The Lure at Yangpyeong
It was a vast cold-storage warehouse. The freezers themselves had long since gone silent, but the place was stacked high with wooden crates built from meranti. The only light came through a half-open shutter, cutting a pale bar across the gloom. Perched on a forklift in the middle of all that darkness sat a man in his mid-twenties, long dangling earrings swinging as he clicked his tongue and yanked his cap on backward.
"So… you're telling me a vampire sawed through this thing I busted my ass to get you?"
Kenneth Yang stared at the snapped silencer Se-gun had brought him, half-convinced he was being messed with. The man who had actually broken the precious piece of hardware clearly had no idea how valuable it was; he was sprawled across a sofa in the corner like he owned the place.
"Fix it. Or make me another one."
"Look. I work for money, sure, but—"
Kenneth glanced at the young man lounging on the filthy sofa. In a dark warehouse like this, that dust-choked couch alone would have been enough to send an asthmatic halfway across the River Styx. Han Se-gun, however, was the sort of creature who could have an arm torn off, reattach it, and keep walking like nothing had happened. This was exactly why Kenneth hated dealing with vampire hunters.
"But what?"
"I'm a hell of a lot richer than you think, kid."
Kenneth pulled out a catalog. It was almost funny—an illegal arms dealer with a glossy product book—but the pages carried the genuine marks of model-gun makers like Marui and Academy.
"Which means I am not going to waste time rebuilding a custom silencer that barely pays for itself. How about we drop that unpopular Tokarev junk and go with something like a Beretta or an MK23? I've got silencers for those coming out my ears. Laser sights too, if you want."
"Can you get me a Glock 18, then?"
Se-gun's interest had been piqued by the Glock 18 Deok-yeon's friend Jeong-jin had used when he turned Corrupted. Something about a pistol that could go full-auto clearly appealed to him. Kenneth looked momentarily thrown, but he already had history with vampire hunters and Se-gun actually paid, so he decided to sell.
"Silencer and laser sight included?"
"Skip the laser. Most vampires notice the moment you paint them."
"Fair point. Anything else?"
"You got a Daewoo Precision USAS-12?"
"Ghk—!"
Kenneth nearly toppled forward mid-page-turn. The USAS-12 was a full-auto shotgun built by Daewoo Precision, so brutally powerful that sales of it had been halted. Against vampires it would have been a dream weapon—except the noise was pure insanity. A maniac like Se-gun would pull the trigger the second he lost his temper, cops or no cops, and once the story hit the news the blowback would land squarely on Kenneth.
"I don't stock that."
"Huh."
Se-gun gave him a look of genuine curiosity. Everything that came out of Kenneth's warehouse had always been well past the pale of legality; there were even wired TOW missiles sitting in wooden crates right now.
"Listen, selling hardware like this isn't just a domestic game. I'm the Black Network's dealer for Korea. That thing is not something I sell to the likes of you, so drop it. What the hell do you think happens if someone starts blasting a USAS-12 inside Korea?"
"You people already spray Barretts and MG50s around. What's one more problem?"
Se-gun stood up, dead serious. As if Silvester and his kind used weapons that were quiet and safe. Since he was already here, he started rattling off a shopping list.
"Oh, and switch my safe house. I made a little noise nearby and need to stay clear of the cops. Also, I'm going to need a new bike."
"You rotten bastard! Do I look like your personal concierge? Huh? That's exactly why I told you to keep it quiet around my place! Why the hell are you the one starting trouble?"
Kenneth shouted, but if Se-gun got pinched it would become Kenneth's problem too, so he had no real choice.
"Fine, fine. Go here. I'm not the only back-alley operator in this world. The Glock 18's right here, but the safe house and the bike—this guy'll sort you out."
Kenneth scribbled a note and handed it over. A phone number was written on it.
"Tell him I sent you. Got it?"
"Yeah, sure."
Se-gun took the Glock. Even a polymer frame didn't make a pistol feel light.
"How much ammo you need?"
"One crate should do."
Se-gun raised the Glock toward the warehouse entrance and settled his eye on the sights. First time holding it, yet it already felt right.
"Hey, hey. You don't even have a bike. Planning to hop on a bus with an ammo crate?"
"I doubt the cops are going to ask to look inside."
"Unbelievable. You've got a pair of steel ones."
Still, Kenneth handed over the ammunition without further argument. Then, as if the thought had just struck him, he asked,
"Oh, right. Word is a Jinma named Jeong-ya got spotted recently. You hear about that?"
"Jinma Jeong-ya?"
"Yeah. There was a post on Finder saying they found her near Yangpyeong in Gyeonggi Province."
"…"
Se-gun closed his mouth, unsure how to answer. He had already faced Jinma Jeong-ya near his own place. There was no way she had flown all the way to Yangpyeong in that short a time…
"Hmph. A lure op, then."
"Huh?"
"Nothing. I'll go grab that bike. Later."
Se-gun picked up the ammo crate and left.
The area around Yangpyeong was already crawling with vampire hunters. Most of them knew the tip was probably fake, but anything connected to Jinma Jeong-ya was worth chasing even at a one-percent chance—or less. The people who had posted the false information had counted on exactly that reaction.
"Ah, damn it. What the hell are we even doing here?"
Hunters fed coins into a roadside vending machine and grumbled. Near the lake, their vehicles were far from alone; cars packed with enough firepower to fill every seat lined the shoulders. Whether they had come to catch Jeong-ya or to catch the vampires hunting her, everyone was armed to the teeth.
"Hey… are all those guys hunters too?"
One hunter returned with canned coffee, eyed the surrounding cars, and handed a can to his partner. The man in the driver's seat took it and muttered,
"Probably. Not like we're gonna walk over and ask, though."
"Yeah, I know. Just weird seeing this many colleagues in one place."
"True enough. Look at all the out-of-province plates. Damn. People came from everywhere."
"Earlier I even spotted some foreigners."
"Hell yeah. Welcome to the globalized age."
They climbed back into the car, still muttering. Vampire activity would stay quiet until nightfall. Even a Jinma who could walk in daylight would find her powers gutted under the sun, so no one was going to make a move yet. Plenty of time left.
"They've been combing the whole district and still nothing."
"Yeah. Why don't you just sleep until sunset?"
"But if Jeong-ya really is a Jinma, wouldn't she use the daytime to stay hidden?"
"Jeong-ya isn't the problem right now."
"Right. The vampires who follow her are the real issue."
They settled into the car. Other, more shameless hunters had even brought fishing gear and cast lines into the water. Ordinary anglers, of course, did not go fishing in bulletproof vests.
"Well, well. Quite the turnout."
Sarhyuk swept the area with binoculars and let out a low whistle of admiration. He was the one who had planted the false report that Jinma Jeong-ya had been sighted at the Hyewon Motel, but even he hadn't expected this many vampire hunters to swarm in. The response was almost unsettling. Still, watching the plan unfold exactly as he wanted put him in a fine mood.
"So what now? Do we wait too, Boss?"
Men from the neighboring cars jogged over with the question. Sarhyuk's group obeyed him absolutely. They had discarded their own judgment and followed his will without question, which meant he had to micromanage every last detail—annoying as it was.
"Hmm. No. We pull out."
"Sir?"
"Everyone here dies today. No reason for us to add a few more corpses to the pile."
The subordinate stared, dumbfounded that the very man who had posted the tip was saying this.
"Then why put the information up in the first place?"
"Because the vampires have their eyes on Jinma Jeong-ya just as hard as we do. If a few of them die in tonight's free-for-all, their numbers drop. Tetra Anax's net gets a little looser."
"But won't the vampires with close ties to Tetra Anax figure it out?"
"Who cares? Posting on Finder is completely anonymous. Even if a mountain of vampires and hunters die here, they all came knowing the tip might be fake. I've got no reason to take responsibility, and they've got no grounds to pin it on me."
Sarhyuk lowered the binoculars and climbed into his vehicle. The massive Humvee rumbled down the sloping road.
"Perfect, really. This many hunters dead and vampire blood prices are going to skyrocket. How could I not be happy? Ahahahahaha!"
A flash of green madness flickered through Sarhyuk's eyes as he threw his head back and roared with laughter.