."
Elliot had finally grasped Se-gun's real objective. The bastard had the gall to try to steal the Korean branch's data for Tetra Anax itself! Tetra Anax had already foreseen this entire affair; even the destruction of the Korean branch would not endanger Elliot's position. But if information on Tetra Anax itself leaked, not even he would escape the consequences.
He might end up as nothing more than a brain in a life-support tank, launched into orbit. Actual Vampiric Oracle satellites already floated up there—vessels Tetra Anax had fired into space for exactly that purpose.
"I'd rather die than end up like that!"
Elliot ground his teeth and began arming himself. The moment he finished strapping on a ballistic vest and loading rifle rounds, a scream burst from the keyphone on his desk. He had been speaking with the central data room only moments earlier. Now screams were coming from that line.
"Already?"
Elliot shot to his feet. Over a hundred armed vampires were stationed inside the building. Had a single man already seized the main computer room?
The corridor was slick with vampire blood.
"Kyaaaah!"
A small, hunchbacked vampire lunged, razor claws flashing. Se-gun blocked the strike with the Beast and drove an uppercut with his left arm—the one fitted with the shotgun shells.
Crack!
The vampire exploded into fragments as if a firecracker had gone off inside him. Se-gun spun and smashed a ghoul-fied Doberman that leapt at his back. The Beast, heavy as a steel club, caved in the upper half of the dog's skull. Even with its head and snout gone, the creature still tried to bite him using only its lower jaw.
"You son of a bitch!"
Se-gun crushed the Doberman's spine with his elbow and hurled detonating cord behind him.
Whoosh!
The vampires opened fire in panic. Se-gun covered his face with both arms and simply charged straight through their midst.
BOOM!
The cord detonated, shredding the vampires wrapped in it into chunks of meat as if they had been fed into a chainsaw.
"Hup!"
One vampire grabbed a steel office desk that had been used as a barricade and flung it. Se-gun slid under it and closed the distance in a flash.
"Keuk!"
As he brushed past on a diagonal, Noctis leapt free of its sheath. The black blade carved a perfect arc, severing neck and left shoulder in one stroke.
Shlick!
"Kyaaaaaah!"
Se-gun shoved the body down the hall and lobbed a grenade into the branching corridor beyond. His hands blurred as he switched weapons.
Tuk-tuk-tuk!
Three-round bursts from the Glock dropped the vampires trying to pour in through the shattered exterior wall. They tumbled back outside with holes in their heads. One, however, wore enough body armor that only headshots would drop him; he absorbed the rounds and leapt inside.
"Die!"
The vampire, armed with an OICW, fired a 20 mm grenade. Se-gun kicked a shattered vampire skull into the grenade's path and threw himself backward at the same instant.
"Uwaaaaaagh!"
The grenade detonated right in front of the muzzle; the firer was torn apart by his own blast. This was a battlefield pure and simple. Wave after wave of vampires kept coming, and Se-gun met every one of them without flinching.
"M-monster!"
Inside the main computer room the remaining researchers were frantically wiping everything. External media—CDs, DVDs—had already been destroyed, but the hard drives were still mid-format.
"Just destroy them physically!"
Even researchers were still vampires. One of them simply lifted an entire computer case and smashed it against the floor. The case itself still protected the drives, though. When they finally tore the chassis open, each server held eight hard disks; the prospect of crushing them all by hand was grim.
The room was sealed as tightly as a bank vault. No matter how monstrous the attacker might be, without a keycard he should never get in. He should not.
Thud!
Something strange scraped against the door; the whole frame shuddered.
Se-gun had packed RDX into the hinge gaps and detonated it. Bank vault doors were supposed to shrug off plastic explosive, but this one was not reactive armor and it was rigidly fixed to the wall. It had to absorb every joule of the blast. It would not last long.
BOOM!
A second explosion. The door still held. Se-gun's face twisted. He had emptied an entire tube of RDX and the door refused to yield. Every second he wasted was another second for them to finish wiping the data.
"Tch. A little short, huh?"
He stared at the tattered door and sighed. Then more vampires appeared, racing down the side corridor.
Whoosh!
Se-gun drew the Beast in a blur and fired. A six-man fireteam in ballistic vests and grenade launchers was erased in an instant. One vampire, though, displayed astonishing reflexes—he vaulted over the Beast's shot, kicked off the ceiling, and came flying at Se-gun.
"Kaaah!"
Jaws open, he aimed for Se-gun's throat. Se-gun did not retreat. He met the vampire with a straight left that caved in the front of the skull and blew blood out the back of the head.
"Hmph."
He hoisted the corpse overhead and slammed it into the door. Two previous blasts had already weakened the panel; the added mass finished the job and the door cracked open. Se-gun jammed his fingers into the gap and forced the security shutter wide with pure arm strength.
Screeeech!
Gunfire erupted the moment the door opened. Every round struck the vampire corpse Se-gun was using as a shield.
"Ah—!"
The vampires inside—researchers more than fighters—held their weapons in awkward grips and froze at the sight of him. The young man in the blood-soaked black racing suit looked like a demon that had clawed its way up from hell itself.
"All right. Hand over the data, you pieces of trash."
Blue fire burning in his eyes, the vampire hunter dragged the still-twitching head of a dying vampire and advanced on the researchers. Incendiary rounds had already set the floor ablaze; smoke and flame filled the room as the green-haired hunter approached with those burning blue eyes. The nightmare was more than the faint-hearted researchers could endure.
"Heh… heh-heh-heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh."
One of them—vampire or not—began laughing madly. Living their entire lives under Tetra Anax's protection, they had never imagined a human vampire hunter could reduce them to this. Se-gun snorted and looked past them at the servers. Dozens of massive units sat packed into the racks; he had no idea which ones actually mattered.
Why were the monitors dark? He twisted his left arm slightly.
Click!
The spent casing in the knuckle blaster ejected itself under gas pressure. Se-gun used the free hand to power on a monitor.
"Still formatting. How many hard drives are in here, and they decide to start formatting now…? This'll take half a day."
He reloaded the knuckle blaster, tensed every muscle like a fighter facing a punching bag, and struck.
"Hah!"
With terrifying force he smashed the entire multi-tiered rack of servers and computers. The machines shattered under the impact. Se-gun ripped free every hard drive he could reach. Because they were server units, each chassis held a thick stack of disks; the pile of drives alone was massive.
"I can't tell the wheat from the chaff, so I'll just take whatever I can carry."
Arms full of hard drives, Se-gun suddenly remembered the Glock. He drew it and shot every unresisting vampire researcher where they stood.
"Gyaaaaaah!"
He thumbed the magazine release and flicked his arm; the empty mag sailed away and clattered against the wall at the same moment every vampire collapsed.
"…The only good vampire is a dead vampire."