Ch.333If… A Single Red Thread Had Broken (1)

Before departing for the Las Vegas Strip, my Eve’s security…

[I won’t entrust it to anyone.]

>[I’ll entrust it to Nightwatch.]

[I’ll entrust it to Silver Lining.]

[Unavailable: You needed to secure Michael Peshikov’s research records and transparent eyes.]

I hand over El Sueño’s body to Fitz & Morrison in the middle of the wasteland, away from any surveillance systems.

There was virtually no possibility they would misuse El Sueño’s body. Thanks to revealing a truth that wasn’t quite the truth to El Pastor.

The amount of credits deposited in my account was… enough to buy a house for Eve, another for Arthur-2 to live independently, and still have plenty left over.

It seemed almost absurd that I was working and paying rent in a housing project with this much money. But I wasn’t intoxicated by wealth.

What I’m waiting for now is… meeting Los Angeles again. I’ll enjoy some mundane daily life with Nightwatch comrades at my Eve’s hideout, rest a bit, and then make two more stops.

I’ll go to Panacea Meditech to tell them that while I may not be able to change Mr. Günter’s attitude, I can change Belvedere’s. Then to Belvedere to use the opportunity given by Mr. Günter, and after that… I’ll go to Hollowwood Creek.

Working as El Sueño this time taught me many valuable things. Value can fascinate people. I can use the Creek inquisitor that Pastor Bill and I had targeted for our operation.

No. He won’t feel used. He’ll believe he’s doing a favor for someone who can open up to him, that he holds the initiative.

Either way, he’ll be completely liberated from his guilt, so I decided not to feel like I’m doing anything wrong. With a refreshed feeling, I head toward Los Angeles.

But then, I received an urgent communication request from Mila. It was just a message asking me to come to my Eve’s hideout, without any explanation. I push my bike to its maximum speed.

Going just under three hundred kilometers per hour, it didn’t take long to cut through the wasteland and reach the ruins. The air smells of ash. The bike’s handlebars crush in my grip.

At the entrance to my Eve’s hideout, there were signs that three armored vans from Hollowwood Creek had broken through the doors. Mila’s emergency signal was coming from inside. I tried not to assume the worst.

In front of the house door, copies with their heads cut off and bodies riddled with bullets were sprawled across the floor. Nightwatch colleagues were skilled enough, but there were too many copies. I should have entrusted it to Silver Lining.

With a nauseating sense of anxiety, I pull out the Hollowwood Creek armored van that had crashed into the doorway. I nearly slip in a pool of blood as I enter my Eve’s villa.

At the entrance, several copies lay with bullets precisely lodged in their soft spots, and blood trails led into the living room… I saw someone with blood filling their broken visor. A familiar person.

It was Calissa. Mila had managed to snipe the invading copies, but couldn’t stop the barrage of bullets from the overwhelming numbers. After confirming her identity, I grab the wall to stand up.

The old marble wall crumbles in my grip. Following the blood trail inside… there was fire, and an inquisitor. His side was slashed by Calissa’s high-frequency blade in her final strike.

It wasn’t just a slash. A large chunk of his side had been cut away, yet he seemed to have walked this far on preservative fluid. Hollowwood Creek was still a meditech company. They could make preservative fluid.

The inquisitor had completed his mission and died. During the three minutes he could endure with preservative fluid, he created the flames before my eyes. His hand, propped against his exoskeleton in death, still held a flamethrower.

And there were flames. Flames consuming one human form wrapped around another. Within the human form wrapped around another, I saw something familiar. Something very familiar.

An object that looked like triangular carbon plates connected to form a sphere. I reach into the flames. From the sticky fuel-fed fire, from the crumbling ashes of the skeleton, I retrieve it.

I extinguish the fire clinging to my hand and press Prometheus’s artificial brain to my forehead. Though significantly damaged by the heat, Mila was still in a state where she could communicate. I establish a short-range connection.

“A-Arthur, I’m sorry. You entrusted me with five talents, but far from earning ten, I couldn’t even keep the five you gave me…”

The string wrapped around my finger wasn’t taut. It felt like it had snapped and was fluttering. I deny it. I try to blindly believe the string is tied somewhere. Blind faith crumbles easily.

“This isn’t the time for metaphors, Mila. What happened? I mean, my Eve…”

Mila shows me what she was last seeing through her artificial brain. A virtual screen displayed a magazine about hand regeneration therapy. She couldn’t speak.

But that silence broke the last thread. I’m free from the earth. My body feels lighter, as if I could fly just on the updraft created by these flames burning before me.

The hubris that burned Icarus as he flew too high is gone now. Only the sky itself is the limit. I’m free. Perhaps too much so. The thermosphere is too far, but it feels like I could fly anywhere.

“We had dealt with a four-person mercenary team sent by Hollowwood Cre-Creek before, and I think they realized then that this place was guarded by just one mercenary company. So they sent these troo-troops…”

Mila seemed to think explaining further would only gnaw at my heart, or perhaps there was something more important. She was kind. Human, really.

“I have a reque-request. Please destroy this artificial bra-brain. If they know Prometheus is alive, Mr. Yoon or others could be in dan-danger too. Besides, the dam-damage is severe…”

Strangely, I didn’t feel sad. No tears came. Or perhaps I was deceiving myself, trying to tie myself to the ground with a string that had already broken.

At some point, everything becomes tiresome. All the sounds around me start to sound like unfunny jokes, and everything I see turns gray like air mixed with smog.

The only thing emitting an intense color was the flame before me. Looking down slowly at the smooth carbon surface of Prometheus’s artificial brain, I saw only a pair of black holes staring back at the black sphere.

My innate excellence begins to work again. I could see what I could do. I could also see reasons not to do those things. They were in that flame. The silhouette crumbles. Even the reasons crumble.

From the crumbled remains, I lift her two prosthetic hands to my cheeks. I feel their warmth one last time. My Posthuman Type IV body, immune to fire, felt even the heat of burning prosthetic hands as warmth.

I brush away the crumbled ashes on my cheek and fill my eyes with a handful of the flames burning before me, in place of the extinguished flames in my eyes. With those flames, I erase the last mark on the speedometer. I whisper slowly.

“Chance.”

“Take a deep breath, Agent Arthur Murphy. Your biometric responses are unstable.”

Unstable? Perhaps it is unstable. Crushed marble fragments clung to my hand that had been pressing against the floor, and the floor bore an indentation in the shape of my handprint.

“Don’t worry. I’m still your Agent Arthur Murphy. I’ll still only repay them as they’ve given. I’ve always chosen tit for tat, and it’s worked, hasn’t it?”

Chance’s voice sounded somewhat relieved. How human. I felt a little comforted. Though it probably means nothing.

“Affirmative. You have always said, ‘He took one life, so I will repay with one life.’ That much is appropriate for Chairman John Rutherford, for whom legal means of justice have disappeared.”

Chance was certainly kind and wise. He didn’t remind me of what I’d been through with words like “especially” in this situation, only reaffirming that I was someone who stubbornly stuck to my principles.

But he was clearly wrong. Rutherford didn’t take one life from me. Instead of taking something, he gave me something. It was time to say goodbye to Chance.

“You’re wrong, Chance. John Rutherford gave me flames… so I’ll give him flames too. Aegis, block Chance 0-1-3-9. Defend against any abnormal connection attempts.”

“Executing.”

Now my mind is finally quiet. I press my forehead again to Mila’s artificial brain as she tries to hold onto her fading consciousness. I whispered to her slowly.

“Mila, Mila… What you always wanted to discard has now become what I want to have. I’ll grant your request, so will you grant mine?”

“Wh-what? If it’s your request…”

“Give me the name and authority of Prometheus that you’ve always wanted to discard. Let yourself fall asleep only as the daughter of those great parents who raised you as Mila. What do you think?”

Mila’s voice seemed confused. Not joyful. Everything is seduction and deception. I seduce her once more. A seduction she cannot refuse.

“That’s, well…”

“It’s about completing the mission you received as Prometheus. I’ll take back the five talents you protected through all kinds of hardships last time, even though you couldn’t protect the five talents I gave you this time. Okay?”

“If I complete Prome-Prometheus’s mission… Can I repay the five tal-talents I failed to protect this time?”

“Of course. It’s about freeing yourself from the guilt that’s been filling a corner of that artificial brain. It’s the last kindness I’m offering you. Because you thought of Mr. Yoon and your colleagues until the very end.”

Mila couldn’t resist this sweetness. Through the short-range communication in my mind, I receive the authority and name of the Prometheus drone. I gently hold her artificial brain in both hands and crush it in one motion.

I’ll properly find an urn for these remains and place them near the urns Mila had prepared, so I carefully tuck them away, then head to Bill’s room. His hologram projector and server had also been destroyed.

I take his Bible. But then, I heard the sound of wheels spinning outside the building. From the volume, it was my bike’s wheels. A voice calling my name came from the bike’s voice synthesizer.

Security vulnerabilities are always in reality. Certainly, even if I blocked you in my head, you can still make yourself heard. Smart, Chance. I leisurely whispered to Aegis.

“You got me there… Aegis, revoke Chance’s external device access permissions too.”

“Executing.”

The bike sound stops. My superhuman hearing catches the sound of gritted teeth from the second floor. Instead of using the stairs, I jump up to the second floor. I saw an Eve leaning against the stair pillar with a preservative fluid injector stuck in her waist.

Is it my Eve? No. She’s not blue. I raise my hand, swing it around and tear it off. I didn’t control my strength. It was more like I didn’t feel a reason to.

Holding that Eve’s head in my hand, I establish a short-range connection. Through the computing assistant in her head, I connect to the cult leader.

“John.”

“Who is this? Since you know my name, you must be one of Bill’s pawns, but it seems there’s a survivor.”

“When the sun and moon rise simultaneously, and the sirens from the extinction war era start screaming, you’d better run.”

With one hand gripping the back of her head, I crush the head I had been holding lightly, computing assistant and all. I lightly dust off my hands and check the medicine box that Eve had been carrying. What I wanted was inside.

It was hippocampus stimulant pills. They probably came intending to take prisoners. There’s no easier way to extract information than feeding someone hippocampus stimulants and scanning their brain.

But thanks to the valiant fight of my Nightwatch colleagues, that didn’t happen. The Hollowwood Creek forces failed to subdue without killing, so they killed everyone.

I chew a hippocampus stimulant pill. I focus my mind on the memories I want to recall. What I want to remember isn’t my memories with Eve. I remember all of those without the stimulant.

To keep my promise to Mila, I forcibly extract the memory of when I scanned Prometheus’s flames with the hippocampus stimulant. I review each letter I saw on the screen and reorganize them into images.

The important thing wasn’t weapon technology. The important things were information and coordinates. Within Prometheus’s flames were coordinates of deactivated and classified bases of the Secret Mission Bureau and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

John Rutherford, who usurped the word “god,” will see what the real gods of the extinction war era were like. When the Phaethon Station screams and the sky begins to burn, he too will understand.

I will bring him the war intelligences and war technologies that he had to excavate and use without understanding, which I will rightfully claim through the birthright I received from Mila.

When he took one life from my Eve, I had planned to take one life from him in return, but now that he has given me flames, I too will give him flames.

I excluded Chance because Chance would try to stop me somehow. I didn’t want to turn Chance off. I didn’t want to use seduction and deception like Mila who had no other option. That’s all.

Connected only to Aegis, as I was about to leave the house with my bike that had gotten stuck at the entrance… several scavengers were lurking around the villa.

I draw Hubris. I charge it and pull the trigger. Two scavengers are torn apart along with the villa wall and tumble across the ground.

Another one sits back on the ground and pulls himself backward several times, bracing against the floor. I follow, pull Hubris’s bolt to load a new tungsten projectile, and whisper to him.

“You can take everything from the Hollowwood Creek guys. Oh, don’t use the computing assistants the copies are wearing. They’re for re-educating humans, so it’s better to dismantle them and sell them as parts.”

He nods even though he doesn’t understand my intention. I check the battery pack’s remaining charge and continue speaking with Hubris slung over my shoulder.

“Since they’re megacorporation items, you can make much more money than from regular corpse-stripping. In return, I’d appreciate if you didn’t touch the pile of ashes in the middle of the living room. Can I ask that favor?”

I aim Hubris at other gang members who had gathered at the thunderous sound and pull the trigger. The road in the ruins turns blood-red. Is this a problem? This was what this gang did anyway. No problem.

After stroking the head of the gang member sitting in front of me a few times, I stand up. I get on my bike and head into the wasteland with the coordinates obtained from Prometheus’s flames. I was free. Perhaps too much so.