Seoul Cyberpunk Story-Chapter 55: Hector (3)

Victor wanted to scream.

But he forced the emotion down.

He knew better than anyone — after years as a mercenary — that losing your head in moments like this only made things worse.

Keeping his voice as steady as he could, he crouched beside Daniel, who was still sprawled on the floor.

"Daniel, stay with me! Who were they?"

Victor’s tone was low and controlled, but he couldn't hide the raw urgency and anger underneath.

At his voice, Daniel’s °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° memory-assist implant kicked in, replaying fragmented images of what had happened.

Daniel groaned in pain.

Still, he tried his best to describe everything clearly.

"They... they were heavily armed. Not mercenaries. More like... military. But they didn't move like trained soldiers."

He coughed weakly, struggling to get the words out.

"I smelled cigarettes... gunpowder... dust, too."

Daniel’s voice shook as he tried to paint a picture of the invaders.

"But... I couldn't tell where they were from...."

In Babel, there were too many heavily armed groups to guess — from corporate security squads to freelance gangs.

Victor swallowed hard.

There wasn’t much to go on.

Then Daniel’s eyes flashed — as if he remembered something important.

"Their coats... there was a red mark... looked like railroad tracks..."

A red railroad mark.

The moment Daniel said it, a name slammed into Victor’s mind.

Red Rail.

A notorious gang that made the abandoned subway tunnels and bullet train lines across Babel their home.

They were infamous for their mobility and massive underground network.

No matter how many you killed, more always crawled out from somewhere.

But why Iris?

Red Rail wouldn’t normally bother kidnapping a random little girl.

Victor pushed that question aside for now. He needed to move.

He quickly checked Daniel’s wounds.

Fortunately, they weren’t as bad as they looked.

As Victor reached for his emergency kit, Daniel grabbed his wrist.

"Mister... I'm fine... Please... Save Iris..."

Daniel’s eyes were full of desperate, pleading light.

Victor hesitated for a heartbeat.

Then nodded.

"I will. I promise."

He stood up in one sharp movement.

Without wasting another second, he moved out into the broken night, scanning for any sign the Red Rail scum had left behind.

Luckily, they weren’t good at covering their tracks.

There were boot prints in the dirt — and faint tire marks.

Victor traced them quickly, opening his AR interface to call Amber.

But the signal just kept ringing. No answer.

Strange. Amber’s never hard to reach...

A bad feeling gnawed at his gut, but there was no time to check on Amber now.

Every second mattered if he wanted to get Iris back.

If Red Rail made it all the way to the Outer Belt, even Victor might lose the trail.

Grinding his teeth, he called another contact.

Aria.

After a few rings, her calm voice came through.

[Victor? What's wrong?]

"Aria. Emergency. Iris was kidnapped by Red Rail."

He explained the situation as quickly and clearly as he could.

Aria went silent for a second.

When she spoke again, her voice was sharper than usual.

[Red Rail? What the hell would they want with a kid...?]

[Got it. I'll pull nearby CCTV footage. Hold on.]

A few seconds later, Aria's voice came back, tense but efficient.

[Found them. I traced Red Rail’s movement.]

[They’re holed up southeast of Burning Duct. At an abandoned subway transfer station.]

She sent him the coordinates directly through the AR feed.

[But Victor... something’s wrong.]

[They’re way too heavily armed for just a gang.]

[Looks like they’re getting megacorp support.]

There was real worry in her voice now.

[It’s too dangerous to go alone.]

[We should gather a team. Maybe get Amber too—]

"No. No time."

Victor cut her off without hesitation.

"Amber's not answering. And rallying mercenaries would take too long. We might lose Iris."

[Victor....]

"I'm sorry, Aria."

Without waiting for her reply, Victor cut the line.

He understood why she was worried.

But he couldn’t stop.

He sprinted into the night, legs pounding against the cracked pavement, racing toward the abandoned subway station.

His new prosthetic limbs devoured the distance in long, relentless strides.

****

Back in my peaceful little studio apartment.

Thump, thump.

"I" was pummeling the top of my head with her tiny fists.

I raised my hands in surrender, but her fury didn’t cool down so easily.

When I glanced sideways, I saw the real culprit.

There it was.

The Kiwi — now stabbed in both flanks with a fork and a knife.

While "I" had been taking a nap after playing, I’d tried to sneak one of the Kiwi dolls and wrap it up in my pizza.

The plan had failed miserably.

Mecha-Agwi, still dangling from the ceiling, had let out a loud "Kyuu!" right at the critical moment — waking "I" up immediately.

"Kyuhihi."

Agwi giggled smugly, watching me get beaten up.

"..."

I quietly swore that next time, I'd stab that smug bastard's belly with a fork instead.

Sensing something from my glare, Agwi finally stopped laughing.

Too late.

At that moment, my AR interface buzzed with an incoming call.

It was Aria.

[Emergency, A.]

Aria’s voice crackled through the line, sharper and more urgent than usual.

[Victor’s in danger.]

[He charged into Red Rail’s base alone.]

[There’s no way he can handle it by himself — and Amber’s gone dark.]

Amber not answering?

That was seriously bad news.

Without Amber, there was no one to organize the mercenaries.

As for me... besides Aria, Victor, and Scarlet — people I’d shared a few pizzas with — I didn’t really have direct ties to any other mercenaries.

[I’ll check on Amber myself. A, I need you to back up Victor.]

Aria sent me the coordinates of the Red Rail gang’s stronghold.

"Got it."

I gave a short reply and stood up.

"I," who had finally cooled down, toddled up to my feet and looked up at me with big, sparkling eyes — the look that said, Come back safe!

I ruffled her hair gently, then stepped out the door of my tiny studio.

"I" followed me all the way to the threshold, waving her small hand until I disappeared down the hall.

****

Seoul Office, underground — secret safehouse.

Amber sat hidden in the shadows, barely breathing.

She leaned against the cold concrete wall, her face deathly pale, sweat slicking her forehead.

A black shard was lodged deep in her right shoulder, poisoning her focus with burning pain.

She had managed to stop the worst of the bleeding with a crude emergency patch, but blood was still slowly oozing out.

Her fingers trembled as she probed the wound. The shard was embedded deep, anchored into the muscle.

"Shit..."

Amber gritted her teeth and endured.

Her AR interface flashed unstable vitals.

Heart rate up, blood pressure plummeting, body temperature dropping.

If the bleeding didn’t stop, she would lose consciousness soon.

"Cough—"

A spurt of blood bubbled from her lips.

"Strange... I kinda miss 'I' right now."

She muttered the words to herself, forcing her flickering mind to focus on disabling the firewall of the jamming system.

"This firewall... it's insane..."

Whoever had deployed it wasn’t some ordinary hacker.

This was far beyond simple communication disruption — it cut off the entire AI frame network at the root.

Not a gang job.

Not some freelance merc.

This was megacorp-grade.

Specifically, someone at Netwitch level — specialists in neural network lockdown.

Amber flicked her eyes to a secondary feed showing a live view of the building's ground floor.

The Seoul Office was destroyed.

The once-cheerful door with its little bell had been ripped from its hinges, twisted into a pile of junk.

The ceiling fan hung broken and motionless.

The corner TV was shattered into a black, gaping hole.

Wooden chairs, tables, empty bottles, shattered glass — all smashed to pieces across the floor.

It looked like a bomb had gone off.

And into that wreckage, black-clad soldiers moved — silent, methodical.

They didn’t speak.

They used only hand signals to communicate — a team trained for silent killing.

Amber recognized them immediately.

She had memorized their armor and biological data once, a long time ago.

Hector’s hunting dogs.

Veteran mercenaries who had survived the Great War’s worst hellscapes.

Which meant the attackers weren’t some random mercs.

They were working for Hector — or for Hexa Core Armory.

She didn’t know why they were targeting her.

And right now, it didn’t matter.

"Small mercy, I guess..."

Amber muttered bitterly.

To be honest, if a megacorp was going to come after her, she’d always assumed it would be Nexus Node.

If it had been them, she wouldn't have made it this far.

She would’ve been dead before she ever reached the safehouse.

At least Hexa Core didn’t know her that well.

Blood welled up from her wound again.

Her vision started to fade.

She was running out of time.

Just then, an explosion rattled the floor above.

The hunting dogs were expanding their sweep, moving toward the underground shelter.

Dust rained from the ceiling.

Amber’s world blurred at the edges.

Fighting to stay conscious, she dragged herself toward an old metal case tucked into the corner.

With trembling fingers, she pried it open.

Inside, wrapped in layers of dust, was a sleek, jet-black full-body suit.

The faint logo of Nexus Node was still etched into the surface.

"I really didn’t want to use this..."

Amber leaned against the case, cradling the suit, her body on the verge of collapse.