Syria's Slave Hunting Ground
They dragged me into the warehouse. A long screech, then a heavy thud. The door was thick iron, with soundproof sheeting stuck over the inside, and the moment I saw it the only thing I felt was relief.
They threw me to the floor. I went down in a clatter of limbs.
One of them stood over me with a big knife in one hand, sneering.
"Little monkey. Come to somebody else's country and all you know how to do is flash your money."
He threatened me with the blade, then spoke to the man who'd come in with him.
"Strip him first. Let's see what he's carrying."
They'd taken my phone when they caught me. The pistol and everything else were already stored in the magic pouch inside the bag. All I had on me was the Aphago necklace, the armor vest layered under my clothes, and the magic rings and bracelets.
The one searching me spoke as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"What kind of man hangs rings off himself like that?"
He tried to wrench the ring off my finger by force.
"Agh! Ah! That hurts!"
I laid it on thick on purpose.
The one with the knife menaced me.
"Quiet. Or I'll cut your ear off."
Thinking I wouldn't understand, he brought the knife up to my face, drew it along my cheek, and set the edge against my ear. That was when the plan finished coming together.
Ten million won a head. I had to take them without killing them, and without injuring them if I could help it. I ran through the magic I was wearing and set the order.
The one twisting my finger still couldn't get my fist to open, and he shouted.
"You son of a bitch! Open your hand!"
He raised his fist and hammered my face without mercy. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Curled in on myself, I rubbed the ring with my finger and murmured in Korean.
"Ogre Power."
"Accelerate."
Support magic first.
The man who hadn't understood a word of it raised his fist again.
"What the hell is this bastard babbling?"
Just as he moved to smash my face a second time—
"Wind Cutter."
A hiss of air, and the cord binding my wrists parted with a soft snap. I threw my freed hand up and caught the fist driving down.
"Ah—!"
He locked up, startled. Still gripping that fist, I triggered the spell.
"Lightning Bolt."
Second-circle lightning magic. The range was short, but the effect was certain. Current snarled through him, and with his hand caught in mine he convulsed, body shuddering.
While I fried him, I threw another spell at the other man—at the floor under his feet, to be precise.
"Grease."
In an instant the friction beneath him dropped to nothing. He'd been about to move in a hurry; he lost his balance and went down.
"Ah!"
He slammed into the floor as if he'd hit ice, loud and messy. The impact was bad enough that he couldn't get back up right away. I shoved the electrocuted one aside, closed in, and drove a soccer kick into the man on the ground.
Thud!
I punted his face like a ball. His torso jerked, then dropped. A heavy thump.
I checked the two of them where they lay. Lucky—they weren't dead. Both out cold. I cast sleep over the men whose minds had already left them.
"Sleep."
It doesn't take well when they're worked up. Half-wrecked like this, though, they couldn't hold out, and they went under. The smashed face still nagged at me.
Damaged goods. Goddamn it. My ten million.
I swallowed the regret and put him to sleep anyway. He wouldn't wake from anything ordinary. Even so, I wasn't taking chances. I pulled a sock off each of them, stuffed it into his mouth, and bound their hands and feet with rope I'd found in a corner.
Now it was time to deal with the rest.
That part wasn't hard. If these ones didn't come back, curiosity alone would send a few more looking. I waited, and they really did come—one, then another. Grease to drop them, lightning to knock them senseless, then sleep. On that pattern I took three more without killing a single one.
But once it hit the third, things changed again.
When the men who'd gone in failed to return, the rest must have sensed something wrong, because they came crowding in all at once. I kept myself tucked in the corner and waited.
A thud. A long, grinding creak. The warehouse door opened, and the men coming through saw their comrades sprawled on the floor. Startled, they rushed inside—I watched them do it.
"What!"
"What happened!"
Sure enough, they hit the frictionless patch I'd laid ahead of time and went down in a heap. A crashing tangle of bodies.
"Guhk!"
"Kh!"
A real fall hits hard—harder still when the floor is cement, far more unforgiving than ice. The ones who came in a step later saw their friends go down and stopped short.
"What's the matter with you!"
"Idiots."
Nothing for it. I burst out of the corner and cast.
"Light."
A flash. Brilliant light exploded.
"Ghk!"
"Agh!"
"My eyes!"
Blinded in an instant, they flailed in a panic. Three of them—I had no margin. I ran in and threw the punch first.
Thud!
The man who took it square in the face flew all the way to the far wall and slammed into it. A crash, then a clatter.
Whoa.
The feeling of my fist caving his face in came through clean. A thrill—and at the same time a thought sparked.
Ah. Shatter his teeth and I won't get full price. I need to practice holding back. A waste, but it can't be helped.
I snatched the wrist of the one hastily drawing a gun and cranked it toward the ceiling.
Bang!
The round hit the ceiling and ricocheted. I caught him by the collar, hauled him in, and drove him straight down into the floor.
Thud!
I'd been studying footage and drilling the positions on my own. I worked through something like a proper form, moving with care—but with acceleration and a strength enhancement stacked on me, my body moved as well as any professional athlete's. The man on the floor rolled onto his side, pupils slack, spit leaking from his mouth.
"Ghhhh..."
Only then did I grab the ones trying to rise, one in each hand, and cook them with lightning one after another.
"Lightning Bolt."
"Lightning Bolt."
"Lightning Bolt."
The door had been left open, so the noise must have carried outside.
"What's going on!"
I heard the rest of them running in. I laid sleep over the men already down, then readied the next spell. When I raised both hands, translucent shapes like arrows rose above my palms.
"Magic Arrow."
A third-circle attack spell with striking power close to a crossbow. A pity—but I couldn't keep all of them. If anyone came through with a rifle up, I'd have no choice but to kill him without hesitating. Some part of me thought the armor vest, worn in three layers, might stop a round. I still couldn't afford to gamble on it.
I hardened my resolve and met the men charging in.
Dead: 3
Injured — broken teeth or bones, or bodies run through: 4
Captured: 9
I bound the captives, put them to sleep, and locked them away. The injured ones I'd put to some other use anyway. I dragged the four of them out, sat them in chairs, and tied them there. I meant to get information out of them.
As expected, they started by sneering, or by flying into a rage.
"You bastard. I'll flay you alive!"
"I'll hunt down your family and cut every one of their throats while they're still breathing!"
"We'll give Korea a nightmare just like 9/11!"
I'm not the type to fuss much over things like human rights—and a criminal's rights, even less. Ransacking the place, my eye caught the kitchen. A scene from a movie came back to me. I went in, boiled up a great pot of cooking oil, and brought it out.
When I carried over the pot of furiously bubbling oil, they seemed to guess what I meant to do. Their faces went the color of ash.
"O Allah!"
"H-hey. What are you doing!"
Amid all those different reactions, I walked up to the one who'd resisted the hardest, a ladle of oil in hand, and poured it over his thigh.
A vicious, spitting sizzle.
"AAAAAGH!!!"
His eyes rolled back as if he might pass out. The rich smell of rendering fat rose off him. Oil that had started at the thigh climbed to his waist, and he thrashed against the ropes.
The visuals, more than anything, are excellent.
The others went white. Mouths clamped shut, eyes averted, they trembled in fine little shakes. I scooped another ladle and stepped in, and this one shook just as hard, lips quivering.
"P-please! Please don't! Don't!!! Aaagh!!!"
This time I poured from above his head.
"Agh! Aagh! AAAAGH!!!"
The scream rang in every direction. He burned where the oil clung to him and shrieked until his voice went raw, while the men seated beside him scrambled to twist away in case it splashed.
"No!"
"Y-you devil!"
"Stop! How can you do this to a person!"
The savory smell of cooking fat seeped into the noses of men watching a human being fried alive. A few of them caught the scent and retched.
"Hrk—!"
Watching them suffer, I almost had to laugh.
"You little shits. When you were cutting living people's throats with knives, you didn't so much as blink. So why is it, the second it's your turn, everything's so fucking unbearable?"
I scooped another ladle and glared at them. The ones who met my eyes flinched, turned their faces, and dropped their gazes. The fine tremor running through them said they were scared out of their minds.
I had no intention of frying my own merchandise for nothing, either. If they were ready to talk, that was enough.
"Quieter now. From here on, you take turns, one by one, and you tell me everything you know. All of it. Hesitate mid-sentence, and you get a nice warm shower. Oh—and if you rat out another man's lie, I'll let you off once. Everyone understand the rules? Then we start with you and go left. Begin."
The information I got was simple.
This place is one of ISIS's branch offices in Damascus.
Their role is to take people who come looking to join IS to a training site—or to kidnap tourists.
The branch holds sixteen men. The nearest other branch is in a village about a hundred kilometers from here.
That one has people producing and spreading social-media videos urging others to join ISIS, and people escorting recruits who have come from Europe to enlist.
I learned the nearby branch's location, its contact details, and its headcount. I also got what I could on the officers they were able to reach.
Beyond information, there were the weapons they'd been storing. I pulled up the floor and found a hidden cache—ammunition, rifles, and an RPG. I already had plenty of automatic rifles, so I left those and took two thousand rounds instead. The RPG, the thing they call the Staff of Allah, was an unexpected bonus. Five warheads. Three for practice, two to keep. That ought to do.
In another crate I found the personal effects of a dozen or more people: passports, wallets, watches. I knew at once they belonged to the ones who'd been kidnapped.
The kidnapped, I was told, were sorted by use.
Women are taken and used as sex slaves for ISIS fighters, or as breeding stock.
Men become labor slaves, kept for forced work.
And last, human offerings—for filming beheadings, or for murder training.
Bad men ought to pay for what they've done. Allah's too busy to bother with this lot, so I'll see they're put to good use in His place.
I loaded them onto the truck parked at the branch. The one I'd scalded with oil had died after all, so I left him. I took the injured ones too. Even a dirt-cheap price is a price, if I can get it. Otherwise I patch them up and use them myself.
I retrieved the bag they'd taken. Before I left, I poured oil across the floor of the branch building and set it alight. A moment later the flames surged. I watched the building wrap itself in fire in the side mirror, then put the truck in gear and pulled away.