Ch.7001 Work Record – The Man from Nowhere (1)

I wake up to the sound of a cheap hologram clock. Instinctively, I reach for my work assistant AI at my temple, but disgust rises to my throat as I clench my fist.

Was I about to punch the bed? If I struck it now, the bed frame would shatter completely, and the money the security chief kindly gave me would all go toward compensation.

Without money, you can’t even afford to be angry. I barely manage to calm my boiling insides and take a shower. In the bathroom, a flyer for a clone brothel advertised with slogans like “Half the human rights, half the price” was wedged in the shower booth frame.

I guess this is cheap enough to qualify as a low-budget hotel. I snort and finish washing up quickly. Irritatingly, I’ve woken up just 30 minutes before work. I fiddle with my phone for a moment.

Thirty minutes pass quickly. I wasn’t hungry, so I just grabbed a bottle of water from the knee-high refrigerator in the hotel room. Even this seemed like a feature of my PostHuman IV enhanced body.

As I was passing time checking my gun, like on a company holiday morning, Francis called. I was starting to feel a bit sorry for what I’d done to him last night.

When the sun rises, I feel like becoming a slightly better person. That feeling follows the sunlight across the sky, completely disappearing beyond the horizon by evening. It submerges.

I still wasn’t used to it. The operating sensation was completely different from handling a floating HUD. It would be better to get accustomed to it.

“Hey, Arthur. I called your office first thing this morning… They said they were suspicious about me recommending someone other than myself, but they want to see you right away. Where are you now?”

Not wanting to say I was staying at a hotel, I just mentioned the neighborhood name. As I held up the screen during our call, the address Francis showed me floated above it.

It’s about a 30-minute walk from here. Mercenary staffing companies needed to know how to show off. Even if contract money was tight, they had to know to set up buildings downtown, and even if only three people worked there, they had to furnish locker rooms for twenty. For most people, there wasn’t much difference between mercenary staffing companies. First impressions are everything.

So I need to go downtown. I do have a resume I printed yesterday, but it seemed almost laughable to hand it over hoping to get hired.

Still, at least the experience section of my resume wasn’t empty but redacted. Being empty means nothing is there, but being redacted means something was there. I might be able to use some loopholes.

I’m looking for a path the very next day after experiencing a dishonorable discharge from a company I’ve never even worked at. First, I needed a place to stay before I could seek revenge.

Francis didn’t make my life this way. He’s just a security vulnerability. The ones who exploited that vulnerability are the ones who turned my life into this mess.

With high positions come great responsibilities. Being a regular employee at Bellwether wasn’t such a high position, but it did come with some responsibility. But not anymore. Losing my position meant putting down that responsibility.

I’ll testify that I hated the terrorists who shot everyone and then shamelessly terrorized Bellwether, sullying the city’s security. It would be a mitigating factor as long as it wasn’t coming from a security team member.

Sure, I was a former security team member, but the branch manager had already made me not a former security team member. So I had nothing to worry about.

After tucking the gun into my chest, I tossed yesterday’s clothes into the hotel’s laundry collection bin and left. The morning city was still a hazy color.

The sky looked like carbonated water with too little blue curaçao poured in. You could see the blue, but it was so close to gray that it felt suffocating.

I guess it had been too long since I’d left home, or a place I could call that, in the morning with the sky above my head.

The air had an acrid smell, but my enhanced body’s respiratory system had two layers of filters. So, overall, it was a bearable morning.

I take a bus downtown. The vehicle was almost empty. That’s because it wasn’t heading toward the major corporate headquarters. Thinking it fortunate that I could sit, I pass by roads full of gray, white, and black.

Learning the location of the bus stop for the first time, I get off in the middle of downtown. Standing there with a map displayed on my smartphone, I set out to find the building Francis had told me about. Being downtown, I was conscious of my gun as I walked.

The mercenary staffing company “Night Watch” supposedly has a sign that looks like a pause logo—two bars inside a circle. It’s not hard to find. As I said, mercenary business requires showing off.

They had set up an office in the middle of a street overlooking an intersection, and in the outdoor parking lot of the office building, two armored vans with logos were parked side by side as if showing off. It’s not a big company.

One would be used for mission execution and the other as a backup. I didn’t know much about the mercenary business, but that’s how vehicle management worked in Bellwether’s mobile unit. I heard the company was run by a Bellwether retiree.

After confirming this, I head up to the third floor where the office is located. It wasn’t draped with curtain walls like Bellwether’s building, but it wasn’t bad in its own way.

The stairs weren’t too steep, and there were traces of the building owner trying to make it as luxurious as possible within their means. The mercenary staffing company probably chose this location for such superficial appearances.

When I reached the third floor, I stood in front of the automatic door with that pause-shaped logo I’d seen from outside. Despite the presence of a sensor, the door didn’t open. I waved lightly toward the person visible through the automatic door.

A woman inside the office noticed the door wasn’t opening and approached me. She wore a black bulletproof coat. Judging by the lines visible under her turtleneck, there was another layer of armor underneath.

She seemed to have only a pistol at her waist, but the smell of gun lubricant wafted from inside. Mercenaries don’t often work in the morning.

The door that wouldn’t open for me opened naturally as she approached. I wondered if it was locked, but she spoke first with a slightly flustered voice.

Her high-end sniper prosthetic eye, with cybernetic implants not visible from the outside, was the same dark gray as Bellwether-issued ones, and she had a black short-cut hairstyle with no signs of dyeing.

Her age appeared to be mid-forties at the youngest to mid-fifties at the oldest. So not retirement age. It was either due to ambition or desire.

She seemed to know how to speak warmly, but her voice wasn’t soft.

“We should get this checked. Anyway, welcome to Night Watch Mercenary Staffing. How may I… Are you the person Mr. Francis Pandy referred to us?”

More precisely, even as she tried to speak warmly, a sharp atmosphere peeked through. She seemed to have quietly looked me over just as I had examined her. She didn’t speak informally.

“Ah, yes. May I take out my resume?”

I lightly tapped the waist area where my jacket’s inner pocket was located. It was in the opposite direction from where my gun was. Only after seeing her nod briefly did I pull out the twice-folded resume and hand it to her.

Her eyebrows twitched slightly as she read my resume. That was understandable. But instead of becoming inefficiently emotional, she asked in a measured voice:

“Francis said he would recommend an applicant who had been part of Bellwether’s security team.”

Now I needed to practice a bit of deception. Revealing that I was under a gag order would violate that order, but giving hints that could lead to the correct answer wasn’t a violation.

“There seems to have been a misunderstanding. I’ve never worked at Bellwether.”

She let out a small laugh. She now realized that we had to play a game of twenty questions regardless of our intentions.

“Well… Alright. So you attended Bellwether’s security team training college for two years and graduated, but never worked at Bellwether.”

It was obvious that inferences were forming in her mind. She waited a moment until she found a way to extract information without asking directly.

“A PostHuman enhanced body with no serial number and redacted history makes sense now. Could you tell me your college callsign? I should at least verify that much.”

Her sniper prosthetic eye flashed briefly. She didn’t care at all what my college callsign had been.

“Shepherd Six… no, Alsatian Three.”

There were Shepherds in Bellwether’s security team, but no Alsatians. Alsatian was a name used only in the security team training college.

“Shepherd… Security Division 4. I heard Shepherd Six was replaced a month ago. I believe PostHuman IV enhanced bodies take about a month to cultivate.”

She looked at me as if seeking confirmation. I nodded briefly. The reason was now clear. I left Bellwether because of this enhanced body. There was no way to explain more specifically.

She ran her ceramic-like, smooth milky white prosthetic hand once over the empty serial number field and muttered:

“That also explains why the door didn’t recognize you. As long as you’re not on the blacklist, I’d like to hire you… May I check something quickly? Such a valuable resource doesn’t just roll in from anywhere in this city. I’d appreciate your understanding.”

I willingly nodded at her words. She took my resume to the office behind the reception area. When she came back, she had a handheld metal detector in her hand.

She seemed to want to verify whether I should be called a valuable resource. I stood up, leaving my jacket with the gun in it, and spread my arms slightly.

The metal detector passed over my body but didn’t sound once except when passing over my pants buckle and studs. She had an expression as if imagining what would happen after hiring me.

Then it was ambition that led to her resignation. I couldn’t know what kind of ambition. But someone like her would never let go of what she needed until she achieved what she wanted. She might be worth trusting.

While I was looking at that expression, a woman with lightweight prosthetic legs that seemed barely held together by frames stumbled out from the inner office. She looked like she was suffering from a hangover.

“Booooss, the check is done. Not on the blacklist. Not just not on it, but Stephanet doesn’t even recognize his face. So, is he a newbie?”

It wasn’t just her legs that were lightweight prosthetics. The hand holding a beer can also looked like a crude early-model prosthetic. Were they street racers obsessed with lightweight modifications?

She looked too normal to be a street racer. Though her complexion was poor due to the hangover, her long light brown hair, shabby tracksuit with the mercenary company logo, grinning face, and blue general-purpose prosthetic eyes made her look more like an ordinary unemployed person.

Street racers who ripped out even safety devices for the sake of lightness and only felt pleasure when riding in their stripped-down cars always had unfocused eyes.

Additionally, they loved engines and speed so much that they had artificial hearts that made engine noises, making them easy to identify.

In fact, races could be done online too. There were plenty of racing games advertised as offering experiences completely identical to, or even enhanced beyond, reality.

But street racers loved the moment of collision and the sensation of their modified car frames tearing and piercing through. They couldn’t be rehabilitated. And they were almost impossible to catch.

Anyway, she didn’t match the image of this mercenary staffing company that I had seen so far. I had imagined a neatly measured appearance based on the boss’s look, but even that might have been just for show.

The boss gestured twice for her to go back inside, as if to rebuild the facade that was nearly broken by that one remark, and extended her non-prosthetic hand to me. I grasped it lightly. We shook hands.

“The blacklist check is complete, and as expected, I’ve confirmed the PostHuman IV enhanced body without any cybernetic implants. Welcome to Night Watch, Mr. Arthur. Night Watch is an official partner of Bellwether, cooperating in nighttime security maintenance activities to make Los Angeles a safer city. Please feel free to call me Yoon.”

Nothing good happens after midnight. A phrase I’d heard somewhere flashed through my mind. I began to doubt whether coming to a night security company was a good choice.

No, it’s just a baseless suspicion. It was because I had been betrayed by a company I trusted so much last night and spent three hours of grace period in confusion and frustration without a drop of alcohol.

I was the one who said anywhere would be fine, so I should be the one to endure wherever “anywhere” turned out to be. After taking a deep breath, I shook her hand lightly up and down.

At the very least, I needed to get a job within a day. That alone would be more than satisfactory.

“I always welcome a company that recognizes my value without needing me to prove it. I look forward to working with you.”

At least the boss matched the facade I had seen. She maintained a stiff, businesslike attitude even after confirming my employment, which I appreciated.

“We are one of Bellwether’s official partners, and since you’re not on the blacklist, your license will be issued by tomorrow. To briefly explain, there are 107 mercenary staffing companies with night security partnerships with Bellwether, and Night Watch is ranked 46th in priority bidding. It’s not a great position, but we still get many requests that aren’t too dangerous and have decent profitability.”

46th place. A great start. The most capable people get the dangerous but high-paying jobs first.

Gradually, less profitable requests come down, and by the time they reach 107th place, only menial tasks that make the partnership with Bellwether meaningless remain. I should be able to earn enough money.

“Weekly organized tasks are provided by Stephanet every Sunday at 11 PM, and sometimes urgent requests come in at 11 PM daily. For really urgent matters, they can come in at any time. So the closer your commute, the better. Ah, how long is your commute time?”

The commute issue. I couldn’t keep staying at the hotel, but this small mercenary company probably couldn’t provide accommodation. Still, it was better to be honest.

“As you might know, I don’t have a place to stay right now, so I’m at a hotel… Currently, it takes about 30 minutes. Ideally, that is.”

The boss’s expression finally twisted a bit. Bellwether hates inefficiency. It was natural for a Bellwether retiree to dislike words like “about” or “approximately.”

“Do you have much luggage?”

When I answered just one box, the boss’s expression, which had twisted at the inefficiency, softened a bit. She led me into the office. Fitting for a company handling night duties, there was no one in the office now.

Only that light brown-haired woman I saw earlier was lying down, holding onto a desk. The boss woke her up by shaking her, then tapped the floor with her heel to make a sound, just as they would at Bellwether.

“Miss Valentina, I’d appreciate it if you could clean up dormitory room #2 that we’re using as storage. Half of the stuff there is yours anyway. Mr. Arthur, take a look. It should be adequate as temporary accommodation.”

The fact that my first thought was that I wouldn’t need to pay rent for a dormitory room showed that I had indeed become poor. The woman who had been enjoying the sensation of rubbing her cheek against the cold surface of the desk got up and met my gaze with her prosthetic eye.

“What, those are real eyes? I can see why the boss wants to treat you well, offliner! You’re thinking you can customize this rookie and put him where you need him, right, boss?”

The boss sighed. She lightly pushed the woman’s back as if telling her to clean the dormitory room first, and said through gritted teeth:

“I’d appreciate it if you could distinguish between a rookie who can’t even afford implants and a military-grade enhanced human who doesn’t need implants, Miss Valentina.”

The friction was visible… but this was still going well. Even considering that when all the employees arrived, I’d be asked hundreds of times if I was really a pure human and treated like a hologram animal in a zoo.