The Price of a Head

There was once an online game called Chrome Blade Saga.

A fusionpunk world — night streets drowning in neon, enhanced prosthetics, guns and magic tangled together in one seamless whole.

One day, the roughly 200,000 players who enjoyed that game were abducted into it. Kang Do-seok was one of them.

Ten years went by.

The Black Dog Gang's office was empty. Kang Do-seok leaned back into a black recliner.

Outside, it was quiet. He had deliberately left the alarms silent. If he simply waited here, the target of his contract would come walking in on his own — a man like that traveled a route predictable enough to be written down in the intel he'd received beforehand.

While he waited, Kang Do-seok drew his terminal from inside his coat. When the screen lit up, a single notification sat at the top, freshly arrived.

Kang Do-seok stared down at the screen for a moment.

"...So it's been that long already."

He had no intention of writing a new entry at this point. He'd given that up a long time ago. Instead, he tapped below the notification window, and records he had lived years without looking at rose up the screen.

Kang Do-seok gazed at the old lines in silence, then killed the screen. Years of entries still waited below, but he had no desire to read any further.

"So that was ten years ago, too."

The murmur had barely left his mouth when—

Slam. The office door burst open.

"The hell? Who's this bastard?"

The man who'd shouldered his way in squinted against the dim light. Kang Do-seok turned his head just enough to look at him.

A red-glowing cybernetic eye. A bull neck. A scar slashing across one cheek. The man matched his photograph exactly — Beckman, boss of the Black Dog Gang, arriving precisely as the contract promised. Kang Do-seok spoke.

"So you came."

"Who the hell are you?"

Beckman's eyes slitted. His gaze slid to the chair Kang Do-seok occupied — the seat that was supposed to be his own.

"What kind of bastard sits in my chair?"

"Boss. Something the matter?"

More men filed in behind him, six in all. The big ones lined up at Beckman's back, every one of them thick-armed and ugly-faced.

At the sight of a stranger planted in the boss's chair, disbelief spread across their faces.

"Boss, you got a guest?"

"What kind of guest sits in my chair?"

"Then what is that asshole?"

"No idea."

Beckman cut in. "Who are you?"

"Name's Kang Do-seok."

"Kang what?"

"Kang Do-seok. Fixer. Give me money and I'll handle anything — extortion, debt collection, contract kills. Whatever you need."

"For the record, I don't deal with junkies."

"You ridiculous piece of shit. Who the hell asked for a résumé?"

All of it delivered without Do-seok so much as straightening out of the recliner.

Beckman stroked his jaw, weighing something. The scar across his cheek squirmed with the muscles beneath it.

"...A fixer, huh. And what reason would a self-proclaimed fixer have to come looking for me..."

He shot a glance at the old-model terminal sitting on the desk, then looked back down at Kang Do-seok.

"Can't for the life of me imagine. I've racked up quite a list of sins."

"You leaked an insurance company's list of high-value policyholders last week, didn't you?"

That was the job. The insurance company had passed it to him.

Money in exchange for recovering stolen property — a routine request, if you wanted to call it that.

From Do-seok's side of it, there had been no reason to refuse. The kind of plump, juicy commission that paid out nicely.

"Ah. That? I found some dirt on a corporate errand-boy and squeezed him with it. Never thought he'd actually hand the thing over — figured he was some bottom-floor clerk. Anyway."

Beckman nodded as if it finally added up. Then he asked:

"So you're here to kill me over that?"

"If it comes to that, I'll have to."

"What's the going rate?"

"One billion Relics."

"A billion... What an absolute joke."

Beckman blew out a short laugh. Hollow chuckles leaked from among the hulks standing behind him as well.

"You crawled all the way in here for chump change like that."

"That's right. See a problem with it?"

Kang Do-seok tipped his chin, still planted in the chair.

"Kill one ordinary gang boss and collect a billion Relics? That's being paid more than enough."

"...Ordinary gang boss? You son of a—"

Beckman's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠face contorted, vicious.

"Do I look like some gutter punk who shakes down shops for lunch money? We've got three full lines of F-Sector locked down tight. We crack open insurance networks and blackmail the VIPs on them. We sweep up the organs off every body dying in the street and convert it all to cash. The money hooked into our operation alone runs past several billion Relics. And you kicked down my door over a lousy billion?"

"Industrious, aren't we. A commendable attitude, really — applying yourself to life like that. It'd almost be worth emulating, if only you could manage a little objectivity about yourself."

The scar on Beckman's cheek twitched. Kang Do-seok went on.

"But at the end of the day, that's all you are, isn't it? A blackmailer picking corpses clean for spare organs. A billion Relics is overpaying you. What, did somebody gild your neck while I wasn't looking?"

Beckman's expression set, slowly, into stone.

He glared at Do-seok for a long moment. Then he rapped his fingertips against his own temple.

Tap. Tap.

"No gold. Instead I've got something far more expensive bolted into this skull. That high-value policyholder list you're after? This thing is stuffed to the brim with exactly that."

The corner of Beckman's mouth twisted.

"Shame for you, though. Because I've got no intention of handing it over. If you want the data, you'll have to carve my head off and carry it out whole."

Beckman drew a pistol from within his coat. His finger slid, slow and deliberate, into the trigger guard.

"This is my office. Count the boys outside and there's better than thirty of us laid through this building. And you still want to have your little dance with me."

"Nothing says I can't."

"Right, then."

The humor drained out of Beckman's face. He bellowed:

"Fire!"

The hulks swung their guns up as one.

Kang Do-seok looked straight ahead.

Ten years he had swung a blade. Men pointing guns at him hadn't been a real problem in a long time.

KRAANG! His boot slammed into the desk, and the heavy steel slab skidded forward, throwing its bulk between the muzzles and his chest. Tat-tat-tang! Gunfire tore through the office. Rounds hammered the desktop, spraying shredded wood and metal shrapnel in every direction.

He exploded off the chair. The instant the blade cleared its sheath, he drew it in a horizontal arc — a stroke that sheared the desk clean in two and carved on into the bellies of the two men nearest. Before their blood could even rise, his sword was already flashing at the next: a thrust through one man's windpipe, then a pivot ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠riding the pull of the withdrawing steel, hacking two more throats open in succession.

Shraaak! Blood fanned into the air. Before the first drops touched the floor, Do-seok had already taken another step.

The last hulk wheeled his muzzle around a beat too late. The blade passed through his neck, and his head slid off its shoulder to the ground.

Do-seok never stopped — he was on Beckman in a breath. One swing, shk!, and the forearm gripping the pistol left the body whole. The severed hand rolled across the floor, fingers still clamped around the trigger.

"AAAAGH!"

His blade drew another half-circle. Swish! Beckman's right leg came away. Whump! Balance gone, his body crashed into the floor.

By the time Beckman managed a single blink, Do-seok's left hand had already seized him by the hair, the blade in his right resting against the nape of his neck.

Beckman's eyes wavered.

"W-wait! Wait a second!"

Snick. The edge pressed a thin line into his throat. Blood welled and spread beneath his jaw. He swallowed hard and forced the words out in a rush.

"S-spare me! Let me live! I'll extract the data chips for you—"

Kang Do-seok lowered his head.

"No."

The blade moved. Blood fountained from the stump of Beckman's neck like a burst pipe. A beat later, with a wet crash, the convulsing body dropped into the middle of the spreading pool.

In the stillness, Kang Do-seok looked down at the floor for a while.

The headless corpse twitched slowly in its own blood. The severed forearm had jammed itself under a desk leg, the fingers around the pistol still refusing to release the trigger.

Do-seok wiped the blood from his blade on Beckman's coat.

Then he rifled through the corpse's pockets.

One piece of obsolete cyberware. A mechanical eyeball not worth its weight as scrap. A fistful of data chips whose purpose he couldn't guess. A few crumpled banknotes.

"Not a damn thing worth money."

He tossed each bloodied item to the floor, one by one.

"...Hm."

Then a stray question occurred to him.

He had, come to think of it, just carved up seven gang members moments ago. The din outside suggested the rest of the gang had heard the gunfire and were swarming toward the office.

And yet there he was, serenely digging through a blood-soaked corpse in the middle of it all. The picture he made struck him, all at once, as strangely unfamiliar.

When exactly did I turn into this?

He couldn't remember.

He remembered that his hands had shaken the first time he killed a man.

He remembered going through a dead man's pockets so he wouldn't starve. Remembered learning that a bullet hurts far more than you'd ever guess.

He remembered the youngest of them spiking with fever, and running out into the night to scrape together money for medicine — and how that money turned out to be counterfeit, and how in the end the medicine never got bought.

He remembered the second-youngest being taken hostage, and storming a gang's office with his life on the line. He remembered failing to bring him home.

He didn't remember every moment. But the big ones, the heavy ones — most of those had stayed.

What he couldn't pin down, no matter how he searched, was when killing people had become a thing that simply didn't matter.

Do-seok flicked the blood from the tip of his blade. Red drops spattered the floor.

Outside, footsteps and shouting bled together through the walls.

"...Well. It's not like that matters."

Come to think of it, it wasn't a particularly important question.

So Kang Do-seok decided to simply take care of the head instead.

Before long, Kang Do-seok walked out of the building soaked in blood, Beckman's head dangling from his hand.

He strode at an even pace to a black sedan, stopped, and dug into his pocket.

Beep. The indicators flashed twice and the locks snapped open with a clack.

He opened the door, dropped into the driver's seat, and tossed Beckman's head carelessly onto the passenger seat. Blood-matted hair slumped limp against the leather.

He pressed the accelerator, and the car slid off into the dark. Beyond the tinted glass, neon signs smeared into long streaks of light.

— End of Chapter 1 —

Author's Note

Greetings, everyone — this is a brand-new series.
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to your support ^^