Park Jin-cheol's hand closed around Gun's wrist and held it there.
"Hoho, is this how kids have fun these days!" He looked around the wrecked junkyard, at the bodies scattered across the ground, at Johan barely holding himself up against a bent car frame. Then he looked back at the young man whose wrist he was holding. "Sorry, boy. I will have to put you down."
Gun didn't respond.
Park Jin-cheol loosened his grip slightly. Most people reacted when a stranger grabbed their wrist mid-swing. They pulled back, looked over, said something. Gun did none of that. He just stood there with his fist still raised, completely still, like something waiting to resume.
'Strange.'
He released the wrist.
Gun's fist drove straight into his face before Park Jin-cheol's hand had fully dropped.
BOOM!
Park Jin-cheol skidded back two meters. He caught himself and touched his jaw. 'No hesitation. No read. He didn't look at me before he swung. He didn't look at me at all.'
Gun was already moving toward him.
Park Jin-cheol stepped in and hit him with a straight right to the jaw, full weight behind it. Gun's head turned with the impact. His feet didn't move. He kept walking forward like the hit hadn't happened.
'He didn't register it,' Park Jin-cheol thought. 'Not ignoring it. He genuinely didn't register it.'
He threw a body shot. Gun's arm dropped and deflected it without Gun's eyes moving at all. Park Jin-cheol tried a left hook and Gun's head slipped to the side just far enough, pure reflex, no intention behind it.
'He's dodging. But he's not looking at me. There's no one in there doing the dodging.'
BOOM!
Gun's next punch hit Park Jin-cheol in the chest and sent him into a stack of car frames. Two frames toppled and crashed. Park Jin-cheol came out of the wreckage and looked at Gun crossing the distance with the same blank forward momentum.
'His eyes are open but there's nothing behind them,' Park Jin-cheol thought. 'Whatever I'm fighting right now, it isn't him.'
He pressed forward anyway and they traded, Park Jin-cheol working his CQC hard, throwing combinations and reading angles. But every clean shot he set up either got slipped by reflex or absorbed with no reaction. Gun kept outputting with steady, mechanical force.
CRACK!
A straight right broke through and snapped Park Jin-cheol's head back. A grab followed and Gun drove him face-first into the concrete.
BOOM!
The ground cracked from the impact. Park Jin-cheol rolled clear immediately and got to his feet, putting distance between them.
Johan watched from across the yard. 'Gun is unconscious but his body is still fighting. Like it has a will of its own. It's similar to Daniel Park.'
Park Jin-cheol looked at Gun and exhaled once. His lip was split and his jaw ached. He looked down at his uniform, now smudged with concrete dust and blood.
'Okay,' he thought. 'Let's be serious.'
War Mode.
Park Jin-cheol moved first.
BOOM!
Dust kicked up under his feet.
His output doubled and the difference was immediate. Hits that Gun's reflex had been slipping cleanly now clipped and grazed because the speed and width of Park Jin-cheol's CQC left less room for pure instinct to work with. A hook got through and snapped Gun's head sideways. An elbow connected across the ribs. A headbutt drove straight into Gun's face and sent him staggering back two full steps.
Johan straightened against the car frame despite his broken ribs. 'Huh? Was the old man holding back?! Holding back against a monster like this?!'
BOOM!
Park Jin-cheol drove a body shot that put Gun's back into a car frame hard enough to buckle the metal. Gun peeled off it and kept coming. Park Jin-cheol caught an incoming punch on his forearm and answered with a straight right that cracked Gun's head to the side again.
"You're not in there, are you," Park Jin-cheol said, more to himself than anyone. He threw another combination, forcing Gun back step by step. "What happened to you, boy?"
Gun's body gave him no answer. It slipped one punch, took the next two, and kept pressing forward.
CRACK!
A hit got through Park Jin-cheol's guard and rattled his vision for a full second. Another one bent him forward. He straightened up and kept going because stopping wasn't something he knew how to do, but the picture was clear now. He was damaging a body that had no one inside it to feel the damage.
'I can't put him down this way,' Park Jin-cheol thought, taking a straight right and using the momentum to create distance. 'I need to end this differently.'
He reached into his breast pocket and closed his fingers around the injector Santiago had given him. Santiago had said to use it only if everything else was off the table. He had used that specific tone he kept for things he meant completely.
Park Jin-cheol looked at Gun walking toward him with empty eyes and blood running freely down his face.
'Everything else is off the table.'
He waited for Gun to close the distance. He needed to get inside the dodge reflex and stay there, which meant he had to eat something to do it.
Gun reached him and threw a straight right. Park Jin-cheol took it full in the chest and let the force drive him forward instead of back, crashing into Gun's space and locking one arm around Gun's neck before the body could reset and slip away. Gun's reflex fired and tried to pull clear but Park Jin-cheol held the grip with everything he had and drove the injector into the side of Gun's throat with his other hand.
CLICK!
Gun's body went rigid for one second.
Then his knees buckled.
Park Jin-cheol held him as he went down and lowered him to the concrete. Gun's body settled against the ground and his breathing evened out slowly, and whatever had been running him simply stopped.
Park Jin-cheol straightened up and stood over him for a moment. "Good fight, boy."
He put the empty injector in his pocket and turned around.
Johan was watching him from against the car frame, one arm wrapped around his ribs. Park Jin-cheol walked over and crouched in front of him. "You're in bad shape."
"Who are you?" Johan said.
Park Jin-cheol looked around the yard at Daniel, Jake, Jerry, Eli, Warren, Mandeok, and Yuseong, all of them down and scattered across the cracked asphalt. He looked at all of them for a moment. "I am Jincheol Park from ARES. These kids. What are they doing here?"
"I came to get someone out," Johan said. "Prosecutor Kangmi Choi. Gun Park had her in that house." He nodded toward the small building at the center of the compound. "The others were probably here for the same reason."
Park Jin-cheol looked at the house. Then he looked at Daniel's face on the ground nearby, at the split knuckles and the dried blood and the way the kid had clearly kept going long past when he should have stopped.
He thought about Dabin.
"Wait here," he said, and walked to the house.
He pushed the door open. Kangmi sat tied to the chair with her wrists and ankles bound and tape across her mouth. She looked at him with sharp, alert eyes.
Park Jin-cheol crossed the room, peeled the tape off carefully, and worked the bindings loose. Kangmi stood and rubbed her wrists. "Who are you?"
"Park Jin-cheol. Ares." He moved to the door. "Can you walk?"
"Yes."
"Then let's go. We have a lot of kids outside who need an ambulance."
Kangmi stepped out into the junkyard and stopped. She looked at the cratered ground, the collapsed frames, Gun lying still in the center of it all. Then she looked at Eli's body, lying on the ground.
After that incident, she had never met him. It hurt to see him like that. But she couldn't let herself lose control. She had an important task to do.
Park Jin-cheol was already on his phone, giving the address in a flat calm voice, listing the injured, requesting multiple units and medical support. He finished the call and stood in the middle of the wrecked yard.
Then he went to check on the kids.