Ch.142Work Record #020 – Ep 6. Returning to My Main Job (2)

There wasn’t enough time for a prolonged firefight from cover. I throw the dead mercenary I’d been using as a human shield at another mercenary hiding around the corner in the office hallway. It buys me a moment.

Then, I sprint forward as if propelled, pressing against the floor hard enough to slightly warp it. I move at a speed that would appear almost rippling to anyone not focusing carefully. I crash through the cheap gypsum board walls.

My eyes meet with a mercenary reloading inside the office. More accurately, only I made eye contact. He merely faced my emotionless, semi-transparent display helmet. I ram him straight into the wall.

As he swings a blade from his prosthetic arm, I smash it with the forehead of my helmet. I push his chin up with my hand, then press my gun barrel against the unprotected underside of his jaw and pull the trigger.

Four bullets punch through the back of his helmet like stitch marks, piercing the gypsum board and embedding in the ceiling. This is why anti-reinforcement rounds can’t be used when civilians are present.

I grip my carbine again with both hands. I lock eyes with another N-Enter mercenary who had been hit by the body I’d thrown. We both aim at the same spot, but I fire faster.

His bullet is stopped by my ballistic plate that covers up to my neck, but my Belwether anti-reinforcement round demonstrates its penetrating power, tearing through his neck and the walls behind him before lodging deep into a pillar.

The N-Enter mercenary tries to stop the bleeding by clutching his neck, but blood pulses between his fingers with each heartbeat.

Still, he refuses to give up or surrender. He somehow manages to grab his pistol. He probably doesn’t have the strength to aim properly, but he knows N-Enter is watching this scene.

A mercy kill would be the more courteous option. He begins squeezing the trigger. His aim wavers from blood loss, and only half of the four shots he fires actually come my way.

The line between fiction and reality blurs. Instead of letting him empty his magazine for some dramatic display, I raise my gun and put one more clean shot through his forehead. Only then does his body go limp and collapse.

I shouldn’t justify this as giving him peace. This is murder. What I’m holding is a murder weapon, and outside, this is being broadcast as content. If I don’t properly acknowledge that, everything becomes meaningless.

At that moment, I hear a sound. Something being struck. Is someone attacking another fleeing mercenary? It also sounds like someone tapping a shoulder. What matters is that I can pinpoint the location.

Just two walls away. I exit the office. They’re waiting for reinforcements on the other side of the wall. They want to surround me as much as I want to avoid being surrounded.

Now that I’ve detected their ambush, it’s time to deal with them. I orient myself toward the gypsum board wall. I pull the pin on two connected flash grenades, then take a few steps back for a running start.

I sprint forward as if bouncing lightly. The sound of my running isn’t audible, but the crashing of the gypsum board wall rings out clearly. Do they know I’m targeting them? Probably not.

They should have figured it out before the second wall breaks. Unfortunately, their instincts aren’t that sharp. They’re just mercenaries thrown into an enemy corporation’s city with a “whatever happens, happens” attitude.

I break through the second wall. My dark Gardner uniform is now covered in gypsum dust, making me more visible. I see a mercenary with his fist raised as if signaling others to wait.

I throw the flash grenades I brought in with the pin already pulled into the middle of the group. They detonate almost without delay, one after another. Those mercenaries succumb to instinct, but my Belwether-made body doesn’t falter.

I withstand the blast pressure without even covering my face. Starting with those furthest from the flash, I pull the trigger aiming for their heads. The anti-reinforcement rounds that can penetrate reinforced suit exteriors easily punch through helmets as well.

The suppressed gunshots echo dully inside the building. Unlike the usual head-rattling gunfire. Perhaps the Heroism & Hope cameras were hoping for exactly this sound.

This needed to look as raw as possible while still being produced. Perhaps they plan to use this episode to showcase how I’ll exterminate the traitors.

I pull a magazine from my plate carrier and reload. Instead of using the gypsum board walls that can’t provide proper cover, I take position behind a building column.

The consecutive explosions, gunfire, and cut communications—everything demands caution. They could run away. But they’d only die after receiving jeers from the viewers. This is the only way.

The sound of soft footsteps on the floor splits into two directions. Two groups. Seems like one person and two people. I try to flank toward the lone one, but bullets pierce through the gypsum wall and hit the column I’m pressed against.

I need to deal with the pair first. They’re firing in short bursts of two or three shots, trying to keep me pinned down. They’re doing their best, it seems.

A frontal assault will do. I mentally call for Chance.

‘Chance, I need some cover.’

“Confirmed. Signal when ready.”

I send an armored transport drone in front of me, then advance behind it toward the suppressive fire. The bullets only hit Chance’s transport drone.

After turning the control stick to full automatic, I sweep across the wall. Thirty rounds from the magazine leave stitch-like bullet holes in the thin wall, and the suppressive fire finally stops.

Now it’s time to deal with the lone flanker. The stealthy footsteps have already ceased. Has he frozen up, thinking he’s the last survivor? I can’t be sure. I need to stay alert.

I wait with my aim loosely directed toward where the flanker went. I thought I just needed to pull the trigger, but… I encounter another unexpected variable. The sound of a wall being smashed.

A mercenary with bulging veins visible on his wrists outside his body armor crashes through the wall just as I had done. He’s injected something. A drug that Type 4s like me don’t need.

His movements are fast and strong. I could commend his determination to complete the mission even if it means using drugs. However, it’s not an efficient determination. It’s closer to obsession.

N-Enter is being stupid. If a mission has already failed, they should retrieve the survivors and prepare for the next job, but by insisting on success at all costs, this is what happens.

I have a somewhat love-hate relationship with Nature & Nature. This terrible inefficiency is disgusting, but their products have been very helpful in removing the illusions that Hollowed Creek injected into Ms. Eve.

I dodge his high-frequency tactical dagger by taking a large step back. As he reacts, I step forward and kick him in the stomach. He resists briefly but is soon pushed back.

I should be thankful that this drug-addled mercenary isn’t using a gun. Instead of reloading, I pull a rifle from the transport drone I brought as cover. I turn the control dial.

I aim at his pelvis as he rises, then squeeze the trigger while tracking up along his spine. The sound of metal clanging and sparks flying from his already-modified spine is so loud that the sound of flesh tearing seems quiet.

No, it wasn’t that quiet. After confirming that mercenary is down too, I call for Heroism & Hope’s unmanned cameras. They sweep through the interior, looking for survivors.

There were none. All eliminated on this floor. Live. I leisurely connect to communications and, for the first time since entering this building, speak in Gardner’s voice.

“Task completed. Returning now.”

I slowly climb the stairs back to the roof. The helicopter that had dropped me off was now waiting, landed. I board it. We cut across Detroit’s night sky.

The city looked quite happy. There were many pedestrians despite the night, and billboards proclaiming “Serena Vanderbilt is protecting this city” glowed brightly even at night.

During the return to headquarters, the screen changes. It shows Gardner pushing through with pure performance rather than tactics—showing no tension, enduring flash grenades exploding in his face, barely scratched by desperate shots from dying enemies, and calmly handling someone bursting through walls just as he had done. Very Gardner-like.

People cheered at the revelation that Gardner’s prowess, which they naturally assumed was fake, was actually real—though not flashy. Would the paparazzi scream? Maybe.

From his perspective, I was like a mudfish muddying the waters. He had likely believed clearly in what was true and what was false until now. More precisely, he probably believed everything was false.

The Serena Vanderbilt series is false. Detroit is false. Heroism and hope are both false. But then he encountered a counterexample. I appear somewhat real. That must be infuriating.

Well, at least Ms. Serena’s body won’t be cut in half again. I return to the penthouse. Polaris is waiting to greet me. The bodyguard named Theo is with her.

As the helicopter lands and the wind gusts begin, Theo blocks Polaris with a ballistic shield. The second bulletproof window of the shield is at Polaris’s eye level.

The bodyguard didn’t say anything, but he was clearly looking at Polaris with adoration. I had never imagined a celebrity who got along well with the people around them. Something unimaginable was right in front of me.

I lightly jump down from the helicopter, which again hasn’t properly landed. Polaris opens her eyes wide as if surprised, then quickly softens them into an eye-smile.

“You’ll hurt your knees, Mr. Gardner. Thank you for your work today. And, Theo.”

She’s not urging him to say anything specific. She’s just urging him to speak. Only after the helicopter departs and he lowers the ballistic shield does the bodyguard named Theo speak slowly.

His mouth doesn’t move as he speaks. He’s outputting the words. I couldn’t gauge how damaged his body must have been to need to output speech while having a human face.

“Not a failing grade, I suppose. I want to be gruff about it, but… Polaris wouldn’t like that. There might have been some advantages, but still… handling eleven people who knew your position by yourself is difficult. Indeed.”

Like a father-in-law. He sounds exactly like a father-in-law testing his son-in-law. Theo sighs. He seems displeased about entrusting something to someone other than himself.

Watching this, Polaris lets out a short laugh. Poking Theo with her fingertip… as if thinking the same thing as me, she says:

“What’s that, Theo? You sound just like a father meeting his daughter’s fiancé. Mr. Gardner is a bodyguard. Right?”

“That’s right. But you’ve been trying to win over this security guard since your first day here, Ms. Polaris. We don’t even know what’s inside that helmet…”

“That’s not a helmet, it’s a gimmick, Theo. There’s a person inside that gimmick. They wear that gimmick because even a tiny part of it helps. Now that you’ve seen their skills, there’s no need to wonder about their identity.”

Her gentle persuasion continues, and eventually the bodyguard Theo nods. The fact that he might communicate better with Polaris creates an unsettling feeling inside me. I might start disliking Gardner.

“That’s true. Yes. Excellent job handling the task, callsign Gardner. You seem sufficient for Ms. Polaris’s close protection.”

“It had minimal meaning, so not bad.”

I answer in Gardner fashion and try to walk past, but Polaris approaches me again. Her eye-smile remains perfectly crafted rather than naturally pretty.

“Was it meaningless?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps… because of those people’s efforts? Trying with all your might to put spilled water back in the glass is meaningless. Even if there were sufficient reasons to kill them, it was the meaningless death of eleven people. Right?”

Now I’m definitely going to dislike Gardner. Conversing with someone who can understand your thoughts through the semi-transparent gimmick wall is more painful than I expected. I sigh and nod.

“If they were completely useless, I would have flipped through the air and flown around to deal with them. What a waste of people who could have been useful as gardeners at the very least.”

They needed to take cover, they tried to catch flankers, and they even did proper reconnaissance. They had created well-organized soldiers with a sense of urgency, but their method of deployment was terrible.

Polaris, who had been quietly listening to my answer, pulled a paper ticket from her pocket and handed it to me. It’s a box seat ticket for tomorrow’s performance. She puts a finger to her lips as if it’s a secret.

“You probably can’t actually come, but… I feel like I should reserve seats for the people protecting the city. It’s the most expensive seat. For you, Ms. Serena, and Mr. Chris.”

“Sentimental.”

“That’s exactly what I’m selling.”

She doesn’t give an inch. Yes. She’s definitely more similar than I thought. I push the ticket back to her and return to my room. Tomorrow is Polaris’s concert. I don’t know what it will feel like.

I can only vaguely guess what it might feel like. There will be many people, and the music will be loud. Everyone will be recording with their computational assistance devices while watching with their eyes. I really don’t know, it seems.

Fortunately, I was planning to be outside the concert hall. Perhaps… on the way back, it wouldn’t be bad to buy one of Polaris’s albums and listen to it. Music in my life has only been background noise.

Slaves obey, machines produce, and humans enjoy. If the biggest thing I’ve gained here is something to enjoy… would Ms. Eve be jealous? I seriously consider it for a moment.

I decided it would be good either way, since I could enjoy Eve’s jealousy as much as I could enjoy the music. Uncharacteristically, it’s been a tiring day. That’s because I took quite a few bullets to my body armor.

Due to fatigue after intense work, I miss the moment when half of this long business trip passes. It doesn’t matter. I’ll work hard, but I was hoping for the job to pass quickly.