Ch.161Work Record No. 023 – Concerning Fire (2)

After such a conversation at dawn, there was no way I could easily fall asleep. Not that it mattered much—my body could operate for an entire week without sleep without any serious consequences.

I connect to the Freelancer Network. Even at this hour, the network was flooded with requests. The dirty work of whales that only freelancers could handle didn’t observe regular business hours.

Information security teams had employees with biorhythm regulators working 24-hour shifts, but hackers believed infiltration attempts at dawn had higher success rates. Terrorists thought the same.

What I needed to do right now wasn’t much… Earn the trust of both Bellwether and Panacea MediTech, track down Prometheus and the Transparent Eye, and live something resembling a real life with Ms. Eve.

I search for Panacea MediTech on the Freelancer Network. Panacea MediTech wasn’t a company that easily put out requests. To begin with, they weren’t the type of company that had many issues requiring freelancers.

Most requests involved tracking down hackers who had attempted to infiltrate their systems targeting red-level customer information, with artificial bodies often offered as compensation. It seemed there wasn’t much for me to do.

I decide to broaden my search to include more mundane tasks. I check personal requests through Bellwether’s mercenary staffing network rather than the Freelancer Network. I wasn’t in a position to be picky.

Now I see more diverse requests. There were quite a few jobs that could be entrusted to skilled mercenaries rather than freelancers. Megacorporations hire freelancers not for strength but for reliability.

While scanning through requests marked urgent, I notice one designated for this area. I immediately reach out to open the virtual screen. This is a job I have no choice but to take.

The request states that burglars are attempting to break into a home with a baby delivered by Panacea MediTech less than a week ago. The location is closer to our apartment than to Panacea MediTech’s headquarters.

I mechanically get up and change clothes. Just like when working with Kanun, I put on body armor and a helmet over my casual clothes, then grab Small Evil loaded with standard rounds and a carbine.

As soon as I enter the elevator, Panacea MediTech’s security team calls in. I respond while tapping the toe of my combat boots against the floor, having swapped out my sneakers.

“Yes, Freelancer Arthur Murphy speaking. Are you calling about the request?”

“Ah, yes! We’re dispatching our tactical unit, but this is an urgent situation… How long will it take you to reach the delivery location?”

Chance displays “within 2 minutes” in my field of vision. It’s somewhere in this apartment complex, so I’ll arrive instantly if I don’t get lost.

“ETA approximately 2 minutes. I’ll go in first and subdue them. Please share any necessary information. The perpetrators aren’t forces from another megacorporation, are they?”

“Even though we’re not on the best terms with Bellwether, if that were the case, Bellwether’s tactical unit would have deployed. The perpetrators… we know who they are. Ordinary mercenaries.”

They already know who the perpetrators are? I leap out of the elevator and mount my bike in the charging bay of the parking lot. I set my destination and follow the path overlaid on my augmented reality vision.

“The perpetrators are… the genetic donors of the delivered product. The biological parents, I mean. Initially, they seemed to have enough money from mercenary work and made payments properly, but starting from the seventh month of cultivation, payments became irregular and eventually stopped.”

A returned child, then. Someone else bought the returned child, and now the original donors believe they’re going to retrieve their child. That’s not the case. Like an item they failed to pay for, that child is no longer theirs.

“To think they’d resort to burglary rather than being grateful that the returned child went to a resident of a luxury apartment instead of the grinder… Understood. I’ll keep the communication channel open.”

Credits are trust written in numbers. No sensible company would give products to those who betrayed that trust. I arrive at the entrance of a luxury apartment building that seems to rise from the middle of the apartment complex.

Quite a crowd of onlookers had gathered, and the building’s private security guards were controlling the situation with submachine guns. After parking my bike, I approach them, displaying my freelancer license.

A man in his forties who appeared to be the security team leader saluted me crisply with his metallic prosthetic hand. I return the greeting with a nod of my chin, and he begins briefing me.

“A freelancer, of all things… The perpetrators are in unit 708, and we’ve evacuated all residents from the floors above and below! But those bastards have set up booby traps in both the stairs and elevators…”

If the child was precious enough to go to these lengths, why not just make the payments properly? If they had used the money they spent on this operation to pay what they owed, the child would already be in their arms.

Or perhaps they thought Panacea MediTech was a soft, easy target among megacorporations. Maybe they thought the company wouldn’t abandon a child just because they missed a few months of payments.

Their expectations were spectacularly wrong. The company didn’t abandon the child who was missing two or three months of payments. They sold it to someone else with the message to pay the remaining balance and take it.

“Right now we’re engaged in a firefight trying to prevent them from breaking into the unit on the 7th floor, but they’ve set up machine guns and are resisting, so we can’t…”

Please use the money for the machine gun and ammunition to make your payments instead. Swallowing a bucketful of curses, I decided to focus on my job. I need to flank them and subdue them.

“Please send me the building schematics. I’ll enter toward unit 708, lure the perpetrators inside, and subdue them. If they’re after the child, they won’t use weapons inside. Are the 6th and 8th floors secure?”

“Well, our apartments have terraces by each main window… The 7th floor aside, we’ve secured the others! We’ve requested cooperation from the 8th floor resident… Ah, they’ve agreed. Escort him to unit 808!”

I dash past his urgent gesturing and run into the building. Standing on the first floor, I enter the open elevator, lightly jump up several times, and reach the 8th floor.

Opening the elevator door from the inside wasn’t difficult. A security guard waiting on the 8th floor looks dumbfounded but guides me to unit 808.

I head inside unit 808. A pot contains food made with real ingredients, not synthetic ones, and the display cabinet is filled with decorative items from Technica and various smaller companies.

It’s a luxurious home. A wealthy place. The child would be better off raised here than by two mercenaries. The rappelling team hasn’t even reached this floor yet.

Ignoring them, I grab the window frame and jump down past the security guards. I catch the balcony railing of unit 708, pull myself up, and find a woman holding a child pointing a gun at me.

She had a rather plump appearance. With short, round blonde hair, she was an ordinary augmented person with just one or two everyday modifications. When I show her my freelancer license, she finally lowers her pistol.

Around her stood a tall, mature boy holding a shotgun. A teenager of about sixteen, maybe eighteen at most. He didn’t resemble the pistol-wielding woman who must be his mother at all.

I record the sound of the crying baby with my voice module and whisper. I need to deceive them. I need to make them believe they don’t know a freelancer has already been dispatched here.

“I received a call from Panacea MediTech. About the original parents…”

“I received one too. Where is the baby’s room?”

The woman quietly pointed her gun toward a room near the door. Good. The baby’s room is closer to the door.

“Which room is furthest inside the house?”

“The master bathroom. My other children are hiding there. Those mercenaries will leave once they get the baby, and after that, we’ll request Panacea MediTech…”

“A shootout and escape scene is too much for a child to experience. I’ll use my voice module to lure those guys into the baby’s room and eliminate them. Would you be willing to help lure them inside?”

The woman’s face showed traces of guilt and fear, but she nodded. While trying to comfort the still-crying baby, she asked anxiously:

“That’s fine, but what about the baby’s crying…”

I hand her the noise canceller I was wearing on my wrist. The man with the shotgun takes it. His hand drops to the floor before lifting it again. It’s heavier than it looks.

“You with the shotgun, take the baby to the master bathroom and turn that on. Close the door too, and no sound will leak outside.”

When I quietly focus, I can hear sniffling, frightened voices, and someone comforting children beyond the wall. It’s commendable when people with sufficient means have this kind of shopping addiction.

“Alright. I can do this. There’s no guarantee those guys won’t harm the other children too. Like you said, a shootout is too much for children to experience.”

Perhaps it’s fortunate those two mercenaries couldn’t make proper payments. It’s good for the child who has found much better parents.

I enter the baby’s room, place the voice module in the crib, and hide in an old-fashioned closet with striped wooden doors. I turn the adjustment lever on Small Evil to three-round burst.

I raise Small Evil, loaded with anti-reinforcement rounds I brought as backup, to adult head height. A home maintenance drone approaches the woman. She begins speaking with a trembling voice:

“O-okay. Okay. I’ll open the door, but please don’t fire shots in front of the children! You’re here for a baby less than a year old, right?”

As the frightened voice rings out and the door opens, the gunfire outside ceases. The voices of the perpetrators begin to be heard from outside. It’s nothing but disgusting.

“What about the machine gun? Are we just leaving it?”

“It can be operated remotely. I at least need to see our baby’s face to have the strength to escape.”

Beyond the baby’s crying sound played by the voice module, I hear footsteps approaching. I hate this. The nearly closed door opens wider. I loathe this intensely.

Perhaps I feel a sense of kinship with that child. But I resolve to save such thoughts for off-duty hours. I’m not here for self-discovery. This is my workplace.

The mercenaries enter with whispers as if trying to soothe the baby. My watch was partially obscured, but that wasn’t a problem for targeting head height. I wait until they’re close enough that I can’t possibly miss.

“Our ba—”

I pull the trigger at the sound of the voice. Three anti-reinforcement rounds leave irreparable holes in the head of the woman reaching out her hand. At least I didn’t leave this in the child’s memory.

As the man tries to raise the rifle hanging at his waist, I smoothly lift my gun from his neck to his head and fire three more rounds. He collapses with evenly spaced bullet wounds.

I emerge from the shattered closet door and drag their bodies into the closet. All the bloodstains remained inside the room. The only marks outside were six bullet holes.

I retrieve the voice module and reattach it to the nape of my neck. I nod to reconnect communication with Panacea MediTech.

“Freelancer here. Two perpetrators neutralized. The product is unharmed. Your customer service team has one less case to handle.”

“Ah, what a relief… It’s fortunate those idiots came within the warranty period. Is the product really unharmed? No injuries or trauma?”

“I used the baby’s crying sound recorded by my voice module as bait, and the real baby is hiding on the opposite side of the house… It might be startled by the gunshots, but it’s safe.”

“Phew… Thank you for handling this cleanly. Still, I should ask the customer to have the product’s condition checked. A cleaning team will be coming!”

I look at the two bodies stuffed into the closet and covered with clothing to hide them. I open the damaged wooden door, exit, and close it behind me.

“I put both of them in the closet. I hope the children don’t see that.”

“Ha! Seems today’s boogeyman takes bad adults into the closet too. Good work. Your payment from Panacea MediTech…”

The woman who had lured the perpetrators inside approaches me. She grabs my hand, expressing her gratitude repeatedly, and then tries to offer real thanks.

“Thank you, truly thank you. I was so worried something might happen to the children… For payment, which has a lower fee—paying you directly or going through Panacea MediTech?”

“Direct payment would have a lower fee rate. If Panacea MediTech pays, it would have to go through Bellwether first, so you’d be charged fees twice.”

“Then I’ll transfer the payment right away. You’re still in communication with Panacea MediTech, right? Please let them know too.”

This is what straightforward gratitude looks like. A substantial amount of credits is deposited into my account—quite generous for a burglar neutralization job. But something seemed odd.

Customer information is Panacea MediTech’s quintessential red-level information. Even Robin had subtly indicated it was red-level information when our conversation was interrupted by a call about a customer’s personal issue.

How did they know where their child had been sold to find this place? Did information leak from Panacea MediTech? I speak through the connected communication channel without opening my mouth.

‘Will this incident be posted on the Freelancer Network? I think there might be a bigger job coming.’

“Well… even for a freelancer, that’s red-level information. Please understand what I mean by this.”

Red-level information was so sensitive that even acknowledging its existence to others was forbidden. The very mention of the term “red-level information” was to be avoided.

The fact that they used the term “red-level information” was… a tacit, or at least minimal, confirmation. Information had definitely leaked from MediTech.

Of course, I’m not an information security specialist, so I won’t be assigned the task of tracking down the information leaker. A complete lack of necessary skills.

Regardless of my lack of skills, there were ways to obtain information. I still had the chip I received from K when we took down NFD.

It was definitely a membership ID chip for an online black market. Coco’s Playstore or something—a rather childish name for a black market, but it would still help me gather more information than having nothing at all.