Seoul Cyberpunk Story-Chapter 71: Rina Cortez (1)

After the cheerful meal, we regrouped in the central control room.

Luna and Celine had already left with Victor’s team to leisurely tour the rest of Seoul Dino Park’s facilities.

At the center of the control room’s massive holograph display, data that Ember and Scarlet had compiled in a short time was now projected.

Glitch Alley.

That strange place Celine had mentioned—where people kept vanishing.

The screen showed satellite imagery of Glitch Alley, as well as a calculated estimate of the number of disappearances based on backtracked CCT-core logs from the surrounding area.

There was also intel going back years, suggesting the Steel Juggernauts gang had claimed an abandoned factory district there as their base of operations.

However, appended to that was a recent note: no sightings of Steel Juggernauts members had been recorded for the past several months.

It hadn’t been long since we received the tip, but just from the sheer volume of data and the meticulous way it had been organized, it was clear how hard Aria and Scarlet had worked on this.

Ember pointed at the holograph and spoke.

“Thanks to the info Celine gave us, we’ve got a solid lead on a pretty shady place. The sudden vanishing of the Steel Juggernauts gang—and the disappearances happening one after another. There’s definitely something going on.”

It seemed Ember was making good use of the urban myth of the “Pizza Demon” spreading through Babel, using it to gather underground intel she normally wouldn’t have access to.

Maybe Luna and Celine’s request was just another part of that larger effort to collect information.

I looked up at the grim image of Glitch Alley floating above the holograph.

Narrow, dark alleyways twisted between densely packed old buildings like a maze.

Just looking at it made it clear—this was the kind of place you could vanish into forever.

Something occurred to me, and I raised my hand and spoke quietly.

“It’s definitely suspicious, but... why do we have to deal with something this sketchy?”

At that moment, the entire control room fell dead silent.

‘...?’

I looked around in confusion.

Ember stared at me, eyes wide like she’d just heard the most ridiculous thing in the world.

Scarlet and Aria shook their heads in unison, looking like they were thinking, “Did she seriously forget again?”

After a moment of stunned silence, Ember slowly walked toward me.

She grabbed both my cheeks and stretched them hard as she spoke.

“This was your idea! You’re the one who said M-freaks were up to something and we should look into it!”

“Ah!”

Only after hearing that did the pieces start falling back into place.

It had been right after we turned Space Dino Park into the shadow fortress now known as Seoul Dino Park.

After a borderline hostile call with a group of mysterious blue-eyed entities, I’d become convinced that MK Corporation was secretly plotting something somewhere in Babel.

So I’d suggested finding incidents subtle enough to slip under the megacorps’ surveillance net, to dig up whatever was going on behind the scenes.

With the mobility granted by Seoul Dino Park, we could extend our influence across Babel in no time.

And to find those cases, Ember had decided to ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) exploit the growing rumor of the Pizza Demon.

Probably as a way to hear from people who normally couldn’t afford to hire mercs...

It made sense—if someone wanted to do something in secret, targeting those kinds of desperate people was the quietest way.

Now it all clicked.

I let out a sheepish “Hehe...” and looked at Ember apologetically.

“Alright, then. Want me to head into Glitch Alley and check it out?”

Ember let out a long sigh, then released my cheeks and shook her head.

“No, A. The thing is... that’s not the only place we need to check out.”

She switched the holograph display.

New data popped up—records from inside the Veritas Correctional Facility.

“While digging through Veritas facility logs, I found something interesting. Some of the inmates were transferred out not too long ago.”

‘...?’

I gave her a puzzled look, wondering what the hell a warehouse had to do with Glitch Alley, and Ember lowered her voice.

“The place they were transferred to—it’s a warehouse located inside the Steel Juggernauts’ territory. And there’s something even more suspicious.”

Her eyes sharpened.

“That warehouse is owned by none other than Hexa Core Armory. And you know how messy things are over there right now.”

Hexa Core Armory.

The second that name came up, the mood in the control room shifted.

Missions involving a megacorp and ones that didn’t... the difference in difficulty was like night and day.

Scarlet crossed her arms and spoke up.

“In that case, we should probably split into two teams. We can’t just ignore either Glitch Alley or the Hexa Core warehouse.”

Ember nodded at Scarlet’s suggestion.

“Right. Scarlet, I need you here as the Operator. You’ll be handling field support and data analysis.”

She marked two objective points on the holograph and continued.

“For the field teams... I think it makes sense for me to team up with Victor, and for Aria to go with A.”

A perfect balance of niche and brute force.

Ember—skilled in both intel and combat—paired with Victor, whose recent implant upgrades had dramatically boosted his combat ability.

And Aria, a top-tier netwitch with elite hacking skills, paired with me—someone with raw power no one else could match.

In fact, the reason they were keeping Victor and Ember on the same team probably was because I was so far beyond the others in combat capacity.

I didn’t hesitate to speak up.

“Then I’ll take the most dangerous one—the Hexa Core warehouse.”

Ember looked at me for a moment, then smiled faintly and nodded.

“Yeah. I figured you’d say that.”

Aria nodded silently and came to stand beside me.

And just like that, the operation plan was finalized.

Ember and Victor would head to Glitch Alley. Aria and I would infiltrate the Hexa Core Armory’s secret warehouse.

“Let’s move.”

With that short command, Aria and I dove straight into the shadows at our feet—without hesitation.

That familiar sensation of cold darkness wrapped around our bodies.

Within the shadow, we sped toward our respective targets.

****

Deep underground, a massive chamber revealed itself, where even the artificial lights flickered weakly.

The walls of the cavern glistened with something sticky and viscous.

Rusty rebar jutted out from random places, their surfaces caked in dark smears and splashes of dried red.

The floor was no better.

The uneven ecrete flooring was riddled with puddles of stagnant liquid—whether it was water or something else, the stench alone made the answer clear.

The air was so foul it was difficult to breathe.

A sharp mix of blood and disinfectant burned the nostrils, layered with the stench of rotting flesh and acrid chemical fumes.

It smelled like a twisted blend of hospital, slaughterhouse, and chemical plant all at once—sickening, oppressive.

Because of that, the atmosphere inside the chamber was indescribably unsettling.

That queasy, suffocating aura only grew thicker the closer one got to the center.

At the center of the cavern stood a single, massive operating table.

The table and the surrounding floor were soaked in black-red gore.

As if to testify that untold gallons of blood had spilled here over time.

The stains varied—some were old and dry, long since turned dark and crusted over. Others were fresh, still wet and glistening with stickiness.

Around the operating table, “doctors” moved in a steady rhythm—not dressed in white coats, but in black-red industrial overalls. From their eyes glowed a cold, chilling blue light.

One by one, they dragged people from the back, hoisting them onto the table, and began their work with mechanical precision.

There was no emotion in their movements—like they were butchering fish at a slaughterhouse.

They paid no attention to the screams or the struggling. As if those didn’t matter, they tore out the implants embedded in the victims’ bodies with crude efficiency.

Limbs were severed. Organs were ripped open.

Squish, splat.

The sounds of fresh organs hitting the floor echoed grotesquely through the chamber.

And from above, one woman gazed down at the gruesome slaughter without the slightest change in her expression.

Her silhouette radiated an aura of black and red, but even in the shadows, her eyes shone with a vivid, unnatural blue.

She was Rina Cortez, team lead of Hexa Core Armory’s Special Projects Division.

Once known for always looking at the world through red-tinted sunglasses, she now stood bare-eyed, her own blue irises gleaming in the dark.

“I must... no, we must find a way...”

Rina Cortez murmured as she watched the dismembered bodies with a voice so quiet it barely registered.

Within her whisper, a bone-deep conviction and a chilling madness coexisted—an unyielding will sharpened by obsession.