Ch.330Epilogue – Back to Los Angeles (3)

Noah now understood the fragility of human life. The undertaker who rushed to the back door with his face covered by both hands pulled the door, and at that moment, an explosion sound struck his ears.

When he saw the other two employees who were running with him collapse like rags after being hit by a directional mine, Noah sometimes found himself trembling. It wasn’t because of them. It was because of himself.

It was because he kept replaying how the prank call he had made to Fitz & Morrison in his youthful recklessness could have returned to kill him.

His life was already indebted to someone’s random kindness. Noah stopped Calisa who was about to rush in. Instead of fearing stray bullets, he waited for the perfect timing.

Two undertakers, who believed one bomb would end the defense at the back door, rushed in through the door as if clinging to each other, each trying to be the first. This was the timing.

Noah’s carbine and Riley’s submachine gun turned the two men into honeycombs, and to prevent them from becoming cover, Calisa pierced one with her high-frequency blade and pulled him toward her. She made eye contact with the undertaker behind him.

In those eyes, Noah saw fear. The kind of fear that couldn’t be shown by a fanatic who believed they were protected by the Virgin of Death. It was fake faith. Volatile faith. Weakness.

As one corpse collapsed with the high-frequency blade stuck in it, the second corpse that had almost gotten stuck in the door also fell. Slowly, they began to clear a path toward the undertaker whose faith had evaporated.

The sound of a pistol rang out, but it ricocheted off Noah’s helmet and lodged in the ceiling of the emergency stairwell. Noah didn’t dwell long on his shaken head. This was a situation he had experienced many times before.

Instead, he stepped forward, regaining his balance, and squeezed the trigger. The undertaker who had been baptized by the nonexistent Virgin of Death could now finally go to her embrace. Painfully, howling like a dog.

Noah felt as if that scream echoed in his ears several times. It was a low, echo-like scream. He thought it was just ringing in his head and tried to shake it off, but it wasn’t.

Through the emergency stairwell window, he saw what looked like an undertaker who had jumped out on his own. He was falling too quickly to have jumped from the fourth floor. He had jumped to escape the Revenant.

Well, there’s no paradise where you escape to anyway. Noah now knew the sound of a person falling head-first from a building and shattering. It was a sign that he was too late to be called young anymore.

He wanted to think that even just a copy of the person he admired, not the person himself, was incomparable to who he was now, but Noah once again reminded himself that it was work time.

Objectively speaking, Noah wasn’t a bad mercenary. He wasn’t steeped in idealism, he didn’t have fewer commissions than his experience would suggest, and he didn’t undermine his own efficiency with strange beliefs.

Still, he was constantly thirsty. When he thought about what Arthur might have been doing at his age… he felt sweetness. The thirst was sweet, and it felt like he could fill his stomach with hunger alone.

He didn’t worry that if he kept running like this, he would suddenly achieve his dream and have nowhere else to go. The thought that no matter how much he ran, he himself would be insufficient felt both refreshing and tiring.

He didn’t dwell on that thought for long. Wilder and Vola had already entered the chaotic third floor and finished confirming the kills of the surviving Orthodox Co. employees.

“No survivors on the third floor. What about the fifth?”

“Fifth floor’s cleared too. One guy jumped, but you know what happens when someone without head reinforcement jumps from the fifth floor. Anyway, K.”

“I already checked! Like you said, he’s already gone, so let’s continue the operation! Oh, I’ll send you the fourth floor drone cam.”

Noah looked at K’s drone camera that appeared at the edge of his vision. Yoon’s sniper rifle, which he had been using since Bellwether, was always effective. He could see holes in the office walls.

Not just holes. Holes leaking blood, tissue, parts, and fuel. He had forced them to take cover against the building’s wall with suppressive fire and then pierced right through them. It was clean to the point of being cruel.

Originally, he had said he would just keep them suppressed and buy time, but once he actually faced them, he saw they weren’t even worth that much. The good thing was… the job was done. Now it was personal time.

A dissatisfaction like muscle pain swept through Noah’s body. They say youth is about living as if you could hang yourself on an unreachable goal and die, but every time he reflected, he saw more of his shortcomings.

Noah wasn’t a Bellwether bioweapon. Nor had he become a back-alley revolutionary, and thinking of Miguel, that wasn’t something to regret, but… he just felt like he wasn’t becoming anything.

A freelancer needed conviction. They needed the temperament to burn their humanity as they moved forward, but Noah didn’t have that. Was that why he couldn’t become a freelancer? It was probably because of strength.

He could… probably become an employee of a megacorporation, but he didn’t think he would be happy. Even if he joined Fitz & Morrison, which still called for the extermination of mutants, he felt he would live full of hesitation and anxiety.

He was still a coward. He had learned how to compromise with that fear. Through mutual contracts, that cowardly temperament now worked as a sensitive and observant temperament, but he still disliked horror movies.

He still missed his mother. Since Bellwether suddenly announced a change in their charter and disclosed the Prometheus Operation, ending mutant discrimination, he didn’t know what to do.

It must have been a strategic choice. Exposing the Prometheus Operation and adopting the slogan “Bellwether moves forward from mistakes. As people always have.” was definitely not for emotional reasons.

Until then, he had excuses. “Bellwether does it, Fitz & Morrison does it, even the nationalists do it.” Relying on others’ authority was… comfortable, regardless of right or wrong.

He disliked mutants. But he didn’t want to point a gun at Ms. Nadia. If he could find the mutant who killed his mother, he would pour all his hatred onto them. That was the extent of it.

Looking at either side, everything seemed ambiguous, nothing seemed complete… he just kept thinking how young and immature he was. These weren’t thoughts he had when he was even younger and more immature.

Surely the thirst was sweet, and it felt like he could fill his stomach with hunger… but when he sat down and thought about it slowly, he was also getting a bit tired. His dreams were big, but Noah was Noah.

Sometimes he would tell Noah Verami in the mirror that he was only twenty-five with five years of experience, so what was he complaining about, but each time he would evade by relying on the addictive word “still.”

This time too, with a heavy heart, he handed over the job that had ended early to Bellwether’s cleaning department and was heading back when he saw an unfamiliar bike parked in front of the office with the night view.

Fortunately, there was a familiar person on it. It was Arthur. With his distinctive display helmet removed, he always had a refreshing expression, a face that was both enviable and admirable.

“Noah! We’re going out for drinks, just us guys. Want to come? Dean and I have a regular place we go to… but it’s been so long since we’ve been there, I wanted to bring a newbie to drink with.”

“I’ve been in the business for five years, so I’m hardly a newbie…”

Noah replied somewhat grumblingly. There was no edge to it. It was similar to the voice he used when responding to Simon, who treated him like a child several times a day.

Still, right now Noah was in the mood for a drink. Plus, if Neon Snake was going to be there, he had no intention of refusing. Riley also gave Noah a light push on the back.

It must mean that his life mentor, or someone who could be called that, had returned after five years, so he should go and catch up. Only then did Noah awkwardly get on the bike parked in the night view parking lot.

Arthur made a light gesture, and route data was transmitted to Noah. It was coordinates for Joshua Tree National Park… which was in the middle of the wasteland. They would have to ride through the wasteland for quite a while.

Naturally, the two bikes left the city. There were plants everywhere with a dull grayish-green color, covered in hair when seen up close, and emitting a not-so-pleasant smell, but still living hard.

It was a plant species spread by Farmers after Bloodsucker’s great success in the Mojave Desert. It was truly ugly and had no use other than revitalizing the wasteland… but it even looked somewhat admirable.

The role of those plants was singular. To extract pollution, decompose after extracting it, and become fertilizer in this nutrient-poor wasteland soil, passing the place on to the next species.

Living beyond that has no meaning. They bear no flowers or fruits, cannot reproduce, and eventually rot and die when their lifespan ends. It’s better to die absorbing pollution.

It seems like they’re the ones living as if they could hang themselves on an unreachable goal and die. Noah muttered to himself. Soon they reached their destination.

It was a visitor center in the middle of the wasteland. Noah knew about national parks, but he didn’t know much about national parks in cities that had been under corporate governance for a long time, like Los Angeles.

All he could see now was a small valley and field where Farmers Co.’s wasteland restoration plants were diligently piling up corpses. Inside, Neon Snake was waiting.

To Noah, Neon Snake was… a person who wore clothes from who-knows-where. Even now, he was dressed in a studded leather jacket that looked like something rockers from the 70s—that is, the 1970s, a hundred years ago—would wear.

Dean, who had been waiting with a black helmet depicting snake scales on his head, took off his helmet and walked out. Neon Snake, who had returned to active duty, possessed an abnormal yet beautiful vitality similar to Arthur’s.

Noah couldn’t feel anything like that when he looked at himself in the mirror or when he heard his own voice. Neon Snake chuckled mischievously and said:

“Look who it is! Just when I thought you were finally getting out of being a cop kid, you went and rejoined Bellwether!”

“I don’t want to hear that from a violent revolutionary turned punk samurai who’s now going around the country slashing people!”

The two clashed their social weapons without any real malice. Neon Snake’s social weapon was housed in a flashy snake-mouth-shaped scabbard, while the Boogeyman’s social weapon knew only a matte black scabbard as its home.

Inside the collapsing national park visitor center were two rotting sofas placed side by side, and between them… an ammunition box that definitely didn’t seem to contain bullets. The Boogeyman opened the box.

Inside… it was filled with real whiskey. There was enough to fill the entire box, enough that if someone knew they just left it here, they might start a treasure hunt.

Noah cradled the whiskey bottle that the Boogeyman casually tossed to him as if it were a gold nugget. As far as Noah knew, only those two people could casually throw something like this.

Neon Snake opened the whiskey bottle and pushed a glass forward as if proposing a toast, and the two men clinked their glasses. Only Noah had to pour the alcohol into a glass. The other two drank the whiskey like water.

After the two men emptied half a bottle of whiskey in one breath, Neon Snake was the first to ask. It was trivial. But it didn’t feel trivial.

“How are your wife and kids?”

“They’re sleeping, so don’t worry. Chance is watching them too… and anyway, everyone knows the Boogeyman is great, but they don’t know who’s behind the mask.”

“Ha, we live in an age where reality can be censored and truth can be manufactured. Right. But it seems we have one more guest today?”

Neon Snake wore artificial eyes shaped like normal human eyes, but sometimes snake eyes could be seen. This was one of those times. It didn’t seem to have any particular intention, but it made Noah feel intimidated for no reason.

Arthur’s answer intimidated Noah even more. It was said by the person he wanted to appear most reliable to.

“Riley asked me to. She said Noah’s been looking quite frustrated lately. And when you’re frustrated, this guy is the best, right?”

Neon Snake and the Boogeyman seemed to share something Noah didn’t know about. Something about this old national park visitor center and the whiskey.

Hearing those words, Neon Snake chuckled. He burst into laughter as if very amused, then turned his gaze to Noah sitting across from him. He looked at him with a grin.

“Frustrated, huh? And you brought him here… Well, is our kid also about to drive a van loaded with bombs into a megacorporation?”

“I was like that five years ago.”

“Really?”

Noah let out a small laugh at the two men’s banter. They were quite frivolous. As frivolous as Noah thought himself to be.

“You were like that then, but now you seem to be doing well as a mercenary? Is it just because I didn’t check the surveillance records much when I was working as an audit team apprentice? Well, there hasn’t been any other incident, right?”

Even freelancers all have different tendencies, methods, personalities, and backgrounds. Dean was casual and full of jokes, while Arthur was polite to everyone, regardless of whether they were younger or lower in position.

They weren’t without flaws. Dean was a person who lived tied to the past, and the Boogeyman… was more famous for his cruelty than his polite personality. He was much more famous for his bioweapon-like appearance.

Only then did Noah nod a little more comfortably. He decided to speak a bit more honestly. It was almost as if Farmers Co. might be mixing a truth serum into the whiskey they made.

“It’s just, how should I put it… I still feel like a twenty-year-old kid. I want to be like Arthur or Neon Snake, but it also feels like I’m dreaming too big… There seems to be a path, but…”

“You mean you don’t have a place you want to go? But if you see a path in front of you and just keep walking hard, it gets tiring. Right, cop kid?”

“I never thought I’d end up asking to be called Killshot instead. Anyway, if your destination is to be a freelancer, you just need to work harder, and if you don’t have a destination, you can just enjoy your mercenary life dating Riley, right?”

Pleasure. It was something only someone who had always pursued pleasure could say. Noah spilled out his childish worries. At least now he had learned to spit them out instead of swallowing them until they rotted inside.

“Freelancer is a dream-like word, and if I were to set a goal, that would be it… But still, I’m not a Bellwether bioweapon like Arthur, and Neon Snake also… has some kind of amazing background, right?”

“Not really? I was from a gang in the back alleys of T-Enter headquarters. I had a knack for killing, but… is that why I became a freelancer?”

Arthur, who had been quietly listening, burst into light laughter and then brought a hologram projector from his bike and casually threw it onto the ammunition box. Faces of people began to appear.

Among them were some people he had seen before. Ruiner’s face appeared, and Arthur began to speak with an expression that seemed to be holding back laughter.

“Noah, do you think you don’t qualify because you’re not a Bellwether bioweapon or a gang boss who survived T-Enter’s survival of the fittest? Ruiner…”

With those words, several photos appeared. Photos that seemed completely unrelated to Ruiner, showing a girl playing with dolls in a penthouse of some building.

Photos of her working as a child model, or clearly drinking at parties that would be full of corporate aristocrats followed. Arthur began to speak with a voice mixed with laughter.

“She probably grew up much softer than Noah, right? She was originally a corporate aristocrat kid. Not a megacorporation, but one that had split off from Ymir… What do you think happened?”

Noah had an idol that people must be tempered in some way. He thought that iron that had never been hit by a hammer was soft. Arthur decided to break that idol for once.

Noah could recall a few things. He thought about the story of her parents’ megacorporation collapsing in the assassin war typical of the entertainment industry, leading her to enter the mercenary business… but that wasn’t it.

At least until high school, she had clearly lived as a corporate aristocrat. While Noah was thinking of a plausible story, Arthur burst into laughter and told him:

“Ruiner isn’t called Ruiner for nothing. When the industry sent a mercenary assassin after her, instead of killing her, he suggested it would be better to have her, so he faked her death at home and disappeared with that man.”

Arthur found and showed a photo among those pictures—among photos of corporate aristocrats who knew how to smile normally, were uncreased, and had futures and visions—one photo where she smiled like the current Ruiner.

“But she found hiding with an assassin boring. So she cut off her boyfriend’s head with the high-frequency blade he used, returned home, and became a mercenary with family support.”

If it had been Noah himself, he wouldn’t have even thought of harming someone who was essentially providing protection just because it was boring, nor would he have believed he could harm a professional.

“There are people who have joined the mercenary business for such frivolous reasons and even earned the title of freelancer. And as for me, I may be called Bellwether’s bioweapon, but I started as a dishonorable retiree who was betrayed by Walter.”

Arthur had somehow stopped calling Walter a brat when talking about him. There was no need to curse a piece of meat he had already devoured. Arthur told many other freelancer stories as well.

It wasn’t that he used his surveillance network access privileges as Bellwether’s external auditor. He just… decided to gloss over it by saying he had been very busy for three years.

By the time Arthur and Dean had downed three or four bottles of whiskey straight, Noah had only managed to empty about a third of one bottle. In that state, Noah leaned back on the decaying sofa with his combat uniform top and said:

“Really, there are… incredibly… diverse people who become freelancers. From ‘Why is this person even in the mercenary business?’ to ‘This person seems like they have what it takes to be a freelancer.’ It’s so diverse…”

“There are no qualifications, right? Instead of saying you’re not a Bellwether bioweapon or a back-alley gang boss…”

The Boogeyman’s hand, which had been speaking with a smiling face looking toward Noah, went down to his waist, and then he drew his social weapon with the vibration turned off and swung it toward Dean sitting in front of him… or so it seemed.

Noah couldn’t even see it properly. In the brief moment his eyes’ frame rate was interrupted, the blade was already in front of Dean’s face, and all he could see was Dean catching the blade with his thumb, index finger, and middle finger.

“Why don’t you start by improving your performance? It’s not that it’s bad to compare yourself with others or admire them. But you shouldn’t let admiration remain just admiration when you’re coveting something you can’t even resemble.”

Hearing those words, Noah finally exhaled deeply. He grabbed the neck of the whiskey bottle like the two men in front of him, took a few gulps, and put it down. His throat felt like it was burning, and his stomach was hot.

“I’m also too soft to be called a Bellwether bioweapon, only interested in romance, and quite a frivolous person… That’s why I became freelancer Arthur Murphy instead of a Bellwether bioweapon.”

He had been so busy just admiring someone too great that he hadn’t even set a destination, and without a destination, his overall lack of ability had become sweet yet tiring.

Noah took another swig of whiskey. Surely I’ve drunk my month’s salary worth by now. This time, he didn’t deny the stupid thought boiling inside him.

Noah Verami, a coward with many worries and fragility, would no longer crane his neck looking up at the sky because he was staring at idols that were too big. Instead, he might join in on the obscene conversations that Wilder and Vola had.

He would stop secretly thinking of the call sign Revenant as a copy of Arthur, and perhaps later he might even go and apologize. It’s rude to think of someone of clone origin that way.

Noah has made one mistake. But unlike his previous mistakes, he will solve it himself, and perhaps he will now be a little closer to being someone Riley doesn’t need to worry about.

The problem is that Riley will continue to worry, but even Arthur himself was warned to always wear a helmet when riding a bike on his way out after putting the kids to bed.

But, this time too, perhaps that was enough. Youth was always a time of making mistakes, and also a time of correcting those mistakes. The key was just not to die drowning in those mistakes.