Ch.67013 Work Record – To the Sky (4)

That day, I was able to sleep in a bed. Not forcing myself to sleep on top of inefficient fears, but feeling the solid bed frame and soft mattress beneath me.

Of course, it didn’t last long. The next morning, I woke up flailing in that suffocating softness that made me feel like I was drowning. It only lasts about one night. If I reduced the amount of sleep, I might be able to rest comfortably.

I felt the fatigue of oversleeping washing over me. This enhanced body sometimes showed such inhuman performance. I couldn’t hate it since it was what made everyone notice me.

After washing up and changing into Nightwatch’s tracksuit, I left the apartment. Should I eat breakfast? Deciding it wasn’t necessary, I headed straight for the office. This was a time when training was desperately needed. A big task was right ahead of me.

Strangely, the street CCTVs seemed to be non-operational. They weren’t even powered on. After glancing at them, I waved lightly to greet Mr. Günter, who was sweeping in front of his store with a broom.

“Good morning. Did someone tamper with the CCTVs? There’s no way they wouldn’t be recording this early in the morning.”

The road had been cleaned at dawn, but Mr. Günter was still sweeping diligently as if it were his routine. He looked up at me and returned my greeting.

“Well… maybe they’re doing some maintenance? I didn’t realize they were off. Heading to work, Metzgerhund?”

That nickname just wouldn’t go away. I’d accepted it as one of my names by now, so it didn’t feel uncomfortable anymore.

“I bought a house, but I didn’t buy a VR connector, so I need to go to the company for training. I guess that’s work? Why don’t you just use an outdoor cleaning drone?”

At that, Mr. Günter showed off his mechanically replaced elbow and knee joints with servo motor sounds before letting out a hearty laugh.

The memory of that efficiency had once given me chills, but after my reminder about today, he seemed to have become more comfortable with me.

“I didn’t replace my joints just to sit in an armchair. It’s good exercise in the morning. I’ll expect maximum productivity, Metzgerhund.”

“These days they call it efficiency, you know. Have a good day.”

When I arrived at the company, an unexpected person was waiting. Kay had already arrived and was talking with the boss, but when she saw me, she jumped up from her chair and handed me a tablet.

“The rookie ordering people around! I brought the Nightwatch old job backups you asked for! I also organized and documented the reviewed content, so check it out! See you at the actual work hours!”

I don’t remember asking for such things, but I awkwardly accepted the tablet she thrust at me. It was a common company item with ports that could connect to a VR access device.

The contents were just an ordinary list of requests. The boss activated his targeting eye implant, scanned through the contents with me, and smiled with satisfaction.

“Since you know where Ms. Kay lives… next time, go get it yourself. Oh, and you should thoroughly review the ‘Death Is Not Once’ gang elimination job. It would be a good request to review.”

I looked for something special, but it seemed like an ordinary job record. It appeared to be about eliminating weirdos who shared recordings from Bellwether security teams or mercenaries with body cams to experience moments of death.

They were addicts who had experienced death hundreds of times, using illegally modified VR connectors until they developed fake thresholds for the pain of death. It seemed important.

Did she hide something in here? Why bother? Not understanding, I gave a perfunctory answer and walked into the VR training room. That’s when I realized the reason.

The VR connector, isolated from external networks for training purposes only, was the only computer I could trust that was physically disconnected from the outside world.

Moreover, since I came to the office every day, there would be no unnecessary movement patterns. If the contents of the work tablet were disguised as Nightwatch job reviews, no one would be suspicious.

Kay might be mischievous, but she certainly wasn’t stupid. Not holding back my smile, I connected the tablet and accessed the virtual reality. As always, the training ground appeared, and now I just needed to find what I was looking for.

I examined the job records but didn’t see anything particularly distinctive. They were all actual records. Almost all of them. I noticed one file that shouldn’t be in Nightwatch’s records. It was a personnel deployment record.

Nightwatch only had eight employees total, including me and Ms. Nadia. It was such a small company that if more than two people took a day off, we’d have to close for the day.

I opened that file and retrieved the image file. I could see the file gradually increasing in resolution from low to high before my eyes. It was a scanned document.

It was a Lone Star Rangers employee deployment record that had been inspected by Bellwether. Kasim Arif, Kasim Arif… Yes, there he was on the list. It showed he was assigned to a task directly ordered by Bellwether along with the Section 4 manager.

Where was the location? I continued reading. He was deployed to Malibu, once a sanctuary for the wealthy but now an abandoned coastal ruin after the Pacific’s corruption. It was one of the coastal ghost towns with only old villas, the poor, and gangs remaining.

If they had used Lone Star Rangers to eliminate all the gangs, the job would have been completed in a day or two. If it wasn’t that, and Julia was looking for him for so long… I considered the possibilities.

The most likely one was detention. Someone was being held captive in that ghost town, guarded by Lone Star Rangers. Who could it be? Whoever it was, wouldn’t it be better to meet them? Probably so.

If it was someone preparing a coup against Bellwether, the branch manager would side with headquarters. If it was someone trying to prevent Bellwether’s coup, then I could assume the branch manager was trying to stage one.

After memorizing the exact coordinates, I began training. Even if I went there, it would have to be at dawn after work was done. Appearing natural was more important than anything. As always, I had to mimic normalcy.

What cards did I have? Preset Bravo-Whiskey, a Posthuman Type IV enhanced body, and a grenade launcher connected to Chance. Pretty generous resources for a regular employee of a mercenary staffing company.

Through job review, I learned how to definitively finish off death addicts who charged forward without feeling pain or being able to die. I had to destroy their spines to physically immobilize them.

I thought disabling their knees would be good too, but while I was turning my attention to the next target after neutralizing one’s knees, a death addict crawled on the floor with his two arms and grabbed my ankle.

A normal person would have been immobilized by terrible pain, but someone who couldn’t feel pain would still interfere somehow. I completely finished him by crushing his head with my enhanced body’s strength.

Be thorough with confirmation kills. If I didn’t kill them completely, I would be the one in danger. Keeping this in mind, I finished the day’s training and walked out. Almost eight hours had passed.

Today was special only to me. For all other employees, it was just an ordinary Friday. For Nightwatch employees, it was the first day of the week, and for mercenary staffing companies, it was just a busy day.

If I acted like it was a significant day, it would show in my behavior. With that in mind, Kay arrived at work as usual. Mimicry had to start from here.

The job review was about a hostage situation I could have handled through dialogue. It was a simulation of how to best achieve results when negotiations failed and force had to be used.

Our conclusion was that I would identify the terrorist, Volla would fire a jammer from her multi-purpose grenade launcher mounted on her shoulder, and then the boss would finish the terrorist with a sniper shot.

There might have been errors or aftereffects for Everflash’s androids, but there was no better way to neutralize both the terrorist and the bomb with detonation potential simultaneously.

You can’t always take care of everything. But you still have to be greedy. The moment you stop being greedy and decide to give up what needs to be given up, efficiency decreases.

That day’s job was handling an ordinary robbery. It was already exposed for Bellwether’s security team to handle, and since it was a lone criminal, the boss sniped him through the house window and called the cleanup team. That was the end of it.

But my dawn was just beginning. Having slept nearly twelve hours yesterday, I felt no fatigue at all. I returned to the company, took off my combat uniform, and knocked on the door of the duty room where Tina was staying.

“Hey, could I borrow the bike one more time today? I have somewhere I need to go at dawn. You still have the one you lent me last time, right?”

The duty room door opened, and Tina, who was removing her proper prosthetic leg and attaching a lightweight one, tilted her head and asked:

“What? Haven’t you been using it all along? You could have kept using it… I haven’t cleared the emergency exit, so you can’t ride like those road racers who don’t value their lives. Feel free to use it! You can even change the registration to your name. Yeah.”

The term “emergency exit” or “fire emergency exit” usually referred to Ms. Nadia. I wouldn’t risk my life now that I had a safe place where I could be with my sister. Even addiction to speed couldn’t overcome family love.

She rummaged around her desk to find the key I had returned and handed it to me. I took it lightly, thanked her, and went down to the parking lot. Ms. Eve was putting on her bike helmet to go home.

Because it was dark around, my vision was brightly adjusted. Even under the coated helmet film that obscured the interior, I could see her reddened face. She was fine during work, but this was personal time.

“Looks like you’re still feeling the aftereffects?”

Ms. Eve tried to maintain a calm voice. She seemed to think I couldn’t see her face inside the coated visor in this dark place. This time, I watched without saying anything.

“No way. A person can en-enjoy a bath while an-answering the ph-phone… Ugh. Fine. I’m still dying of embarrassment. Happy? I won’t take off my helmet, so just know that.”

“I can see the blood flow along your cheekbones, so don’t worry. Oh, could you lend me a helmet? I got the bike from Tina, but a road racer wouldn’t have prepared a helmet.”

As soon as Ms. Eve heard my words, she covered her visor with her hand. In that awkward posture, she picked up another helmet from her bike and handed it to me. I felt like I might laugh again.

“That body has terribly good performance. But at least you’re not trying to convince me why a posthuman doesn’t need to wear a helmet. I… can’t have a beer with you looking like this, so let’s do it next time. Okay?”

I put on the helmet she gave me. Without enhanced vision, the inside would be too dark to see clearly. That was enough. Am I right to think I don’t want to involve Ms. Eve?

She willingly told me about her most terrible past and desperately asked for my help. She showed me her vulnerabilities knowing it might be rude. She trusted me.

What if it looks like I’m not telling her because I don’t trust her, rather than because I’m worried about her? For a moment, just a brief moment, I weighed the practical danger against hurting her feelings.

The practical threat was greater. Kay was willing to help me because she’d die anyway if Bellwether caught her, but if I didn’t involve Ms. Eve, she wouldn’t get into this… damn, she had met the Shepherd too.

But so far, the Legal Assassination Team agents had only come for me. That meant they didn’t yet see my senior as a threat to be dealt with. Besides, I was the one skilled at infiltration as an offliner.

So I boldly decided not to tell her at all. Fearing hurt feelings at the cost of endangering lives was stupid and inefficient. Efficiency is good. Inefficiency is only evil.

Besides, Ms. Eve was someone who helped a person afraid of a bed’s softness to entrust their body to that softness, if only briefly. I smiled.

“Yes, next time. I’ll drive carefully, so don’t worry… No, that’s not right. Thank you for worrying about me. That’s better than ‘don’t worry,’ right?”

Ms. Eve smiled lightly. Even a smile visible through that coated visor could be clearly seen, which was one of the parts I liked about this enhanced body.

“Much better. Get home safe. See you at the company tomorrow. Or… I might call you at dawn. You know?”

“As long as you remember that I do sleep.”

Ms. Eve left first, and only after hearing the sound of her bike tires scraping the road did I get on the bike I borrowed from Tina. After connecting to Chance, I said:

“Chance, set phone to Do Not Disturb mode. Turn off the automatic call rejection function. Make it look like I’m not answering because I’m asleep.”

I started the engine and began riding toward Malibu. Chance asked in a puzzled voice:

“Confirmed. Additional confirmation required. I heard Ms. Eve say she might call at dawn. Will you ignore that call too?”

“If necessary. And right now, it is necessary. I’m going to spy on a mercenary staffing company that received direct orders from Bellwether, and if a phone ring ruins the job or starts a gunfight, Ms. Eve would be sad.”

There are things you can’t do even with the most trustworthy person. With the bike carrying only a bag containing my carbine, I started racing through Los Angeles.

I followed the coastal road with fewer CCTVs. The seawater was still nearly black, but they said it could be restored within 20 years. The scars of that war were being washed away.

Time didn’t help. We didn’t choose to forget. Wounds don’t disappear on their own. Only through a precise and professional process can scars be removed.

That’s all I was trying to do. To cut this evil connection between Bellwether and me, like a collar, I needed a precise and efficient treatment process.

Surgically remove everything connected to the tumor—whether blood vessels or muscles—and cover the remaining scar with artificial skin or something similar, and the liquidation would be complete.

The city behind me didn’t know night, and the ghost town had learned darkness through that war. By the time the stench of the rotten sea began to waft in, even the streetlights became scarce. It was the optimal environment for an offliner to operate. Malibu was getting closer.