Ch.286Work Record #040 – Faith Alone (6)

My Eve boarded the van that would pick up the Hollowed Creek escapees. It wasn’t an armored van, but the body had been reinforced with bulletproof plating. Even that wouldn’t have been cheap.

Still, it meant that much to her. If she thought of it as preventing others from making the same mistakes she had… buying a modified bulletproof van like that would have been more important than even having a home.

I put on an ash-gray combat uniform designed for wasteland operations and donned a display helmet with swirling wasteland dust patterns. After mounting my bike, I followed Eve’s modified van. We slowly made our way into the wasteland.

After parking my bike by the roadside, I dismounted and began running on foot. With Hubris slung over my shoulder, I scanned the wasteland intently. No immediate threats were visible.

No, wait. I spotted some movement in the dusty wind. I approached silently. Just a corpse? No. The dust around it was stirring unnaturally, suggesting breathing.

I quietly approached from behind and grabbed what appeared to be a person. It was someone wearing a white hood. They had pale white eyes and the capital letter “I” branded on their forehead. A Creek copy.

An inactive clone. Or if not a clone… someone who had been brainwashed. Judging by the brand on the forehead, it seemed more likely this was a person turned into a copy as some form of punishment.

But when the copy felt me grab them, they began muttering something quietly. They wore a neck microphone similar to what I used before my modifications. The report was monotonous.

“Movement detected. Requesting backup at current location.”

Are they using clones for such trivial tasks because all their drones are being used for city surveillance? It seemed ridiculous, but… the fact that this copy was reporting something was dangerous in itself.

As I removed the white hood the copy was wearing, I spoke through my Calliope module mentally. Being able to communicate more precisely than hand signals without making a sound is always fortunate.

‘Stop the car and raise the armor plating. I found a copy reporting to someone. What about the escapees we’re meeting?’

“The rendezvous point is still a few kilometers away. Usually the inquisitors don’t come this close to Los Angeles… Should I contact them?”

‘Tell them to keep coming if they’re willing to take the risk. Or tell them they can stop and wait where they are if they can’t risk it.’

My communication with Eve briefly cut out before reconnecting. They wouldn’t want to give up after coming this far.

“They say they’ll keep coming. They haven’t noticed anyone following them… Are those guys really watching?”

‘They might just be monitoring from a distance, but… with such crude communication equipment, they couldn’t transmit that far. They must be nearby.’

I put on the copy’s white hood. The face portion was made of translucent fabric, so I could still see through it. Since the copy had just requested backup, either more copies or an inquisitor would be coming.

I crouched low in the thick gray dust of the wasteland and looked around. The copy had made a report, but the copy itself was just a clone without human thinking abilities. Someone would come to check.

Then, I spotted a glint. From a slightly elevated area of the wasteland with gentle slopes, I could see a small lens reflecting light. I strained my eyes to look through the translucent fabric.

It was binoculars. And I could see someone wearing dark black clothes that didn’t match the characteristic gray of the wasteland. Creek inquisitors wear white reinforced suits. This must be the Patriarch’s Eve.

If the Patriarch’s Eve had come all the way here… it was definitely because of my Eve. I wanted to grab and tear her apart with both hands, but the Patriarch’s Eve would certainly be useful.

She outranked the inquisitors, was much older and more experienced, and knew much more about Hollowed Creek. The benefits of capturing her alive were incomparable.

‘I found the Patriarch’s Eve watching. I’ll approach and handle her. Check if there are any Creek inquisitors nearby, and request sniper support immediately if it looks dangerous.’

I waited briefly. Chance, embedded in my mind, displayed a small virtual screen before my eyes showing the wasteland’s atmospheric conditions. I could see a screen of green and red indicating wind strength.

The wind was slowly subsiding. As the gray dust from the barren land settled, I lowered my body. And not long after… the screen gradually turned green from one end.

The wind was picking up again. Wind whistled past my ears, and clouds of gray dust rose. I rose with them and… while the edge of the screen was still green, I dashed forward. My footsteps were nearly silent.

The feeling of running with all the strength in my legs was always exhilarating. Not long after I started sprinting, I could reach speeds of about eighty kilometers per hour, and a rush of refreshment washed over me.

Just as I was getting lost in that exhilaration, I caught a glimpse of the Patriarch’s Eve through the hazy dust, arms raised to shield her face. Her fetishistic outfit was clearly not designed for dust protection.

I charged with my shoulder forward, using my momentum. The Patriarch’s Eve only noticed something rushing toward her from the wasteland dust cloud moments before impact, and she went down without even having time to scream.

After tumbling across the smooth wasteland floor with gritted teeth, she managed to grab the ground and barely pull herself up as I approached.

I needed two things from her: her life and her voice. The first I could take at any time, but the second required cooperation. I extended my right hand, fingers spread, and struck her side.

It was less of a strike and more like driving my fingers in. The latex suit, bordering on fetishism, stretched as my fingers dug into her side, but her body beneath wasn’t as elastic as the suit.

Even the Patriarch’s Eve, who had tried to keep her mouth shut despite the pain of my fingers crushing against her ribs, eventually grabbed my wrist with her right hand, desperately trying to remove it.

I recorded her scream that burst out with that desperate gesture using my Calliope module. I continued recording as she writhed and let out more near-screaming sounds.

“Inq-Inquisitor! At my position…”

While a normal voice module would have required more recorded speech to synthesize someone’s voice, the built-in AI in my Calliope module was much more sophisticated.

I covered the Patriarch’s Eve’s mouth and spoke with her voice. The Patriarch’s Eves had higher command authority than inquisitors. I didn’t know how large a harem they had built to keep producing them, but it was useful.

“Copies, open fire on the inquisitor.”

The sounds of submachine guns and flamethrowers spitting fire mixed in the wasteland. The heated air began to swirl, and the dust storm only grew thicker.

If I had been speaking to a person, I would have explained the reason. Perhaps how the inquisitor was pretending to look for the broker while actually trying to lure Eve and the Patriarch’s forces into Los Angeles.

Hollowed Creek had saved me that trouble. They were the ones who filled their ranks with humans who would follow any order without question. I was merely taking advantage of it.

The Patriarch’s Eve reached down to grab the submachine gun typically worn at the waist, but couldn’t find it. The pistol was attached to her left side. Left-handed?

The pistol was on the left. A small mechanical device was attached to her right wrist. People prefer to operate devices with their dominant hand. If it was on her right wrist, it meant she operated it with her left hand.

Even when I drove my fingers into her side, she maintained an awkward posture, grabbing her left side with her right hand, trying to preserve her left hand. I placed the submachine gun in her left hand and pressed the muzzle against her chin.

I put her finger on the trigger guard and pulled the trigger. No pale mass exploded before my eyes. The safety was still on, so the trigger stopped.

Though she naturally didn’t have time to react, the Patriarch’s Eve, who had been held captive with a resigned expression, began breathing heavily with all strength leaving her body as soon as she heard the trigger catch.

She had expected it to fire. She was that inexperienced. I let her hear the sound of me turning off the safety, then threw her into the swirling dust storm. I began speaking leisurely.

“I hope you don’t think you’re lucky the gun didn’t fire. Having the trigger pulled would have been a more merciful death. What happened to the Eve who returned alive after losing her Patriarch?”

“That woman was incompetent, so barely…”

“I’m going to send you back without a scratch. You know better than I do what will happen if I say you were competent enough not to get a single injury.”

The sound of the flamethrower ceased not long after. What emerged through the dust storm was not the mindless copies but the inquisitor. He couldn’t see me in the dust.

With his reinforced suit tattered from bullet holes, he began spewing unintelligible words in a voice wet with fear and rage pumped by adrenaline. Understandable, given his near-death experience.

The Patriarch’s Eve urgently raised both hands, trying to calm him down as he spoke words that barely connected beyond individual utterances… but it’s hard to calm someone excited by bullets.

“Wait, wait. Calm down, Inquisitor. That order was…”

The man who had been spewing barely coherent babble pointed his flamethrower at the Patriarch’s Eve, not realizing she was unarmed. Now he finally spoke something that could be called words.

If it could be called that. Not seeing me hidden in the wasteland dust, what he spewed was nothing more than confirmation bias and resentment—no different from a dog’s barking.

“You were clearly talking to someone just now. I’m reporting that despite being favored by the Patriarch, you used that to conspire with Hollowed Creek’s enemies and tried to harm the Lord’s servants, you fucking bat-like old hag…”

But it didn’t matter. If it looked like conspiracy to the inquisitor, it would be reported as such. And if the inquisitor who reported the Patriarch’s Eve’s conspiracy died, the story would be clean.

I took the Patriarch’s Eve’s submachine gun and fired on full auto at the fuel tank and fuel line of the inquisitor’s flamethrower. Fuel leaked and ran down the inquisitor’s reinforced suit sleeve.

And in a brief moment, it caught fire. The Patriarch’s Eve tried to throw herself into the flames, but I grabbed her and prevented it. I kicked her toward the wasteland so she couldn’t throw herself into the fire to die.

Now the Patriarch’s Eve had lost her way back. There was no way the Patriarch would accept an Eve returning unharmed when an inquisitor had been shot by copies and burned to death by his own flamethrower.

This was why terror politics failed. Just a slight deviation in plans, just a little push, and everything collapsed beyond repair.

And those who had been licking the dictator’s honeypot knew exactly when to betray. She connected her communication and began shouting at me. Her expression was desperate. Not toward the Patriarch, but toward me.

“I was carrying out the Lord’s orders when someone attacked us! A-A stranger I’ve never seen before took down the copies and the inquisitor, and now me…”

It was an excuse the Patriarch would never believe, but she wasn’t hoping he would. She was stating her reason for martyrdom. She pointed at her temple where a computing assist device would be implanted.

Then she made a gesture of smashing her palm with her fist. I approached her and, with my thumbs up, struck both her temples to destroy only the computing assist devices inside. The connection would be severed.

After writhing in pain from the destroyed computing assist device, she curled up like a newborn, trembling before somehow managing to rise in a terrible state. She would need surgery to remove the computing assist device properly.

She had succeeded in appearing dead to the Patriarch, or at least giving him reason to think she was dead, but there was no reason I shouldn’t extract her brain and take it to the information processing team.

Not yet, anyway. The Patriarch’s Eve, whose life had etched subservience and cunning into her veins, clutched her head and, even with the smoking, crackling implant still embedded, spoke quite fluently.

“You know how old I am, kid. Injecting hippocampal stimulants into an old brain like mine would only bring up ancient memories, useless to your information processing team. What you want…”

“If you can recall anything, the information processing team could extract your brain and check. If you can’t offer something better, I’ll just dispose of you too and deal with anyone interfering with the effort to rescue Creek escapees…”

I naturally pretended my purpose was saving Creek escapees. It was easy to imagine and infer that what I started for someone I loved would develop into a public good.

It would sound implausible to say that what I started for someone I loved remained solely for that person while claiming I would kill a mega-corporation.

But in this high-speed era, the latter happens and the former doesn’t. It was an amusing situation, but I decided not to laugh.

“If you keep me alive, you could use me as bait once. If the Patriarch learns I’m alive, he’ll send even more Hollowed Creek forces than now to retrieve me because I know all his secrets. You’re smart. So…”

I turned on the Calliope module again and spoke with her voice and manner. Her expression was chilling, but her attempt to cover it with a smile was sickening to see.

“So, it wouldn’t be difficult to pretend you’re alive without you actually being alive, Eve. Isn’t that right?”

She cried out in what sounded like an aggrieved voice. What I needed was a symbol to add credibility to Pastor Bill Weaver’s church.

“Then what do you want from me!”

“I’ll pay for it, so why don’t you get your body completely replaced to remove any remaining devices, then go to Pastor Bill Weaver and repent, Eve.”

It was quite far from Jerome’s strange tastes… but still, borrowing Jerome’s hand once wouldn’t be difficult.

At first, it wouldn’t matter whether her repentance was genuine or false. She couldn’t return to Hollowed Creek, and if her survival was discovered, she would become Creek’s prey… Eventually, it would become sincere. For her own sake, if nothing else.