Slave Hunt

When I came to, I realized I was floating somewhere around the middle of the cliff.

I had picked the hours before dawn on purpose for the crossing, and with nothing around me but solid dark, I had to wonder whether the two worlds didn't share the same flow of time.

Should I go higher?

I rose slowly toward the top, and there was the cliff's edge. Fortunately, not a soul in sight. Once I was sure of that, I stepped up onto the rim.

Time first.

I pulled the phone from my pocket. It hadn't shown so much as an antenna bar in the other world, so I had shut it off to save the battery. A moment later the power came on. Still no signal. The other world or this desert, it was all the same.

The night air was cold enough to raise a chill. On any ordinary night I might have lost the path, wandered the sand, and dropped dead where I fell. Not tonight.

"Levitation."

I triggered the magic again, and my body lifted. The movement was smoother than before. I pushed the speed and climbed even faster—five hundred meters, seven hundred, a kilometer. In the end I was two kilometers above the ground.

I caught my balance in that dizzying emptiness, drew the glasses from inside my coat, and put them on.

They gave me the eyes of an eagle. By day, finding what I wanted might actually have been harder. At night, even accounting for the curve of the Earth, I could see out to a hundred and seventy kilometers—and it was night.

A small object, maybe I would miss. The lights of a megacity of ten million, twenty million if you counted the greater area, were another story, however far off they burned.

There.

I checked them against the compass from my coat and roughly fixed a bearing. Twenty-seven degrees northeast. Then I dropped straight back down to the ground.

With a direction locked in, all I had to do was make for it and not waste time. I had to take them tonight. If they had already run, I was in trouble.

I broke into a run along the bearing I had just taken and laid magic over my feet.

I started running at three or four times an easy jog—forty kilometers an hour. An ordinary man would have folded in minutes, but I had stacked endurance on top of the speed, and I pulled a recovery potion besides.

I ran for three straight hours. Between the endurance enhancement and three bottles of recovery potion poured down my throat, there wasn't a whisper of fatigue.

In that moment, ahead of revenge, another thought surfaced. How much could I sell these recovery potions for? Even at a few hundred dollars ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a bottle, people would buy. The catch was whether they could ever be recognized as food. Dragging an approval out of Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety was anything but simple. I set the thought aside. It had come up almost on reflex.

Once I crossed the city's edge, I eased. The biggest reason was that my phone had caught a signal. I never knew a single little bar at the top of a screen could steady a man like that.

I let my nerves down and opened the map. My location blinked. Getting back, then, was only a matter of time.

I had burned through nearly all my money buying the necklace, but at least I hadn't lost the card as well. First I searched for a nearby bank. Three and a half kilometers. I would start there.

I ran for the bank, then slowed. Go too fast where people could see, and it would look wrong. I cut it to about what an ordinary man could manage flat out. Even at twenty kilometers an hour, I got there quick.

Whenever I went abroad I carried a debit card from a global chain bank. I barely touched it in Korea, but it was handy for the odd time I needed cash in a hurry. Before leaving the country I had deposited a modest sum, just in case—enough to buy a single plane ticket.

I put the card in and withdrew the money, already converted into Egyptian pounds. Thinking over what I had to do today, I figured I would need a fair amount. I split it across several withdrawals and pulled thirty thousand pounds.

Right as I finished taking the cash, an ominous signal came from behind me.

Ting-ting.

Among the things I had brought, a small bell hanging from the bracelet on my wrist began to ring.

Cold sweat broke along my spine. I let out a long breath. Call it a major city if you like; there was no reason to expect decent public safety in Egypt. Show yourself pulling cash that many times over, and the odds of becoming a target only climb.

I activated the magic on the gear I was wearing, exactly the way I had practiced.

It didn't actually draw on the strength of a monster called an ogre, but I had been told it could still pull several times an ordinary man's power. Iron Skin laid a barrier over my whole body on the order of full plate, the iron armor of a medieval knight. Hard to say how much medieval plate was really worth—but even in Earth's Middle Ages, well-forged armor could stop a matchlock ball and a longsword. Why else would something as brainless as a morning star have been invented, if not to punch through it?

Praying they weren't holding pistols, I turned around.

Three of them.

"Hey, bro~ What were you doing over there?"

"How about we talk for a minute?"

One of the men swaggering toward me drew a jackknife from his coat. The moment I laid eyes on that cute little pocketknife—

"Whew. Fuck. I thought it was a gun. Scared me."

Relief could hit that hard. The cold sweat went pleasantly cool.

And then—

"You sons of bitches."

I launched the way I had drilled. Triple acceleration was already on me. I charged and swung a fist the way I had seen it in the comics.

The Dempsey Roll!

A sloppy stance, wasted motion everywhere. Even so, the force behind triple acceleration was more than enough against ordinary men. The one in front of me wasn't stupid enough to eat a punch he could see coming, and he threw an arm up to guard. I, on the other hand, had cheat-tier gear strapped on.

Whud!

Not an ogre. About a gorilla. My fist smashed through his guard and sent his whole upper body flying.

Crash!

The unreal power froze the others where they stood. Into that gap I snapped a front kick and drove a fist into a gut, and the man I caught there was blasted backward and slammed into whatever stood behind him. He dropped the knife in his hand without ever getting a swing off. The last one couldn't commit to running or rushing, and just stood there half-cocked.

I closed in, seized him by the collar, and hauled him straight up off the ground.

"Ghk!"

With grip and arm strength on the order of a gorilla against a man, size meant nothing. I drove the body of the bastard—feet pedaling in the empty air—straight into the pavement.

Crash!

The man on the ground twitched. I looked around. Fortunately, it seemed no one had seen.

Careless. I should have taken this somewhere with no people. Got worked up. I need to be more careful.

I scooped up the fallen jackknife, stuffed the money into my pocket, and ducked into an alley. The one mercy was Cairo. With public order like this, vanish down an alley and a trail gets hard to find. And if I showed my face somewhere public after running at an inhuman speed, I could build an alibi even if the police came looking.

I took a pendant from my pocket and hung it around my neck. Necklaces dangled all over me. Some rapper I was.

It was a long way from the stealth reserved for mages. All it could hide was line of sight, more or less, and not even that completely—ninety-nine percent invisibility. Look closely and you would catch something like a wavering boundary. But in a dim hour ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠before dawn like this, that was plenty to hide a body.

I ran at full power, speed hauled up to five times. Obstacles and buildings in the way, I cleared by lifting myself into the air with levitation. Once I made the rooftops, I jumped from roof to roof.

Tat-tat-tat-tat. Tat-tat-tat-tat.

Leaping from building to building, cut against the cold air of dawn, felt sharp enough to thrill. So this was the taste those kids on YouTube were hooked on—the reason they pulled insane stunts.

The first place I went looking was the company's Egypt branch.

The date on my phone said two days had passed, the same as in the other world. They would have taken some kind of step in that span. Reported me missing, most likely. If so, Hassan would be living exactly as he always did. That much was obvious.

I headed for the front of the branch building and hid in an alley with a view of it. I waited. Thirty minutes, give or take.

There. That piece of shit.

I watched the car Hassan was riding pass along the street and drop into the building's underground garage. I walked straight in after it. Down in the garage, his car was sitting there.

Good. First, get the door open.

I reached into my pocket and drew out what was inside. A key.

A key made of millions of grains of sand. I set it to the keyhole and pushed, and it drove itself inward. The grains, gone soft as clay, churned on their own and forced open the gaps inside the lock. I checked that it had seated hard, and turned it.

Click.

Lucky this bastard's car wasn't keyless. Handy little thing—though I did wonder how I would ever open a real electronic lock, the kind with an automatic key.

Either way, I unlocked the door with the key and climbed into the back seat, then locked it again behind me. I lay down on the floor back there and shut my eyes for a while. All I had to do was wait until Hassan showed.

Hassan, fresh from taking his work orders, came back down to the underground garage.

On the surface he was working no differently than any other day, but a greasy unease trailed him the whole time.

The reason—

Never found that bastard's body. Goddamn it. Where the hell did he fall?

He had been trying to grab ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the man when Amin fired, and he had seen plain as day the one who took the bullet go over the cliff. The problem was that they had never found a body at the bottom. He had even burned a day of leave going down to look, and still nothing.

Did I get the spot wrong? Damn it. Even so, fall from there and he's dead. No way he's alive. Shit.

What really ate at him was that, with no photo of the corpse sent along, he still hadn't been paid the balance. Amin kept pushing to find the man and finish him, but all Hassan knew from the client was a Telegram ID. Tracking the bastard down was a long shot.

Damn it.

He never should have put his hands on a job like this. For a little while, the money had blinded him.

He shoved the irritation down and headed for the car. He opened the locked door, sat, turned the ignition, and took the wheel. He worked the gear.

He had backed the car out and was just about to pull away when a voice from behind him, and something sharp against his throat, dragged a line of ice down his spine.

"W-wh-who?"

A hood was pulled low, so the face stayed hidden.

"You fucking bastard. You forgot my voice too?"

Hassan's face went ashen.

"M-M-Mr. Kang?"

"Yeah. You fucking bastard. So before I jam this down your throat, drive exactly like I tell you. Nice and slow."

The knife at his neck pressed harder. The tip bit in, just barely, and a bead of blood welled and ran.

"Ghk!"

"Move and you get hurt worse. Drive rough and you get hurt too. Understand? Drive smooth. Your driving's always been a little wild. Today's a driving lesson."

"Wh-wh-where."

"Where do you think. Your friend. The bastard named Amin. Drive."

Hassan slowly pulled the car away.