Sewer Rat
Kang Do-seok tucked the terminal away inside his coat and walked straight out of Carvel's office. As he rode the elevator down, neon signs smeared into hazy streaks of light beyond the glass wall.
The noise of the street rose up to meet him on the ground floor. He took the building's rear exit and slipped into an alley that saw little foot traffic, then drew a blood capsule from inside his coat—Raden Beck's sample. He set it on his palm and twisted the locking mechanism.
Crack! The sealed lid snapped open, and blood spilled across his palm.
In the next instant, the blood pooling in his hand began to writhe. It slid between his fingers, then stopped short, and the skin beneath his wrist split with a faint sting. From under the flesh, a single red thread crawled out and entwined itself with Raden Beck's blood—a strand as fine as a vein, climbing from his wrist, over the back of his hand, until it joined the pool in his palm. By then, the red line stretching from Kang Do-seok's wrist was pointing straight ahead of him.
The skill was called Blood Tracking.
Of all the blood-attribute abilities, it sat on the lowest rung of the ladder—a common skill, learnable by any character. Unlike class-exclusive techniques reserved for certain jobs, a common skill was available to anyone who managed to get their hands on a star. Blood Tracking did exactly what its name promised: it tracked the owner of the blood. That didn't make it omnipotent. If the sample had spoiled, been mixed with someone else's blood, or been tampered with by a proper blood mage, the direction could twist however it pleased.
But Raden Beck's blood was clean. The storage condition was good, and there was no trace of a blood mage's sabotage. Naturally. Beck was a man who had embezzled a fortune and bolted—he might have spent money hiding his own body, but there was no way he'd hired a blood mage just to block a single Blood Tracking. Men like him had ransoms that defied imagination.
Kang Do-seok looked down at the red line squirming on his palm. It pointed out of the alley.
"Alive, then."
He raised his blood-slicked hand and walked in the direction the line indicated.
The line led out of the alley. The neon glow of the entertainment district didn't last long. Two blocks on, the dizzying profusion of signs began dropping away one by one, and three blocks further, the pavement itself gave out. At the end of it stood an elevated highway.
Vehicles rumbled overhead. Rainwater dripped down between the thick concrete pillars, and the ground glistened with old oil stains. In the wall beneath the highway was an iron door leading down into the sewers.
The door hung half open. Kang Do-seok stepped through.
The smell reached him first. Rotting water, oil, vomit, old blood. Black filth crept slowly along the narrow channel beside his feet, plastic bags and cigarette butts drifting on its surface alongside one dead rat.
And deeper inside the sewer, there were people.
Men sitting on soaked cardboard. Men sleeping under tarps. A one-armed man who'd torn a seat out of a scrapyard wreck and made it into a bed. Another slumped against the wall, unable to move, his cheap prosthetic dead from a drained battery.
Homeless.
No money, no identity. In Netron City, the homeless were handled much the same as sewer rats—which is to say, nobody spared them a thought. They clung in a long line along the sewer wall, some with empty cans set out before them, some hugging broken heaters.
Kang Do-seok brushed past them. The red line on his palm drifted slowly, swaying left and right—then stopped. The blood shifted across his palm, little by little, and pointed at a man.
The man sat with his back against the sewer wall. A filthy tarp hung off his shoulders to the elbows, and his face was caked in thick black grime. A wild beard had grown every which way, and one eye was clouded white. On his knee sat a single crushed, empty can.
Kang Do-seok stopped in front of him.
Dark eyes looked up.
"You Raden Beck?"
"Fuck—!"
The man bolted upright. The tarp dropped to the floor even as his hand dove into his coat and came out with a small dagger.
"Die—urk!"
Kang Do-seok kicked him before the blade cleared the coat. His heel buried itself in Raden Beck's stomach. The body folded in half, and Beck flew backward and slammed into the far wall.
BOOM!
"Kghak—kkheghk!"
The man's groans echoed through the sewer. Every homeless head nearby turned toward Kang Do-seok. He swept his gaze around once and spoke.
"What are you looking at? Yes, it's a kidnapping. Don't mind me—go do whatever it was you were doing."
At that, the homeless turned their heads away and quietly slunk off.
Kang Do-seok walked over to Raden Beck and seized him by the collar.
"W-wait, wait, hang on. You're here to take me in, right? Just wait—I don't have any—"
"Shut up."
THWACK!
His fist cracked into Raden Beck's jaw. Beck's head snapped back, his eyes rolled white, and the strength drained out of his body. Kang Do-seok hauled him along by the collar all the same, the limp body scraping across the wet floor.
The remaining homeless watched his back recede for a long moment. Then someone murmured, quiet as a prayer:
"That tarp's gotta be warm."
Sure enough, one of the homeless crawled over to the spot where Raden Beck had been sitting and wrapped the tarp around himself. He closed his eyes and rolled onto his side, looking for all the world like a man who'd found bliss. Not one of them spared a thought for the vanished Raden Beck.
Carvel's office.
Two glasses sat on the black glass tabletop. Carvel leaned back in his chair, and across from him a woman sat on the sofa with her legs crossed. Black jacket, close-cropped hair, and blue electronic circuits blinking slowly deep inside her eyes.
"You're seriously going to take care of that pile-of-shit debt?"
The woman asked. Carvel lifted his glass and answered.
"I am."
"He's still just a blade-for-hire, though. How's a sword jockey going to find Raden Beck, who's spent years buried?"
"He's not just a sword jockey. He's Kang Do-seok."
"So what if he's Kang Do-seok? Is he gilded or something?"
Amy gave a hollow laugh.
"Let's be honest here, Carvel. Even I couldn't find this guy. Had his face reworked, scrubbed his identity, doesn't carry a terminal, never touches the Net. How's some guy swinging a sword supposed to track him down?"
"Possible. Because he's Kang Do-seok."
"I'm skeptical."
"Then go be skeptical somewhere else."
"You call that a joke? Not funny. Not even a little."
Amy shot Carvel a narrow-eyed glare, and Carvel laughed on, entirely unbothered.
"Still, this should take him days at least. That rat burrows well—won't be easy, no matter how you—"
That was the moment.
Click. The door swung open. Carvel's head turned.
"Kang Do-seok?"
Kang Do-seok stood in the doorway. Carvel did a quick calculation on the clock—barely a few hours had passed since the man had left.
"Why are you back?"
The woman on the sofa turned her head as well.
Instead of answering, Kang Do-seok flung what he'd been dragging into the room.
THUD!
Raden Beck slammed down onto the office floor.
"Argh! Aaaagh!"
Beck screamed, rolling across the floor. He was wrapped in a coat that reeked to high heaven, his face smeared with black grime, his terrified eyes darting wild and unfocused.
"Shut up."
Kang Do-seok had crossed the room before anyone noticed; now he drove a foot into Raden Beck.
THWACK!
Beck's body rolled across the floor several times over and fetched up against the black tabletop, doubled over.
"Ghhk—th-this is illegal! Illegal abduction! Violation of the Private Debt Collection Act, assault, unlawful confinement, infringement of bodily liberty—all of it—"
"So what."
Kang Do-seok took him by the nape of the neck and hauled him up. Then he set him down in front of Carvel and the woman.
"See for yourself."
For a moment the woman could only stare at him, mouth slightly open in surprise. A short silence passed, and then the corner of her mouth curled up—just barely.
"...I'd heard you were quite the debt collector."
She rose to her feet as she spoke.
"Your work is remarkably thorough."
"Do the job thoroughly and the next commission walks in the door. Who are you? The client?"
"That's me. Hold on a second—I have business with this bastard."
The woman's face turned toward Raden Beck. His shoulders flinched, and she smiled.
"Raden Beck. We have some accounts to settle, don't we?"
"Eep."
The color drained from his face.
"A-Amy. Amy? You're Amy?!"
"I am."
Amy uncrossed her legs and rose from the sofa.
"Long time no see, you son of a bitch."
"Wait—let's negotiate. Let's negotiate! I'll find some way to pay. Really. I don't have it on hand, but there's a hidden account—"
"Negotiate?"
Amy snapped her fingers. Blue text scrolled rapidly through the depths of her eyes.
"Sure. Let's negotiate."
"Huh?"
"Checked the records, and wow—you're carrying a lot of inventory in that body, aren't you?"
Raden Beck's lips trembled.
"Liver's a Grade-3 cultured liver out of BrightHealth. Heart's a Harrow Medical reinforced model. Both kidneys swapped too. Oh my. And you even replaced a lung."
"No, that's—"
"It's fine."
Amy smiled.
"Spit all of that out and it'll fetch quite a bit. Won't cover the principal, but it'll put a dent in the interest."
"N-no. You can't."
"Why not? Aren't they yours?"
"It's my body!"
"And how do organs bought with Harrow's slush fund become your body?"
The smile never left Amy's face.
"I've already contacted the corpse vault. Don't worry too much—I'll have them swap in some perfectly serviceable homeless-man organs. I can even front you the surgery fee. Interest collected upfront, two hundred forty percent monthly."
"A-are you insane?"
"For the record, that's the preferred-customer rate."
"Amy, please. Let's do this the nice way—"
SLAP!
Her palm lashed across Raden Beck's cheek. His head whipped around.
"Nice?"
A second palm shot out and left a red welt across the other cheek.
"Do you have any idea how many months of my life you cost me?"
Raden Beck shut his mouth.
Amy brushed off her hands and turned toward Kang Do-seok.
"Thanks, Kang Do-seok. Men who don't use the Net are a nightmare for me to find."
"Right. If you're done here, take one of these."
With a look of perfect indifference, Kang Do-seok dug into his coat. What came out was a single white business card, which he held out toward Amy.
She took it and read the writing carefully. A short silence later, she opened her mouth.
"Wow. That's actually impressive."
Her gaze ran back and forth between the card and Kang Do-seok.
"The sight of you handing out business cards stuffed with creative ad copy—truly memorable. Here, I'll give you one too."
"Give me what?"
"A card. Take mine. It's an e-card. Just threw it together now."
Blue text flickered across the surface of Amy's eyes—mechanical prosthetic eyes. Kang Do-seok's terminal let out a long, drawn-out whine. He fished it out of his coat, and fluorescent letters rose across the screen.
It read:
♡ Corporate firewall infiltration / internal data recovery ♡
♡ Frozen account release / fund flow tracing ♡
♡ Deleted log restoration / access record falsification ♡
♡ Surveillance grid takeover / tracking signal jamming ♡
♡ Identity laundering / surveillance-net access / prosthetic lockouts available ♡
♡ Junkies welcome too—as long as you pay ♡
She smiled. The circuits inside her prosthetic eyes crackled blue.
— End of Chapter 8 —