Seoul Cyberpunk Story-Chapter 13: Heart Drill (4)

The time A spent waiting endlessly for Onyx.

And the morning when Onyx secretly infiltrated her father’s office.

Deep underground, hidden within a massive vault, a lone silhouette was cast in the dim light.

Conrad, the boss of the Concrete Family, sat in silence, slowly reviewing a set of documents, as if waiting for someone.

"Thirty-seven already..."

His muttered voice carried a deep sense of regret.

Thirty-seven.

That was the number of Family members who had been sacrificed due to his decisions.

He had been dealing with Hexa Core Armory for a long time now.

His reasons were simple.

He didn’t want the Concrete Family to remain just another mediocre gang, unable to advance.

Beyond that, he sought a way for himself and his daughter to become corporate affiliates—to transition from mere outlaws into a sanctioned gang under corporate backing.

He refused to leave his daughter with the life of a drifter, scraping by in the outskirts.

And for that future, he had given up his own people—handing over gang members for human experimentation.

He didn’t even know the nature of these experiments or their objectives.

But he sacrificed his family for his own ambitions.

"How much longer must I wait?"

Hexa Core Armory had provided him with advanced weapons, explosives, and funding.

But what he truly desired—they had yet to deliver.

And so, today, Conrad had summoned a Hexa Core Armory representative to demand an answer.

Just then—

The sound of footsteps echoed through the storage area, and a figure emerged from the shadows, clad in a perfectly tailored black suit.

"Summoning me out of the blue? Didn’t I tell you to avoid calling me unless necessary?"

The representative’s face was expressionless, as if deliberately concealing any emotion.

But his voice carried a faint edge of irritation.

Conrad, however, ignored his tone and shouted instead.

"How much longer must I wait before I gain entry into Hexa Core Armory’s citadel?!"

The representative clicked his tongue in annoyance and replied.

"Not yet. Wait."

But that wasn’t the answer Conrad wanted.

"Haven’t I contributed enough already?!"

As Conrad raised his voice in frustration, the representative let out a deep sigh.

With a slight trace of exasperation, he observed Conrad for a moment—then spoke in a calm, detached manner.

"Perhaps... it’s about time we replaced you."

A chilling statement.

The moment those words left the man’s lips, Conrad felt it—danger.

His instincts, sharpened from years in gang warfare, screamed at him.

Move! Now!

He reached into his inner pocket, fingers grasping for his pistol—

BEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

A sharp, piercing tone ripped through the air, slamming into his skull like a hammer.

His pistol slipped from his fingers, clattering to the floor.

A violent shudder ran through his entire body.

A crushing, vice-like pain coiled around his mind.

"Wha... what...?"

His cybernetic implants malfunctioned as if they had been hacked.

His body refused to move.

His voice—barely more than a strangled groan.

The representative slowly approached, looking down at him.

A small device on his wrist flashed with a pulsing red light.

"To be fair, all the test subjects you provided were useful. They greatly contributed to the project’s success."

A smile crept onto the man’s face.

A genuine smile.

As if he was enjoying this.

"But now, we have all the data we need."

Conrad’s trembling body struggled to keep upright as he lifted his gaze.

He wanted to say something, but only blood-flecked foam dribbled from his lips.

The representative stepped past him, heading deeper into the vault.

He examined its contents—searching for something in particular.

"Ah. Here it is."

From the depths of the vault, he retrieved a semi-transparent data cube.

Inside, swirling like a red vortex, was a compressed AI construct.

This was the original aim-assist AI—the reward Conrad had received in exchange for the Heart Drill experiments.

Slipping the cube into his pocket, the representative pulled out a small device and placed it on the vault floor.

With the press of a button—

A blue flame ignited, flickering like living glass.

It expanded outward, growing ever larger.

Conrad could only watch in helpless horror.

The blue flames didn’t burn ordinary objects.

Instead, they selectively devoured anything constructed with AI frameworks.

The vault’s data records, experiment logs, evidence—

All of it was disappearing.

"N... no..."

He struggled to reach out—but his body wouldn’t respond.

The representative glanced down at him one last time.

"Did you really think a lowly street rat like you could become part of a corporation?"

His footsteps echoed as he walked away, the sound bouncing off the steel walls.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

As they grew distant, Conrad’s consciousness began to fade.

And then—

A sound.

Something unnatural.

Something wrong.

A sound eerily similar to the incoherent whispers of Heart Drill ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ victims.

"W-wait..."

His hand shook, reaching forward—

But there was no one left.

Only the blue flames, consuming everything around him.

And as time passed, as the flames finally died down—

Conrad’s failing vision replayed the choices he had made.

The people he had betrayed.

The lives he had discarded.

And in the very end, only one image remained in his mind.

His daughter, Onyx.

"I... I'm sorry..."

His final words—never heard by anyone.

****

The boss of the Concrete Family, with a hole drilled through his heart, lunged at me.

"All fake... You’re wearing fake skin too, aren’t you?"

His voice was twisted, like a broken loudspeaker blaring distorted noise.

How is he moving with a hole in his heart?

Normally, when someone took Heart Drill, they would go berserk before their heart was punctured, and that would be the end of it.

But this man was different.

Even with his heart drilled through, he wasn’t dead. If anything, he had gotten stronger.

BOOM!

Every time the boss swung his hand, walls and pillars shattered like brittle reeds.

Every step he took made the ground collapse beneath him.

And he was unbelievably fast.

"That mask, that light... I have to take it."

Unmatched strength and speed.

He was on a completely different level from the berserkers I had fought before.

Unlike those with minimal implants, the Concrete Family boss was packed with combat-grade enhancements.

Fighting him inside the vault was a bad idea—I needed to get out.

If I stayed here, I’d end up buried underground.

And I wasn’t in the mood to fight while being entombed alive.

"Hiding? You, who has nowhere to run...?"

Ignoring his frenzied screech, I let his punch brush past me, allowing it to send me flying toward the elevator shaft.

The moment I reached it, I planted my feet firmly—then launched myself upward with all my strength.

A flash of blue light surged around me like a storm, and in the next instant, I rocketed skyward, bursting through the ceiling and landing in the open courtyard of the Concrete Family’s hideout.

As I took in my surroundings, I saw the central building collapsing, its once pristine white walls cracking and crumbling apart.

BOOM!

But from the wreckage, the family boss emerged once again.

His form was even more grotesque than before.

His skin had turned completely ashen, and from the gaping hole in his chest, a crimson mist seeped out in an endless flow.

It would’ve been nice if he had just stayed buried...

Around us, gang members who had rushed out at the sudden explosion stood frozen.

Among them was Onyx.

She stared at her father, his chest hollowed out, her expression filled with shock.

"Father...?"

Onyx’s faint voice echoed across the open space.

"Fake... You’re fake too... Where’s the real Onyx? You’re all just implants, tricking me... Where is she?!"

The Concrete Family boss had lost his mind completely.

He couldn’t even recognize his own daughter.

I glanced at him.

Blowing his head off, like I had done to the last berserker, seemed like the most efficient solution.

With that thought, I clenched my fist tightly.

The blue light radiating from my body flared even brighter, crackling like a roaring inferno.

"That light... There it is again, among the fakes pretending to be dead..."

Muttering incoherently, he charged at me.

I gathered power into my fist—

THUD!

My glowing blue punch slammed into the boss’s face, sending him flying backward.

A clean hit.

Or so it seemed.

But as I shook my fist, I felt something was off.

A deep, unsettling resistance.

Like something was pushing back.

The impact hadn’t fully landed.

"Guhhh..."

Sure enough.

From the debris of the collapsed building, the boss slowly began to rise.

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And his movements—

His posture was unnatural, like a marionette being pulled by invisible strings.

His limbs jerked stiffly, an eerie, mechanical quality to every step.

"The light... If only we had the light... Everyone would show their true faces..."

As he advanced, the air around him darkened with an ominous red haze.

The more he walked, the thicker the crimson aura grew.

It wasn’t long before I could barely make out his form through the swirling mist.

Then, suddenly—

The red mist vanished.

!

And in that same instant—

The boss was right in front of me.

No sound. No warning.

Like he had teleported.

His fist was already swinging toward me.

I barely had time to react.

Bracing for the impact, I crossed my arms defensively, gathering every ounce of strength to block it.

SCHLKT.

The moment his fist made contact—

Both of my hands were severed.

Like a hot iron brand melting through styrofoam.

My severed hands floated briefly in midair before tumbling to the ground.

!

I was genuinely shocked.

This wasn’t a sneak attack—

Yet my body had been sliced through so easily.

Normally, if I braced myself, I could withstand even a direct hit from a tank shell.

And yet—this happened.

As I stared at my severed hands, I instinctively leapt backward as fast as I could.

The boss’s fist barely missed me, sweeping through the air where I had just stood.

I widened the gap between us, regaining my stance and reevaluating him.

His hollow chest cavity—

From within it, crimson circuit patterns dripped like spilled blood.

And then—

The missing red mist surged back toward the hole in his chest, forming a ring that spun at an accelerating speed.

Like it was devouring all the surrounding energy.