Chapter 22: Dance under the lights (8)

The lights flickered and died.

Completely gone.

-…F24 has started. Assault team, top floor.

Vivian’s voice flowed into Lee Do’s ear.

Taking out a new cigarette, he reloaded the chamber.

“You didn’t really need to help.”

-It’s fine, just focus on the job.

He had received help during the Scav incident, but this was clearly the role of a hacker rather than a fixer.

Unlike a fixer who leaves no trace on the scene, there was a risk of logs remaining on the hacked machines.

Lee Do didn’t say much about it.

Instead, he pulled the trigger towards the darkness where not even a sliver of light penetrated.

Bang- The bullet lodged in someone’s head.

They collapsed, bleeding, convulsed on the floor, and then stopped.

Staying in a headquarters disguised even as a business meant they knew what they were involved in.

!diots.

-The security team has arrived at the main entrance. You should probably start heading down.

Lee Do moved towards the stairs, against the sound of footsteps and curses coming from the darkness.

“What about the assault team?”

-They’re engaged. It won’t be easy, since the current executives were Red Stream’s hounds.

“Don’t they need help?”

-Not really. It’s F24’s job.

The cooperation with F24 wasn’t particularly grand.

Send in the easy prey first.

Then, when the assault team infiltrates the top, the security team enters.

He had no reason to refuse the position of bait.

He had intended to enter alone anyway.

Furthermore, he was in charge of cleaning the basement.

‘Human trafficking, they said it happens in the basement.’

F24 was a security team, not an emergency rescue team there to save people.

The ghost stories of back-alley gangs kidnapping people weren’t just stories.

They were real.

And all of it was ultimately Core Works’ doing.

The information F24 had sent even detailed how Red Stream had committed various acts of human trafficking, organ trafficking, and other atrocities, and how they had evaded surveillance.

In that case, F24 had been unable to enter simply because Core Works was behind them.

“Here! Over here!”

Lee Do fired his gun.

“…Keuk.”

The guy coming up collapsed onto the stairs and rolled down.

Even after being stepped on, he was already dead, no groans escaping his lips.

Was there an essential difference between this trampled guy and F24?

He readjusted his cigarette.

He focused on Vivian’s briefing.

-It might get a bit creepy from the basement onwards. You know what kind of guys they are.

“Human trafficking?”

-Yeah, it was written in the information F24 gave us.

Human bodies, organs, things like that.

It was Red Stream.

A considerable number of the vermin settled in Sector 11-A must have been inspired by the act of dismembering and selling people.

More cruel than the Flesh Cartels in terms of brutality, and more persistent than the Black Lotus Society of the East in terms of tenacity.

Red Stream, which was merely a gang, was like that.

“F*ck! Intruder! Intruder here…!”

Lee Do pulled the trigger on the guys who had gathered, alerted by the gunshots.

Smoke scattered over the corpses, and the cigarette in his mouth seemed to be tinged with the scent of blood.

Lee Do turned his head.

A faint coughing sound came from below the space where everyone had died.

“…Cough, cough.”

He stepped into the darkness and moved.

It was the second basement level, down the steel stairs.

The site of human trafficking.

A place where the smell of blood grew thicker.

A yellow light bulb, perhaps powered separately, flickered on and off, casting a weak light.

And that sound.

“…Good girl, huh?”

A voice came from the place where he let out a stream of smoke.

It was the voice of b@stards still indulging in pleasure, unaware that their headquarters was crumbling.

He touched the card Vivian had given him to the keypad of the locked door.

It was a hacking tool that tore nodes in real-time and transmitted them outside.

-Just a moment….

Soon, the door to the human trafficking site opened with Vivian’s hacking.

Lee Do reloaded the chamber with a cluster of rounds.

Clack, he test-loaded it, tried how many times the trigger pulled in a second, and then stepped inside.

“Isn’t it good… Yeah, this is it….”

The voice was getting closer.

During the time Red Stream had been rebuilding, there had been one advantage.

It was slaughter.

Something that even those of relatively low rank could enjoy.

It was after the heads of the main Hounds and executives had flown.

A strange phenomenon occurred where mere underlings became Hounds, and Hounds became executives, but that didn’t matter to them at all.

They were individuals who had no interest in the organization’s well-being from the start.

They had joined Red Stream ultimately to feel pleasure.

And Red Stream, under the name of missions, gave them quite a few opportunities for pleasure.

It was a win-win structure, so to speak.

What was pleasure there? For example, it was something like this.

“…Haa.”

The feeling when dismembering human flesh and injecting drugs.

The fear of a stranger.

The thrilling, ecstatic pleasure of that stranger slowly dying under one’s own hands.

The incision of skin.

The rupture of muscle fibers, when muscle fibers snapped and the internal muscle cell fluid flowed out.

When muscles lost elasticity like a rubber band in an instant, and physical rupture occurred with a sensation of tearing.

“Good girl…? Huh? Isn’t it good? You feel good too, right?”

“…”

A fool whose vocal cords were torn to shreds and could only tremble.

A realistic sensation, different from the real-time emotion-sharing videos injected into chips.

That was pleasure.

He picked up a scalpel.

As he touched it to the twitching flesh, he thought.

He was curious. About the actions of the current Red Stream executives.

That they would flaunt such sadistic dismemberment merely for the organization’s prestige.

Why?

It was nothing more than branding themselves as cruel.

Even those executives obsessed with slaughter only found meaning in openly committing such acts.

Not actually enjoying the act itself.

“Raq.”

The man called Raq turned his head.

“Should we start on that b*tch soon?”

More than anything, what made Red Stream a comfort to them was not just that it gave them opportunities for slaughter and dismemberment, but something slightly different.

The man called Raq nodded, and he was similar to him.

It was the fact that there were many here who shared the same values as Raq.

In a world where human bodies were no longer needed, they would be the ones who needed human bodies the most.

Raq finally turned his head.

His eyes fell on the half-dozen figures imprisoned behind the steel bars, stripped naked with only shreds of clothing.

It was under the flickering lights.

Some were crying, some just stared blankly at the wall with empty eyes.

Weren’t their bodies covered in needle marks and dried blood, their lips chapped, and saliva dried around their mouths?

Raq licked his lips and asked.

“Did we film before?”

“No, let’s film this time.”

“One film is 30,000 credits. Those fakes, they know what reliable quality is.”

A cackling laugh escaped.

Raq took off his bloodstained gloves and approached the cage.

Their smooth skin was visible under the flickering lights.

“These are the b@stards, right? The labor law firm?”

The labor lawyers captured by some Hound.

“That’s right.”

“And… that b*tch.”

She was a Solo captured because she failed to protect a mere club.

Raq’s gaze particularly landed on her, huddled in a corner.

“Hurry up, hurry.”

He entered the cage and grabbed her wrist directly.

He dragged her out.

She barely resisted, as if having already given up, but when he kicked her in the side to get a reaction, she flinched.

Raq removed the man from the blood-soaked operating table and placed her on it.

Her weak eyes trembled, but that was a common reaction from everyone.

Raq ignored it and looked for his tools.

“You knew this was going to happen, right? You too.”

Maria.

Was her name Maria?

“Maria, Maria… a beloved woman, indeed she deserves it.”

A clattering sound flowed continuously from the toolbox into his hand.

He hummed a tune out of habit.

Then, his eyelids twitched once.

At the anticipation of dismembering such a beautiful woman’s flesh piece by piece, the drug he had injected earlier brought on a hazy drowsiness. This was why this place was, so to speak, a sacred ground.

Raq barely managed to speak, clenching his tingling fingers as if to break them.

“Maria, ah, Maria. I’ve been curious for a long time… I don’t understand why we have to be alienated.”

He finally found it in the toolbox.

A small saw.

“Frankly, we don’t know what those Megacorp b@stards are doing in the underground, so why should only we be alienated?”

Philanthropist.

[ TL Note: A philanthropist = someone who helps others selflessly, often rich or influential, doing good “for the sake of humanity.]

“In that sense, I’ll show you what our love is… right to you.”

They prided themselves on being true philanthropists.

Because they truly loved all people.

Without discriminating between men and women.

Even animal b@stards.

Raq stared blankly at the fear reflected in Maria’s eyes.

He hadn’t even started yet, but a wave of ecstasy was already beginning to overwhelm him.

His eyelids felt like they were going to flip again.

To think that such a strong Solo woman was captured by this low-life villain and would soon have her flesh flayed, even more so….

“Ah… good… so….”

Raq’s sclera boiled red.

In the end, it was like that.

Because there was a hole in his back.

Thud, he collapsed.

The man next to Raq, who was about to turn on the camera, stared blankly at the spot, bewildered.

It was the sight of a cigarette butt being flicked.

“!diot.”

And the sight of him putting a new cigarette to his lips.

As if it were cursed.

“He says it’s good, that f*cking !diot.”

Exhaling smoke, he looked down at the fallen man, an undeniable uninvited guest.

Lee Do.

After examining Raq’s collapsed body here and there, he aimed his gun at his body again.

Bang-

The lingering sound of the shot spread through the space and briefly ended, then the trigger was pulled again.

Towards the head.

Bang! Bang-! Bang-!

The already limp body twitched each time the gunshot rang out.

It truly ended when the raw pistol ejected the slide back with a thwack.

And there was a pool of blood sticking viscously to his feet.

Looking down, Lee Do spat out his cigarette.

He turned his head.

It was just the man who was about to turn on the camera.

“…W-Wait….”

Reloading, he pressed the muzzle to his head.

Bang!

He fell.

“…! …! …!”

Under the flickering lights, his body twitched as if dancing.

Aiming similarly, he fired a few more times, and only after the head was grotesquely crushed did Lee Do turn his eyes.

It was a woman with short black hair.

The woman from that club.

She was staring at Lee Do with bewildered eyes, as if dreaming.

Gulp, tears welled up in her artificial eye, as if she couldn’t distinguish dream from reality.

“…”

In the silent exchange of gazes, Lee Do took out a cigarette pack from his pocket.

He had no way of knowing how she had been captured, but he decided not to question it.

He just offered her a cigarette.

Her trembling eyes went to the white stick, then vaguely rose upwards.

“You said you’d feel guilty back then.”

Lee Do spoke first.

Tossing her a pistol and ammunition, he gestured with his eyes towards the naked people beyond the steel bars.

“You drag them out. If you were genuinely grateful back then.”

He gestured again with the offered cigarette, but she didn’t take it.

“If you don’t smoke this, I will.”

Instead, he brought it to his own lips and stuck it in.

Her trembling lips looked like they would drop the cigarette at any moment, but Lee Do nevertheless lit it for her.

“…”

Sitting back on the operating table, she soon wiped her eyes with a slender arm.

Being in a half-naked state with only underwear, the wires etched into her arms and body were more clearly visible.

It was clearly attached to a machine, but it was, no matter what, human.

“You can do it, right? Getting those b@stards out.”

Maria nodded silently.

Lee Do also nodded and turned his back.

Just then, Vivian’s voice came through.

-Hey, I think there’s a problem.

It was probably about the upper floors.

The 16th floor, where the assault team had landed.

-L-Q3 has gone berserk.

Berserk. It usually referred to a state where bodies made of machines pushed their physical limits to the maximum and bore an extreme overload.

It meant that a fierce battle had occurred, and that the assault team had failed.

-As expected, the assault team was wiped out.

Picking up one more cigarette, he finally, truly, put it to his lips.

Exhaling breath and smoke, Lee Do asked.

“So, what should I do?”

-F24 told you to get out. They’ll handle it from now on.

“You mean the security team will handle it?”

-Yeah. So you could get caught up in it too, so just come out quietly.

Vivian’s tone, as she continued, was filled with her characteristic calmness and was merely composed.

-But you’re not going to do that, are you?

Faintly, a nuance of expectation, perhaps, a nuance of testing, was intertwined in her words.

-Right?

Lee Do nodded moderately.

As if silence meant agreement, she continued composedly.

-It’ll still work, the elevator. Go check it out. 16th floor.

It was going to be like that anyway.

Since there was no need to comment on Vivian’s attitude right now, Lee Do also said nothing.