Ch.270Work Record #038 – Neither Fleeting nor Glorious (7)

Noah, feeling Miguel’s grip weakening as his attention shifted elsewhere, curled his body and bent his legs before kicking Miguel hard in the chest. One kick only made him flinch.

When Miguel quickly tried to grab his neck again, Noah managed to push him away with a second kick. The hand he had subtly moved to his waist came up, and lying on his back, he pulled the trigger.

One shot hit squarely on the head—or more precisely, it hit the bulletproof helmet dead-on, causing the bullet to deflect, but Miguel’s head jerked violently.

Not missing the moment when Miguel’s posture faltered, Noah pulled the trigger again… but the bullet was stopped by the visor. Bad luck. Because the first shot had made Miguel’s head jerk, this one hit the visor at an angle.

Normally, visors don’t have enough durability to stop bullets head-on, but it was a pistol round, and the glancing hit was barely blocked. Miguel, whose stance had been broken, regained his footing and covered his head with his arm.

His body was exposed. Hoping that there was at least some human flesh under that chest armor, that all this motion of pulling the trigger would have meaning, Noah pulled it again. He was desperate.

It infuriated him that he had to be this desperate to catch what would be considered a nobody criminal by Los Angeles standards. It was all because Noah had refused augmentation due to his own petty mindset.

Because of that, when they denied everything Noah believed about all the kind people in his life, he couldn’t respond immediately, and when evacuating from the building, he had to be carried in Riley’s arms. That fact irritated him.

As long as one doesn’t get addicted, augmentation isn’t ideological. It’s physical, necessary, and simple. Humans remain human no matter how much their outer shell, packaging, and internal materials change.

Noah could feel his pistol running out of bullets. The expanded plate covering Miguel from chest to groin showed no signs of breaking.

His entire body screamed to run away, but reason encouraged his instincts to be brave, arguing that charging forward would give him better chances of survival and buying time. Miguel wasn’t wearing a full-body prosthesis either.

Reason was like a helpless old man in a small room. Everything had to be done by instinct. It was always instinct that governed his body, trembling with fear and twitching with pain.

Reason knew only one thing: to coax and soothe that fearful, pain-sensitive instinct, helping it achieve something greater, even though reason itself saw instinct as ugly and imperfect.

Miguel still had reasons to keep Noah alive. So, as soon as he confirmed Noah’s pistol was empty, he lowered his arms that had been protecting his face, expecting to chase after Noah. But what he saw was the opposite.

Instead, Noah was charging toward Miguel. Throwing his full body weight into it, he knocked Miguel down and, gripping the pistol by both handle and barrel, savagely struck Miguel’s face with the edge of the grip.

Fear bloomed in Miguel’s mind that the visor, already damaged by a bullet, might shatter. It was a shameful fear that he might die at the hands of this rookie mercenary who seemed to have lost his mind.

Noah unleashed his boiling rage. He spat out broken tooth fragments and blood that had pooled in his mouth, covering Miguel’s visor, then struck it again with the pistol gripped like a hatchet.

“What you said—yes, it’s a personal insult to me… With the petty excuse of not wanting augmentation, I remained pure human and couldn’t even subdue someone like you, and you’ve been making every effort to keep me alive until now…”

Miguel’s wild punch struck Noah’s side. A terrible feeling like his insides were being stirred and a wave of nausea rose up. Noah barely managed to exhale a choking breath.

He steadied his breathing. With one arm firmly wrapped around Miguel’s arm that was trying to rise again, Noah spat out words like an animal’s bark. The words were human. Perhaps too human.

“It’s an insult to those kind and strong people! Everything you bark like a dog, licking up hatred that others wish to bury in their embrace! To me, it sounds like nothing but! A personal! Insult!”

Barely maintaining his broken breathing, Noah raised the pistol high and repeatedly struck Miguel’s visor. The sound of the visor cracking could be heard. Noah drew his tactical knife and stabbed at the broken part.

But the knife was blocked. Miguel had barely managed to hold onto his reason, just as Noah had. Noah looked down at Miguel’s face like a mirror. It was what he would have looked like if no one had intervened.

Now for Miguel, Noah was an enemy who had to be killed. Not a fool who could be easily captured, with claws pressed near his neck and growling to make him surrender everything—but a complete enemy.

With his visor broken and even his nose bridge slightly twisted inside, Miguel removed his helmet. It was now an object that couldn’t properly function as a helmet and would only obstruct his vision. Now he needed a gun.

Noah stomped on Miguel’s chest as he tried to get up, then stepped off his body to retrieve his rifle that had been scratched and kicked across the floor. But this time, Miguel was faster.

Miguel’s metal prosthetic hand firmly grabbed Noah’s wrist as he was almost crawling to grab the gun. He spun and threw Noah away.

The drive mechanism of the prosthetic hand that had even stopped bullets screamed in protest, but Miguel could still move, while Noah, whose back and head had hit a raised armor plate hard, couldn’t even regain his senses properly.

It seemed to have solidified into Miguel’s victory. It looked that way to Miguel, and Noah, whose sense of depth perception felt distorted as he tried to reach for the discarded helmet, thought so too. No. He didn’t think so.

What determined who won and who lost in this city was neither Miguel nor Noah. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that in this city, things like Miguel’s victory or Noah’s victory had never existed in the first place.

The house always wins. Belvedere always wins, Fitts & Morrison always wins. The city always wins. The routine and its repetition always triumph. The house had made its decision long ago.

Miguel leisurely kicked Noah’s rifle away and raised his submachine gun. His voice, which had consumed and harbored only hatred like a pufferfish consuming and harboring poison from toxic food, regained its composure.

Noah gave up trying to reach for the helmet and looked at the HUD inside it with his wavering vision. The timer showed 5 minutes and 3 seconds. He had managed to buy time through the physical struggle.

Miguel’s gun barrel pointed at Noah’s head. No matter how inexperienced Noah was, even Miguel wasn’t a true professional. If he had been, he wouldn’t have walked leisurely or engaged in conversation.

“For the last time… No. I won’t be arrogant enough to say such things…”

That statement alone was already arrogant enough. In the blink of an eye, Noah watched as Miguel’s body was torn apart at the waist while pointing a gun at his head. The gunshot sound came afterward.

A thunderous boom more like artillery fire than a gunshot followed, and Miguel, seemingly unaware of his condition, twitched as if trying to get up with his one intact hand. He could only scrape the floor.

As suddenly as that gunshot and without footsteps, a bogeyman approached. His face was covered with a display helmet that obscured the interior, and he was a freelancer who looked modest compared to others.

His movements were clean. He inserted a high-frequency tactical knife into the nape of the now dim-eyed Miguel, lightly carved it out, and placed it in a preservation fluid container he was holding. Arthur briefly looked down at Noah. He was in terrible shape.

But he had lasted five minutes. This city doesn’t offer a hand to those who have fallen, but it does offer a handshake to those who get up on their own. Arthur deliberately spoke with his mouth rather than using his voice module.

“This is callsign Bogeyman. Successfully captured the terrorist mastermind. Requesting an information processing team to scalp and extract information, and a medical team to evacuate Kanun Company’s president who was injured during the operation. End transmission.”

Noah couldn’t help but chuckle despite his body being practically shattered. He opened his mouth as if to complain a little to Arthur. It wasn’t a complaint. It was closer to an expression of relief.

“Ah. I had, a perfect one-liner, for Mi-Miguel. If only, you’d waited, until I could, say it, Arthur.”

“I’m not patient enough to wait for that. Fortunately, Miguel is still alive here to hear it.”

Arthur held up the preservation container with Miguel’s head. He would live forever. He has an eternity to ruminate on what Noah is about to tell him. It’s not a beautiful thing.

“Miguel, Miguel… I won’t curse you. I’ve vented enough anger. What I wanted to tell you is… yeah. I wanted to say it’s neither fleeting nor glorious. That’s what you would have said. This is a promise.”

Noah barely managed to pick up his helmet and showed the timer inside the visor, stopped at 5 minutes and 4 seconds. Only after willingly mocking him did he put the helmet back on.

“Kanun’s promise that help would come if we lasted 5 minutes. The promise was kept. Because… we called for backup before running away. We scattered, ready to die, to buy time!”

As he finished speaking, a medical evacuation vehicle that had been on standby near the operation area entered the alleyway. Another person who didn’t look quite human also got out of the vehicle.

They looked human but had completely removed their head, replacing it with a ram’s head made of metallic shine and matte black. Information processing work tests human nature to its limits.

At the end of that test, information processors often set aside their humanity. They reshape their forms to match their work, trying to forget the fatigue. It’s difficult work.

The ram-headed information processor extended a hand replaced with a full-body prosthetic, and the Bogeyman handed over the preservation container. The information processor received it with a slight nod, turned around, and opened the container.

Miguel still had a mouth but couldn’t scream. The sound of a rotating saw blade rang out, and the information processor threw the preservation fluid-soaked facial skin and skull of the man toward the roadside.

The information processor, now holding a container with only the brain remaining, boarded the vehicle first, and the medical team loaded Noah onto a stretcher and into the vehicle. Noah made a joke-like comment in his hoarse voice. It was an expression of relief.

“On the way, could you show me, an implant catalog… I didn’t want, implants before, but after experiencing this… I want to replace everything immediately, without wasting a second. Really…”

The medical staff smiled and closed the car door, and the vehicle departed. What the medical staff showed wasn’t the implant catalog Noah had jokingly mentioned. It looked like drone camera footage.

It was a drone overlooking the surrounding streets that had already been secured. Terrorists who had gathered here believing Miguel’s petty words were shooting at the sky. They didn’t seem to be trying to shoot down the drone.

As the drone camera raised its view… a twin-propeller transport helicopter used by Fitts & Morrison was flying. The helicopter door opened, revealing a figure trying to appear human.

The terrorists’ gunfire was directed at that figure. They seemed to have the naive hope that hitting the propellers might cause the helicopter to crash. It was useless against the nearly three-meter-tall full-body prosthesis.

The matte black metal giant, with three rotating camera lenses on each side instead of eyes, jumped straight out of the helicopter. The drone camera’s view slowly turned downward, following Talos.

If it were just an inhuman figure created by implants and modifications falling, words like terror or despair might be fitting… but Noah saw hope in that figure on the screen.

The accelerating body slammed into the ground, crushing and killing the terrorists around it. Screams erupted from the surroundings, and those who still had their wits about them fired their guns, but they were small caliber.

Talos parted those bullets like raindrops, pierced the head of a nearby terrorist with his sharp fingertips, lifted it up, and threw it into the crowd. Despite his massive and enormous size, he was agile.

Some with high-frequency blades that might actually damage his body rushed at him, either overcoming their fear or driven by it, but Talos even performed a backflip in place.

While in mid-air, he reached out to grab the terrorist’s wrist and, using the centrifugal force of his rotating body, slammed him into the ground, shattering him. It was an unnecessary action. It was simply to demonstrate the difference in capability.

Talos wanted them to be afraid. In a world where people like the whores of Sin City never even had the chance to have their own will, these people were wasting their precious free will on this.

He wanted them to be afraid, to think about running away, and to be torn apart by their own weapons while trying to escape—that’s why he willingly performed such unnecessary actions.

What followed was a scene worthy of being used as promotional footage by G Entertainment, that company bearing the names of blood and glory. The machine guns mounted on appendages protruding from Talos’s shoulders spewed fire.

As the crowd tried to scatter, hoping not to be the next target, reinforced speakers attached all over the full-body prosthesis simultaneously emitted ear-splitting high frequencies and terrible low frequencies.

The sound waves burst out with enough force to make nearby debris bounce, and the fleeing terrorists, without exception, collapsed and began to twitch, their entire bodies in such pain that they didn’t know which part to clutch.

From the opposite alley, Belvedere’s assault section was driving terrorists forward, and Lobsters began to drop around Talos. Now the only important thing was that those worthy of salvation would be saved.

The medical staff member, who had briefly put a hand to their ear to receive a communication, approached Noah, checked the condition of his ears, and inserted a small in-ear device. The face with modest implants looked completely ordinary.

“This was requested by Bogeyman. The terrorist leaders are with your colleagues, and one freelancer has been assigned to each of your colleagues. This in-ear is connected to the communication channel, so please listen comfortably while you wait.”