Seoul Cyberpunk Story-Chapter 72: Rina Cortez (2)

Ember and Victor sank into familiar darkness—and in the blink of an eye, arrived on the rooftop of a building near their target.

They were so used to shadow travel by now that they didn’t so much as flinch as they scanned the area.

From their position, they had a clear view of the abandoned factory district suspected to be the base of the Steel Juggernauts gang.

“Shadow travel really is convenient...”

Victor muttered under his breath, pulling a sleek, cylindrical electronic scope from inside his coat.

The moment he brought it to his eye, blue light flickered from the lens, and his field of vision magnified dozens of times.

He lowered himself behind the rooftop railing and began a methodical sweep of the entire factory zone.

Ember positioned herself on the opposite end.

She tapped her temple lightly with one finger.

Her tactical goggles activated, and her vision filled with layered environmental data.

From thermal signatures to sonic detection, even micro-vibrations—her goggles streamed real-time intel of the entire area.

Soon after, a message from Victor popped up in Ember’s AR interface.

<Ember, it’s way too quiet. Not a single life sign from inside the gang’s base. It’s... weird.>

Ember calmly checked her incoming sensor feed and responded.

Her voice transmitted directly into Victor’s neural implant via AR comms.

[No CO₂ fluctuation. No thermal activity. No sign of 'living organisms' at all. I’m not even hearing mechanical noise.]

Victor frowned.

Through his scope, the factory district resembled a dead city—utterly still.

<Even almost no A-frame response... this is giving me a bad feeling.>

From experience, Victor knew: when you saw something this suspicious, shit was about to go sideways.

He recalled several of his roughest past missions in a cold flash of memory.

[Yeah. There’s definitely something off here. Let’s keep our guard up.]

Ember nodded, remembering her own brush with countless dangerous ops back during the “Green Race” era.

Her instincts were telling her loud and clear—this wasn’t just some run-of-the-mill gang hideout.

The two remained silent on the rooftop for a while, scanning every corner with precision.

Scratch marks on the outer wall. Faint tire tracks on the ground. Suspended particulate matter drifting in the air.

They were trying to gather everything they could before moving in.

If it were A, she’d probably have already stomped right through the front gate and smashed the whole place to pieces.

But Ember and Victor were different.

They gathered intel. Analyzed. Made a plan.

That was how they did things.

Honestly, A was the outlier. This was how proper merc work was done.

Still, no matter how thoroughly they searched, the information they could gather was limited.

All they found was one unsettling clue: people went in, but no one came out.

[Time to move.]

Ember was the first to speak.

There didn’t seem to be anything else they could learn from up here.

Victor nodded in agreement.

The two descended from the rooftop and cautiously made their way toward the central factory building, presumed to be the Steel Juggernauts' main base.

Victor, with his implants hardened for durability, took point. Ember, cloaked in optical camouflage, followed behind, covering him.

As expected, the inside of the factory was completely empty.

What was once a space filled with machines now held only dust and dead air.

They muffled their steps, moving slowly toward the center.

It was just as they reached the heart of the building—

Something dropped silently from the ceiling’s shadows right above Victor.

‘!’

Victor’s instincts flared, and he twisted his body, reaching for the gauntlet cannon on his belt.

But before he could even draw it, a heavy gunshot thundered from a distance.

The assailant that had lunged at him was blasted by a shockwave and hurled deep into the building.

It was Ember’s anti-tank rifle. Suppressed for stealth, but still packing raw force.

Victor reflexively repositioned, scanning for a second attacker, but the surroundings remained deathly quiet.

No follow-up attack came.

“Phew...”

Victor exhaled, still on high alert as he surveyed the interior.

The warehouse was bare—no furniture, no storage, not even crates. Like someone had packed up and left.

He even checked the ceiling where the attacker had dropped from, just to be sure. Then he finally spoke.

“Nothing. That one guy must’ve been the only one here.”

He pointed toward the charred corpse lying on the floor, a large hole gaping through its chest.

Ember slowly disabled her optical camouflage and approached him.

Her expression was unusually grim.

“...”

She stared down at the corpse in silence.

Victor tilted his head, puzzled.

“What’s with that face? Oh, wait—don’t tell me you’re pissed because the body didn’t blow to pieces?”

He had a point. The body looked strangely intact for someone who had just taken a hit from a high-caliber anti-tank rifle.

There was only one wound—

A perfect circular hole punched straight through the chest.

The edges were smooth, almost surgical. Like someone had drilled it out with absurd precision.

“That’s insane. Even with a cutting torch, you’d have a hard time making a hole like that...”

Victor murmured, crouching with curiosity.

But Ember remained heavy in her silence.

She hadn’t aimed for the torso.

From her angle, there was no line of fire to the chest.

She’d aimed for the leg—to immobilize.

...There was no physical way that kind of perfect hole should exist in the chest.

“...Heart Drill.”

The words slipped from Ember’s lips in a near-whisper.

A clean, round hole punched into the center of the body.

A level of durability so inhuman that physical weapons barely left a scratch.

This corpse bore an eerie resemblance to the Heart Drill phenomenon that had shown up during the "Ecrete Family" contract A had resolved long ago.

****

In the deep shadows of Eastern Babel’s outskirts—

Aria and I hid on the rooftop of a building overlooking the warehouse owned by Hexa Core Armory.

The moonlight was faint tonight, but with Aria’s state-of-the-art optical implants and my sharpened senses, the tight security perimeter was crystal clear.

“...That’s warehouse security?”

I whispered in disbelief.

The ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) defenses were airtight.

Heavily armed soldiers patrolled in strict formation, while automated unmanned turrets glinted ominously from every corner of the building.

Above, several drones equipped with searchlights roared across the sky.

This wasn’t security for a simple storage facility.

It was more like a military-grade lockdown.

“At that level... it’s on par with megacorp research facility protection.”

I muttered, recalling the security details I’d once seen at a Titan Tech lab.

Aria gave a small nod at my words and answered in an equally low voice.

“It’s not just some logistics warehouse. The location’s too suspicious. Either there’s something incredibly valuable inside, or...”

She paused, scanning the warehouse again with a serious expression.

“...they’re hiding something dangerous.”

I agreed with her analysis and let a subtle smirk creep across my lips.

The fact that they were guarding it this thoroughly only confirmed one thing: there was something big inside.

My heart thumped slightly with anticipation—maybe we’d find a clue related to MK Corporation.

“Come forth.”

Grinning mischievously, I stood and summoned the beasts of Seoul Dino Park.

Shadows spilled out across the rooftop like ink, expanding rapidly until they rippled like a black lake.

The surface spread wide enough for all the park’s shadow-beasts to emerge at once.

“Wait, A.”

Just then, Aria softly but firmly grabbed my wrist.

She shook her head, stopping me.

“If we make too much noise, they might destroy or run off with the evidence. We need to go in quiet.”

“...”

I pouted and reluctantly withdrew the expanding shadows.

She was right.

We didn’t come here to smash Hexa Core’s warehouse to bits.

I slowly sat back down.

Suddenly, a scene from a game I used to love a hundred years ago flashed through my mind.

I let out a short chuckle and lifted a bit of shadow from under my feet.

The shadows molded to my will, sliding up my body and reshaping into a hood and mask around my face.

Just like the protagonist in that old game.

“We’re the thieves.”

I kept my voice low, playing into the mood as I muttered,

“The world doesn’t welcome us.”

I thought it was a pretty cool line and glanced at Aria.

But her expression didn’t match my expectations.

“Another hundred-year-old game?”

She just stared at me like I was doing something stupid again—equal parts unimpressed and exasperated.

Sigh.

****

Meanwhile, back at the Steel Juggernauts’ abandoned factory zone in Glitch Alley—

Ember and Victor were still methodically searching the eerily empty building.

But contrary to expectations, they hadn’t found anything.

No people. No signs of gang activity. Not even leftover scraps of their presence.

It was so clean it was like no one had ever been here to begin with.

“This is seriously weird. How could there be nothing?”

Victor muttered, unable to hide his confusion.

His enhanced visual implants could pick up even a single speck of dust—but here, nothing useful came up.

Ember swept the area again through her tactical goggles, but the result was the same.

“I think it’s about time we regroup with A...”

Victor began cautiously.

But Ember shook her head.

Her instincts were still screaming that something was hidden here.

The idea of leaving like this made her skin crawl.

“Is there really nothing here?”

Growing tense and frustrated from the lack of results, Victor kicked a small stone at his feet.

That’s when it happened.

Instead of bouncing off the wall, the pebble sank straight into it—like it was dropping into water—and vanished.

“!”

Ember rushed over and ran her hand across the wall.

At a glance, it looked like a solid wall made of ecrete. Even to the touch, it felt solid.

But when Ember pressed harder, it gave way—sinking inward like soft jelly.

A wall with no substance but with physical resistance.

It was a technology she had never seen before—not even during her days as a secret agent for the megacorps.

Strangely, it reminded her of The Child.

Ember carefully stepped through the wall, and Victor followed right behind her, tension written across his face.

Beyond the wall, a narrow, dark corridor stretched downward.

The moment they entered, the stench of blood hit them hard.

It was so strong that they immediately knew this wasn’t from a body or two—it was as if the entire underground space had been marinated in blood.

The smell had soaked deep into the walls and floor.

This hadn’t happened recently. This place had been rotting for a long, long time.

At the end of the corridor, a vast chamber revealed itself.

And in the center stood an operating table, completely drenched in gore.

So drenched, in fact, that it didn’t look like a surgical table anymore—but more like a sacrificial altar for the living.

“...!”

Victor and Ember sharpened their senses and carefully advanced, tension rising with every step.

They moved past the chamber with the operating table, deeper into the underground.

And finally arrived at a dead end.

There, a lone black tank sat in the middle of the room.

They approached cautiously, trying to see what writhed faintly behind the black glass.

And the moment they saw inside, both of them instinctively held their breath.

What filled the tank was—

Dozens—no, hundreds—of human brains.

Each one, grotesquely, still had its eyes attached. And those eyes were slowly, aimlessly, drifting around.

It was the kind of sight that made your stomach twist just from looking at it.

An unspeakable horror.