Greed. (2)
Dudududududu―
The Dark Knight's heavy exhaust note rumbled through the area.
The fortress wall was built from compressed scrap cars. The guards in the watchtowers atop it flinched and swung their muzzles around, but not one of them dared to pull a trigger.
This was the man who had erased Geumji New City in a single day. Rumors about that "death god" had already spread far and wide.
Keeeeeik―
Before Sang-goo had even come to a stop, the tightly sealed iron gate ground open with a raucous clang — as if they'd been waiting for him. Or as if defying him was simply unthinkable.
Sang-goo rolled off the throttle and passed through the gate.
"Well, I'll be… you came all the way here alone again. Damn impressive, I gotta say."
At the dust-choked entrance to the industrial complex, search team captain Ji Seong-gyu stood waiting to receive him. Dozens of armed men lined up behind him, but their eyes held not hostility — they were brimming with fear and awe.
Sang-goo pulled off his helmet and tucked it under his arm.
"Quite the welcoming committee."
"After what you pulled two days ago, even this doesn't feel like enough."
Ji Seong-gyu gave a wry smile and offered his hand. Sang-goo clasped it with his gloved one — and in doing so, caught sight of the open ground stretching out around them.
"You've cleared the path so well, I hardly need a guide."
"Let's go. The commander's waiting. Ah — is the little one coming along again today?"
Ji Seong-gyu nodded toward Little Dog. Sang-goo already had Little cradled in his arm.
"Yes."
Sang-goo and Little followed behind Ji Seong-gyu.
Something was off. Last time, the place had been bustling with the roar of running machinery and crowds of workers. Now it was unnaturally quiet — like the stillness before a storm.
"It's quiet. With everything that happened in Geumji New City, I half expected you'd be gearing up for war."
At Sang-goo's remark, Ji Seong-gyu offered no answer, only quickened his pace.
They arrived at a wide clearing in the heart of the complex, where several hundred Legion soldiers had gathered, murmuring among themselves.
"That's…."
Sang-goo's brow furrowed.
At the center of the clearing, atop a stack of shipping containers, dozens of people knelt with their hands bound. Every one of them wore a black uniform — the ragtag remnants of the Black Guard, men who had either been lucky enough to flee or had been posted to guard the outer perimeters.
Their mouths were gagged, their bodies lashed with rope, and behind them stood the Iron Corps' executioners, axes and iron cudgels in hand.
"Mmph! Uuuggh!"
The prisoners' eyes were desperate, begging for their lives.
"……Why go out of your way to do this where I can see it?"
Something about it felt deliberate, so Sang-goo stopped and asked. Ji Seong-gyu didn't answer right away; even his face showed a flicker of discomfort.
"You could have handled this somewhere well out of sight. Is this some kind of… demonstration? For me — for Yeongdo-gu to watch?"
"……"
"Commander Kim Cheol-ui ordered it, didn't he."
At Sang-goo's pointed remark, Ji Seong-gyu let out a short sigh.
"I won't deny it."
"How childish."
"These are the bastards who spent months killing and abducting our comrades. Think of it as revenge against them, and… a ritual to forge our Legion's unity."
Sang-goo stared at the execution platform in silence.
Of course, the grudge between these men was not his place to judge. They had fought a war of mutual slaughter; it stood to reason the defeated would meet a miserable end.
And yet it left a bad taste in his mouth. This wasn't justice being served — it was fear put on display.
Am I really any different?
The thought came unbidden, and Sang-goo turned inward.
The version of himself who had hunted down the thugs who killed his father, buried an axe in them, and left them broken. And even now, the fire inside had never gone out. The embers that seemed long dead would blaze back to life the moment gangsters so much as loitered at the edge of his sight.
Even now, the sight of thugs flipped a switch in him — a nature that wasn't satisfied until he'd drawn blood. Watching someone else's act of vengeance through a third party's eyes, he felt anew just how chilling, how utterly mad such violence really was.
So Sang-goo said nothing more. No — he couldn't.
Setting aside his brief bout of self-reflection, one thing had become clear to him. Kim Cheol-ui was not some great man who would relinquish power easily. The desire to flaunt his own strength — even if it meant severing the heads of prisoners of war. That was the true essence of this performance.
"Let's go."
Sang-goo turned on his heel first.
The elevator ride up to the upper floors of the headquarters building passed in a heavy silence.
It was Ji Seong-gyu who finally broke it.
"……What happened to the crows?"
"Choi Min-seok and his leadership are dead. Any armed personnel who resisted during the fight were dealt with as well. They were all wearing black uniforms, so they were easy to sort out."
"And the ones left over?"
"You mean the civilians who were locked up in there, or the technicians who cooperated just to survive?"
Sang-goo glanced sideways at Ji Seong-gyu.
"They're alive."
"Being held as prisoners? Or sent off to a labor camp?"
Sang-goo smiled grimly.
"No. They've been assigned quarters and given rations and daily necessities. The wounded are being treated at the hospital."
He glanced at his watch and added, almost as an afterthought:
"Anyone in good health is having the time of their lives at a sports festival right about now."
"……A sports festival?"
Ji Seong-gyu's eyes went round. He stared in disbelief, doubting his own ears.
"It's the Lunar New Year holiday. They'll be playing soccer, doing tug-of-war… probably sharing tteokguk together, mixed right in with the Yeongdo-gu residents."
Ji Seong-gyu's pupils wavered. This was… nothing like what he'd imagined.
He had assumed, as a matter of course, that the vanquished would become the victor's slaves — plundered, trampled, forced into wretched submission. That was exactly how things worked here in the Iron Corps.
And yet — a sports festival.
"Ha…."
Ji Seong-gyu let out a hollow laugh. He'd thought Yeongdo-gu's operation fairly shrewd — Sang-goo seemed stubborn and cold-blooded, yet they went around treating people, healing the sick. But he'd never imagined this. The Korean government at the time of the Break had, truth be told, been a bitter disappointment.
In public they postured as champions of the people, while behind closed doors the high and mighty scrambled for yachts bound for open water and private bunkers. As a former rescue chief, he of all people knew exactly how it had gone down.
Really… is that a place where human beings actually live? Are those government bastards for real?
Or was this all for show — a performance of kindness to coax the Iron Corps into a peaceful merger? Suspicion would have been natural. But something about Sang-goo's offhand manner made it ring true.
Whatever the case — civilians who didn't starve, who lived safe and could smile. Wasn't that the very world Ji Seong-gyu had dreamed of?
The elevator reached the top floor. The doors parted onto a vast glass dome. Last time, this place had bristled with heavy machine guns and armed bodyguards. Today was different.
Not a single guard in sight. An empty space, and a table set at its center. Kim Cheol-ui sat there waiting.
Early sixties, bronze skin, hair cropped short and thick with gray. His face carried both a grandfatherly warmth and the stiff bearing of a career soldier. In place of a uniform he wore a black suit and long overcoat, with a single white chrysanthemum pinned to his chest.
"Welcome. Ah — is that friend a stand-in for your dog?"
Kim Cheol-ui rose from his seat to greet him.
"I'd call him my partner."
"Looks like a reliable one. Sorry about the getup. I have to pay my respects to the comrades this Legion has lost."
Kim Cheol-ui gazed briefly out the window, toward the clearing with the execution platform.
"It wasn't by our hand, but you swept the crows away for us… and only now do I feel I've earned the right to pray for my comrades' souls. I'm truly grateful."
Kim Cheol-ui bowed his head with formal gravity. Whether it was sincerity or theater, Sang-goo couldn't tell — but at the very least, the man observed propriety.
"I only did what I had to, to survive."
"That's the right answer. Everyone's struggling to survive, after all. Sit, both of you."
When he took his seat first, Sang-goo and Ji Seong-gyu settled in at the table. Little, unbidden, plopped his haunches down in the seat beside Sang-goo.
Kim Cheol-ui glanced once at Little, then moved to pour the wine himself. When Sang-goo declined, he filled his own glass instead and spoke.
"With the crows gone, I imagine you've come to discuss a peaceful merger."
He turned the wine glass slowly between his fingers, his eyes fixed on Sang-goo.
"That's right. So tell me — what happens when we join Yeongdo-gu? My men. Those hungry mouths under my roof. How will they be treated?"
Sang-goo answered without hesitation.
"I'm not the one with final authority, so I can't speak to specific administrative procedures. But there are things I can promise."
"Now you have my attention."
"The elderly and the children will be protected and kept safe. Anyone healthy enough will contribute labor and receive fair, honest rations in return. Not worked like slaves — fed and housed in proportion to what they put in."
"Labor, eh… is that all?"
"This is just my personal opinion, but—"
Sang-goo looked Kim Cheol-ui dead in the eye.
"Those converted trucks I saw when I came before. And the welding and repair skills your people have. Put those to use, and I think they'd go a long way toward cleaning up Busan."
Kim Cheol-ui's eyebrows twitched.
"Cleaning up Busan?"
"Nearly ten thousand people can't just sit on a mountain of hoarded supplies forever. Spring's coming, and if I'm right, the zombies will only grow more active — and then we'll have more than we can handle. Hunting the dead is a big enough task on its own, but if we don't clear away the bodies piling up by the day, disease will sweep through everything."
At that, a strange smile crept across Kim Cheol-ui's lips. He leaned forward, visibly intrigued.
"Now you're talking. Busan is Korea's second-largest city — a few passes of a broom aren't going to clean it. It takes heavy machinery. Give me enough support, and I'll stake my reputation as a Corps of Engineers man on building things that'll blow your mind. Road rollers that grind zombies into paste — flamethrower tanks, you name it."
"An excellent idea."
"All that equipment I built to catch the crows, and it ends up serving the country instead. Hahaha!"
Kim Cheol-ui roared with laughter, as if shrugging off the weight that had been pressing on his shoulders. Since this was a man he'd be working with from now on, Sang-goo gave him his fair share of nods and agreement.
"From now on, human beings shouldn't be fighting each other as enemies. We all unite as one and take back our city — Busan. And from Busan as our foothold, one district at a time, we take back the country."
"Taking back the country…."
Beside him, the corners of Ji Seong-gyu's eyes reddened. The day he had dreamed of for so long. The day of reclaiming not mere survival, but life itself.
"Whew… now that's a story that sets the heart on fire!"
Kim Cheol-ui broke into applause.
"Good. Very good. Listening to you, it's like all the phlegm I've been choking on for months finally came up and out."
The mood was at its ripest. A peaceful merger, a blueprint for the future. Everything seemed to be flowing along without a hitch.
And then—
Kim Cheol-ui set down his wine glass, and his expression hardened.
"Well, since we've come this far, let me lay my cards on the table up front."
His eyes glinted — greedy, yet perfectly cold-blooded.
"I'm the man who leads this Legion. I have to look after my own, don't I? There are a few things I want. Grant them, and I'll bring the Legion under Yeongdo-gu's banner myself."
Sang-goo asked flatly, as if he'd been expecting exactly this.
"And those would be?"
Kim Cheol-ui held up three fingers.
"First: the Iron Corps keeps its own command structure."
Force crept into Kim Cheol-ui's voice.
"We don't scatter. Even as part of Yeongdo-gu, I command my thousand men directly, as a single unified force. Nobody touches my people without my order."
A declaration that he would never surrender his authority.
"Second: exclusive management rights over the industrial district."
"The complex?"
"That's right. If we're going to retake Busan, you'll need weapons and equipment — and their production and management belong entirely to my unit. Your Yeongdo-gu administration keeps its hands off."
In other words, a chokehold on every piece of ordnance they produced.
"And finally, the third: amnesty."
Kim Cheol-ui looked Sang-goo square in the eye.
"We've survived the end of the world. Our hands are soaked in blood. We've looted, we've killed. But the moment we set foot in Yeongdo-gu, everything in the past is wiped clean. No one under me — myself included — gets punished or put on trial for anything that happened before. In writing. That's my guarantee."
Three conditions. Military authority, the rights of production, and a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Kim Cheol-ui wasn't proposing a merger at all. He intended to carve out his own private kingdom inside the vast fence of Yeongdo-gu.
Sang-goo's eyes narrowed. The third he could live with. The first two — something about them didn't sit right.
And why, of all things, did the old man Hwang Sang-chul spring to mind? Probably because in situations like this, it had always been that man handling things in his stead. The old man would most likely have said—
"Has this cock-sucking son of a bitch got rust packed in his goddamn skull? You wanna read the damn room or not? Somebody's gotta beat some sense into that thick head of yours before it starts working!"
— while reaching for a katana with a freshly honed edge.
Which was exactly why a sour little laugh slipped out of Sang-goo.
"You really can't read a room, can you, old man."
He'd softened it as much as he could — but the blunt truth still tumbled straight out of him.