The Bait
The Physiognomist hadn't even finished drawing his pistol. From the sliver peeking into view I could tell it was a Glock 26. His eyes, which had been boring into mine, drifted slowly downward and stopped on the Backscratcher gripped in my hand. He still hadn't cleared his gun, but my muzzle was already on him. The moment he confirmed that what I held was a hunter-grade pistol, one corner of his mouth lifted. Sharp eyes.
Bright moonlight poured through the window in the wall we were both braced against. We could not have seen each other's faces any more clearly. A winged insect still spun in a dizzy blur right in front of us, and in the instant both of us, without meaning to, let our gaze snag on its flight, it fluttered and shot out the window. In the same breath the Physiognomist and I thrust out the arms holding our guns. A click. Out the window.
"Don't come any closer!"
"Don't you move!"
We snapped the warnings at the same time, and the unknown figure closing in from a distance froze where he stood.
"Brother, you've got a feel for this."
"Anyone with dull ears is already dead."
The man outside almost certainly hadn't been coming for us. From where he stood, there was no way he could have seen the two of us inside the building. Just a rotten piece of luck. With the moon at his back he was nothing but a black silhouette; the two muzzles flashing in the moonlight, though, scared him badly enough that he threw both hands high at once.
"P-please, spare me!"
"Eh?"
At the sound of that voice, the Physiognomist eased his muzzle up a fraction.
"Kim-ssi?"
The postman who had taken the deal with the raiders posing as a search party.
"D-Drunkard?"
"That really you, Kim-ssi?"
"It's me, it's me! God—Drunkard... am I glad to see you!"
With that he lowered his arms and took a step toward us.
"Stop!"
"Huh?"
"Stop right there!"
"Drunkard, who's that beside you?"
"You got a look at him earlier, didn't you? Well-built postman. My little brother."
"Ah... so the two of you decided to travel together after all?"
Kim-ssi ignored my warning and took another step.
"Stay where you are!"
"What's the matter, young man..."
"I told you to stop."
"Just help me a little..."
"Kim-ssi, don't come any closer!"
"Stop!"
"No, if you'd just listen to me—"
"Kim-ssi! Listen!"
"Last warning."
"Please, help me..."
"Kim-ssi!"
The round cracked off into empty air.
"Hk—!"
Only after I'd wasted it did Kim-ssi finally stop coming closer.
"...Don't make me say the same thing twice again."
Ammunition was as precious as blood. Warning shots were a rich man's luxury, and I couldn't even say how many years it had been since I'd fired one. Everything a single round could be traded for flashed past in a reel—and in the next breath I felt, absurdly, like a rich man myself. Confidence seeped out of the spare magazines I'd packed without skimping.
A man who fires warning shots. That's the kind of man I am.
If the Physiognomist hadn't been standing there, that first shot would have gone straight into Kim-ssi's calf. I'd given him the one pass.
"Young man, please, help me..."
"Hands up. High."
"Just listen for a second—"
"Hands up. Want me to show you what happens if you make me say it a third time?"
"Hhh..."
Beside me the Physiognomist only heaved a long sigh and said nothing. No complaint about my methods, at least. Kim-ssi raised both arms.
"Mr. Drunkard, talk the young man around for me. Tell him to help..."
"Kim-ssi..."
"Right arm stays up. Left hand only. Slowly unbutton your shirt and open it."
He didn't answer.
"Unbutton it and open it. That's twice."
The wet, hitching sound of his sobbing pulled my face into a grimace on its own. Nothing to be done about it. Kim-ssi undid the buttons.
"Help me... hhh..."
Just as I'd expected. Under the shirt a belly band was cinched tight, small charges fixed to it—a bomb someone had forced onto him.
"Fuck... Kim-ssi..."
The Physiognomist's voice had gone heavier than I'd ever heard it. This had to be his real one. A bomb that might go off any way, at any moment. We both slipped behind the wall. I didn't take my muzzle off the window.
"This won't work."
"...I know. There's no way."
The raiders would have taken Kim-ssi somewhere they'd already judged safe—a fully controlled environment—and along the way they would have squeezed a decent background check out of him. When the chance came, they cleaned him out completely. That was how skilled raiders worked. A blind ambush carried risk. Even if you landed the first blow, a fight could run anywhere, and killing a postman out in the open only to get unlucky with a witness could turn into a real nuisance afterward. So they lured him in, set him at ease, and stripped him without spending much strength.
The problem was what came after. How, exactly, had Kim-ssi walked out of their hands alive? The answer was simple: he hadn't. That sort of thing didn't happen.
Without realizing it, he took another step.
"Listen to me."
I closed one eye and settled the muzzle dead on his forehead.
"S-sorry! I didn't mean to... I'll stay still. Help me."
"I'm sorry, but you're already a dead man."
"Kim-ssi..."
The Physiognomist had known they were raiders. That was why he had refused the deal, and why he had tried, at the start, to talk Kim-ssi out of it. Kim-ssi hadn't listened. He couldn't very well have shouted that those men were raiders with them standing right there, either. That would have meant a fight on the spot, and even if the Physiognomist had gotten his gun out fast, the best he could have managed was one or two companions for the road down to the afterlife.
"I should have listened to Mr. Drunkard... hhh..."
The Physiognomist hung his head. He had known Kim-ssi was going to die, of course. Knowing a thing in your head and seeing it with your own eyes were entirely different matters. Eyes and muzzle still fixed on the man's forehead, I spoke to him low.
"Pack up."
Without a word, he started getting ready to leave.
Somewhere out there, the one who had rigged the bomb was hiding—far enough not to be seen. They would have stuck some basic tracker on the explosive belt and been following at a careful distance, waiting to hear it blow. They hadn't gone looking for a tracker just to stage this, of course. Even a simple one wasn't a common item. More likely they had picked one up by chance in the middle of a robbery, then sat around working out how to use it. This was the result. I couldn't tell what kind of detonator they had fitted, but the purpose was the same either way.
Catch the fish that takes the bait.
When the charges went off, anyone close by would die or be left a cripple. Even a small charge, packed with enough shrapnel, was plenty for killing people. After that the raiders who had been hiding would step out and collect the spoils.
"Turn around. Get down on your stomach. Slowly."
"Hhk... young sir..."
"You really don't listen."
"Hhh."
Kim-ssi slowly lowered himself.
"Face down. Hands behind your back."
He moved like he was dragging it out. At least he had stopped wasting words.
"Any charges on the sides of that belt, or the back?"
"Hhh... I think there was one on the side..."
"Feel for it. Tell me exactly."
"On the left, yes. Nothing on the back..."
Saving their stores. Only two charges.
"Turn your body ninety degrees clockwise."
He did as he was told.
That'll do.
If it blew while he was face-down, the shrapnel fixed to his belly wouldn't spray. I had turned the charge on his left hip the other way, so at this distance we were safe.
"Kim-ssi. Listen carefully."
Silence.
"If you know anything about the men who cleaned you out, say all of it. Now."
"Information..."
"Think, Kim-ssi!"
He drew a deep breath and sank into thought. Something came back to him.
"The bosses were those two."
Two leaders.
"The one who barely talks, and the one who acts polite?"
"Yes, those two. They split the work, but both of them were running the outfit. And..."
Two men playing captain as equals was no easy arrangement. Not ordinary raiders, then.
"They seemed to be planning to hit a settlement, but which one..."
Once raiders gathered a certain amount of strength, going after a settlement was common enough. In the end, what they wanted was a settled life too. Men who lived by robbery figured taking one was easier than building one.
"They must have talked among themselves about how they'd take it."
"I wasn't held all that long... Ah. Would this count?"
"Anything you remember. All of it, Kim-ssi!"
"I heard they'd hired mercenaries and sent them in, to gather information on that settlement..."
Mercenaries, slipped inside a settlement to collect intel. So they weren't planning to fight dumb and head-on. Smarter than I'd expected. Time for the two of us to get clear.
"We should pull out."
"Yeah..."
A bomb that could go any moment, any way. There was no saving him. No—from the start, Kim-ssi had been nothing but a walking corpse. I backed away and lowered the gun. Keeping it on him to the end would have been the careful thing, but I didn't think I needed to. I didn't want to, either.
"Kim-ssi."
"Mr. Drunkard..."
"When I get back to headquarters, I'll make sure they hear about this."
Report an attack on a postman, and the military would answer. In the old days, I gathered, an organization called the police had handled that sort of thing. There was nothing like it now.
"There's really no way for me to live? Is there?"
"...I'll make sure they hear."
Even if the army went out, finding raiders who drifted with no fixed home was no easy thing. One search, nothing turned up, and the matter would be buried. Still, they got results more often than you'd think. The rate at which the murderers of postmen were brought down reached a full nine percent.
"Kim-ssi."
"Yeah..."
"Knowing it's the end, and getting to steady your heart before you go—that's a kind of luck, too."
He said nothing. It was the truth. A monster or a zombie crashing in without warning, a sniper out of nowhere, an air raid no one had announced—most people were gone in the same breath they gasped.
We left the building and put distance between ourselves and Kim-ssi at a quick pace. He made no sound. He didn't follow. What was he thinking?
By the time we had gotten far enough, a heavy thud rolled in, low and thick: the sound of the blast settling over the ground.
We had to break through the sniper zone before sunrise. I moved fast and didn't rest, and the Physiognomist kept his mouth clamped shut and stayed on my heels. Looking at that bulging belly, I had figured he would be slow. Living to his age hadn't been pure luck after all.
After the sun came up, we crossed a mountain. From there his stamina couldn't match my pace, so I put on a reasonable show of struggling and matched him. Then I found a place that looked safe—a big rock set among thick trees. I stepped into its shade and immediately bit into a compressed powder ration. It crunched. At this speed the delivery would leave me a fair amount of food to spare, so I could afford to eat my fill. The Physiognomist looked as if he had no appetite at all.
"Brother."
Something about the way he said it sat wrong. Creepy, almost.
"What."
"About Kim-ssi."
Another crunch.
"Why'd you ask him for information on the men who robbed him?"
"You said you'd report it to headquarters yourself. They attacked a postman. Of course it has to be reported. You need information for that."
"Just to file a report? That's all?"
Of course it wasn't. If I ran into those men anywhere, at any time, I would need more than that to know them. I had the two bosses' faces clear enough, but faces alone might not be enough. If a day came when I met them again and recognized them, I would be able to act with a little less hesitation.
"That's all. What other reason would there be."
"True enough. That sort of work belongs to the army."
"That sort of work?"
"Punishment, I mean. Payback. Revenge."
Revenge, courtesy of the army.
"The most satisfying kind is the kind you take with your own hands, though."
"Who doesn't know that? If I had it in me, I'd have done it already!"
Right. You needed the ability. To do what just anyone couldn't, you had to stop being just anyone. Still, I was curious.
"What were you to Kim-ssi, that you're talking about revenge?"
"The same blood!"
"Didn't you say he wasn't a Woo? That he was a Kim?"
"Ah, that's an alias, an alias! Originally he was a Woo, same as us. All of us, the same blood!"
What was he, a vampire? Why cling to blood like that? When the time came to part ways, I would have to tell him mine was an alias too. The truth was, I was a Son. Not a single consonant or vowel in common with Woo. If he filed me away as the same blood, I had a feeling something exhausting would find me someday.
"But that Kim fellow had a Core on him, didn't he? So he never used it, right to the end."
So he had been carrying a Core. The raiders would have taken it.
"If it was valuable, those bastards hit a jackpot."
"Hard to call it precious when the risk is that big. The failure rate was all of ninety-eight percent, and the failure effect was permanent paralysis of the whole body."
Sober, no one could possibly use a thing like that. Trash-Tier. Which meant—
"At that rate, there's a chance it was an Ability Core."
"Right. That's why he carried it for insurance. When the moment comes that's just right for dying, it's all or nothing anyway, isn't it?"
In the end, it seemed Kim-ssi hadn't used the Core even at the decisive moment. Or maybe he simply hadn't been able to.
We started moving again. Going down a mountain, you had to be more careful than going up. I had come out loaded with survival gear, and the bag was heavy enough that the strap kept sliding off my shoulder. I hitched it back into place, and something round inside knocked against the rest of the contents with a dull clatter.