Seoul Cyberpunk Story-Chapter 30: Delicious Kiwi (2)

The ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) outskirts of Babel burned in the red light of sunset, casting long shadows across Hexa Core Armory’s secret testing grounds.

It looked like someone had dragged a warzone out of history and plopped it right there.

Massive concrete constructs mimicking buildings.

Burnt-out vehicles and their charred debris.

Bullet casings and impact marks scattered in every direction.

And on the blackened walls—scorch marks from past explosions.

Standing dead-center was a being too foreign to be called human.

Hector.

Once a legendary mercenary—now Hexa Core Armory’s ultimate creation.

He looked less like a man and more like a walking war machine.

Both arms were strapped with shields—looked like they were repurposed from armored vehicle plating. Two cannons, the kind you’d normally see mounted on a mini tank, jutted from his back.

His legs had been reinforced with thick hydraulic pistons just to support the mass of his upper body.

"Human tank" didn’t even begin to cover it.

The only parts left that could be called “human” were his brain and spinal cord.

Everything else? Metal.

And even that metal had been swapped out multiple times over.

Anyone else would’ve gone insane a long time ago. But Hector hadn’t lost himself.

He used to lead a mercenary squad. That was before the disaster five years ago, when Hexa Core Armory suffered a catastrophic defeat. They finally admitted it—they needed individual firepower. Not just machines. Not just teams.

They brought in veteran mercs. Lots of them.

They started turning them into something else.

Only one of them made it.

Only Hector survived the full transformation.

The others either died or broke trying.

Now, Hector—the monster Hexa Core Armory built—was engaged in live combat against a Circle Prototype inside a simulated city grid.

[“Target located.”]

The moment he muttered that, a red beam tore through the mock buildings.

He instinctively raised his left shield—but the beam sliced through it like paper.

Overwhelming firepower.

The heat flash melted his entire arm.

[“Even tank-grade shielding can’t stop that?”]

Hector ripped off the molten wreckage of his arm.

Then tossed the rest of the shield aside.

Useless armor was dead weight.

He even detached the twin cannons from his back.

Now lightweight, Hector dashed through the alleys of the digital city.

The Circle Prototype kept blasting those red beams, but Hector zigzagged unpredictably, dodging every shot like it was a rhythm game with real stakes.

The prototype was a veteran too—no doubt. But it wasn’t Hector.

The firefight dragged on—until something shifted. The glow from the Prototype’s chest suddenly dimmed.

And its movements slowed.

Hector didn’t miss a beat.

In a blink, he was behind it—lifting his right hand.

In it: a hand cannon.

BOOM.

The explosion was far too loud for any personal firearm.

When the dust cleared, the Prototype was on the ground, chest cavity blown open.

[“Still unstable.”]

Hector muttered the judgment out loud.

By catalog specs, the Circle Prototype should’ve been able to tank at least three hits from his hand cannon.

But reality had other plans.

The prototype’s systems still needed refinement.

He uploaded the battle data through his AR interface.

Graphs and numbers flooded his HUD, stats pulled from every piece of gear embedded in his body.

Then he turned toward the hangar, limping in to start repairs.

While replacing the pulverized mechanical arm, a new message flashed across his AR display:

Dispatch Order: New zone discovered 15km northwest of Babel Outer Perimeter. Immediate recon required. Priority: MAXIMUM.

Hector closed the panel and casually issued the mercenary deployment order.

These kinds of jobs weren’t new.

In Babel, new zones popped up several times a year.

The city was riddled with unstable spatial fractures—chunks of terrain cut off from the rest of reality.

And those places?

Usually filled with death.

Cities that got severed from the world during the Great Convergence?

Even without external threats, humans trapped for decades eventually turned on each other. Cannibalism. Starvation. Collapse.

Some zones even spit out constructs—full-body manifestations of corrupted data or memory.

If they were just dangerous, Hexa Core Armory wouldn’t care.

But they mattered.

Because sometimes... those zones were time capsules. Entire districts frozen in the exact state they were a hundred years ago, before the Great Convergence.

That meant they could contain traces of MK Corporation.

When Hector exited the hangar, his mercenary squad was already geared up and in formation.

Top-tier soldiers, fully equipped with the latest Hexa Core Armory tech.

Hector uploaded the mission brief to their shared HUDs and raised his voice:

[“All units—move to target coordinates.”]

****

Morning sunlight slipped through the window crack and brushed my face.

I rubbed my eyes and sat up, taking in the single-room apartment around me.

The kiwis Amber sent yesterday were neatly tied up on the cutting board.

They’d been tightly secured so they couldn’t escape, and even their beaks had been carefully dealt with so they couldn’t cry too loud.

The kid—who should’ve been in bed—was now perched on top of the kiwis.

What was strange was how these little “kiwi-kiwi” chirpers didn’t seem to sleep.

The moment I got up and stepped closer, every single kiwi turned its head in perfect sync to look at me.

Creepy in how identical it was. Unnerving, even.

Time to start slicing?

I walked to the kitchen, opened the drawer, and pulled out a small kitchen knife.

It was the knife specifically made for chopping up the kiwis Amber sent on a semi-regular basis.

I raised the blade and looked down.

Today’s kiwi was unusually big.

Way bigger than usual—probably one of those “1++ grade” ones I’d only heard about in rumors.

Amber must be making decent money lately...

I was zoning out, about to stab the knife down—

[NOOO!!!]

The kid’s eyes flew open and she shot upright, grabbing my arm.

Not physically, of course—but it startled me enough to almost drop the knife.

......

I looked down in silence. Her eyes were pleading.

Like she was trying to protect a friend.

“...Fine.”

I sighed and put the knife down.

What could’ve been a rare gourmet kiwi pizza got postponed.

The source of this c𝓸ntent is frёeweɓηovel.coɱ.

As soon as I untied the birds, the kid started playing, riding around on them with glee.

She clung to their round backs, bouncing from one to the next like they were amusement park rides.

They're dull-colored and kind of gross, but she loves them... weird.

I stared blankly for a while... then it hit me.

...!

The kiwis could see her.

They turned their heads to follow her. When she jumped, they tilted their bodies to catch her.

That was a first.

Up until now, only Mecha-Agu and I could see her.

Is it because the kiwis were engineered using MK Corp tech?

By now, the kid had blended in naturally, hopping between Agu and the birds like they were all just playmates.

Agu had been annoyed at first, but now he was chasing them around with her.

She found the awkward, springy way they ran hilarious.

[Heehee.]

Every time a kiwi galloped off, her face lit up with pure joy.

But really—how long do these things last? Shelf life... lifespan... whatever.

Would be nice if they didn’t rot too fast.

Can’t let them spoil. When she falls asleep, I’ll sneak one and slice it up for pizza.

Heehee.

I was grinning to myself, plotting silently, when a comm alert flashed across my AR display—Amber.

I accepted the call.

Her voice echoed directly into my skull.

[A. Emergency job. Get to Burning Duct. Now.]

She didn’t sound like her usual cold self. There was urgency in it.

****

Amber snapped awake.

Her body ached—she’d fallen asleep in the agency’s busted-up office chair. Her back was stiff. Neck too.

When she uncurled her fingers from the blanket she’d been gripping, she saw the deep creases left in her palm.

Sunlight seeped through the window, slowly illuminating the inside of the office.

Morning had begun in Burning Duct. The usual noise rose from the streets, steam hissing out of pipe stacks, the city swallowed in a fog of industrial haze.

Familiar chaos signaling the start of another day.

Amber yawned and stood up slowly.

Still groggy, she scanned the office—then spotted something odd on her desk.

“...?”

There was a faint mark on the surface.

It looked like a small handprint, made from displaced metal dust.

Less like something physically touched the surface—more like a magnetic force had swept it aside.

Amber leaned in to examine it.

“...Weird.”

Dust scattered in strange shapes.

Too strange to ignore. She activated her AR interface and snapped a quick photo.

“The iron filings from the floor somehow ended up on the desk...”

She muttered as she wiped the remaining dust away.

Then brewed herself some coffee and powered on the data terminal.

The screen lit up with a blue glow. Dozens of intel feeds booted up at once.

Her fingers moved like they were dancing across the interface, sweeping through wave after wave of data.

“Jinrong’s side... seems quiet.”

Her eyes relaxed slightly.

Even though A had come face-to-face with a Jinrong agent, it looked like her identity hadn’t been exposed.

All the chatter was about Hector.

Amber let out a breath of relief.

As she flicked through more channels, a new message pinged.

Victor’s name flashed on the screen—he’d been undercover in some sketchy religious cult.

Save me.ㅁadf

That was all.

The message cut off mid-sentence, like the connection had been forcefully severed.

Amber didn’t waste a second. She opened a comm line to A.

As she waited, the jingle of the Black Bio Pizza logo played—the default ringtone for A’s terminal.

Amber closed her eyes and prayed Victor was still alive.