Ch.56Work Record 011 – Seizing the Opportunity (1)

A week of night patrol ends on Tuesday, not Friday. The weekend has always been defined by work days. Waking up in the on-call room has become familiar, but just as I’ve gotten used to it, I have to say goodbye.

I still wake up at 7:30 AM. Perhaps the nights are too long. I briefly organize the past few days’ work in my head. Since meeting Kay last Friday… nothing particularly noteworthy has happened.

The last important thing I remember is the producer from Farmers Company contacting us, wanting to send a box of ingredients to Night Patrol. For the entire weekend, I mostly assisted with patrol duties.

Yesterday… yesterday was nothing special either. Just the usual routine—gang members acting up, so we took the van, eliminated them all, called the cleanup team, and returned. But today is special, even if there’s no work.

According to the contract, salary is paid on the last working day of the fourth week each month. Today is the first time my salary will be deposited into my account. I’ve received paychecks at Bellwether often, but… this feels very different.

Unlike at Bellwether, where it always felt burdensome, today I’ll see how much I’ve earned—or been saddled with—through my own abilities. My heart has been racing since morning.

Of course, I’ll have to wait twelve hours. Night Patrol’s work hours start at 8 PM. I don’t seem to be the only one up early. I hear someone knocking on the on-call room door.

The knock is light. It must be Tina with her hollow lightweight prosthetic. There was no need to be cautious, but I confirmed before speaking.

“Come in. You know I wake up at 7:30 every day.”

The on-call room door opened, and as always, Tina entered, limping with her skeletal-looking lightweight prosthetic limbs. She pulled up a chair, sat down, and grinned.

“You can’t just drink alcohol others buy you anymore, Offliner. Can I get a can too? I’ve been working my ass off this month. Right?”

It was a moment when I’d be receiving in one go what would take months to earn as a new employee at Bellwether. Finding Chance and infiltrating Half & Half Company had been especially lucrative.

Still, instead of boasting, I just shrugged. I wasn’t one to flaunt wealth, nor did I know how to.

“Everything I earned this month will probably go toward finding a place. Well… the idea that I can pay a housing deposit after working for just one month might sound deceptive.”

“So what? You’re a Posthuman Type IV! You should earn at least that much to feel, hmm, how should I put it… compensated? Right?”

Feeling compensated. It was true, but I wasn’t looking for compensation for being kicked out of Bellwether. What I wanted was compensation for what I’d done at Night Patrol.

It would be enough. More than enough, actually. Not because of the money, but because it meant I had a place to return to. That said, I wasn’t going to turn down the money.

I answered with a grin before saying:

“Ah, um. After I sign the lease, should I give you my address too? It’ll be around here anyway…”

I lightly tapped the wall toward where Nadia stays. Tina seemed to understand what I meant, so I continued.

“It would be good to have a place to hide when Bellwether searches the entire city looking for mutants. They’ll search partner companies, but they won’t look for employees’ homes.”

Tina reached out and tapped the tip of my nose. Now she’s grinning.

“Such a nice kid. Then I might take you up on that? Even with President Yoon’s help, there might be dangerous situations.”

After saying that, she stared at my face for a while before tilting her head and asking. I heard the question I always hear once more.

“Isn’t it tiring to live so nicely, Arthur? I’ve never lived that way… but it seems exhausting. People treat you like someone they can ask favors from, and yeah, they’ll treat you like someone who’ll help anyway.”

Her words overlapped with what the Section 4 Chief had told me, making me chuckle a bit. I lightly tapped my bag containing the carbine and said:

“Considering the number of people I’ve killed, I can’t claim to be nice anywhere. And it’s not that tiring. If I start being nice first, I don’t need to whine about why there aren’t more nice people in the world.”

Tina giggled and replied. She seemed to find my words quite amusing.

“Just saying that kind of thing means you’re terribly nice. Don’t take everything so seriously. You have human aspects too…”

“Humanity often takes the form of flaws. I know.”

It was the flaw I had shown to Kay. The sensation of wanting to find Walter and beat him to death with my own hands. As I dwelled on that feeling, I shuddered at the creeping sensation.

Tina slowly extended her lightweight prosthetic hand and stroked my head. Looking at me with the same comfortable expression she uses with Nadia, she said:

“Smart kid. These days, even Nadia’s starting to say ‘Don’t treat me like a child!’ so I needed someone to treat like a younger sibling, but when I’m with you, I feel more…”

In the middle of her sentence, we heard knocking from Nadia’s side of the wall. We both burst into laughter at this response, which suggested she was listening. Tina finished her sentence:

“I feel more like the kid. Stay that way, Arthur. It makes you unpredictable. The right person in the right place at the right time. Yeah.”

“Among the terms used to describe an efficiently deployed Bellwether bioweapon, that’s my favorite.”

That morning conversation ended, and soon President Yoon arrived. Though no one announced it, everyone had arrived by noon as if by agreement. Enzo’s expression was serious.

Enzo is quite an admirable person. I had wondered how important an accountant could be in a mercenary company, but Enzo was essential in every field. Especially now.

Salary statements are being distributed. Each translucent file contained one or two paper documents. Mine showed an amount close to twelve thousand credits, even after deducting the brokerage fee withheld by Bellwether.

The brokerage fee was essentially a tax, but Bellwether preferred the term “fee.” They feared becoming like nationalists if they started using the word “tax.”

I put away the statement without showing my excitement. Everyone was checking their accounts, so I also took out my phone to see the number 12,000 credited to my account that previously had only a few hundred credits.

I sighed to suppress my rising smile. After seeing everyone confirm their amounts, Enzo clapped his trembling prosthetic hands once and said:

“If there are any errors in the amounts, please let me know… Especially Arthur, since you’ve worked with many different clients… I’ve taken measures to prevent problems, but if anything happens, don’t struggle alone and be sure to contact me…”

The Chance job would have been paid by the nationalists, and stopping the terrorist in front of Fitts & Morrison’s headquarters would have been paid by Fitts & Morrison. Somehow, I felt apologetic toward Enzo.

Credits themselves represented trust. Earning twelve thousand credits this month meant I could expect to earn twelve thousand next month too, and it also meant I could afford to be generous by that amount.

Everyone had gathered at this time for the salary statement distribution, and now the atmosphere suggested it was time to disperse. I returned to the on-call room, connected to Stephanet, and contacted Bellwether Administration’s Housing Management Department.

With a stable job, my record since starting mercenary work on Stephanet, and sufficient credits in my account, finding housing becomes simple.

Especially if it’s a vacant unit. The screen changes a few times. Stephanet works furiously, seemingly reviewing my records from Bellwether’s side.

I was worried that my numerous “record deletions” might be an obstacle. A red line appeared stating that there was no record for the six months after graduating from Bellwether Security Team Training College.

But suddenly, that red sentence disappeared. As if it had been erased, literally. Stephanet began reviewing the next item as if such an entry had never existed.

Did they just consider it insignificant and skip it? Even for Bellwether college graduates, it wasn’t uncommon to be unsettled for about half a year.

Anyway, the word that finally appeared on my phone screen was “ELIGIBLE.” A notification filled the screen saying this result had been sent to the Housing Management Department.

Now a housing department employee will review it and send me a payment request. Once I pay the requested amount, the lease contract will be completed.

The high-speed era created by Bellwether made everything too fast. It was extremely efficient—if you had money and needed a home, and there was a home available, they would provide it.

It was inhuman behavior, of course. However, “inhuman” doesn’t always mean inconsiderate of others. Deceiving and exploiting others was also part of human nature.

If I get a place, I can receive the server computer containing Chance’s AI from the Shepherd and install it. It might feel like talking to a wall, but at least I’ll have company during my alone time.

Once I get the computational assist implant, I can also receive tactical help. I may be just a 22-year-old ordinary mercenary, but Chance was an unmanned aircraft with fifty years of experience since the war, even earning medals.

To calm my nerves, I entered the training room. I put on the connector that helps access the net and entered the virtual reality training ground.

A gun is a killing weapon. A mercenary’s job is to kill people. Maintaining order is just a facade. The job is simply to hear the order to kill someone and then kill them. I remind myself of this again.

If I forget this, black-and-white logic will start creeping up from my toes like mold. Even the salary I’m so excited about is money earned by killing people—I remind myself of this fact.

As I was organizing my thoughts, a thought crept into my mind: Still, no one died during the Chance mission. Sometimes, rarely, no one has to die.

This time, I had a counterexample. I trusted efficiency but didn’t blindly believe in it. The world doesn’t always work according to my beliefs. After making sure of this, I enter the training ground.

With an alarm set for 8 PM, I go through each training program President Yoon prepared for me. I review methods of killing people with guns, tactical knives, and bare hands.

After repeating this for about seven hours and then showering, my schedule before work is complete. I processed the payment request from Bellwether Administration’s Housing Management Department with a single touch on my phone.

The employees who had gathered at the company at noon were gradually returning, and we spent time reviewing past work. There wasn’t much to review about the gang handling operations.

After that routine passes, the time for public announcement work approaches. As 10:59 PM comes to an end, Kay refreshes the page while using a stopwatch. A wall of text begins to appear.

Eve was still the fastest. With a light gesture, she pushes away and hides items from the list that don’t need review by others. She did this despite not even being a posthuman.

By the time I was scanning through the requests, the list started disappearing. Night Patrol’s logo was stamped on one request that Eve had pushed forward, and a holographic projector illuminated the wall for the briefing.

President Yoon walked out with a satisfied expression to begin the briefing. It was time to see what today’s request would be.

“Don’t make mistakes just because it’s payday—let’s finish the week properly. Now, I’ll begin the briefing. Today’s public announcement work is hunting a wanted criminal. We’ve received information that a wanted criminal affiliated with the Non-Human Liberation Front is wandering around Los Angeles. This fugitive committed terrorism at Bellwether’s New York branch and has been fleeing across the country.”

After the explanation, the screen changes. We see New York City. The massive Brooklyn waterfall, said to have formed during that war, was a distinctive feature. They say it used to be an island all the way to that waterfall.

I couldn’t really imagine it. I had no idea what kind of weapon could vaporize such a huge landmass and create a massive seawater waterfall.

Most things about that war were like this. Nobody tried to teach it, nobody wanted to know about it. All I barely learned was that the world population decreased from 12.7 billion to 3.7 billion.

I decide to focus on the briefing. The image changes once more, showing a photo of the perpetrator. The face explained why they hadn’t been caught yet. It was a generic model used for menial labor.

Even the androids cleaning at Bellwether had that face. The wrinkle-free white face, strangely faded blonde hair, and a gentle but emotionless expression—all identical.

Since it’s the Non-Human Liberation Front, could it be related to the transparent eyes too? This might be a good opportunity to shake off pursuit from the Non-Human Liberation Front. I make a mental note.

“The name has been erased, so the official designation for this android is Wanted Criminal #1276. This android is accused of destroying the War Memorial in New York City with a bomb, and judging by the Non-Human Liberation Front’s attempt to infiltrate Bellwether’s New York branch immediately after the bombing, it appears to have been a diversionary attack, making the crime even more serious.”

The Non-Human Liberation Front wouldn’t care about humans. Even if it was a war memorial, to this android it was just a place where a terrorist attack could divert Bellwether’s attention.

Am I any different? I who know only brief facts, circulating rumors, and what I heard when meeting Chance—am I in a position to mock that android?

The slide changes, showing a photo of the android spotted among cleaning staff in a building. It was difficult to distinguish from other androids, but there was a wound inflicted by Bellwether’s Anti-Air Department.

A long scar crossing below the right cheek—a bullet graze. It must have been lucky. Both fortune and misfortune tend to find those who deserve them, regardless of whether they should. This was another such case.

But that luck ends today. Bellwether has tracked it down again. It crossed diagonally across the United States from New York to Los Angeles, but it will be caught. The objective must be capture alive.

“Due to this android’s terrorist actions, 67 Bellwether employee-citizens died, and 4 had to replace most of their bodies with prosthetics. Shutting down one android won’t atone for these crimes. However, if the information processing team disassembles and analyzes its artificial brain, we can identify and deal with the extremist faction of the Non-Human Liberation Front. This is for those 71 people. Let’s go.”

In today’s world, the term “severely injured” is rarely used. If you die instantly, you’re a fatality; if you somehow survive, the megacorporations or nationalists who own the city will find a way to save you.

As President Yoon’s briefing ends, my mindset is perfectly prepared. Now I just need to seize the opportunity.