Ch.47Work Record 009 – Nothing but the Horizon in Sight (3)

“Don’t make me gamble on the possibility of atonement when I can’t win. They say possibilities are infinite, but when has that infinity ever given a single answer?”

He stood between Ms. Eve and me. I decided to willingly deny his words. I wasn’t the only one gambling here.

“I don’t understand why you’re reacting so sharply just because I know something. If there’s a possibility of atonement, then on the opposite side, there’s a probability of failure. We’re both betting on probability theory. So, please step aside. Don’t interfere with me, just as I don’t interfere with what you believe, Preceptor.”

Other people’s beliefs are their own. My beliefs are mine. He shouted with desperation. Why did I sense desperation? I couldn’t understand.

“Am I just a third party too? That’s not even funny! This woman killed ME! The bullet lodged in the back of my head was…”

I was annoyed that he kept trying to block us with the same words. It seemed like the routine had been disrupted. Perhaps his goal was to prevent others from trusting Eve so he could bring her to Hollowed Creek.

He wasn’t the actual person involved. He was a third party. He had never been shot, nor even had a body that could be shot. I decided to think of him as a single-layered hologram pretending to be a victim.

“That was your original. You’re just a copy. Not even a complete one. I don’t even know what fills the remaining 58% of you. It might be full of Hollowed Creek’s tricks for all I know. And yet! I’ve been treating you like a person and talking to you. I was betting on the possibility that you’re a human-like entity. Not anymore. Step aside, hologram.”

At my words, he finally moved aside. He output a voice through gritted teeth. He wasn’t speaking.

“There must be accountability…”

I didn’t bother responding to the hologram’s words. It was just a specter. A mere ghost visible to Ms. Eve and everyone else. Believing that, I knelt on one knee before Ms. Eve.

“I… I think getting better is just getting better. I’m glad I’ve been able to help. If Ms. Eve really killed the Preceptor and ran away out of greed, I wouldn’t help anymore, but I need to hear the reason, right? Please tell me. Help me decide.”

Ms. Eve quietly raised her head. Our faces were close. She caressed her hands, which she had replaced with prosthetics, and quietly opened her mouth.

“I… I was stupid. I didn’t know who this person was. I was so hungry for days that I thought it didn’t matter who helped me. But when he took me to the bedroom to rest, in the Preceptor’s bedroom…”

She raised her hands to cover her eyes. Startled by the sensation of prosthetics rather than hands touching her eyes, she pulled them away, then buried her face in her hands again.

“I saw Hollowed Creek’s sacred artifact. I, I… thought this person was also a pursuer from Hollowed Creek! When preparing to escape, I’d heard that Hollowed Creek’s inquisitors built houses throughout the wasteland, pretending to help escapees rest before sending them back to Hollowed Creek. I was so scared… Being captured by someone like that and sent back to Hollowed Creek to become a copy…”

She shot the Preceptor with all her might using her starving hands. The Preceptor was an exile, different from the leader, so instead of decorating the house with sacred artifacts, he quietly kept them in his room. Ms. Eve saw that.

It was a terribly unfortunate situation. The worst possible outcome between a desperate fugitive and an exile from the fugitive’s city of origin. I felt like I might be sick.

My expression hardened. The Preceptor’s words about accountability might… No. That was just a specter. Just a hologram, not a person. I could see tears flowing down along her prosthetic hands.

“There’s no one left to hear my apologies. Just holograms that seem placed by Hollowed Creek to mock me. Even cutting off the hands that committed murder and replacing them with prosthetics changed nothing. All I can see anywhere is the horizon. No land to lean on, just blue, blue, and more blue…”

Her tears were as deep as the sea she was trapped in, and just as salty. I couldn’t think of what to say. How had I dealt with simple misfortune before?

I always had a way. Subdue the mercenaries and escape. Try to argue my case before the disciplinary committee. Let Francis know I was alive and receive the path to becoming a night guard.

But she had no such opportunities, having left everyone she knew in Hollowed Creek. There were inquisitors interrogating her, but no one to take her side, and all she had in Los Angeles was too much time to ruminate on her actions. Los Angeles was her mental prison.

She looked up at the Preceptor’s hologram. Looking at his light-outlined form, perfectly modeled after his living appearance, she spoke in a tearful voice.

“I’m sorry. Truly. I didn’t know you were trying to help me. No one ever tried to help me. Everyone I knew in the Creek, my parents, everyone I believed in tried to stop me. I had to shoot my father who was shooting at me, saying it was better to shoot his daughter dead than let her become a fugitive! How could I, how could I…”

To me, it might be a reason, but to the Preceptor’s hologram, it would sound like an excuse. It seemed like an excuse to Ms. Eve herself. Even as she explained, her expression continued to crumble.

Perhaps I had been incredibly lucky. Someone had told me it was better to trust others than to distrust them, and when I followed that advice, I didn’t end up with a bullet in my head. I could try to believe those words.

Ms. Eve had learned that lesson through blood. The most horrifying part was that she learned it not through her own blood, but someone else’s. The Preceptor’s hologram snapped back gruffly.

“Then you’re now paying the price for that distrust. It will last a long time. Perhaps forever. And in the midst of all that, you’re getting distracted by some outsider? Atonement isn’t even on your…”

Something similar to hatred welled up inside me. It wasn’t hatred exactly. Hatred was the desire to destroy and neutralize. That was the emotion I felt toward bioengineered monstrosities.

This time, I stood between Ms. Eve and the hologram. This might be the right thing to do. Or perhaps not. Unable to reach a quick conclusion, I opened my mouth.

“It was Hollowed Creek, founded by your original, that made Eve unable to trust people. If we’re talking about consequences, your original just paid his price too, didn’t he? And atonement? By what authority do you judge whether atonement has been achieved or not? Was Hollowed Creek a company that added judicial functions to holograms created just to torment a single person?”

The Preceptor’s hologram crackled. He tried to speak, but his voice cut out and was replaced by static. The hologram shook his head. Though it wouldn’t help since it wasn’t a real body, he clutched his head.

The reaction was human-like. If it were truly just a hologram, it wouldn’t have brought its hand to its head in pain. I was starting to doubt, when the hologram shouted. Again with desperation.

“I won’t give up my mind too! This is my will, my corpse with only bones remaining, my tombstone! Damn it!”

The hologram began to flicker unstably. He approached me again. He tried to place his hand on my shoulder, but being just a hologram, it ended up floating above my shoulder.

“Eve must pay the price. She must taste despair. That’s the only way. Remember this. As you said, I paid my price. Eve must pay hers too. Let her continue her mercenary work. Now go. Disappear! Stop tormenting me and get out! You’ve already taken everything from me!”

The hologram was speaking like a madman. He seemed to be trying to calm down, making incoherent statements, then wailing like a lunatic. I started to sense something strange outside the house. Creek’s vans were beginning to move.

I didn’t know what was about to happen, but I knew we didn’t have time to linger inside. We needed to move quickly. I put my helmet back on and extended my hand to Ms. Eve.

“The Creek guys are starting to move, Eve! They might have sent more troops because the hologram started malfunctioning!”

Ms. Eve couldn’t reach for my hand. Her trembling hands seemed to have lost all will. Nevertheless, she reached out in fear. She couldn’t go back to the Creek.

As she grabbed my hand and stood up, I lightly embraced her as she repeatedly apologized to the writhing hologram of the Preceptor. I threw open the door and exited. There were no armed forces.

I jumped lightly. Leaping over the garden and hedge fence, I landed where I had parked the bike, put the helmet on Ms. Eve, and seated her on the back of the bike. She wrapped her arms around my waist again.

The strength was almost compulsive. She was holding on so tightly that I could feel the pressure even with my Post-Human Type IV shock-resistant body. I hadn’t turned off the engine, so I immediately activated the motor and started driving.

Leaving tire marks on the access road from the wasteland to the Preceptor’s house, I changed direction. I could vaguely see cars coming from Hollowed Creek at the edge of my vision. We needed to return to Los Angeles.

Those cars must have seen us disappearing along the horizon, but strangely, instead of chasing us, they rushed into the Preceptor’s villa. Weren’t we the target? Or had we left something behind?

Ms. Eve seemed unable to answer at the moment. She was just holding tightly to my waist with her head down, as if afraid of falling off, so I continued driving toward Los Angeles without stopping.

It took less than two hours to reach the beachside ruins where she lived. She got off the bike with trembling legs. Only after looking around did she start to catch her breath.

Unable to enter her house, she tried to lean against the front door, but realizing this ruin was a gang hideout, she staggered but stood up. I took her hand, hid the bike, and went inside together.

I led her to the bedroom and sat her on the bed. The bedroom, which had been a comfortable place until we left, now had a terrible atmosphere.

Ms. Eve leaned against me, her face covered in tear stains. With her face against my shoulder, she mumbled.

“Am I stupid and selfish, Arthur? I thought an apology would be enough. I thought something would change if I went to meet the Preceptor’s hologram and apologized, but nothing changed. I shouldn’t feel resentful about that, right? It’s terribly selfish. Right? Or maybe it was foolish to expect change from an unchanging hologram…”

When I killed Osgard Company’s driver by smashing his face into the steering wheel, I sneered that I wasn’t someone who could give second chances. And it was still true now. But the feeling was completely opposite.

I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t efficient, and it was so different from all the previous situations where I could find motivation and words through a desire for efficiency.

After much thought, I finally chose honesty as my answer. It might have been irresponsible. Everything had blurry, unclear outlines.

“I… I don’t know either. I just think it was bad luck, but I know that’s not enough. I want to say Hollowed Creek was wrong, but…”

“Murder is a sin, Arthur. I, I killed too many people trying to escape from Hollowed Creek. Mercenary work suits a murderer like me. That’s it, right? Tell me that’s true…”

That’s what Kay had said. People easily brand themselves. Not others, but themselves. How could it be erased? This wasn’t just a brand that burned the flesh, but one that scorched the bone.

I was about to suggest quitting mercenary work, but I remembered the Preceptor’s final words. He had said to let her continue her mercenary work. He had said it desperately. Why? It seemed better to find out.

It seemed I could postpone suggesting she quit until after that. Not wanting to irresponsibly borrow someone else’s words, I searched for something I could say myself. I could find only one thing.

“What do you want, senior? It’s not to be acknowledged as a murderer, right? How did you feel when you were with me? Was the horizon all you could see then too?”

Ms. Eve began shaking her head as if that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. After shaking her head for a long time, until her blue hair became disheveled, she finally spoke in a whisper.

“Everything seemed to be getting better. I thought I could see the end of the horizon. Just, it felt like I had someone I could lean on, talk to, and share my past with… Yeah. It was tempting. It felt like if I took your hand, I could go somewhere good, and good things would happen if I stayed by your side. It felt like I could forget everything and start over…”

Someone like Ms. Eve couldn’t possibly forget so easily about killing someone. She was a good person. A good person who had fallen into an unbearable and undeserved place.

“And yet, when I look at you, I’m reminded of how terrible a person I am. Killing people, again and again…”

I grabbed both her hands. I repeated what I had said before while drinking a beer.

“I’ve killed many people too. When I worked for Belvedere’s security team, I was in the security division that stopped intruders, so I probably killed over a hundred people in six months. It was the same after I left Belvedere. I killed Osgard Company’s driver out of anger, and I selfishly stabbed Half & Half Company’s security team member in the neck for myself and the people I know. If Ms. Eve is a terrible person, then so am I.”

I could bear it. Why? Was it because all those people deserved to die? No. I still didn’t know the reason, but I could help. Ms. Eve shook her head.

“No, no. You’re not a terrible person. Absolutely not…”

“Then Ms. Eve isn’t a terrible person either. Don’t give up, Eve. Until now, I’ve rejected all claims that I’m an amazing person, but the truth is, I am amazing.”

Not being used to praising myself, my words were a bit awkward, but I decided to continue. For the first time, I revealed something like the confidence I had lamented to my work assistant AI.

“I came all this way from being trapped in a copyist’s cultivator with only a severed head after a bioengineered monstrosity escaped from Belvedere’s security team. I escaped from the lab, and even after being expelled from Belvedere, I didn’t give up. I joined the night guard, and now I’m here in front of Ms. Eve. You can try, and I know how. Let’s do it together, okay?”

Whether Eve had seen land or white clouds at the end of the horizon, I couldn’t know… but at least she nodded.