Collecting the Rats
"Fair enough. Better take what we can get and call it a night."
With that, they stashed the soju. Christian charities had a habit of lecturing the homeless if they caught them drinking — one or two scoldings, at least — so the men played it safe. Still, people like these were genuinely welcome. Grateful, even.
So that night, as always, the homeless accepted the warm tea and bread without a second thought. It was a little strange that every person handing out the food was a man, but the world had grown ugly enough that no one expected a woman to wander these streets after dark. And when you were the one taking handouts, you didn't have much room to complain. Nobody found it odd.
Still… something's off.
Mr. Gu hid a piece of bread away and took a sip of the tea. He understood the sugar — it made the stuff easier for men like him to get down — but there was a faint medicinal smell underneath. He'd heard stories from overseas: people drugging the homeless, kidnapping them, harvesting their kidneys and selling the organs on the black market…
To do that to this many people, though, you'd need an entire wing of a general hospital.
He took another swallow. The soju already in his system made the warmth spread through him faster than it should have — and the sensation was wrong. By the time he was certain it was a drug, it was already too late.
Freeze to death or get your organs cut out… what's the difference?
Uncharacteristically resigned, Mr. Gu collapsed. He wasn't alone. All around him, homeless men crumpled where they sat and did not get up. Once the drug had done its work, the man who had been posing as a charity worker surveyed the scene with open contempt.
The bodies sprawled across the ground looked less like people and more like livestock. Of course, expecting elegance from men you'd just knocked out with drugs was unreasonable — but to a supremacist, the sight was almost unbearable.
"Christ. Look at all this human garbage."
"Shut up. If you've got time to bitch, start moving them."
They hauled the unconscious men upright. The drug put people under, but metabolism varied — every so often someone woke up early.
"We taking all of them?"
"Are you insane? A whole crowd of homeless vanishing overnight? This isn't the Pied Piper of Hamelin."
"And these aren't cute little kids, either."
"More like sewer rats."
They snickered among themselves. No matter how ugly the homeless looked to them, these were still human beings — and the way the men dismissed them said everything about their arrogance.
"Anyway, grab about ten and let's go."
"We used the drug and we're only taking ten? What a waste."
"There's no room in the van."
"So we make two trips."
The strangers looked at each other. They studied the one who'd suggested a second run, then nodded.
"The drug lasts long enough. Fine."
And so they "collected" their cargo — a process that treated the homeless not as people with rights, but as something less than human entirely.
By the time Mr. Gu came to the next day, half the homeless who had gathered at S Station were gone.
Se-gun wrestled with whether he should investigate the missing homeless at all. The vampires already had a target painted on his back. Move carelessly and even ten necks wouldn't be enough to keep him alive.
But showing his face at Arjuna every single day was just crawling under Silvester's shield — and that was no way for a vampire hunter who'd struck out on his own to live.
"Pride doesn't put food on the table… but I should look into it."
Muttering to himself, Se-gun swung a leg over his XR-250. He'd start with the parks and stations where the homeless tended to gather.
Mr. Gu drained what was left of his soju and sighed like a man nursing a broken heart. Those bastards had definitely done something last night — he just had no way of knowing what. Kidnapping that many people… organ traffickers? Or a shrimp-boat crew looking for free labor? Either way, nothing good.
"Hell. Is this what the Jews felt like getting herded into the gas chambers?"
He muttered the words and hung his head. That was when he noticed a young man parking a motorcycle in front of the station. The bike looked foreign, and the kid had a baby face under a head of green-dyed hair. None of that alone would have drawn attention.
"Hmm."
The young man was scanning the area, clearly searching for homeless people. Mr. Gu knew it on instinct.
This have something to do with last night?
The thought crossed his mind, but the kid's manner didn't match. He looked like he was debating whether to approach anyone at all — the posture of someone doing this for the first time. Fair enough. Walking up to a total stranger and asking if they knew anything took more nerve than most people had, especially when you weren't a cop or a reporter.
"Hmm. Now that I think about it, I'm starving."
Mr. Gu mumbled the words and shuffled toward the young man. The kid looked at him like a drowning man spotting a life raft.
"Excuse me. Could I ask you something?"
"Sure, anything. But listen, young man — I'm a little hungry first. What do you think of our ancestors' virtue of mutual aid?"
"Oh. Of course."
The young man — Han Se-gun — was quick on the uptake. He dug out some cash, bought a convenience-store lunch box and a can of coffee, and set them in front of Mr. Gu.
"Anything else you need?"
"Nah, this is fine. So what were you going to ask about? The risk of skyrocketing oil prices? American hegemony? Chinese immigration into Korea? Fire away."
"…"
Se-gun's face went stiff for a moment. For a split second he felt ashamed of his own general knowledge — or lack of it — next to a homeless man.
"I'm kidding. Just spouting whatever came to mind. Don't worry about it."
Mr. Gu picked up his chopsticks and split a piece of pollack roe in half as he said it. The young man finally exhaled in relief and got to the point.
"It's nothing complicated. Lately, have people been disappearing around here?"
"Ah, that? Come to think of it, yesterday…"
Mr. Gu started to speak, then glanced around. Se-gun leaned in, listening carefully.
"Let me finish eating first, then I'll tell you."
Privately amused, Mr. Gu put his chopsticks back to work. Once the meal was done, though, he turned serious. He told Se-gun everything — the men who'd shown up that night, the tea and bread they'd handed out, how one sip had sent him reeling into unconsciousness.
"I'm telling you, I think they're organ traffickers. Has to be."
"Th-that's…"
Se-gun looked troubled, and more than a little rattled by the possibility. If they were organ traffickers, they weren't vampires — and poking at them would get him nowhere.
"Thank you for telling me. Any idea where they went?"
"No clue. I was out cold right after. Oh — there's a convenience store right in front of the station. Why don't you ask the clerk? The night-shift guy isn't on now, but there's a dedicated overnight employee. Make sure you talk to him."
"I will. Thanks again."
Se-gun stood and left.
After checking other stations and asking around among the homeless, Se-gun returned to the station that night. Following Mr. Gu's advice, he meant to question the overnight clerk about the previous evening. But even after carefully timing his arrival, the employee claimed to remember nothing unusual.
Not everyone catalogued their surroundings and built mental timelines the way Se-gun did. Still, watching the trail go cold so abruptly left him deflated.
"I see. All right. Understood."
He nodded and stepped back outside. Losing the thread was frustrating, but if the enemy were vampires, they would have had ways of handling a convenience-store clerk's eyes. Ordinary organ traffickers couldn't manage that. So the enemy really was vampires, then?
"Hell. This is worse than finding a needle in a haystack. Do I just wait for heaven to hand me a lead?"
Muttering, Se-gun walked toward his motorcycle. That was when he saw them — a group of people working a bolt cutter against the chain locking his bike. The XR-250 was an eye-catching foreign model, and thieves gravitated to it from time to time. Which was exactly why Se-gun used a chain with links two inches thick — the kind no ordinary cutter stood a chance against.
"Hmm…"
He watched them work for a moment. High schoolers? Four of them, by the look of it, and their form was practiced — these kids had done this before. Se-gun himself had stolen a Ninja once out of necessity, but he loved bikes too much to forgive theft. To him, a motorcycle thief was no better than a scumbag who snuck into a blind man's house and stole his guide dog.
"Huh? The fuck you staring at?!"
The lookout finally spotted Se-gun and barked the words. Before the sentence even finished, all four of them closed in around him, posturing and threatening. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black — thieves with this much volume. Se-gun covered his face with one hand, half in disbelief.
"That's mine, you know."
"Oh yeah? Well, starting today it's mine. Got a problem?"
Thugs always threatened people the same way — flaunting their bodies while leaving every vital point wide open. A habit born of only ever facing polite types who wouldn't throw the first punch. From the perspective of someone who lived by the creed of kill-or-be-killed, it was like setting the table and lying down on it, begging to be eaten.
Thud!
The words had barely left the kid's mouth when Se-gun's kick slammed into the side of his knee. Something cracked, the joint gave, and the thug crumpled.
"You four are John Does One through Four. You little shits."
Se-gun muttered it and drove his knee into the lowered face in front of him. Breaking the leg hadn't been enough — he stamped the face for good measure. He'd been feeling short on sparring lately. This was a perfect training opportunity.
"You son of a bitch!"
"Is this guy crazy?!"
True to form, the thugs just stood there surrounding him, too stunned to do anything. Se-gun used the opening to drive another knee into the unconscious one's face. People like these never reformed. Beat them half to death, put them in a hospital bed, and the second the wounds healed they'd be back on the street, loafing around and scheming how to bleed someone else dry.
"You guys. This slow, and you think you're going to steal a motorcycle?"
The taunt worked. One of them reached into his jacket for a knife. Se-gun closed the gap in a lightning step, snapped four punches left and right in rapid succession, and finished with a knee to the face. The would-be knifer went down a bloody mess.
"Whoops. A little early to be falling over."
Se-gun caught the collapsing arm and hurled him with a reverse-joint throw — Thunder. The elbow joint popped with a wet crack, and the kid who'd been out cold snapped awake screaming.
"Gah!"
"Kgh!"
Another one came at Se-gun from behind. Se-gun swept low with his heel like a roundhouse kick aimed at the knee, then whipped a backspin blow into the attacker's face and sent him flying. Se-gun was wearing his Reactive Gloves, and the hit must have landed wrong — the thug's face was a sheet of blood in an instant. In a boxing match it would have been a doctor's stoppage on the spot. Street fights didn't have doctor's stoppages.
"…Stop! Stop! I can't see! Stop!"
By the time the thug surrendered, Se-gun's fists had already hammered his gut and solar plexus four or five times. The fact that he could still talk after a beating like that impressed Se-gun deeply. Speaking after body blows meant squeezing the last air out of lungs that had almost nothing left.
"Ah. Well. I guess that's enough, then. I'm going."
Se-gun said it, swung onto his bike, and rode calmly out of the station plaza. Behind him, the wounded survivors found their voices.
"You fucking bastard!"
"You son of a bitch! Are you even human?!"
Screech!
Se-gun hit the brakes mid-insult. Miraculously, the cursing cut off at once.
"…Almost feel a little bad. They've got a cute side, those guys."
He muttered it and twisted the throttle again.
Vrrrooom!
In the distance, a single motorcycle tore down the road. Standing atop a streetlamp, Gyeong watched it go and frowned.
"So that's the famous hunter. Let's see what he's made of."
He flicked his fingers. Beneath the streetlamp, a thin sheet unfurled across the road. From above it looked like a blanket; from the side it was nothing more than a hairline. Translucent and impossibly thin, the plate hung at precisely the height of a human neck.
"Tch."
Gyeong was one of Juk-yo's children — young and aggressive for a vampire, and once a favorite of the Jinma's trust. But after Juk-yo's death he had become the proverbial dog at a funeral, kicked from one dirty job to the next.
Vampires exposed to sunlight weakened steadily until they burned. They needed a safe place to sleep during the day, and safe places cost money. The reason vampires ran massive corporations was simple: they needed the cash.
Gyeong needed money too. Like any young vampire, he loved a good fight. What he did not love was cleaning up after other vampires.
"Damn it. This is pure garbage. Puts me in a foul mood."