Ch.46Work Record 009 – Nothing but the Horizon in Sight (2)

After running for about two hours, nothing remained but a barren wasteland with nothing visible ahead or behind. The sunlight was intense, but the homeostasis maintenance function of the Post-Human Type IV was working well.

As we continued across the wasteland, gradually approaching our destination, Eve’s hands gripping my back tightened little by little. Just fifteen more minutes of running, and we were already quite close to Hallowed Creek.

We stopped briefly in the middle of the wasteland after running for two hours without encountering even a single car. After checking my weapon, I glanced back at Eve, who was still holding tightly to my back.

“If it’s the founder’s birthplace, there might be someone guarding it. Should we approach slowly and scout first?”

She removed her hands from my waist and shook her head slightly. Even through the helmet visor, I could faintly see her gloomy expression.

“We didn’t encounter any gangs or wasteland dwellers on the way here. So there won’t be any need to draw weapons. There is someone guarding the place, but they won’t stop me from approaching. They never have.”

Do they think that by revisiting her guilt, Eve will eventually give up and return to Hallowed Creek? If so, I’d feel like slapping them.

Trusting Eve’s words, I continued toward our destination. Taking an exit from the straight highway, I could see a well-maintained country house in the distance, accompanied by greenery unusual for the wasteland.

For the home of someone who provided the ideological foundation for a mega-corporation, it didn’t seem particularly large. Perhaps they were simply frugal, or maybe they had been exiled to the wasteland for some reason.

In front of the house stood a woman wearing form-fitting reinforced armor. She had flowing blonde hair. Seeing her long hair, I knew she was also an Eve. Probably not an Inquisitor.

I had to stop the bike midway as she blocked the path to the founder’s house. I let Eve dismount first and grabbed my carbine. I set the control to full auto.

Without a helmet, I could see her face clearly. She had fair skin with more vitality than Eve’s, and while her outfit was clearly combat gear, her lipstick was dark. Her face looked like she was in her twenties.

Her flowing blonde hair shimmered in the sunlight, and her snake-like eyes smiled unpleasantly. Her face showed composure, but not the kind that would be used for good.

It might not be just the smile. Perhaps it was the Hallowed Creek logo necklace she wore outside her armor that bothered me. She called out to Eve as she dismounted from the bike.

“You’re back, Eve #113764. I heard you were rude to the High Priestess’s hand in Los Angeles, but the High Priestess has mercifully allowed you to visit the founder’s home still. What’s this beside you? Have you earned enough to hire a bodyguard, or have you found another ‘good person’ you’ll shoot in the back of the head someday? Either way, you’re full of corruption from outside the Creek.”

I took a slow, deep breath and glanced around. About 500 meters away was a sniper in desert camouflage.

Though our bike’s engine was already turned off, I could feel subtle vibrations from the ground. Vibrations from an armored van or vehicle with its engine running.

I could assume there were reinforcements out of sight. I didn’t hear anything more, but what I did hear was enough. Eve spoke with a slightly shrinking voice.

“Just mock me as usual and get out of the way, Eve. I didn’t come to see you.”

“No, no. I can’t do that. I have the right to ask you questions, Eve #113764. Because…”

Seeing Eve shrink further, I reached out to stop her from moving forward and interrupted the woman’s words.

It was rude, but I didn’t care. They would treat me as a corrupted outsider regardless of my politeness, so there was no reason to waste goodwill on empty air.

And to get in without fighting or giving answers Eve didn’t want to give, threats seemed better than polite conversation. Sometimes a hardline approach is necessary.

“Because there’s a sniper lying in the heat haze, and there are several copies in the van hidden by the house. For someone standing so proudly like a vanguard, you sure have a lot of insurance. Don’t you?”

She mockingly raised her hands in a gesture of surrender, as if trying to appear intimidating in her tight armor. Do I have the means to eliminate them all? If I could handle the sniper, it wouldn’t be difficult.

“I’m so grateful you noticed, outsider. Then you should appreciate that telling the sniper not to shoot you dead was our form of courtesy and mercy. When someone talks like that after we’ve shown mercy and courtesy, the old man gets angry. He might order us to shoot. Hmm?”

Her hand approached to push my shoulder. It seemed like an attempt to establish dominance with her strength enhanced by the artificial muscle fibers in her armor. I waited until her hand came close, then raised my own hand to grab her throat.

The Post-Human Type IV could move once at a speed that couldn’t be tracked by the frame rate of an unwary eye. Like a jumping spider that disappears with only the sound of its legs hitting the ground when you blink.

With my other hand, I grabbed the wrist that was trying to push me and raised it toward the sniper. I used my thumb to push her head back. I smiled back mockingly.

Another bluff? Probably not. The moment she gave me this distance, I had the advantage. Speaking felt like pushing chips onto a table.

“Tell them to shoot. That seems like a decent reinforced suit—it would make a good human shield to block five or six shots until I reach the sniper. If I twist your neck here, the copies who weren’t ordered to kill intruders will just sit there until I shoot them dead. Why would I bring Eve to such easy prey in front of someone with what seems like a latex fetish?”

I laid out the simplest method of subduing her in a monotone. She looked at me like a nationalist looking at the Belvedere Temple. Fear was seeping into her face.

Her leg came up with enhanced strength from the artificial muscles, kicking hard at my chest, but my body didn’t shake much. The Post-Human Type IV has excellent shock absorption.

A warning shot landed ten meters from us. The exact distance was about 510 meters. I continued speaking.

“Eve said she doesn’t want anyone to die. And you probably didn’t know two people were coming. I’m an offliner, so I don’t show up on radio detection. Don’t worry. You’re lucky. Even if you die here showing off, Hallowed Creek will make you a martyr.”

Words I don’t mean are easier to say. It felt like filling in answers on a test. Just an essay question.

Eve tugged at my collar as if asking me to stop, so I decided to wrap things up. I never really intended to kill her anyway.

This needed to be just an incident. It had to be embarrassing enough that this woman, who loved her High Priestess too much, would rather bury it than report it. That would be safer.

“So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll put you down and apologize for my rudeness, and you… do whatever you want. Either report to your beloved High Priestess that the old man made a spectacle of himself by failing to stop a young mercenary, or silence the sniper and call it just an incident. Your choice?”

I block her attempt to nod with my thumb, preventing her from nodding even though she wants to, and keeping her from speaking until I release her, pretending I just realized I should let go.

With a face red from humiliation, she spat out a brief word. She didn’t even have the courage to tell me to kill her. Those with such courage don’t survive to old age.

“An… incident. Yes. Sniper. Forget what you saw and return to the van for rest. Done?”

No other commands were displayed on the UI that appeared over her pupils. I put her down and gave a slight bow. With my hand still on the carbine handle, I returned to my normal tone and said:

“I’m glad no one got hurt because of this incident. I apologize for the misunderstanding. Everyone gets tense when they come out to the wasteland… Let’s call it an incident because of that. Sounds good.”

The most important thing when talking to people is understanding what they value. In that sense, Hallowed Creek’s fanatics were easy to manipulate with words.

Eve, who had been almost hiding behind me, passed by the other Eve who had cleared the way and entered the house through the front door—a house that luxuriously maintained a garden with running water in the middle of the wasteland.

Only then did Eve start to catch her breath. She had been someone who thought she just had to endure, with no will to resist. I quietly waited for her, turning the carbine’s control to safety.

As her rough breathing gradually softened, she took one more shaky breath and said:

“When I’m with you, Hallowed Creek just seems like… a monster under the bed or in the closet. They’re terrifying people to me, but in front of you, they scatter like shadows. Let’s go, Arthur. It’s time to meet him.”

Without asking who we were meeting, I walked into the house with my shoes on. Following her into the living room… a man with a round face wearing small glasses was sitting on the sofa.

More precisely, he wasn’t actually sitting there. A hologram was being projected in a sitting position on the sofa. There were hologram projectors throughout the house. The hologram was created simultaneously from at least four directions.

The hologram began to speak. An AI? Not an AI. It was much closer to how a human speaks.

“I knew Eve would come, but I never thought she’d bring a guest. Pleased to meet you. I am the founder of Hallowed Creek. About 42% of me, that is. The rest was damaged because Eve shot me and ran away, only returning to copy and upload my consciousness. Fortunately, I can still talk and think.”

Eve couldn’t raise her head in front of the hologram. Instead, he began to speak. A thoughtful, slow voice came through.

“If Eve brought someone here, she probably wanted me to tell you this. I am an exile. After the war, I established Hallowed Creek to give people who had lost everything to believe in a means to believe again and dream of life… but the current High Priestess wanted people to look at her, not at faith. I became an exile in a power struggle, given only this villa in the wasteland.”

God may be an abstract concept, but the High Priestess is real. People want to believe in something more concrete. If they can’t, they want to have a more concrete concept.

The founder, with only 42% remaining, didn’t look like a villain at all. That might be why Eve couldn’t raise her head. He continued speaking.

“Most of my memories are damaged, so that’s about all I remember. Would you like to know what happened on the day I died… or more precisely, the day my original died?”

I nodded briefly. I felt goosebumps rising along my forearm, but I came here to listen. Not to deny.

“Eve was running away. Out of Hallowed Creek. Running without knowing the way, she ended up at this villa. I could have called the Inquisitors, but I decided to protect her. I gave her food, drink, and a place to sleep. I planned to take her to Los Angeles after she rested. But!”

The hologram began to flicker. It writhed in pain, and a gunshot wound appeared from the back of his head, changing to show his head pierced from back to front. There were also two gunshot wounds on his back.

“This woman shot me and ran away. She took food and water, even took a car from my garage and fled. The bullet missed my brain, so my original didn’t die instantly. He was alive until Eve returned out of guilt.”

Eve beside me was already kneeling. She couldn’t even look at the hologram with the gunshot wounds, as if seeking absolution rather than forgiveness.

But the hologram wore a somewhat sad expression as it spoke. Any hatred seemed unable to last long, as if it were merely feigned.

“So, stay away from Eve. Let her be alone. There will only be more wounds. Can’t you see the soul of an unhappy, cursed sinner?”

There seemed to be something strange about his words, but I couldn’t quite grasp it. Despite having had a caretaker once, Belvedere graduates weren’t particularly good at empathy. I asked him:

“I don’t believe in souls or curses. Why Eve shot you…”

“Would knowing that bring my dead original back? You’re giving the wrong answer. This Eve doesn’t deserve happiness. That’s not me saying it. It’s not for you to say either. It just is.”

The hologram turned its head to look at where Eve was. The hologram had no eyes. It only saw where the cameras from all directions focused.

“Speak, 1…”

The hologram flickered briefly. Then it started speaking again.

“Speak, Eve. Tell us if I’ve spoken even one word of falsehood. You know best.”

There was so much I didn’t understand, but I could tell that coming to a place like this frequently couldn’t be good for Eve. Eve, kneeling on the floor, barely managed to speak.

“It’s true, Arthur. All of it. Do you understand now why I said I was undeserving? Why I kept telling you I wasn’t a good person, just not a bad one? Can you see how ridiculous I am? I killed someone and went to Los Angeles to keep killing people. But when I’m with you, I feel a little better… and I thought I shouldn’t feel that way, which is why I said today would be the last day. So please…”

There was something I needed to recall. I felt it. What was it? I mentally retraced conversations I’d had with others over the past few days. I recalled what Kay had said.

She might have already given up and labeled herself as an irresponsible person. And she said such people were very common.

Since Eve didn’t talk much with other employees, it was unlikely Kay knew and spoke about her, but I decided to borrow the meaning contained in her words for now.

“I still want to hear the reason, Eve. Still.”

“Even if there were a reason, it wouldn’t change the murder. My original won’t come back to life…”

The founder’s hologram shouted at me. It was true. But that wasn’t the only truth. I faced the hologram and spoke.

I hated not knowing things. About Belvedere’s pus, about why I died and came back in Jack Winstead’s laboratory—I didn’t know anything, and I didn’t want to remain ignorant about Eve either.

“It’s a bit ridiculous to expect me to just blindly hate and curse after hearing this far. It was a terrible act. Ungrateful. But I’ll decide how to treat Eve. I prefer to hear everything before making decisions. Thanks for telling me, but I don’t want to be possessed by a ghost.”

Eve still couldn’t raise her head. But the founder’s hologram brought his hand to my shoulder. Hovering his hand about a centimeter above my shoulder, he spoke in a small voice.

“It’s already too late. It’s already too late. Please understand. Please.”