Chapter 5: Connections

‘Of course that jackass would somehow get himself wrapped up in the only organized group of criminal vampires outside of the local Noble Blood’s crew.’

Ji-Hun was an idiot who didn’t understand the scope of the ‘gang’ he ended up joining but he did from the memories. This ‘boss’ isn’t just another upstart with delusions of grandeur. He has agency, ambition and worst of all an actual plan that doesn’t involve challenging the Noble Bloods to a duel to usurp their position.

‘Should I even get involved?’

This group is not small time and they are definitely not amateurs. The fact that they managed to turn Ji-Hun into a vampire and instill within him enough discipline and self control to suffer through hours of sitting with people and not attack them on sight as well as training him enough to be able to utilize his powers effectively in the span of a little under two weeks spoke a great deal of their competency.

More than that they are already in business with the Noble Blood and messing with them might just earn him the interest of the vampire boss. He didn’t want that, the last thing he wanted is to start a war with the one who controls most of the vampires in the city. He still has important things to do and a campaign against a Noble Blood is going to need a full time commitment…not that he wanted to in the first place.

“So what the hell am I doing here?” he spoke lowly to himself from the rooftop overlooking a nondescript office building that belongs to Suntronics LLC.

Of course that is just a front for the actual organization known as the Blood Syndicate. A name so on the nose he wondered how anyone could take them seriously. Unfortunately if that was ever a phase in their history it is one long in the past because at this moment in time the Blood Syndicate is kind of a big deal. At least that’s what he got from Ji-Hun’s memories of when he was given a tour of the place. From what the dead man saw there are vampire guards, surveillance systems and automated security measures.

To reiterate these people are not amateurs.

Unsurprisingly to cover up their illegal activities they ran a legitimate business of a call center that handles outsourced tech support for other companies. They even hired human employees some of whom are working the night shift at the moment. As for their illegal work it is relegated to the basement floor where the rest of the vampire employees reside. As for what they do Ji-Hun’s memories didn’t provide any specifics on that front as he was hired muscle and didn’t have any interest in anything outside of cracking skulls and drinking blood.

‘Fucking useless.’

What he could guess however is that it has to do with cyber crimes? He couldn’t bring himself to really care about that aspect of their work as Ji-Hun’s memories did reveal something that piqued his interest enough to be worth further investigating. It is the only reason why he bothered to show up in the first place since he is not interested in taking down criminal organizations or possibly getting the attention of the city’s Noble Blood.

And so he lightly dropped down in front of the building and entered. As he did the cameras quietly malfunctioned leaving the guards working the shift as the only ones with eyes on him.

“Hold it right there!” one of them spoke as they got up from behind the security desk.

“Forget about me and continue as if nothing happened” he spoke whilst giving a little wave.

The two guards suddenly went blank faced and sat back down to do just that. He did not so much as slow his stride as he continued on but not before telekinetically snatching one of their keycards. With Ji-Hun’s memories as a guide he made his way to the basement with no issues whatsoever. The few people he happened to encounter on his brief walk acted as if they didn’t see him and as he left their sight the memory of him was summarily deleted from their minds.

Using the guard’s keycard he is able to access the basement where he disabled the more prevalent surveillance and mentally obfuscate his presence from the minds of the over two dozen vampires present on the floor.

‘This is actually a nice setup.’

The room itself is spacious and taking up the majority of space are high end computer desktops most of which are being manned by someone. The entire thing looked like a typical office setting except there are several men in suits standing in the corners overseeing the process with a surprising amount of vigilance. There is also the fact that literally everyone in the room is a vampire with most of them in their feral state and a lot of ‘red drinks’ being enjoyed as they worked.

After taking it in he walked through the organized chaos of the room towards management office. The ‘interesting thing’ he saw from Ji-Hun’s memory happened to be on one of the worker drones’ computer but he figured this thing to be important enough that the manager would be paying attention to it. As luck would have it the manager in question is in and looking like the vampire equivalent of a typical middle management tech bro.

“What the-who are you!?” the vampire demanded looking up from his monitor to glare at the intruder with red eyes and fangs partially bare.

“Calm down.”

The words had an immediate effect as the vampire calmed himself.

With that done he walked around the desk to stand next to the man “now I want to know everything on a girl you seem to be keeping tabs on.”

The Next Day…

It is a rather gloomy morning with the police setting up a perimeter around a call center building which turns out to be a front for criminal vampires. Overseeing the proceedings is an older man getting on in age with wrinkles showing and his dark hair graying at the temples and a significantly younger man, wearing a pair of glasses and fiddling with a tablet in hand.

“Another day, another vampire attack” spoke the older officer, Han Kwon, cradling a steaming cup of coffee “do I even need to be here for this?”

“Apologies sir but this time it’s different” answered his glasses wearing subordinate Roe Seong-Ho as they entered the warehouse.

Perhaps once it would have looked like somewhere hospitable however at the moment it looked as if a tornado had sped through the building. There was damage, destruction and death in the form of empty clothes surrounded by dust.

“What am I looking at here?”

“We believe this building to be a front for a criminal organization led by and comprised of vampires sir.”

“We already knew the vamps were getting organized tell me something I don’t know, like what the hell happened here?”

“The prevailing theory is that this organization got into it with another vampire organization or gang.”

That did not make the older officer feel better “the last thing this city needs is a vampire gang war” he grumbled while sipping his coffee before grimacing at the taste “God this is terrible.”

“That’s because you can’t be bothered to spend the extra money for quality stuff Kwon.”

The voice caused the younger of the two men to turn around before gasping. Standing behind them is a fair skinned woman with a youthful appearance, violet eyes and bluish black hair running past her shoulders. She wore a black turtleneck long sleeved shirt under a blue coat, grey suit pants and black shoes. She is Hwa Chiyon, an officer who received special training for dealing with investigations into crimes involving vampires.

“Roe did you find any blood?”

“N-no ma’am” the man floundered with a small red on his cheeks.

“What about cameras?”

“They all went down.”

Chiyon hummed as she walked deeper into the carnage with purposeful steps.

Her keen eyes swept the area as she spoke “you said it’s being speculated that this is the result of some sort of turf war?”

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“Yes ma’am.”

“Hmm” she hummed to herself “if this is a turf war as is speculated then it wouldn’t be farfetched to think that a group of vampires were fighting amongst themselves.”

“Yeah” he answered before his eyes narrowed “you think it’s something else? We’ve seen vampire gang wars before.”

“Yes but do most of these men look like thugs to you?”

Kwon grunted “Roe, did we get any IDs from these guys?”

Seong-Ho tapped his tablet for a bit before answering “yes sir it appears that these vampires are part of the front company.”

“I can see two sets of uniforms here” Chiyon observed.

“The suits appear to be guards while the rest are technicians.”

“What can you tell us about the technicians?”

“Most of them have no criminal backgrounds to speak of. The manager got in trouble for fraud and money laundering.”

“What were they doing here?”

“I did some research and managed to find their website on the Darknet.”

The answer made Kwon scowl “what? Let me see that” he swiped the tablet and read the contents before spitting out a single word “freelancers!?”

Jung looked like he ate a lemon and this piqued Chiyon’s curiosity. Taking the tablet out of his hands she too read the content and her brows raised a bit.

“You must admit that it’s a good business for a vampire to be in when you think about it. After all who is going to mess with you if you’re under the protection of a vampire?”

“Lot of good that did them” Kwon spoke looking around the place before turning away “in any case that’s a couple more vampires off the streets.”

Chiyon didn’t offer him a retort as she came to her own conclusions. Unlike her fellow detective and officers in the department Chiyon had a lot more perspective when it came to vampires. She’s seen the aftermath of what a group of vampires fighting amongst themselves looked like and this isn’t it. Even the most unimpressive vampire can break through concrete walls and these men seemed to be professionals meaning the group that attacked them must have comprised of some very powerful vampires.

‘Even then this is too constrained.’

At first glance this certainly looked like a mess even if there weren’t any bodies to drive home this fact given the nature of vampires Chiyon has enough experience dealing with this to make a reasonable assumption on how things went about. Other than that there are destroyed computers, cracked walls, broken glass and the place generally looked like a tornado blew through. And this sort of debunked the insinuation that the incident is caused by another group of professionals.

This mess is not the work of professionals…nor does it seem to be the work of a group.

It was a scary thought to be had but ‘from what I can see it looks like they were all fighting against a single person.’

There is more than just broken furniture in the room. The walls looked like a car had smashed into them, the floor had a massive crater in it and part of the ceiling was caved in. There was also blood splattered in various sections and despite the carnage Chiyon could find nothing to suggest a struggle between multiple vampires which is perhaps the most worrying aspect of this entire ordeal. For all intent it appeared whoever attacked these vampires held such an enormous advantage in terms of power that the others were finished before they could even mount a proper retaliation.

Now this could have been a surprise attack but she just could see how when dealing with a group of trained and experienced vampires. She made sure to check the background of the guards and found that some had actual military background along with being hardened thugs.

Chiyon handed the tablet back to Seong-Ho and posed a question “were you able to pull any information from the computers?”

Seong-Ho shook his head “most were destroyed in the carnage however their hard drives remain intact. They’re encrypted so it will take some time to get the information though.”

Chiyon clicked her tongue but nodded anyway “good.”

‘Better than nothing.’

Considering some of the ‘services’ offered by this Blood Syndicate it wouldn’t be out of the question for these men to have crossed the wrong individual and paid the price for it. Vampires hardly have any solidarity unless they are in the same group and fights between them often end up with one side dead.

‘Whoever did this is not your average vampire’ and as far as she knew there is only vampire capable of meting out a response like this and if he is involved then this investigation just became a lot more dangerous.

Another thought that came to mind is the fact that this is the second case in as many days of vampires attacking each other. Just yesterday they were called to the scene of a double murder. The first victim was a local thug Dae-Ho who is known in the area for his violent harassment and extortion of people. The other ‘victim’ however was in fact his murderer, a vampire by the name of Hee-Chul who borrowed money from a loan shark to support his gambling addiction. So there is the link between them and they found the thug’s blood on the deceased vampire’s clothing so it checks out.

The way Chiyon saw it Hee-Chul who had gambling addiction borrowed money from a loan shark and got in debt. Whether or not he became a vampire before or after he took the loan is still a mystery as well as moot at this stage. In any case Dae-Ho was sent to collect but was killed by Hee-Chul and shortly after was himself killed by another vampire. From what she saw of the crime scene apart from the broken wall there wasn’t much of a struggle if any. Hee-Chul may have gotten an attack off but otherwise was completely dominated in the skirmish.

‘What are the odds that these two incidents are unrelated?’ she paused ‘wait wasn’t Hee-Chul a technician?’

She distinctly remembered that being the case when she skimmed his file yesterday.

‘I should look into that when I get back to the office.’

Suddenly Kwon’s voice interrupted her thoughts “well I’ll be damned, we got another dead vampire.”

Chiyon’s interest is immediately piqued “another one? Where? Who?”

“A university student” Kwon answered “the school’s groundskeeper found a student’s clothes and vampire dust in a condemned building on the property along with some damage, apparently there was a fight.”

“Any witnesses?”

“Not as far as we can tell yet.”

“I guess we’re going back to school then” Chiyon chirped with amusement earning a snort from her older colleague.

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