Ch.272Work Record #038 – Neither Fleeting nor Glorious (9)

Mine used a more intelligent method than the other terrorists. The plan had already failed when a group of mercenaries escaped.

Miguel knew how to breathe life into the gathered gangs, cheap mercenaries, and the city’s failures, but eventually, the security team would return and kill them all.

Mine didn’t want to be one of the corpses sprawled on the floor. No. It wasn’t even certain if she could become a corpse. Mine was clearly one of the ringleaders. She wouldn’t be allowed to die.

That’s why Mine led another group of terrorists out, claiming to pursue the three escapees. Thanks to her taking them out, more of the others would die, but that wasn’t her concern.

In this high-speed era, selfish people survive better. It was the only principle Mine knew. That’s why she had attached herself to Miguel, who was strong and could control people, and now she was trying to break away.

The security vulnerability she was targeting was Kanun. The boss was merely a Pure, and the rest of the employees were just novice mercenaries… with only one seasoned mercenary mixed in.

If they had already reported the situation and megacorporate security teams started pouring in, the only way out would be through Kanun. Mine could also threaten them.

And they wouldn’t reveal Mine’s whereabouts because they had negotiated with terrorists. A simple principle. At least that’s what Mine believed. She had numerical superiority anyway.

Superiority in performance and numbers makes thoroughness and certainty the highest virtues, not cleverness. The hulking figure with a bulletproof shield and the small medic could be left to the idiots with guns.

Mine needed to handle the seasoned mercenary. Seasoned mercenaries sometimes worked miracles. They didn’t earn their stripes for nothing, and they usually proved it at least once.

But this man was a family man. As soon as he heard the small medic calling the big one’s name nearby, he diverted his attention from the fight with Mine where he had a slight advantage.

Mine believed Jimon would be easy prey. The hypothesis that people use vision to see what’s in front of them was absurd; most people saw and defined what was before them through belief.

She fell for Jimon’s pathetic feint of slightly turning his head because she saw with belief, not eyes. Mine’s high-frequency blade skillfully aimed for Jimon’s nape.

Jimon didn’t have one of those bizarre orientalism-steeped high-frequency blade katanas like Mine handled, nor did he have the manpower she brought. But he had worked a few years longer than Mine.

He had worked in more diverse places, experienced several devastating failures, and barely won a few more victories. The remnants of those failures always added strength to Jimon’s hands.

Jimon caught the incoming high-frequency blade with his Fitts & Morrison prosthetic hand, neural feedback turned off. He twisted it. He could feel the high-frequency blade humming ineffectively, caught between metal and fiber.

“You think I don’t know what they teach first about wielding that thing? ‘It cuts with just a touch, so never let it touch your body.’ Yeah, you got good training but kept bad habits, you little shit.”

The high-frequency blade could cut through bulletproof fiber like paper and, with enough performance, strength, and skill, could easily slice through a metal prosthetic.

But, at the same time, it was still just a blade. Simply swinging it wouldn’t cut; you had to drive the edge all the way through to kill someone. The problem was that this fact was easy to forget.

Even a gunner holding a strategic position and firing a machine gun believes that a high-frequency blade can cut through anything, delighted by the thought of slicing them with a single stroke if only they could get close.

So they end up throwing slashes. Instead of following through with full force to complete the cut, they develop a habit of cutting with a fluttering, throwing motion. The technology outpaces the user.

Generally, this wasn’t a big problem. If you weren’t facing full-body cyborgs every day, you could easily cut through an ordinary person in body armor with just a thrown slash if you had the skill.

But not now. The wildly thrown slash couldn’t cut through the metal prosthetic completely and got stuck, twisting and losing its vibration. Now it couldn’t cut anything.

This was the small trick that this seasoned mercenary, as Mine thought of him, could pull off. Perhaps it was thanks to settling his hatred and accepting the Fitts & Morrison prosthetic. Either way, it was quite trivial.

Jimon twisted his metal prosthetic. Since it could move regardless of joint limitations like those used by Sin City bitches, his arm rotated nearly a full circle at an impossible human angle, wresting the blade away.

Though it was still a high-frequency blade with a twisted edge… it had completely lost its usefulness even as a cutting tool. In contrast, Jimon’s prosthetic was still functioning well. To some extent, anyway.

The fourth and fifth fingers barely moved, but that didn’t matter much. Three moving fingers on a metal prosthetic were enough to grab someone. Now Mine was the desperate one.

When she kicked with the characteristic angular force of a prosthetic, Jimon caught it with his prosthetic again. A heavy metallic sound rang out as metal hit metal. His forearm rolled over the spherical joint characteristic of Fitts & Morrison prosthetics.

The palm rotated to where the back of the hand should be, and Jimon grabbed her ankle with his three functioning fingers, then threw Mine heavily while moving at an angle impossible for human joints.

Her high pride rolled on the ground. Perhaps she was just thrown back to where she belonged. Mine was gradually losing her fighting spirit. For her, killing this seasoned mercenary had no value.

The first priority was survival. Everything else came second. Mine, who had rolled on the ground and gotten up, reached behind her back while extending her other hand toward Jimon. Despite trembling, she spoke in an affectionate voice.

“Wait, wait! If you let me go, I’ll let that couple go too! Really. You know we’re the leaders, right? What’s the point of wasting time fighting me here? Those two…”

“You’re a rat. A rat that looks for escape holes in any situation. What, you’ll spare those kids? Fighting is a waste of time? That’s when I grab your hair by…”

Mine raised her arms to block Jimon’s swing with his non-prosthetic arm. It was another feint. His metal prosthetic heavily struck her exposed abdomen.

“I need to tell those bastards. Your boss is in this state, so continuing to fight has no meaning! That’s what I need to say.”

Clutching her stomach from the heavy impact that lifted her body before dropping it, Mine had to face another punch without hesitation. Again, the human fist came first.

It was a punch she could take and endure. Thinking this, Mine tried to pull a flash grenade from behind her waist, but even that judgment was wrong.

Jimon skillfully struck Mine’s chin, and as she tried to forcibly stand up, her face filled with nothing but survival instinct, he drove his prosthetic into it.

Now even Pedro would have trouble introducing Mine as pretty. A face with a shattered nose loses its beauty regardless of how pretty the original was. Now she too was desperate.

The terrorists who followed her didn’t matter; she just needed to survive herself. Her ignoble but honest survival instinct emerged, and she began pretending to roll on the ground while curling up.

She picked up the flash grenade she had dropped and pulled the safety pin right in front of her face. Jimon didn’t know what was happening beneath Mine’s face.

Just as Jimon was about to grab Mine’s hair and drag her to where Wilderf and Evelyn were, Mine flashed bestial eyes, threw the flash grenade at Jimon, and curled up again.

If they had been freelancers, they would have had anti-flash implants, so it wouldn’t have been a big problem, but Jimon was just an ordinary, somewhat skilled mercenary. Covering his head and turning away was his only defense.

The flash temporarily took his sight, and the explosion made him unable to grasp his surroundings. Since neither had guns, nothing would happen if he just kept his guard up… but everything was quiet.

After about thirty more seconds, as the afterimage of the last scene began to fade from Jimon’s vision… Mine was gone. Only the scenery of an alley with several trash cans lined up was visible.

Jimon briefly considered whether to look for her further, but stopped when he heard the sound of Fitts & Morrison’s sonic weapons used for subduing suspects exploding nearby, followed by gunfire.

Wherever she had fled, she would eventually die within the encirclement. Her fate was more important to him right now than Wilderf and Evelyn’s survival. The others were all engaged in one-on-one fights, but those kids were outnumbered.

He briefly wondered what he could do without weapons, but running to help was the priority. Now he didn’t need to worry about hacking computation assistants or anything else; he just sent a support request and ran.

Despite being the senior member of this company, he had always been the one being taken care of. He was the kind of person who would swing a liquor bottle and get detained at the Fitts & Morrison headquarters whenever he got drunk.

Since Noah was pulling his weight, Jimon wanted to act like a senior member too… but that seemed unlikely this time as well. Someone was standing in front of Wilderf, who was shielding himself with a prosthetic arm riddled with bullets.

He was a man half a head taller than Wilderf, who was already quite large. Wearing comfortable clothes that seemed unsuited for this kind of work, he stood between them with just a shotgun. He was a freelancer. That was obvious without explanation.

It would be more accurate to say that one man felt more imposing than the twenty terrorists.

But this time, the terrorists had one chance. They were holding a bundle of eight incendiary grenades.

The thought that they had brought such things to detonate among employee-citizens made his blood boil. Seeing all the pins tied together, they clearly hadn’t intended to use them separately.

Thinking they would be subdued one by one in order of proximity to the freelancer, one large terrorist threw the bundle of incendiary grenades at Ilbelli while taking bullets.

No. The bundle wasn’t aimed at him but behind him. They already knew he had come to protect Wilderf and Evelyn. Jimon ran to grab the terrorist, but it was too late.

Ilbelli caught the bundle of incendiary grenades as it flew in a heavy, short arc. He clicked his tongue once and hugged it to his chest. The bundle… exploded right in Ilbelli’s arms.

Thermite flames erupted, shocking even Jimon who had thrown the terrorist who threw the grenades, and burning alive several terrorists who were in front of Ilbelli. Only a silhouette was visible in the flames.

Thanks to hugging it to his chest when it exploded, only heat spread behind him without flames reaching there, but the freelancer who had it explode against his chest was surely dead. Everyone believed so. The situation worsened again.

One terrorist’s expression changed from despair to hope. With the joy of being able to easily dispose of a freelancer who had come to capture them, he uttered a leisurely taunt.

“I thought we were fucked… How did that old man become a freelancer? Like, don’t freelancers usually have interception systems or something?”

While Jimon was in shock, the large terrorist turned and pushed him away. Recognizing him as someone who had been in the restaurant, he drew his gun and aimed.

However, his advantage didn’t last long. Just as Jimon had given an opening in his shock, the terrorist also gave Jimon an opening in his own shock. Because a voice came from within the thermite flames.

“Being called an old man by these little shits makes me realize I really am getting old. Did you ask how this old man became a freelancer?”

A human silhouette began walking out of the flames. Not a human silhouette. Just an imitation. A silhouette resembling human bones and muscles with a deep blue sheen was walking out.

The head, which looked like a skull, had a smooth dark blue sheen, and a human form covered in metal fibers that neither melted nor burned in the thermite flames emerged from the fire, with muscle-like fibers splitting across its body.

Ilbelli was a full-body cyborg except for his brain. For his family’s sake, he had covered his full-body cyborg skeleton with skin that had blood flowing through it, but inside, he was a perfect modified human, 98% machine.

“Strength. That’s why. Not satisfied with the body I got from the special operations division, I got the city’s best full-body cyborg, and that’s why I’m recognized as a freelancer. If it weren’t for that damn Talos, I’d still be number one.”

Ilbelli, with his artificial skin burning and smelling like a person being roasted, charged at the terrorists with flames surrounding him. Just grabbing them was enough.

His fully heated cyborg body was a weapon in itself. A terrorist caught in Ilbelli’s grip went limp with hand-shaped marks on his neck, emitting a terrible smell of burning flesh.

Taking a step forward, he lunged at a speed Jimon could barely follow with his eyes and pierced through the face of the terrorist who had mocked him with his fingertips. After throwing him aside with pink foam spraying everywhere, he spoke as if chewing and swallowing:

“Tsk. My wife hates seeing me like this so much…”

They were the ones who had stripped away Ilbelli’s leather. And they were the ones who had to face what lay beneath that human skin and family love. In the end, everyone met or would meet their deserved fate.