Ch.102Work Record 016 – New Recruitment Period (1)

To give a second chance to a mercenary from a small company that wasn’t even an official partner, the goals of a freelancer and a security chief from a giant corporation had to align, and both had to work tirelessly.

I hope Noah understands just how rare second chances are. If he doesn’t, the meaning behind today’s opportunity might be lost. The object most similar to humans is a domino.

When one falls, everything around it falls and collapses. If Noah doesn’t use his second chance wisely, Simon, who barely managed to stay standing, will fall too.

If that situation comes… I’ll side with whoever results in fewer deaths. Probably Fitts & Morrison. I didn’t deny it, nor did I even think to.

Simon probably knows this too, so he’ll try to prevent that from happening. That’s enough. Most efforts bear fruit. Whether good or not.

After the job was done, the first person to approach me was Ms. Riley. After hesitating briefly, she bowed her head deeply. Someone who knows how to apologize. A rare and pleasant sight.

“I… I don’t know what to say… When you said you knew everything, I just lost it. I’m truly sorry…”

“After you’ve apologized, what more is there? Besides, I was the one who got hit, not the one doing the hitting, and thanks to the difference in enhanced body performance, it wasn’t a big deal.”

The enhanced body I wore had good shock absorption. She might have felt pain, but she wouldn’t have been injured. Living with this kind of body, you tend not to worry much about yourself.

Did I give Noah special treatment? No. I simply ensured he didn’t die because it wasn’t a death-worthy situation. If it had been, I would have put on combat gear, stormed in, and eliminated him.

Whether it’s coldness or blind indifference, I didn’t dwell on it and decided to leave Kanun’s office. It was time for those people to pull themselves together, and I wasn’t a Kanun employee.

It didn’t take long, but the fatigue was real. I got on my bike and headed home. Tonight was another night off from Nightwatch, and I’d already handled two jobs today.

Riding through smog so thick I could barely see ahead, paying attention to vehicle alerts on my HUD with my hearing wide open, I heard a strange sound nearby.

It was the sound of a vehicle engine. The distinctive sound of a gasoline vehicle left running while parked. Something not showing up on my HUD. I parked my bike by the roadside and approached.

As I got closer to the vehicle, muffled sounds that weren’t fully absorbed by the soundproofing began to leak through the door cracks. It was a human voice. As I approached the door, I sensed movement nearby.

Someone was quietly approaching. I felt a knife tip emerge from the smog and grabbed the wrist. It was a tactical dagger-sized blade, and judging by the lack of vibration, not a high-frequency knife.

“What’s this? You’re pretty strong, huh? But man, you should’ve just minded your own business. We weren’t planning to stab anyone.”

Another person was approaching from behind. They tried to muffle their footsteps, but I could hear them clearly. I blocked a machete being swung down heavily with my forearm to prevent my clothes from tearing.

The blade couldn’t cut through my Type 4 skin at all. It just struck with a dull sound. I leisurely began to apply pressure to the wrist I was holding.

The feeling of flesh being compressed was brief. There was a creaking sound like an overloaded plank, and the dagger dropped from the hand of the man in front of me. Another hand grabbed mine.

“You’re strong, huh? Who’s in the car?”

“You bastard, what kind of strength… Hey! Do something!”

The machete-wielding hand behind me rose again, this time swinging down toward my head from above. I caught it lightly with my hand to avoid having my hair cut.

I grabbed the collar of the retreating attacker and pulled him closer. Seeing no modifications, he appeared to be a pure human, which meant his silhouette wouldn’t show up on passing vehicles either.

If I got close enough, proximity sensors would detect him, but by then it would already be too late. I just didn’t want to cause a traffic accident.

I applied a bit more pressure to the wrist I was holding. With my thumb supporting the base of the bone that was barely holding at its elastic limit, ready to press and break it, I asked:

“If there’s a misunderstanding, I’d like you to tell me before I hand you over to Belwether. Among situations where a gagged person is in a car padded for soundproofing, there are a few that could be called misunderstandings.”

Of course, none of those misunderstandings involved people carrying daggers and machetes. The silhouette in the smog seemed very aware of the state of his arm bone. Trembling, he began to speak:

“We, we’re just wasteland residents! Living in an abandoned research facility in the wasteland! But, my, my friend’s younger sister went missing…”

“Oh, please. Where in the world would someone looking for a missing person drive an unregistered gasoline car while carrying a bunch of knives? If you’re going to make excuses, put some effort into it, okay?”

Kidnappers. It would be easier to hand them over to Belwether. Sighing, I threw the assailant whose collar I’d grabbed to the ground and placed my hand on the trunk door handle. I broke the crude lock with force and yanked it open.

Inside, away from the smog, sat a woman with a gag in her mouth and her wrists tied behind her back. The vehicle reeked of cheap musk perfume and synthetic whiskey.

Judging by the lack of communication connection, she was a pure human. As I reached toward her face to remove the cloth gag, she backed away, hiding in the corner of the trunk.

Pulling on the wrist I was holding, I planted my fist in one assailant’s face. I controlled my strength, but he would have to face his somewhat flattened features from now on. I threw his unconscious form on top of the other one.

After brushing off the blood and tooth fragments stuck to my hand, I entered the vehicle. I grabbed only the handcuffs binding the struggling woman’s wrists with both hands and easily tore them off. I let her remove the gag herself.

Feeling her hands free, she removed the gag, and I spoke to her. I just needed to verify her identity and then hand her over to Belwether. Kidnapping issues require someone bigger than individual concerns.

“Could I see your pure human registration card? You know, the plastic card you get instead of having a computational assist implant. Like this.”

I showed her the plastic license I had received when living as an offliner, but she looked at the card I held out with a completely confused expression. She shook her head.

“I don’t have one. I’m from the wasteland.”

Belwether wouldn’t accept the transfer in this case. Wasteland people have no obligations to the city, but also no rights. Belwether had no reason to protect them.

But I couldn’t just hand her back to the kidnappers either. As the second assailant began to stir and move, I stepped on his leg to keep him down while reviewing the manual.

“Then… if you register as a pure human and become a registered employee-citizen of Los Angeles, Belwether will consider you one of its citizens and protect you. Don’t worry about these guys. I can deal with them and call a cleanup team.”

Of course, becoming an employee-citizen required many more procedures. You needed to prove you could do some kind of work in the city, but even just applying would get you some help from Belwether.

She shook her head, despite the fact that without citizenship, I couldn’t even process these criminals for crimes against a citizen. After a moment of silence, the woman who had been trembling at my demeanor spoke up.

“There are… more. Besides me. There must be dozens of people like me… and, you can’t register all of them, can you?”

Belwether only accepts useful refugees. They won’t help dozens of pure humans with no skills out of mere goodwill. Even the returned children who survived did so because Belwether could raise them as they pleased.

But maintaining dozens of people in the wasteland, where not even a single plant can grow and the Wasteland Restoration Research Institute is struggling… what they were doing was obvious. I sighed.

It reminded me of Helen. The situation would be better than back then, but still. I placed my heel on the knee of the assailant whose leg I had been stepping on and asked.

That assailant knew very well what someone who could crush a human face with their fist might do with their foot.

“Is she one of the women they were using as escorts?”

Visibility barely reached my feet. The assailant nodded, trembling. I began searching through my contacts.

I was looking for the contact information of the mercenaries I met at the restaurant in front of Fitts & Morrison when I went there with Ms. Eve. The Sin City Bitches. A mercenary staffing company from Las Vegas brothels.

For one person, I would have to apply for pure human registration and get Belwether’s help, but for dozens, definitive proof of ability was needed. This company was the only one that would provide such proof for these people.

After a brief ring, the call connected.

“Mercenary staffing company Nightwatch, Arthur Murphy, general staff. We exchanged cards in front of Fitts & Morrison headquarters last time. I’m calling because there seems to be something I should pass along.”

“Arthur, Arthur… Ah, confirmed. But, our Sin City Bitches is an official partner of Fitts & Morrison, so working with an official Belwether partner might be… awkward, as you know.”

“I know. But if I saw self-proclaimed wasteland residents trying to kidnap an unregistered pure human woman in an unregistered gasoline van, shouldn’t I contact you?”

With those words, I transmitted the location information. The clerk’s voice turned cold as she replied.

“Estimated arrival time is 7 minutes. Have you killed the assailants?”

“I have not. They seem to be quite close partners with Fitts & Morrison, and I couldn’t miss the chance to see what’s inside.”

“Well done. Please wait a moment.”

Not long after, along with the sound of an armored van, came an overwhelming scent of cosmetics. Clearing away the smog, a familiar-faced mercenary jumped lightly from the van. She greeted me with a nod.

It was Section Chief Carmilla Lupus, whom I had seen in front of Fitts & Morrison headquarters last time. She greeted me with a smile.

“See you again, Santa. Ah, wait. Open up those two bastards on the ground and send them to Fitts & Morrison. Let’s see what’s going on. And the victim…”

She looked over the woman in the van, then approached her with creaking full-body prosthetics. With a rather friendly face, she said:

“I heard you were almost kidnapped. Could you explain the situation? Criminals running brothels in the wasteland isn’t anything new.”

Her name was Nora. She seemed to have been captured by a criminal organization hiding in an abandoned research facility built by some unknown megacorporation in the wasteland and left behind after the research project ended.

She tried to explain her life. She described the scenery inside the building, full of the characteristic white of research facilities, and how many people visited, then continued:

“There are quite a lot of people. Some came voluntarily to make money, and some were born in the wasteland and just live there…”

At those words, Section Chief Carmilla’s voice sharpened. Trying to hide her fierce energy, she said:

“Which category do you fall into, Ms. Nora? I heard you don’t have a pure human registration card, and we’ve confirmed there’s no matching face in the registration list…”

Nora answered in a frightened voice. She must have sensed the ferocity and hatred in Carmilla’s voice. Sin City Bitches staff members took the two assailants to the back of the car. I could hear the sound of a bone saw.

“I was born in the wasteland and have lived there all my life…”

Only then did Carmilla’s voice soften. She slowly raised her full-body prosthetic and explained the reason to Nora.

“Then you’re worth helping. Let the women who want to live as prostitutes stay there as prostitutes for life. It’s their choice. Sin City Bitches only rescues those who never got to choose.”

From behind the vehicle, I could hear staff members calling Fitts & Morrison’s cleanup team, and after Carmilla handed Nora over to other staff members, she approached me. She put on a friendly face over her weathered features.

“A real Santa, aren’t you? We’ll listen to that woman’s situation, and by tomorrow we should be able to track the location. Tomorrow we’ll make an official cooperation request to Nightwatch. Fitts & Morrison will like it too.”

What Fitts & Morrison valued was improvisation. Figuring out what to do on your own, making choices, and completing tasks yourself. So choice was important.

It’s only natural that they despise those who make stupid choices and then whine for help when things go bad. She asked with a somewhat relaxed expression:

“Were you trying to do a good deed?”

“She said there were many people like her. I could only think of one company that would give jobs, even conditionally, to pure humans who’ve lived their whole lives in the wasteland. They need jobs to register as pure humans.”

With each word I spoke, the smile visible inside her helmet grew deeper, until by the end of my sentence, it had become a full grin. She patted my shoulder and said:

“This is why I like Belwether folks. You efficient do-gooders are so efficiently good.”

“You’re from Fitts & Morrison. Wouldn’t it be better to praise me for excellent improvisation?”

Belwether’s creed is… now it’s Belwether’s creed. Anyone can say something right once or twice, so there’s no need to focus only on Belwether’s words. Section Chief Carmilla burst into laughter.

“Right, right. That was amazingly excellent improvisation, Santa boy. Yeah. Those wasteland bastards are going to experience the Vegas night. And we’ll have a special recruitment period at the end of the year. Ah, yes…”

The Vegas night… It seemed to refer to what she and her colleagues did after receiving military personality chips from Talos, while working with personality adjustment chips. She continued her drawn-out words:

“Hand the pimp over to us. It’ll be some bitch who makes you call her sister or mother or madam while gently soothing your shitty days, and we’ve got a lot built up against such women. Fitts & Morrison will cover the costs.”

It seems Talos wasn’t joking about the Wild West. It was a handling method more suited to talk of legal revenge and frontier justice.

I wouldn’t see Sin City Bitches tear the pimp apart, but I felt no aversion to it either. They had wasted their first chance so thoroughly that there was no one willing to work to give them a second one.

If they had at least been like Noah Verami and not touched a hair on anyone else’s life, it might have been worth reconsidering, but these wasteland people weren’t even that.

Then this city wouldn’t give them even a corner of its brain prison. It was entirely fitting.

Although the official request hadn’t come in yet, it seemed like Nightwatch would be working together tomorrow. Just that fact brought a smile to my face.