Ch.167Work Record #024 – All Birds Must Learn to Fly (3)

I follow the screams. Passing through the kitchen corridor, where they’ve created their own twisted art by embedding broken implants into mannequins, I see what was once a kitchen.

Not anymore. An old ventilation fan runs at maximum to extract paint fumes, and most of the countertops have been removed to create what they consider a workshop.

The screams were coming from the center of it all. A woman covered in mismatched implants haphazardly attached to her body was shrieking. Hacking itself doesn’t cause pain.

Sparks were flying from the auxiliary battery embedded in her side to power all those cobbled-together implants. One of the gang’s engineers was already sprawled out on the floor.

It seemed like an electrical overload. Even for body modifications, gangs never install proper batteries. She turns toward me, noticing the intruder.

Her crudely constructed full-body cyberware begins to thrash. She was as tall as Vola but lacked Vola’s sturdy structure. Compared to Vola, who could shrug off small arms fire with a smile, her body looked like a plastic model kit.

In addition to her original two arms, I could see two awkward appendages protruding from her sides. Seems they’re trying to use up surplus prosthetic limbs this way.

As she throws herself forward, propelling with all four arms against the ground, I lightly push off and move behind her. I squeeze the trigger of Small Evil loaded with anti-reinforcement rounds.

Small Evil has no silencer. The gunshot echoes deafeningly in the enclosed kitchen space filled with hollow ventilation ducts. I reduce my hearing sensitivity.

The bullets leave a clean triangular pattern of holes in her armor-plated face. One round grazed her head, but she continued swinging her arms.

I didn’t shoot cleanly enough for an instant kill. I’m still not as good as Mila, who could precisely hit the medulla of charging gang members. I was quite curious about the secret to her precision.

I block her swinging arm with my hand holding Small Evil and step closer. Placing my gently undulating dagger against her nape, I leisurely move it back and forth, slicing through. Her metal-replaced jaw tries to bite my helmet.

My one-way display helmet doesn’t even get scratched. Her body, thrashing like a mindless beast, loses strength with each cut. I strike the completely severed head, sending it flying.

I confirm-kill the gang engineer collapsed on the floor from electrocution with my high-frequency dagger. I hear another engineer gasping for breath after fleeing toward the kitchen storage. I slowly move my gun barrel.

Restoring my reduced hearing, I aim carefully and pull the trigger. Pink liquid flows from the hole in the wall, quickly turning red. Gunshots also ring out from the dining area.

Clean, successive pistol shots. It’s Mila’s gunfire, soon joined by several other sounds. Once again, Mila fired first. I reload Small Evil.

Thinking I’ll need to clean up the remaining ones, I turn the selector to full auto. After warning about crossfire over the comm channel, I open the door leading to the dining area.

The door to the kitchen—recessed to be inconspicuous to guests—opens, revealing gang members wildly pulling triggers in response to the gunfire pouring in from outside.

They’re horrific lumps of mechanical engineering. Superior modifiers like Vola wanted to create better-functioning full-body cyberware to establish a new standard for humanity, but gangs have no such goals.

That’s why they end up looking like this. I squeeze the trigger. The anti-reinforcement rounds target the only living part of these gang members—their brains. They cleanly pierce through the brain containers and leave holes in the wall.

“Another one came in from the side! That fucking pile of scrap metal, what the hell is she—”

The voice, transmitted through a speaker rather than vocal cords, stretches out the last syllable before cutting off. After confirming the gun barrel turning toward me, I hide behind the door.

Kanun SA’s gunfire continues. The infiltrated gang members, unable to properly utilize their computational assistance devices, couldn’t withstand Mila’s machine-like accuracy and the bullets from the others.

When the gang’s gunfire stopped and I went back out, the situation was already resolved. Kanun SA had improved since last time. It seemed my training had helped, and they would continue to improve.

They needed to embrace that sensation. They needed to enjoy the fact that they could now reach places they couldn’t before. They had to get on board with this high-speed era.

Was this what Mr. Günter wanted me to experience by managing people? At headquarters, I could have met the best people—the Hammers.

Doing this alone with Kanun SA wasn’t bad. I needed the confidence that I could lead people to a slightly better place. I wanted to register as a Night Watch affiliate.

If that happened, I could tell Chance that I’d made definite progress in leadership. Kanun SA, having learned from me and becoming a Night Watch affiliate… though they might not like this phrasing, they would be useful.

A mercenary company that knows my methods and tactics—that’s what they are. I helped Mila with the confirmation kills, putting a bullet into each brain container of the gang members sprawled on the floor.

I tear out one’s voice synthesizer. When I supply a little power through the wire-like nervous system, it starts speaking. The last words he wanted to say were still there. I recorded it.

“Juba, fall back to the kitchen! Make that scrap metal bitch be a meat shield at least! Break through where that one guy is!”

After saving it as a preset scavenger, I let out a small laugh at Kanun SA’s personnel who were looking at me strangely.

They were looking at me like tribal warriors watching someone about to eat the heart of a defeated enemy. I waved my hand and explained.

“Why are you looking at me like that? I heard some of them went to deliver implants, so I’m just collecting voices. We need to kill them too for a proper cleanup. Mila, how was Kanun SA?”

I naturally change the subject. Mila, after pushing two pistols into her waistband and thinking for a moment, holds up six fingers.

“Six out of ten! They were calm, the pointman did his job well… accuracy was a bit lacking, and they rushed in more as a mob than a coordinated unit, but overall good!”

That means they did better than what Mila considers average for a mercenary company. When they were hunting Smog Crawlers… they were maybe two or three out of ten. Only Simon knew how to fight properly.

Simon will be proud when he returns. Or he might growl, thinking I’m trying to steal Kanun SA. The latter was more likely, but I chose to believe the former. Better to think positively.

I send Kanun SA back to their van to leave the area. After moving the bodies sprawled around the gang’s van into the restaurant and throwing them inside, I reload after firing just six shots and wait.

I didn’t have to wait long. After about ten minutes, I heard a bike stop in the restaurant parking lot. A young gang member entered through the back door of the restaurant, saying:

“Whose bike is that in the parking lot? Pretty slick, where’d you steal it from? So…”

His voice cut off, probably smelling the blood. I emerged from my hiding corner as he tried to sneak away and pulled the trigger. Eleven bullets left, and two delivery boys to hunt.

I deliberately dragged the corpse to create a blood trail leading to the kitchen and threw it among the bodies there. A little later, the second delivery boy entered. He swallowed hard seeing the blood-soaked corridor.

“What the, what the fuck is with all this blood… Is anyone in there! What happened here!”

I turned on the preset scavenger. Removing strength from my voice, I mimicked the voice of a dying traitor I’d heard during my time as a Gardener.

“Bikers came, they came. Took care of them but… fuck, come to the kitchen! Bring first aid…”

The delivery boy hurriedly went to the bathroom, grabbed a toolbox and first aid kit, and opened the kitchen door. I plunged my high-frequency dagger into his nape.

If his hands had been empty, he might have drawn a gun, but both hands were occupied with evidence of comradeship rare for gang members. The first aid kit and toolbox clattered noisily on the floor.

I threw the second delivery boy’s body onto the pile of gang corpses in the kitchen. Finally, I just locked the back door of the restaurant. After about twenty minutes, I heard someone knocking at the door.

“Hey! I told you not to lock this door! Which asshole…”

I pulled the trigger. Opening the locked door, I lightly kicked aside the body blocking the doorway. There was no need for pathetic disguises to lure in rats anymore.

The job was done. I turned on my computational assistance device to call the Belwether cleanup team, then rode my bike from the parking lot to join Kanun SA. Setting the bike to auto-drive, I climbed into the passenger seat.

Noah, at the wheel, had been nervously tapping the steering wheel with his fingers but let out a hollow laugh when he saw me get in. What he’d seen today hadn’t been very pleasant, apparently.

“If we ever have to fight Arthur… all five of us should keep our mouths shut. When I heard Riley’s voice and rushed over, what I saw was…”

“A freelancer in combat gear with a display helmet would be pretty scary, I guess. But why do you and Simon both assume we’ll end up fighting? I’m trying to be your friend. Can’t you see that?”

He probably couldn’t see it clearly. I was the one who threatened and subdued Noah when he growled, and I was the one who restrained Riley as if I could snap his neck vertebrae. Noah just laughed hollowly again.

“That’s true, but… still, no, no. You’re really a reliable person and one of Kanun SA’s few connections… but what if some unfortunate incident happens…”

He was exactly like Simon. Instead of blurting out that there are no unfortunate incidents, I decided to listen to Noah a bit more this time. I changed my conversational strategy.

“If we fought, it’s too obvious how it would end, which is scary. No, that’s not right. It probably wouldn’t be an unfortunate incident. I might end up at Fitts & Morrison’s headquarters again if I drink too much.”

Since he already seemed to know this fact, there was no need for me to comment further. At least he was better than Simon in some ways. I turned off my helmet display to show my face before answering.

“Choose between an honest answer and one that just tells you what you want to hear.”

It was almost coercive, but Noah chose the former out of curiosity rather than coercion. It seemed I would have to repeat the conversation I had with Mr. James.

“If you take Kanun SA and do something like that, I’ll come with my freelancer gear and handle it personally. As you saw today, mimicking Noah’s voice would be no challenge.”

“Voice is one thing, but speech patterns…”

“My imitation of the gangs’ speech patterns today wasn’t that awkward. Using that voice to locate and eliminate the IT staff first, then dealing with the rest in order of threat level wouldn’t be that difficult.”

In contrast, I would gain a lot. Whatever it was, it would completely bury something that had become Fitts & Morrison’s shame. I might even receive thanks or another request.

“But I don’t want to do such easy, profitable work. Freelancer pay doesn’t help me sleep well. I sleep better when I do work I want to do, work I’m not ashamed of.”

What resolved my trauma-filled nights of rejecting soft beds was putting a bullet through Walter’s head with Mr. Günter. Desire keeps us healthy. Pleasure makes us healthy.

Noah quietly closed his mouth and continued driving toward Kanun SA. After glancing at me several times, he spoke. His voice sounded like he was forcing himself to swallow something he didn’t want to.

“Do you think… my mom shot the Fitts & Morrison security team first? It’s just something I’ve been wondering lately. Maybe that’s why Fitts & Morrison provided information to Uncle Simon…”

It was a reasonable point, but even the most aggressive nationalist wouldn’t be stupid enough to point a gun at the heads of mutant hunters in reinforcement suits. Noah spilled out his contradiction.

“If that’s not the case, then… I don’t see why they’d keep letting us off. Both Simon and I keep hating Fitts & Morrison and trying to harm them… but they just keep letting it slide.”

My thoughts became clearer. He had sufficient reason and reached a conclusion based on it. But that wasn’t enough. If Noah was right, then Fitts & Morrison had acted in self-defense.

It would have been more natural for them to cleanly eliminate Simon during his first rampage and then inform Noah of that fact. It was a somewhat plausible hypothesis, so I decided to note it.

“There’s about a week left until Simon gets out, right? You can ask him then. Though I’ll probably be on another job by then…”

“No! I don’t expect you to help confirm that too. It’s my business. My business alone that shouldn’t burden others. But, um…”

He had definitely made progress, drawing a clear line. However, Noah’s voice began to tremble more anxiously than before. Was there something else?

Were there other signs? Probably not. I checked everything related to Noah Verami, whom I had mentally designated as a dangerous person, with the help of my computational assistance device, but nothing came up.

And Noah… very, very annoyingly, said something utterly trivial. I was worried about someone driving into Fitts & Morrison headquarters, and here he was…

“You and Riley aren’t, like, a thing, are you? He always approaches you so excitedly when we meet outside, and today he rushed out of our meeting as soon as he saw you…”

I felt a migraine coming on. I weakly banged my helmeted head against the glove compartment of the van before sitting up. I decided not to get angry. This was a common twenty-year-old’s concern.

“I’m worried about self-proclaimed revolutionaries getting themselves killed by corporate security teams… He’s just grateful to his benefactor, and you saw Eve at the Hive yesterday, Noah. No. Not at all.”

If that had been my preference, I would have proudly returned to Los Angeles with my arm around Polaris’s waist. I let out another sigh drawn from the depths of my lungs. The car finally arrived at Kanun SA.