Kapitel 16: Altered Trajectory

'When I woke up this morning I was not expecting this.'

He had not heard a peep from Soyun all of yesterday and given her precarious circumstances he didn't attempt to call her. She was the one who wanted a meeting after all so she can set the terms of said meeting. Plus he had an assignment to do which in itself is a distraction from that damn Blood Syndicate laptop he never really stopped thinking about. In any case imagine his surprise when he put on the local news as background noise while he made dinner only to see something unbelievable.

That unbelievable thing being the news reporter standing in Soyun's neighborhood at the burnt remains of her home reporting on several explosions and fires caused by what they say is result of a vampire gang war. Apparently aside from vampires being casualties four people were killed in one of the alleged bombings. It was an entire family including a foreign priest who is well known to the community and his three adopted children.

Neugdae attempted to call Soyun in that moment only for it to go directly to an automated message informing him that the number is no longer available.

'Did she actually get killed?'

As he thought this he turned to look outside where the sun was still waning.

Eventually he shook his head "no, worst case scenario she got captured."

Which wasn't good but it would make more sense considering she needs to be alive for them to get what they want from her. Also starting a fight in broad daylight does not sound like something a Noble Blood would do. Rather it sounded like something a vampire hunter would do to capitalize on their minor weakness to sunlight. The four bodies found in the building presented a conundrum but only if he counted the altercation as something Soyun planned.

He couldn't picture Soyun coming up with a plan like this and he doubted the Noble Bloods, specifically Ji-Hae would go through the trouble of doing such a thing. The priest is a whole other story however.

'I can imagine a Templar Knight doing this' it was a smart play Neugdae could admit 'should I go and do my investigation?'

He would be lying if he said he wasn't curious about the whole situation but after thinking about he decided "nah, I'll just wait and see how this played out."

Soyun seemed serious about taking the fight to Noble Bloods and if she wanted his help she would just have to contact him. Besides he has a whole different headache to deal with anyway with the Blood Syndicate. At the moment he is still on the fence about getting directly involved not just because he is reluctant about becoming a vigilante but while busting heads would get rid of the syndicate the same couldn't be said for their employer.

As he once again found himself stewing on the topic his gaze found a familiar face on the TV as the reporter interviewed one of the officers on sight.

"…maybe involving the police wouldn't be that bad."

Meanwhile…

"What a mess."

Multiple explosions, half a dozen fires, gunshots, vampires fighting each other in broad daylight and don't even get her started on the fact that they found several illegal military grade weapons scattered across the neighborhood where the battles took place.

'How did it come to this?'

This entire week has been one big lesson in patience for Chiyon who felt like she was solving a puzzle without all the pieces. Then ever so often someone would shake up the board dashing her progress and adding more pieces that only serve to make her work even harder than it already was.

Case in point at the beginning of this she started off investigating what appeared to be a civilian murder that turned into a fight between two vampires. Then it was investigating the scene of a massacre of vampires brought on by what they deduce to be the results of one vampire faction eliminating another. That same night another vampire is killed, this time a delinquent student at the local university.

'And now this'

Yet another battle between vampires or so it would appear however from what she picked up at the scene it seemed to be a much more complicated affair than that. For instance the presence of scattered ammunition and destroyed weapons combined with the fact that this took place in broad daylight did not lend credence to this being a typical battle between vampires.

While it wasn't unheard of for vampires to use weapons they default to melee weapons as rather than firearms for the simple fact that most conventional firearms would not be able to meaningfully harm them much less kill them. Also their natural strength, speed, durability and healing factor can trounce such weapons and armor?

This led her to a rather radical thought that rather than the battle being between vampires it could be that humans were involved. The fact that this took place at noon when the sun is at its highest and most visible lends credence to this theory however it starts to lose teeth upon further scrutiny of the crime scene.

For instance there was no evidence of human involvement, as in no corpses, blood or any DNA evidence to suggest a human was even there. On the other hand the sheer number of dead vampires made it more plausible to believe that it was another group of vampires responsible for the deaths. Just because vampires don't usually use conventional weapons didn't mean they couldn't and the weapons themselves painted an interesting picture on what kinds of individuals these perpetrators are.

At the crime scene they recovered the remains of several grenade types, a desert eagle, rocket launcher and military grade flamethrower. All of the weapons are either naturally capable of causing damage to vampires or modified to pull of that end result and in either case needless to say they are gears no normal person can obtain and operate.

'When everything is put into perspective we're looking at a small group with specialized training and connections' Chiyon grimaced 'definitely not local.'

It is a hunch on her part since the numbers of the dead vampires (or rather their discarded clothing) combined with a few IDs present in the clothes paint them as part of an organized group. Not unlike the Blood Syndicate but immediately more dangerous. Chiyon knew that the vampires in the city answer to someone, a de facto leader and through her own private investigation traced the headquarters of this leader to a certain night club which in itself is a hotspot for vampire activities.

The same night club that a number of the deceased vampires seem to be affiliated with which should have given them grounds to be granted a warrant to investigate the place. Unfortunately they couldn't or rather the higher ups wouldn't even with this amount of evidence. It is frustrating and Chiyon would have been seething had this been the first time it happened but it wasn't.

If Chiyon had her way then she would have called down a task force to raid the place. Unfortunately the owner of the Monarch night club, Chong Ji-Hae happens to be the son of Chong Ujin a wealthy business magnate and one of the richest men in the city. Ji-Hae himself is a nasty piece of work with more than a dozen or so complaints filed against him. None of them ever made it to court and no charges were brought to the then young man. The records themselves were mostly expunged and now only exist as 'unsubstantiated rumors' amongst the police precincts.

It should be noted that these events took place years ago back when Ji-Hae was only the son of a wealthy millionaire vying for control of his father's company by working as upper management at one of his firms. Then he got into an accident involving a vampire and everything changed. A year after this incident Ji-Hae left his father's company to start a night club which became the most popular night club in the city, Monarch. Chiyon is pretty sure at this point that Ji-Hae is the leader of the city's vampire, the so-called Noble Blood.

Unfortunately even with this knowledge there was nothing she could do about it as the man is too well connected for the police to apprehend on any legal basis. Even going after him outside of the legal channels is ill advised due to his position as the leader of the Gwangju vampires and him most likely being a powerful vampire in his own right. The fact of the matter is Chiyon needs the support of the government to take on someone like that. With that said it appears that someone else was taking the fight to Ji-Hae.

'And from the looks of it they've been doing it for quite some time now.'

Following a hunch Chiyon looked into all the major incidents that occurred that week and found a startling connection between all of them. The first to seemingly kick off this mess was Hee-Chul, a technician who was fired from his job after he was found laundering money possibly to fund his gambling addiction. After that he spent a few months unemployed until he got a job working for Suntronics which was a front company for the Blood Syndicate organization.

The next incident in the timeline was the death of the university student Kwok Ji-Hun who before his demise was absent from classes for nearly two weeks which Chiyon believed to be the timeframe for when he got turned. Upon going through his phone they found multiple connections to the Suntronics front company and how Ji-Hun was being hired as security. They also may have found a connection between Ji-Hun and a recent vampire attack on a highway that saw half a dozen people killed.

Then the third incident involved Suntronics itself being attacked with the death of all the vampire employees present in the building. At this point Chiyon is convinced that the Blood Syndicate was the one being targeted but unfortunately there wasn't anything gleamed about who would do such a thing and this latest incident didn't make finding the answer any easier.

This brings us to the latest incident where contrary to the rest of the incidents the Blood Syndicate wasn't directly involved. Not even the way how the vampires were dispatched matched the other incidents. Despite the disconnect however Chiyon couldn't help but think that the incidents were all related, she just didn't know what the common thread was.

This thought pervaded her mind throughout the entire night adding to the frustration of her superiors' refusal to pursue an obvious lead displaying the blatant corruption in the police force. Needless to say Chiyon left the precinct and arrived home in a particularly disgruntled mood though not to the point where she didn't notice something amiss after arriving in her apartment. Although in her defense it is rather hard to overlook the stranger sitting at her dining room table.

Chiyon's response is immediate as she dropped her handbag to pull out her standard issue weapon, a Smith & Wesson Model 60.

"Hands where I can see them!" she hissed, pulse rising as she regarded the stranger warily.

The man dressed in all black including a hoodie, ski mask, snow goggles and leather gloves complied with her demand by slowly raising his hands.

"Detective" he spoke in a deep distorted voice clearly the result of a voice changer.

"Who are you?" she questioned feeling her anxiety rise.

"I mean you no harm."

"Forgive me if I don't take your word for it" surreptitiously she glanced around making sure there wasn't an ambush waiting for her.

"I'm alone" he suddenly spoke.

"You still haven't answered my question."

"You don't know me but you know my work."

"What?"

"I'm the one responsible for the attack on Suntronics or rather the vampire organization using Suntronics as a front for their illicit dealings."

Chiyon's grip on her pistol tightened "the Blood Syndicate, you're the one attacking them?"

"Yes and I am" he admitted yet again.

Chiyon regarded the stranger for a moment she had many questions but she started with the most obvious.

"What are you doing here?"

"Things are about to get…hectic in the next couple of days possibly weeks and before that happens I need your help to mitigate the damage that's about to happen."

"And why should I bother listening? Why don't I just arrest you for the string of crimes you've been doing all week?"

"I only ever attacked the vampires at Suntronics."

"What about Hee-Chul and Kwok Ji-hun?"

"I don't know who Hee-Chul is but Kwok Ji-Hun is the one responsible for the recent highway pileup that killed half a dozen civilians" the stranger spoke tersely laying his hands on the table and curling them.

'Well that confirms our suspicion' Chiyon thought with a pronounced frown.

"Did you attack him because he was part of the Blood Syndicate?"

She received an electronic sigh in response "if you're going to ask me questions could you at least put down the gun. It's not like it would do you any good anyway."

Chiyon did not like to be reminded of the fact that her weapon is useless here but did not budge "I like to keep it for my peace of mind."

'Besides even if I can't kill you with it I can at least buy myself time with a well placed headshot.'

"Even without these?"

Then he uncurled his hands to letting five bullets drop on the table.

'What?'

At the same time Chiyon felt her weapon becoming the tiniest bit lighter causing her to reflexively squeeze the trigger.

*Click*

"What?"

She squeezed several more times only to get the same result before looking at her gun seeing the cylinder now empty before her gaze cast to the pile of bullets on the table then to the stranger.

"How?"

*Clack*

Chiyon spun around as the familiar sound of her door locks clicking into place reached her ears in the near dead silence of the room. Her hand reached to her handbag only to touch air as the weight from her shoulder disappeared. Chiyon spun back around to find her handbag resting on the table before the stranger.

"Take a seat Officer Hwa."

The chair opposite him pulled out of its own accord startling the woman.

"We have much to discuss."