Ch.265Kanun Company Work Log Page 053 – Neither Fleeting nor Glorious (2)

Somehow, seeing Call Sign November overlapping with my own image made my insides ache. A person blinded and deafened by hatred.

The source of my hatred was the possibility that Fitz & Morrison might have killed my mother. Once I learned that wasn’t true, I was able to let it go.

That person must also have some reason for blindly distrusting mega-corporations. They’re thinking instinctively, like people right after the war. At least, that’s what I chose to believe.

If that’s the case, I could help. Offering someone the same comfort I received, preventing them from doing the stupid things I almost did—it seemed like paying forward what Arthur had done for me.

First, I needed to find November’s location. I climbed into our Kanun armored van and took out my phone. Life as a pure-blood mercenary wasn’t so bad. Probably.

I didn’t want to stick a bunch of implants in my body, even if they were just mechanical devices. Somehow, it felt like I’d be losing my humanity.

Of course, seeing Riley with about half her body modified, including her eyes and both hands, suggested it wouldn’t be that serious an issue.

And, above all, the Fitz & Morrison security chief with the full-body cyberware called the Talos Series… was cool. In the most primal sense.

It was reassuring to think that if I just held out, someone like that might drop from the sky. Could I become someone like that if I started getting modifications?

After everything I’ve been through, I still couldn’t move beyond being a dreamy mercenary. My daily life consisted of either dreaming or admiring others.

Is this… an expression of frustration, as Arthur said? I thought for a moment, staring at the search bar of the mercenary network. Words heard during drinking sessions tend to linger in the mind.

As I sat there with a contemplative expression, phone in hand, Riley leaned over toward me. She quickly figured out what I was trying to do after glancing at my screen.

“What are you doing, Noah? Oh, you’re trying to find that Call Sign November guy or whatever, right? I thought he’d cause trouble if we left him alone, and you’re thinking the same thing. Yeah.”

“Well, yeah, he seemed kind of similar to me… I mean, to me before Fitz & Morrison told us the truth. I did a lot of stupid things, you know? Like making prank calls to Fitz & Morrison based on rumors I’d heard.”

Riley naturally placed her hands on her hips as she stood in front of me. She always took that posture whenever I acted without confidence. I still couldn’t get used to using her full name.

“Noah Verami. We were all stupid back then. I even threw punches at someone who came to help us. Alright, let’s look together. Call Sign November, independent mercenary…”

She took out a lens with a HUD from her pocket and put it in her eye. I’d heard smart glasses might be better, but no matter what, an adult wearing glasses seemed… strange to me.

Now I could see the virtual screen appearing in Riley’s field of vision. Pedro Molina. I immediately saw why I hadn’t recognized his implants. His profile showed military experience with the Nationalists.

Was he still using standard military implants? The desert operation coloring and everything—it would make sense if they were Nationalist military-grade. Riley casually expanded the list of related mercenaries.

Though he had no company, I could see he consistently worked with mercenaries about Kanun’s size. And among them was a mercenary in his early twenties, similar to me. Miguel, a common name.

Unlike me, though, he was clearly modified. Both eyes were already prosthetic, and both arms had been replaced with cybernetic limbs up to the shoulders. His proud display of them made him seem more like a typical mercenary than me.

While Riley scanned through each name, I searched them all online. Even this level of investigation yielded plenty of valuable information. Perhaps even more than I wanted.

Photos of him pointing guns at the camera, shooting down filming drones and angrily posting, “Do I still look like I’m showing off?” Somehow, he seemed to be trying to prove he was dangerous.

Effort doesn’t always equal results. Arthur steeping a tea bag, dropping a single drop of synthetic sugar into it, and stirring it a couple of times with a teaspoon would be a million times more threatening than that display.

Arthur was… certainly a good person, definitely kind, but there was something… inexplicably frightening about him. In contrast, this Miguel guy just seemed to be trying hard to keep up with such people.

Riley turned toward the screen I was looking at and made an “ugh” sound. She made a finger gun gesture and transferred the virtual screen she’d been viewing into my field of vision. It was about November.

The screen showed an article criticizing how, despite the Nationalists treating soldiers who died fighting against Corporate Government agents as noble, they weren’t providing proper support for them.

“The article itself is, you know, one of those ‘we’re morally superior’ things… but our Mr. Molina left this comment from an account linked to his mercenary profile.”

The comment she showed me was lengthy. He explained how important his unit had been when he served under the Nationalists, and described what a Corporate Government mercenary—brought in as a “high-value asset”—had done.

He wrote that the mercenary kept raising his fee, and when they wouldn’t pay him enough credits to drown in debt, he threatened to expose everything to the Corporate Government to give them justification for action.

The Nationalist information processing team, feeling disrespected, called in his team. They dealt with the mercenary but suffered severe injuries, and even then, they didn’t receive proper medical compensation, so he came to the Corporate Government.

Up to this point, it seemed like he would hate the Nationalists, but the conclusion was strange. He ended up saying that after coming over, he found the Corporate Government was no different, presenting an inexplicable false equivalence.

Several comments followed asking “what’s your point,” and Pedro’s final comment showed as “Comment blocked due to Turner & Tucker’s operating policy.” What had he said?

I forwarded that virtual screen to our hacker. Kanun didn’t have exceptional hacking skills, but we generally live leaving enough traces that we don’t need great hacking abilities.

“Can you find any archived version? I think we need to know clearly what kind of thoughts this person has and what he’s saying…”

Hacking wasn’t necessary this time either. For some reason, there are people in the world who archive Turner & Tucker articles by the hour.

“He’s crazy. Just from our encounter today, we could write it off as bad luck and move on. Why are you so interested in getting involved with these people?”

The virtual screen the hacker pushed back to me contained a simple sentence. It was something so yellow that even Turner & Tucker, which could be called yellow journalism, had blocked it.

“I just… see myself in him. What I did, calling Fitz & Morrison and spouting nonsense, wasn’t exactly sane either. This person just… seems similar to me somehow.”

What he had written was: “I wish that war would happen again so both the Corporate Government and the Nationalists would all just die.” Sadly, I knew exactly how it felt to say such things.

It’s almost like giving up. Knowing that something will never happen, and just spewing hatred however it comes. It was similar to when I called Fitz & Morrison acting like they were behind the Belvedere coup.

It’s terrible. My molars clench, and my mouth goes dry for no reason. This wasn’t about stupidity anymore. I wanted to say that I knew how terrible that feeling was.

The reason was probably… depression. Unlike Uncle Simon, who quickly started mercenary work and became self-sufficient, the mother I remember from my childhood was just sad.

The Corporate Government world seems ruthless and mechanical at first glance. It looks like a giant machine that grinds people up as fuel, belching black, corpse-scented smoke as it moves forward.

The Nationalists at least tried not to appear that way, and my mother, who had lived in Nationalist territory for a long time, was depressed for quite a while about the Corporate Government’s unmasked appearance.

But in the end, this Corporate Government land is also where people live. It’s a land where people who mock compassion need compassion the most, and those who are wary of kindness are the ones who desperately crave it.

My mother eventually found vitality by helping such people. In the end, she died being exploited by a mutant because of that helpful nature, but I want to believe she wouldn’t have regretted it.

But Pedro, who comes from the same Nationalist territory, seems to be the complete opposite. He seems to have found nothing. He appears disgusted by the naked face of this city and the bare body of this world.

Nevertheless, he… wasn’t causing problems in any way. Even today’s incident, while surprising, wasn’t really a problem when carefully considered.

No matter how foolish his thoughts were, the people he dealt with were gang members with kill orders. Los Angeles doesn’t place much responsibility on that level of vigilante activity.

Someone had created the turning point that Arthur had tried so many times to create for me, and eventually succeeded in making. It certainly doesn’t look like a good turning point.

If it had been a good turning point, his blind hatred should have disappeared. But… he remained the same. Only the direction seems to have changed. I take a deep breath.

Remembering the person who tried so hard to show me that the world doesn’t run solely on the repetition of paying blood prices, over and over again, I spoke.

“November, whom we met today… honestly, yeah. He’s insane. Definitely not in his right mind. But we’ve all experienced that state of mind before. Especially me. And Simon too.”

It’s not enough for someone to work behind the scenes, pull strings, use their abilities, and solve problems. To become a slightly better person, you have to acknowledge it. I decided to do so willingly.

Have I gotten a bit better at speeches? Predictions and forecasts remained hazy, and I couldn’t see the path ahead at all. That’s good. It’s normal. In this situation, all I could do was keep talking.

“What does Kanun do in Los Angeles? We nip problems in the bud. Since we’ve experienced this problem ourselves, we might be able to take action. Either help, or detect signs early and report them.”

Since I wanted to help, I decided to consider the situation if that failed. Just because we wanted to help didn’t mean the other party wanted to be helped.

If all he wanted was to shake off his depression by shooting guns, we could simply report him to Fitz & Morrison or Belvedere and buy time.

In that case… it would be better to operate near Fitz & Morrison, which is also a Kanun partner company. Regardless of trusting people, we needed to keep our guns close.

Now the speech ends. What’s harder than giving a speech is enduring the brief silence that follows. As I waited with clenched fists, Riley’s voice came through.

“I think someone should praise us for trying to pay forward what we received, but I agree. I don’t want to hear ‘what were you doing back then?’ if those guys cause something big.”

Riley naturally picked up where I left off, and Wilder and Evelyn nodded in agreement. The feeling of being trusted by employees who were also friends was definitely not bad.

So the first thing we needed to do was contact Call Sign November, Pedro. Fortunately, we had a good reason to make contact. After taking a deep breath, I started explaining.

“So… I’ll contact Call Sign November, whom we met today, and say we want to buy him a drink since he made our job easier. I’ll tell him he can bring any mercenary friends he wants too. How does that sound?”

The hacker made a slightly perplexed expression. He cleared his virtual screens—more than ten of them—and said:

“I like the idea of rounding them all up, but what if he gets suspicious and thinks we’re trying to draw out everyone associated with him? Choose something more natural.”

Something more natural. We needed to make him bring up his associates first. He must have been influenced by someone just as I was influenced by Arthur. There must be a community of fate.

“Then, how about saying Kanun wants to recruit him, even if it’s just lip service? He’ll obviously refuse, and when we ask why, he’ll have to talk about the other mercenaries he works with.”

“Not bad… but what if he actually accepts and wants to join Kanun?”

“Th-that’s…”

I had no answer since I’d planned assuming he would definitely refuse, but Wilder jumped in with a laugh.

“Wouldn’t that be even better? Whatever his background as a Nationalist soldier… Kanun is a place where a Fitz & Morrison security chief and a Four-Company certified freelancer work, right?”

“Oh… yeah, that’s true. Then there’s no better place to change his mind. If he really wants to join, we can transform him, and if he refuses, we can ask about his team. Great!”

I hadn’t thought of that. I didn’t seem ready to lead a company on my own yet, but the company had reliable friends and colleagues. Maybe that would be enough.

I nodded to everyone and initiated a communication link to Call Sign November’s contact registered in the mercenary network. I tapped the back of my phone with my fingertip while waiting.

Soon the communication connected. November would have seen our contact as Kanun. After cautiously examining the information for a moment, November’s voice came through.

“Well, if it isn’t the company from today. What’s up? Did I miss a few guys that you had to deal with separately? I’m pretty sure I caught all those traitors.”

“No, no. You said it yourself. Today was a lucky day for us. If you’re available, I’d like to buy you a drink sometime when you’re free. Would that be okay?”

Hearty laughter came through the communication channel. I had the soft thought that maybe he wasn’t originally a bad person.

“I’m not one to turn down free drinks. When works for you? Being independent, I’m free all day.”

Good. This part was successful so far.