Handiwork
Inside the pitch-black abandoned factory.
A low thud of combat boots echoed at the entrance to the manufacturing room.
"Jack? Miss the manufacturing room that much? Kahahaha!"
Doomdoom turned his head and bellowed, keeping watch at the door. His face was still completely encased in machinery, red optics blazing.
Diligent little bastard. What's he doing here alone at this hour?
Jack clicked his tongue inwardly.
"There was some equipment I didn't take when I cleared out."
Jack answered offhandedly and walked deeper inside.
"Yeah? Well, that Yoo Jinwoo bastard's been cooking up some crazy shit in there all day!"
Doomdoom chattered away from the stairs above the manufacturing room. Jack paid him no mind and made straight for the main machine in the far corner.
It's all for nothing, you dumb fucks.
Jack pulled a small chip from inside his jacket. The malware chip he'd received from the Blood Bone Gang. Plug it into a cyber socket, issue an overload command, and tonight this factory would cease to exist.
Jack connected the chip to his socket.
But the very instant he did—
Crackle—!
"Ugh...!"
Static electricity burst from the back of Jack's neck. His cheap cyber socket had failed to withstand the data transfer load and thrown an error. A searing pain lanced through his brain.
Hey, Jack, how much longer?
A Blood Bone gang member's voice crackled through his embedded comm unit. They were all waiting outside the abandoned factory for the power to drop.
Just hold on.
Jack ground his teeth and connected the terminal again. Before long, a green light blinked, signaling the upload was complete.
"Doomdoom, I'm heading out."
Jack fiddled with the back of his neck as he made for the exit.
"Leaving already? Don't be too broken up about it, Jack. It's not like you got kicked out of the gang."
Doomdoom called down from the stairs, his tone consoling.
"Your chance will come around again someday! Doomdoom-nim guarantees it!"
Talking about chances. The second this operation kicks off, I'm blowing your fucking head off first.
Jack's eyes flickered blue. Data streams cascaded across his vision as he jacked into the factory's central control system.
Click.
The moment Jack issued the power cut command, the lights illuminating the factory went out like falling dominoes.
Operation commencing.
Jack's short transmission went out.
"What the fuck?!"
Blindsided by the sudden darkness, Doomdoom shouted in alarm, instinctively reaching for the pistol at his hip as he scanned his surroundings.
BANG—!
A gunshot shattered the silence, and Doomdoom's body snapped backward. A bullet flying out of the dark had punched clean through his left shoulder.
"Tch. Was aiming for your head."
Jack lowered the smoking barrel and murmured.
"Never liked you from day one. Quit acting like you run this place."
"Jack! You son of a bitch... what the hell are you doing?!"
Doomdoom shrieked, clutching his shoulder. His optics pulsed red, hunting for Jack in the darkness.
"Hmm, what does it look like, Doomdoom?"
Click.
Another metallic sound rang out in the dark. A cold muzzle pressed against the back of Doomdoom's skull.
"That voice... Blood! Is that you?!"
The man emerging from the darkness was Blood, boss of the Blood Bone Gang. To erase Nemesis—the thorn in his side—from the Lower District forever, he had infiltrated their headquarters himself.
"You fucking kidding me. Jack, your piece of shit is betraying us?!"
Jack smirked and readjusted his grip on the gun.
"Nemesis ended the day it fell to the Lower District, you idiot."
And that was the moment.
Psshhhh—!
With a loud hiss, liquid began spraying from the sprinklers hanging from the ceiling. At the completely unexpected development, every one of them—the Blood Bone soldiers, Jack, even Doomdoom—tilted their heads back to stare up.
"What the—now what the hell is this?"
Blood scowled as the spray drenched him.
"The sprinklers... they've been broken for ages."
Doomdoom muttered blankly, wiping the liquid off his face. Come to think of it—just that afternoon, an image flashed through his mind of Yoo Jinwoo climbing a ladder, inspecting and repairing the sprinkler nozzles one by one.
"Right, that Jinwoo guy fixed them all today. Kid's got no handiwork skills at all."
Sprinklers going off with no fire anywhere.
"'No handiwork skills,' huh."
A quiet voice drifted from beyond the darkness. At the same moment, the liquid spraying from the sprinklers burst apart in all directions, releasing a vicious stench.
"This—it's not water!"
Blood sniffed at the air, and his face went rigid. Too viscous to be ordinary tap water, and a pungent ozone reek stung the tip of his nose.
And then—
Crackle! Snap!
"AAAGH! My arm! MY ARM!"
One of the Blood Bone soldiers screamed, clutching his right arm and rolling across the floor. Crimson sparks erupted from the cybernetic arm grafted from elbow to fingertip, spewing black smoke.
"My—my eyes too! I can't see!"
"My cyber socket's burning up! Fuck, what IS this stuff!"
Death rattles of screams erupted from every direction. Wherever the liquid touched, sparks flew, and the cybernetic components melted from the inside out, unable to endure the runaway overload.
Electrolyte Neural Corrosive
Effect: Sends the conductivity of cybernetic components into runaway overload, destroying all circuits beyond any possibility of repair.
"M-mother of... fucking...!"
Jack was no exception. The cheap cyber socket embedded in the back of his neck reacted first. The pain burned down into the connected neural pathways of his brain, and Jack writhed on the floor.
"J-Jinwoo...!"
Jack glared through gritted teeth into the darkness. From there, a man was walking slowly toward them—Yoo Jinwoo, clad in a hazmat suit and mask, a tactical light in one hand.
"Sorry about the lack of handiwork skills."
As Jinwoo swept the light across the room, it laid bare the Blood Bone gang members writhing in agony.
"You—you little...!"
Blood forced his arm up, trying to aim his pistol. But his cybernetic eye and nervous system were already thoroughly pickled by the chemical, and he couldn't hold focus.
> Cyberware scan complete
> Target: Blood
> Status: [MOTOR CORTEX PARALYSIS] / [CIRCUITS MELTING DOWN]
> Threat Level: [MINIMAL]
Jinwoo strode over leisurely and kicked the pistol from Blood's wrist. The gun clattered powerlessly to the floor.
"Doomdoom. You okay?"
At Jinwoo's question, Doomdoom, sitting dazed with his wounded shoulder, nodded.
"Y-yeah... it just feels like plain water to me? Smells like shit, though."
"Of course it does. Remember how I coated your socket and your parts this afternoon?"
Doomdoom's face lit with realization. He remembered Jinwoo that afternoon, slathering some sticky solution into every nook and cranny of his body under the guise of a parts inspection.
So THAT'S what that was?
"Insurance is meant to be taken out."
Jinwoo walked up to Jack. Crawling on the floor and moaning, Jack reached out to grab Jinwoo's trouser leg.
"S-spare me... Jinwoo, please... we're both pharmacists, you and me...."
"Me? With you?"
Jinwoo looked down at him with cold eyes.
"And you really shouldn't be begging me for your life."
As Jinwoo answered, Jack's eyes wavered, unable to find anywhere to settle.
"What's that supposed to—"
Before Jack could finish, screams and chaos erupted from the corridor outside the manufacturing room.
"Fuck! It's Suzy! She's killing them all!"
"It's the Chrono Drive! Her movements—ARGH!"
"Y-you cyberpsycho bitch! DIE! Just DIE!!"
A sizzling mechanical whine and the sound of air being torn apart came one after another. Before long, silence fell, and Suzy—drenched in blood—emerged from the darkness.
"Haa... haa...!"
Gasping for breath, she stepped into the manufacturing room. Jinwoo regarded her in silence.
> [Terminal Chrome Syndrome]: Progression 88% (RISING SHARPLY AGAIN)
The Chrono Drive—undeniably powerful, but dangerous as hell.
The warning text blinking red in front of Jinwoo's eyes told the story. Suzy's Chrome Syndrome levels, which the drugs had suppressed, had surged back up to the critical threshold.
"What's going on here? Why are Blood Bone bastards—"
Suzy's gaze swept across the floor. She'd rushed down at the sound of gunfire, slaughtered the ones outside, and sprinted all the way here. But the scene didn't match her expectations. The Blood Bone executives and their boss Blood lay sprawled on the ground writhing in agony, and the only people standing unscathed amid it all were Doomdoom and Yoo Jinwoo.
"Boss! Jack—that bastard joined hands with the Blood Bone Gang and betrayed us!"
Doomdoom shouted urgently, still clutching his shoulder. Suzy's brow narrowed.
"So it would seem."
"Jinwoo saved us, boss! He neutralized every single one of them with the sprinklers!"
At Doomdoom's addendum, Suzy stared straight at Jinwoo.
This guy? How?
Complicated emotions flickered across her eyes, but they quickly settled into something cold.
"We'll talk details later. That work for you?"
"Of course."
Hearing Jinwoo's answer, Suzy readjusted her grip on her sword.
"Jack. Never in my dreams did I think you'd betray us. Did you forget where my brother took you in from?"
"S-spare me, boss! It wasn't what I wanted—Blood, that bastard, he seduced me! I was being blackmailed—!"
"Cut the bullshit, you fucking worm."
Blood interrupted from where he lay crawling on the floor, spitting blood as he spoke. He looked up at Suzy as if making one last desperate gambit.
"Suzy! Spare my life—just my life! An Upper District merchant! I'll connect you, yeah?! I can help Nemesis climb back up!"
Suzy let out a brittle smile.
"If you die, that contact of yours and every credit you own become mine anyway. Isn't that right?"
"You fuck—!"
Shff—!
Before the words had even left his mouth, Suzy's blade cleaved through the air. Blood's head dropped powerlessly to the floor and rolled.
Shaking the blood from her sword, Suzy gave the order.
"Doomdoom. Kill the rest of the executives."
"Yes, boss!"
Raising his gun with his one remaining arm, Doomdoom bored a hole through each executive's head in turn. The dry cracks of gunfire filled the manufacturing room—tap, tap, tap.
Finally, Suzy seized Jack by the hair and hauled his trembling, prostrate body up off the floor.
"You don't get to die clean. Understood?"
"B-boss..."
CRACK—!
With a dull, heavy thud, Jack's face was slammed into the concrete. His body convulsed once, then went limp.
As Suzy rose slowly, still breathing hard, Jinwoo silently pulled a freshly made immunosuppressant from inside his jacket and held it out to her.
She snatched it roughly and drove it straight into her own forearm without ceremony.
Pshhh—! Hsss—!
The moment the drug entered her system, the fine tremors that had been running down her shoulders subsided. Her overheated neural pathways were forcibly calmed, and the red glow of her eyes gradually died down.
"...Thank you."
Suzy murmured quietly and sheathed her blade. Sweat-soaked black hair clung to her face.
"Doomdoom, lock Jack up in the underground cell. And have the boys clean up all this trash."
"Yes, boss! Right on it!"
Doomdoom hoisted the unconscious Jack by the back of the neck like a sack of cargo. He had a hole in his shoulder, but he carried out the order faithfully all the same, paying it no mind.
Brushing the blood from her hands, Suzy turned to Jinwoo.
"Jinwoo. Let's have a talk, you and me."
Suzy's Affection: +20
Suzy's Dependence: +10
The system window blinking in the corner of Jinwoo's vision pulsed pleasantly.
"Sounds good."
Jinwoo smiled and followed after her.