Ch.205031 Work Record – High-Value Asset (6)

Those who remained in the building must have felt some kind of eerie sensation. I had hoped they would rush to the seventh floor where I was, but they began to quietly disperse.

Understanding one’s limitations helps in choosing the best course of action. However, living as a villain lowers the quality of available choices. Living as a good person is beneficial.

After all, anyone who hadn’t locked themselves in this building seeking acrid drug smoke or electrodes that create fake happiness wouldn’t have died. I go down to the sixth floor. It feels like playing hide and seek.

Everyone locks their doors firmly and hides in their rooms. They probably don’t believe that these light plastic doors, not even metal ones, will protect them. I approach a door and lightly punch the handle.

I reduce my hearing sensitivity. The door rattled loudly, but that wasn’t why I dampened my hearing. Bullets began pouring through the door from inside the room.

Faith makes people happy. Believing that I was standing in front of the door pulling on the locked handle might have made them happy, but it had no practical use.

I wasn’t in front of the door, and they ran out of bullets. Only after the air became acrid with the smell of gunpowder and fire did the plastic door slowly fall backward. I walk into that smoke.

The moment I entered, I could visibly see their faith shatter. They didn’t scream. They must have had some ammunition left, as they hadn’t wasted all their bullets on the door. Gunshots ring out.

Their aim was good, but simultaneously not good enough. The bullet that hit my one-way display helmet ricocheted. Without my head even tilting backward, I continued forward. I draw my high-frequency tactical knife.

I watch as the gunman, backing away, trips over a sofa in the room. With my hand extended forward, he shouts something while staring at the vibrating knife in my grasp. It wasn’t worth listening to.

I grab him by the hair, plunge the knife into his nape, and skillfully twist it half a turn. Another gang member swings a machete, now nothing more than a crude weapon that has lost its original purpose. I catch it with my palm.

If I had caught it with the back of my hand, the artificial skin there would have been cut. The skin on my palm was incomparably tougher than the artificial skin on the back of my hand. I grab the blade and take the machete.

I slash with centrifugal force from the outside of the body inward, then throw the machete at the last person, pinning him to the wall with it. I repeat. The method is always the same as usual.

If they’re only aiming at the door, I infiltrate through the window; if they try to escape through the door and chase after me, I wait attached to the ceiling of the stairwell and attack as I drop down. I took a few more pistol shots, but there wasn’t even any bleeding.

Since I had no intention of being unnecessarily sadistic, I pulled out my pistol upon seeing the last survivor trembling in the corner of the room. Three muffled gunshots through the silencer. It’s over.

On my way down, I stop by the control room again. Jeff’s drone was connected to the PC inside, downloading files. It was probably collecting the original file I had found.

It was a practical test that could also cover up the national patriots’ shame, so Jeff had moved quite efficiently regardless of his affiliation.

You could call it killing two birds with one stone, or you could call it a deception. I decided to call it killing two birds with one stone. Jeff must have genuinely needed confirmation as well.

I leave the building and get back into Jeff’s car. My clothes still smelled of gunpowder residue, but I didn’t particularly mind. It would be worse to waste time changing clothes here anyway.

“Just as I thought, Donny. How does it feel to shoot criminals? Does it feel like anything at all?”

“Of course there’s a degree of aversion to killing people. No matter how much you dress it up with talk of social order and whatnot, death is always personal, so it can’t be helped. Still, doing something is better than doing nothing.”

A virtual screen slides into my field of vision. It was footage captured by Jeff’s small drone of me eliminating the gang.

In that video, I handled the job efficiently. Without stopping, using everything that came to hand… I killed people like a factory worker skilled in repetitive labor. Not a sight I want to see again.

“This doesn’t look like someone who feels aversion to me, Donny. Just what have we brought in?”

“Whatever you’ve brought in, shouldn’t we prioritize figuring out how to use it?”

Jeff bursts out laughing. I think I heard something similar when he communicated with the client right after taking the job. That I was a common citizen trying to deflect uncomfortable questions with sarcasm.

Is it better to face things head-on? Still… I was just an ordinary Belwether-certified freelancer. Ilbellina, Ruiner… they could all do this much. My abilities aren’t special.

“Whatever we’ve brought in, find a way to use it, Donny? I’m starting to think I could just throw you into Madeline’s Lot and you’d be fine. Tell me honestly. What do you think would happen?”

“I’d be treated like someone who can’t adapt for a few days, then after I find the whistleblower and they find evidence, they’d understand why I was ‘someone who couldn’t adapt.'”

“Right. It’s obvious, Donny. You’re that kind of person. But you made an unusual request to Langley as compensation. I believe you said you wanted to learn. Isn’t that right?”

I nod lightly. Jeff looks at me with another sly smile. He claps his hands once and continues.

“You’re going to live hearing that you make life difficult for yourself, Donny. But that’s not necessarily bad. The important thing for you is to create something of your own. Isn’t it getting harder to find the right mentor?”

I already had a few things. Kicking down doors or grabbing handles and ripping them off was almost taboo in traditional breaching, but it was becoming my basic strategy.

Climbing walls and hiding on ceilings like a spider were also techniques I’d devised to use my Type IV most efficiently without wearing an enhancement suit. Perhaps I should do the same in other fields.

“So that’s why you asked the national patriots’ intelligence agency about that. As for my own method?”

“Well, even for a high-value asset, the Madeline’s Lot job is much bigger, so we could discard you after the job is done, yet here I am giving you advice. It would be too much to expect more goodwill from us.”

Jeff made a slip of the tongue. The part about potentially discarding me was an implicit truth. The mistake was saying that Madeline’s Lot was a much bigger job. Big enough to require a certified freelancer.

At first, they clearly said they chose me as an alternative to the untrustworthy FBI. That must be true.

But just as security teams have special operations and assault divisions, legal has patent divisions, and information processing has special activities divisions, the national patriots must also have armed forces connected to intelligence agencies.

Why didn’t they use those forces? Why did Jeff specifically mention they could discard me? There might be something in Madeline’s Lot that they want to reassure me about by saying such things.

What do national patriots fear? National patriots most resemble Belwether. What does Belwether fear? Corporate warfare. National patriots would also fear fighting megacorporations.

Could The Old Way in Madeline’s Lot be entangled with a megacorporation? No, that’s unlikely. If they were directly involved with a megacorporation, they’d be barking at each other looking for justification. The national patriots are quiet.

Still, something related to megacorporations is involved. Could multiple megacorporations be entangled? If so, the national patriots would have every reason to avoid a scenario where nationalist and corporate politics clash.

Information flashes through my computational assist device. Jeff clicks his tongue twice and points a finger at me, asking leisurely:

“Did you take the bait?”

“Agent Ines McKinsey also tried to say that Madeline’s Lot was more than just a drug case, but you stopped her. If the reason Madeline’s Lot is problematic is bigger than the drug issue, there’s only one answer.”

“And what would that one answer be?”

“Megacorporations. It can’t be Farmers Corp. They’re a company that doesn’t pay much attention to disputes between national patriots and corporate politics, and they have no need to be greedy when they’re already producing food.”

The Farmers Corp logo was even embedded in the corner of the restaurant sign we visited. Farmers’ strategy is simple: make people take their existence for granted.

This prevents other megacorporations from approaching the food sector. It makes them question whether investing astronomical sums to take a piece of Farmers’ pie is worth it.

That’s why Farmers Corp never betrays anyone. Their only principle is to feed anyone who pays enough. Thanks to this, Farmers has secured a good position.

They’ve established a stable and excellent ecological niche that allows them to pour time, money, and manpower into rebuilding wastelands. They had no reason to deviate from that.

Jeff paused, and I poked a finger between our seats. I thought I knew what he meant, and I was right.

“That’s as far as you can infer with the information you have, Donny. Yes, you’re a wise guy. But the amount of knowledge and information in your head can’t keep up with that wisdom. So you need to throw yourself in, don’t you?”

“That’s true. Even now, my conclusion is simply that I’ll find out once I get into Madeline’s Lot. So, the conclusion is…”

“Read something whenever you have time, Donny. It’s good to study corporate political reports divided by quarters. National patriots’ publications aren’t usually provided to those from corporate politics, but…”

I can see them through Chance. Without mentioning that, I quietly wait, and Jeff continues.

“It’s not such an important secret anyway, and cities under the federal government have many physical terminals to accommodate pure humans. Take them all. Would I sound like an old fogey if I told you to read until you see the path?”

“Not at all. For someone who can train eight hours a day with virtual reality training manuals, that’s as good advice as any. So… I’ll need to prepare something on the way to Madeline’s Lot.”

“Well, as long as you don’t ask for something like a bomb big enough to destroy the hydroponics facility in Dvorak, it’s fine. After all, both the higher-ups and their higher-ups expect you to succeed.”

“What? I was talking about a box of something… donuts, or bread, or something like that, which would be in the passenger seat when we get in the car. I thought that would suit me well.”

Jeff chuckled before breaking into laughter. He naturally starts talking about things national patriots would discuss.

“I don’t think your grandmother’s secret sauce recipe contains truth serum, so it must be for infiltration?”

“For infiltration, yes. I’m not meeting rural residents hiding secrets but senior colleagues I’m meeting for the first time as a newcomer, so I should bring something to gain their goodwill.”

Having discovered that something dangerous was involved, I needed to ensure that this knowledge didn’t affect my behavior. Not everyone knows the most terrible truth. Most are just foot soldiers.

I need to blend in perfectly with those foot soldiers. That’s all. The next day, I follow Jeff, who is waiting at the door, into my first Charleston morning. It was time for adaptation training.

Jeff willingly taught me everything. About the lives of national patriots, and what kind of person I needed to become to infiltrate them, he freely gave it all to me.

I even learned from him what my fake identity should have learned at the police academy. How national patriot police draw guns from holsters. Unlike the mobile division, I learned that not all outcomes result in fatalities.

While in corporate politics, the best implants, full-body prosthetics, and artificial bodies compete every three years to test the limits of human flesh, science, and technology, all national patriots’ sports involve pure humans.

No, not pure humans, but ordinary people. These people view modified humans as unnatural monsters. Yet Jeff, though he didn’t show it outwardly, was a modified human of average level.

I met with Agent Ines once during lunch or dinner to talk. She was typically a person with a lot of affection. She thought I would be anxious.

But she’s not all compassion. Family is the first unit of social group that national patriots experience. Therefore, the shadow of family is deep. As deep as Belwether’s shadow cast over me.

But Belwether is not a person, and family is made of people. She was someone who wanted to escape that family shadow. The desire for self-validation is common. I record each meeting.

I must become both a spotter and a sniper on my own. I must be able to find information myself and act on it. I’ve always done so, but now I felt like I had established clear principles.

During the nearly two weeks of training, I learned many things. Not just national patriot police manuals but also their slang and uneasy rumors—Jeff taught me everything.

I also made good progress with Agent Ines. She knew exactly why she had been chosen. “For some political reason.” Exactly. She says she knew from the beginning.

But for her, it’s an opportunity. An opportunity to serve the purpose she swore to. The Belwether security team shouting “For the company, employees, and shareholders!” flashes through my mind.

While Jeff provided what was necessary for the job, conversations with Agent Ines filled in the gaps between Arthur Murphy and Matt Collins, starting from the general mindset of national patriots.

Coffee with soy milk instead of expensive dairy milk; national patriots take more pride in determining the members of the federal government than in the federal government itself. I had never voted.

The nut flavors at national patriot ice cream chains are delicious. The Saturday night show that makes fun of everything from national patriots to the federal government is entertaining.

I took all the trivialities and minutiae that any person should have from her. She was the perfect teaching material.

The infiltration preparations were being completed perfectly, and now the time to meet The Old Way was approaching.