Transfer of Land
Before I went to collect Maximus, I stopped at the house in Nowon.
The reason was an alibi.
The villa was newly built, and a CCTV camera watched the common entrance. The recorder sat in the living room of the owner's unit — my mother's. I checked what the camera had caught and set the storage to its maximum, thirty days. Then I went into my room.
"Turning in early."
Now I only had to slip out. Mother wasn't likely to come into the room overnight, and even if she did, the cameras would show no sign that I had left. Nothing to worry about. We lived on the sixth floor, and the wall offered nothing to climb — no gas pipe, no rainwater downspout. Not that I meant to climb. I meant to fly. On Earth, the standing fact is that human beings cannot.
I changed clothes, took out the transparent robe, and triggered the magic.
Transparent Robe — Invisibility
Flight
My body turned invisible in an instant. Flight next. I eased the window open, stepped outside, and shut it again. From there I flew until the neighborhood was behind me.
Nammun Market.
At that late hour the streets around the market were deserted. I tucked the G-Wagen deep into an alley and left the engine running.
"When I signal, the two of you come in. IS-1, grab whatever's at hand. Maximus... well. You won't need anything."
"Understood, Chairman."
I left them there and got out, pulling the cap low over my brow. A look around, and then I walked for the nightclub.
A heavy stood watch at the door. I went up to him.
"I'm the one who was told to come at eleven. Kang Chung-sik. You know the name."
He looked me up and down. A rotten little smile, halfway to a sneer, and a jerk of the chin.
"Go downstairs. Somebody'll show you in."
I took the stairs the way he pointed. Loud music throbbed, muffled, from below. At the bottom a glass entrance came into view, and faded lettering caught my eye.
Sure enough, another heavy came toward me.
"You actually showed. Follow me."
He led me in. I crossed the club behind him. On the stage opposite, a dancer in nothing but her panties twisted through her routine. He took me to where the private rooms clustered at the back, walked the corridor to its end, knocked, and opened the door.
"Boss. He's here."
"Send him in."
The man turned to me.
"Go on."
I stepped past him into the room. The moment my foot crossed the threshold, a rough hand seized my shoulder and yanked. A kick caught the back of my knee and dropped me. I went down the way they wanted, knees on the floor.
A shield was already wrapped around my whole body, so there was no pain. Only a foul mood. I nearly killed every one of them then and there, and decided instead to stick to the plan and hear the story first.
Once I was kneeling, those same hands bore down on both shoulders. I lifted my head. On the sofa opposite sat a middle-aged man, his skin dark and rough, crowded with scars and the pits of old acne.
He spoke.
"Shit. Looks like a complete pushover. Here I thought you were somebody with a little weight. So why weren't you scared?"
Still on my knees, I asked him.
"Walk me through it."
"Hahaha. Wow. Strange little bastard. Fine. We're face to face, so let's talk business. You closed on a piece of land not long ago."
"That land?"
"Yeah. Out in Hwaseong. We need it. Be nice if you handed it over."
"And why do you need it? Who needs it?"
"Someone I know says he does. I need a piece of it too. I'm not asking you to give it away. A billion won. I'll see you get it. Not much of a loss, is it?"
I had bought it for a billion and a half, and he wanted it for one — and called that no loss. The man was insane. Or he simply had no conscience.
"I'll need the name on the title before I hand anything over."
"Fair. Hong Seokho. An acquaintance of mine."
Hong Seokho. I didn't know him, but now that I had the name, I could look into it.
"Going to these lengths to get it, though. There must be something on that land."
"No idea. Still — if Councilor Hong is after it, there's a reason, don't you think?"
Councilor? A member of the National Assembly?
If so, then there really was something there. Inside, I crowed. My eye hadn't failed me. Of course.
"We drew up the contract. You don't have a seal, right? A fingerprint will do. Don't worry."
He took the papers from an envelope and spread them on the table. At the same time the men holding me grabbed both arms, hauled me up, and dragged me to stand in front of it.
Transfer of the Hwaseong parcel — fingerprint in lieu of seal.
The ink on the seal I had stamped myself had not even dried, and already they wanted the land signed away. I had heard as much as I needed to hear.
I activated the ring on my finger. Telepathy. It could send a message to a target set in advance. Part of me wanted to finish this myself, but the more hidden cards I kept, the better.
Come in and clean this up. I'm in the innermost room.
Maximus came up off the seatback.
"It's the Chairman. We're going in."
"Yes, Head Slave."
Maximus and IS-1 got out and headed for the club.
The heavy on the door froze for a beat at the sight of Maximus coming straight at him. He had been trusted with the entrance, so he was a solid mass of a man himself — but Maximus was closer to a Canadian grizzly, or a polar bear, than to anything human.
"The hell?"
Startled, he hesitated, and still threw himself across the doorway on reflex. A hand the size of a cauldron lid closed over his face and drove him straight into the floor.
Thud!
He never got as far as thinking of fighting back. Face planted, he lay spread-eagled and out cold. By the time anyone registered what Maximus was, the entrance was already a wreck. The other heavies blocking the door went down one punch apiece.
Strength past a full-grown orc, the bare-handed art passed down in Gaia, and the fundamentals he had taken from Argon — Maximus was a human tank.
"Stop him!"
"You son of a bitch!"
"Get the weapons! Now!"
He slipped the men rushing him with bare fists, and the punch he threw smashed a gangster across the face.
Thwack!
The fist buried in the man's face hauled the rest of him along and flung him.
Crash—!!!
A grown man flew onto a table and slammed down. People screamed.
"Kyaaa—!"
"A fight! There's a fight!"
Another fist came swinging in behind the first. He blocked it and punched again.
Thwack!
Shatter—!!
Glasses and beer bottles burst in a racket. Men with steel pipes and aluminum bats charged, vicious. He let a pipe slide past, caught the man's shoulder, swept the ankle, and drove the airborne body straight into the floor.
Thud!!
A baseball bat he stopped in his palm. He hooked an arm around the shoulder and the back of the head and threw the man over his hip, slamming him down.
Thud!!
"Ghk!"
Flung out like a frog, the man choked off and blacked out. The next one in swung a bat at Maximus's skull.
Clang!!!
"Aaagh!"
A clean ring of metal, and the man who had swung couldn't hold the shock in his hands. The bat dropped. Maximus turned at his leisure, seized the torso, hoisted him, and planted him on the next table over.
Bang!
The table jumped. Dishes of bar food and beer bottles leapt, shattered, and sprayed in every direction. Men drew knives and rushed him. He trapped a thrusting arm in his armpit and ripped the shoulder from its socket, slipped the blade, and drove a fist into the face. He took the charge's own momentum and threw the man onto the neighboring table.
"Agh! My arm!"
Thud! Crash!
Clatter—!!
More than a dozen of the crew came at him, and not one of them slowed his feet by a step. In the meantime IS-1 found the corridor that led to the rooms.
"This way."
Maximus came up and took the lead again.
"Let's go."
Once my fingerprint was on the contract, the man in front of me smiled, thin and mean.
"Meek as a lamb in person, and on the phone you ran your mouth like that. Keep it up and you won't live out your span. Remember that."
After the print I pulled a tissue from the box and wiped the ink from my thumb.
"My lifespan is my business. Don't worry about me. Worry about yours."
"What?"
That was when the noise broke out beyond the door.
"Stop him!"
"You bastard!"
"Weapons! Bring the weapons!"
The man's face hardened. He looked at the subordinate beside me.
"Go out and see."
"Yes."
The man answered, turned, and opened the door. The instant it swung wide, a shadow filled his sight and his body locked.
"Wh—"
The word never finished.
Crash—!
Shatter—!!
The heavy came flying through the doorway and slid straight across the table. Bottles, glasses, and plates were shoved clear, struck floor and wall, and broke in a clatter. His head caught the far edge and dropped, limp. The bridge of the nose, the philtrum, the mouth — caved in, split open. The pupils were dull. He was unconscious. His chest still moved, a little, so he seemed to be alive.
The man took in, in a single glance, the wreck of the subordinate who had flown in and sprawled there. Seo Heegon, boss of the Suwon Nammun Gang, stared with a rigid face at the mass coming through the door.
He had grown up on hard bones in the underworld, and he had never seen a build like this. What held his eyes harder than the size was the gaze. Would a butcher who had slaughtered beast after beast have eyes like that? No feeling in them at all. Instinct told him this one would break a human body, smash it apart, without a moment's hesitation.
"Who are you?"
Maximus came in and stood at my side. Seo Heegon looked from me to him.
"You know each other?"
I picked up the contract in front of me. My fingerprint, stamped in red ink, marked the page. I held it up, took a lighter from my pocket, and set the paper on fire where they could see it.
The burning sheets curled inward. I lifted the ice bucket from a corner of the table, dumped the ice, and dropped the flaming contract inside. The flame that had climbed above the rim died almost at once.
Seo Heegon ground his teeth where no one could hear it.
So that's why he stamped it so meekly.
Even so, he could not give ground here.
"Hey. Think carefully. You pull this, and you think we'll just sit still and—"
"What?"
The order was for the slaves. Maximus understood. He answered and stepped forward.
"Yes, Chairman."