Ch.228Record of Task #033 – Fear Not the Darkness (2)

I am not the enemy of the Grand Duke. Nor am I a friend. While I shouldn’t fight the Grand Duke’s forces to prevent mutant hunting, there was clearly a need to maintain a close relationship with them to gather information.

It’s like the fake relationships I formed at Madeleine’s Lot. So I shouldn’t get too close, but I also can’t stay too distant. If we were to give scientific names to social beings, perhaps they would be classified as people with multiple faces.

The next day, I woke up early for the first time in a while. Still the same familiar routine. Wake up at 6:30 AM, wash up and prepare for work. Check weapons in front of the mirror while making small talk with my AI assistant, then head to work.

The differences were that I wasn’t wearing a Belwether temple uniform, the gun at my waist wasn’t my original pistol… and the AI assistant in my head was Chance. Breakfast was also a bit better.

I deliberately left home a bit early. Arthur-2 was tossing and turning on the makeshift bed in the living room, mumbling “take care” in a groggy voice before falling back asleep, which made me smile.

After getting on my bike, I headed toward the Belwether headquarters. It felt like going to my old home, but the owner of that home no longer remembered me. I connected to Stephanette from Pasadena.

“Good morning, Stephanette. You do have voice recognition capabilities, right?”

“A sheep is not a wolf… Skip. You’re not mistaking me for some pet robot AI, are you? This pretty and lovely Stephanette can certainly do that much, freelancer. No, that doesn’t sound right. Arthur.”

She was a willful and talkative AI, but I never disliked Stephanette. Whether she inherently had goodwill toward humans or developed it… it was obvious that she liked people.

“Of course not. Could you confirm my 7:30 AM appointment with Section Chief Gabriel Walker? Do I just go to the lobby?”

“No, you can go straight to the Anti-Mutant Department. Freelancers are granted building access anyway. Would you like me to display the directions?”

I nodded lightly. I had nothing more to ask Stephanette, but she didn’t terminate the connection. It wasn’t quite a coffee talk protocol… she just seemed to want to chat.

“Aren’t you busy in the mornings, Stephanette? There must be at least a hundred people asking you work-related questions right now.”

“Sadly, it’s over two hundred. But Stephanette is a smart and capable girl, so I can handle their trivial requests while chatting with you. Impressive, isn’t it?”

“It seems fine, except that I see more of a lonely AI than a capable one, Stephanette. So, anything unusual happening at headquarters?”

Stephanette made a groaning sound with her synthesized voice. She might have wanted to express embarrassment, but given her personality, it didn’t quite come across that way. It was just pleasant to hear.

“You could pretend not to notice sometimes, you know? Anyway, nothing unusual. Some kids tried to breach the server with inadequate tools, so I gave them a stern warning. Just another boring day.”

“Seeing how you’re even feeling bored, I wonder how long I should keep calling you an AI, Stephanette. Still, a familiar face is coming to headquarters today. You’ll be watching, I assume.”

Stephanette wasn’t suspicious of me, but she would be watching. Even if it was out of goodwill, it would reduce my chances to talk with Chance.

“Oh my, that’s… I shouldn’t call it self-importance, should I? I have my retrievers who care about me, you know? I’ve even hung up a new picture, so maybe you’ll enjoy that?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. I nodded, and the Belwether headquarters entrance naturally opened before me. I walked in and got off my bike, and Stephanette connected to the bike.

“If that were the case, you would have gone to enjoy it without saying anything. Stephanette, you know… you sound like you’re asking for attention right now, don’t you?”

“Ha! Who, me? This lovely and pretty Stephanette? No way. I’ll just guide you to your meeting place, Arthur.”

Her hurried conclusion was remarkably human-like. Instead of teasing her further, I showed her that the safety on the small lever of mischief tucked at my waist was engaged, then headed inside.

It had been a while since I’d visited the headquarters. I knew the internal layout precisely, but I was only familiar with using the security team’s private entrance behind the wall. Walking normally through the building was something I hadn’t done in a long time.

I followed the line drawn on my vision by Stephanette—clearly reflecting her personal taste—toward the Anti-Mutant Department. The building was quite spacious, but it wasn’t difficult to arrive on time.

Upon reaching Anti-Mutant Department 7, I opened the door to Stephanette’s remarkably sweet “Have a nice day” farewell. The atmosphere inside was as un-Belwether-like as their color-inverted logo.

It resembled a mercenary office more than anything. Walls openly displaying Fitz & Morrison attachments and sub-weapons, and a dark room with only operation maps flickering.

A man with slightly curly long hair rose from a desk inside. He was taller than me, but his overall thin impression made him appear less bulky. He had the look of someone who deserved the nickname “human hunter.”

“You’re right on time. Let me introduce myself again… I’m Section Chief Gabriel Walker of Anti-Mutant Department 7. I’ve been reviewing your work records since we’ll be officially collaborating. You’ve worked in quite diverse fields.”

In reality, it was twice as varied as what was written there, but I didn’t mention that. My career history wouldn’t necessarily make me good at hunting mutants.

“I’m still a novice when it comes to mutant hunting. I’m in a position to learn from professionals, so there’s no need to flatter me.”

The skinny, gloomy section chief nodded with a somewhat relaxed expression. He sent me a training file.

“First… I need to assess your basic skills. This is a suppression training for the most common types of mutants, so please approach it comfortably.”

He led me to an adjacent room with a virtual reality connector. While it’s possible to connect to virtual reality with just a computational assist device, using a proper connector puts much less strain on the brain.

I lightly put it on my head and sat in the chair. My senses floated, and then I felt my body being pulled down as if gravity was taking effect again, entering the characteristically bland space of virtual reality.

The virtual reality seemed to be controlled by Section Chief Gabriel Walker. An automatically generated corner of what could be any Los Angeles slum changed the surrounding scenery, and a gun was placed in my hand.

It was a standard Belwether pistol. Compared to my Small Mischief, it was barely worthy of being called a gun, but for ordinary people, even a single hit from this pistol could be fatal. I checked the magazine.

The section chief’s voice began to sound in my head, explaining the purpose of this training program.

“First stage. The target will pass through the alley ahead in 1 minute and 30 seconds. It’s a mutant that uses visual stimuli, the most common type. Have you been educated on how to counter them?”

This was the type with abnormally formed eyes. I’d learned that some affect the central nervous system to immobilize movement, and others cause even worse effects. I nodded lightly.

“Good. To remind you, the key point is to avoid eye contact. In most cases, the abnormal formation of the iris turns the iris itself into… an image that causes some kind of neurological damage.”

I had experienced it once. It was also the simplest type. Belwether had already created visors that block the effects of visual mutants, and they didn’t seem difficult to commercialize.

As I listened to the explanation, the 1 minute and 30 seconds before the target’s approach was almost up. I lightly jumped up and grabbed the window frame of a building to my left—its interior not rendered—on the third floor, pulling myself up.

I jumped once more. As if flying through the air, I climbed to the fourth floor and waited while hanging. The target appeared around the corner and began walking down the alley, rubbing its eyes in the smog-filled air.

People don’t pay attention to what’s above their heads. Even Director Beoam during the Belwether coup failed to notice me because of this one fact and lost his head.

After that, it was simple. I aimed at the approaching mutant’s head and pulled the trigger four times without feeling even the slightest recoil. One shot hit the shoulder, but the rest properly struck the head.

“Using Type 4 physical abilities is useful too. Good. Let’s move on to the next simulation.”

Mutants deal with sensory stimuli. Their physical danger itself is not high. The important point is that, unless it’s someone like Nadia, it’s difficult to identify them by appearance.

I lightly jumped down from the fourth floor. The simulation displayed a warning message, but for a Type 4, this was an everyday action. I dismissed the warning window and moved to the next virtual reality.

This time it was indoors, and I could see several Anti-Mutant Department members around. The peculiar thing was… I couldn’t hear any surrounding sounds. It wasn’t just earplugs but a helmet with shock-absorbing material.

A mutant that creates auditory stimuli? I knew almost nothing about this type. Nadia was a mutant who dealt with electrical stimuli. The voice in my head continued.

“What do you think this is?”

“It seems to be a mutant that uses auditory stimuli. If so, we’d have to carry out the operation without verbal communication, but couldn’t we work around that using hand signals or voice modules?”

“That’s correct. However, because some mutants deal with electrical rather than auditory stimuli, we use only hand signals to prevent confusion.”

It seems Tina wasn’t overreacting or being unnecessarily anxious. The Anti-Mutant Department had sufficient data on mutants similar to Nadia.

The second test was relatively simple. It was just a straightforward process of communicating only through hand signals with bots created based on mutant elimination operation records and shooting the mutant.

The stimuli created by mutants are abnormal. Visual stimuli that aren’t visual stimuli, auditory stimuli that aren’t auditory stimuli.

Even without special effects, just being exposed to them makes your head feel stuffy due to the increased amount of information to process.

Feeling that stuffiness, I continued the training. It included using gas grenades to subdue barricaded mutants, or inferring approximate types through records of mutant behavior monitoring.

Tear gas is useful when dealing with mutants that cause visual stimuli. For mutants that cause auditory stimuli, vomit gas was particularly useful. It was necessary to prevent them from using their vocal cords.

Finally, only the last training remained. A communication screen showing the section chief’s face appeared in my vision. This training apparently required talking while looking at his face.

“The abilities you’ve shown so far, honestly, make me want to recruit you for the Anti-Mutant Department. It’s simple for a human to wear posthuman gear, but not simple for a human to move like a posthuman.”

He was probably referring to my wall climbing or jumping to get out of sight. And after the compliment, he explained what he wanted to do last.

“Therefore, I’ll proceed with the training that’s usually optional. Mutants’ abilities are not absolute. Some types can cause great damage in a short time, but more often, they don’t.”

In the virtual reality that had returned to a bland flat space, something in human form began to take shape, eventually forming a complete human figure. It was a familiar woman.

The woman I had seen during the Jaina terror incident. Her irises… were grotesquely distorted. I could see irises that had become an unknown pattern, like a static-filled old monitor.

And my body wouldn’t move. Last time, I could ignore the abnormally formed eyes thanks to the visor provided by Belwether. It felt like my body refused to move.

But my breathing didn’t stop. It felt like all the muscles in my body had contracted and frozen. It was simply replaying a signal to my nervous system to stop.

Was this optional training about moving while under a mutant’s ability? That might be it. I had to think so. As I remained frozen, the section chief began speaking again.

“Get a grip. There’s no admin privilege in the human body. When commands come down the nervous system, they’re just executed, and right now, the mutant is simply overriding with repetitive commands.”

So an ability that simply freezes you like this can be physically overcome somehow? I try to feel my fingertips. This is my body. What’s being overridden now is just a meaningless command.

I gritted my teeth and tried to move my fingers. There was a terrible sense of dissonance, as if a body that should be still was moving on its own, but it didn’t last long. My fingers twitched.

It felt exactly like the morning after falling asleep at the Security Team graduation party after drinking a whole bottle of synthetic whiskey. Even then, I could still walk despite the nauseous hangover.

Also, the mutant’s eyes seemed to be getting dry. Due to the dryness, she blinked, and in that brief moment, the mutant’s ability was temporarily cut off. Seizing that moment, I put strength into the metal coil-replaced tendons.

I couldn’t control my strength at all. I couldn’t. I punched the side of the mutant’s face with my fist. A sound that shouldn’t occur when a person hits another person was heard, and the fake mutant before me was shattered.

Literally. The modeling was excessively stretched into a grotesque form due to an impact level that hadn’t been anticipated, rolling on the floor. My body, which had been stiff and immobile, now began to relax comfortably.

Mutants might be more dangerous to me than mercenaries with guns. If so, training to endure these trivial abilities wasn’t enough. I spoke to the seemingly dumbfounded section chief.

“Please let me try once more. This time, I was lucky to move because of the eye blink. If that mutant had been holding a gun, my movement would have been too slow.”

Another sample mutant appeared before me. Again, it was the same type of ability where my body wouldn’t move. Trying to think of a method, I remembered my second eyelid.

Originally used for anti-flash protection, it might be useful here too. Since blinking is reflexive, I blinked while lowering my second eyelid for anti-flash protection.

That black membrane was of no use in blocking the mutant. Although my vision darkened, making it hard to see clearly, it was separate from being unable to move my body. I had to use the direct approach again.

What Section Chief Gabriel Walker told me was very helpful. There’s no admin privilege in the body. Commands just overlap. I repeated in my mind that taking control was something I could definitely do.

Then I tried a different method. Since my muscles tensed up like a cramp when affected by the ability, I did the opposite—slowly relaxed all my muscles with deep breaths, then concentrated to move in an instant.

My fingertips, which had been momentarily limp, pierced through the mutant’s head. This way, I could move faster than the first time, but it still took over twenty seconds.

I repeated the process. Section Chief Gabriel Walker willingly provided me with mutant samples. The only ways I knew to improve abilities were repetitive training and practical experience, and this body was good at repetitive work.