Ch.76Work Record #014 – Unauthorized Slaughter (3)

The bed was soft and comfortable. I liked the feeling of the mattress supporting my back securely. The fear of drowning in the mattress had faded away.

Time to work again. Habitually, I woke up according to Belwether’s work schedule, washed up, and immediately turned on the computational assist device on the side of my head. I contacted Boss Yoon first.

How long has it been since I’ve made a call using both hands? It feels almost surreal. After a couple of rings, the boss’s voice came through.

“Good morning. What can I do for you?”

Nightwatch wouldn’t be able to help properly. The Chairman was just sitting there watching me work, not trying to help anyone I knew.

Everyone’s swimming. He’s just watching because he finds my swimming entertaining. It’s better to keep my distance.

“Could I get Michael Glenn’s contact information? The one I worked with on the Chance recovery job? It’s safer to go through connections in situations like this.”

“I’d be happy to help someone you haven’t been officially assigned to assist. I’ll take any information you can provide.”

“It’s black. Oh, by the way, boss… does Michael like quail fry? Or would actual fried chicken be better? The three of us should go out after work.”

I heard Boss Yoon’s brief sigh through the communication. It was a sound of relief. He must have been quite tense when receiving my call, as he exhaled deeply before speaking.

“I don’t know. He’s the type who would eat dog food if there’s alcohol. That’s good news. I expect the job will be handled cleanly. Well then.”

How scathing. I couldn’t stop smiling until the connection ended. Michael’s contact information would arrive soon. It wasn’t a secure connection like the ones Nightwatch colleagues used, but it would be fine for simple communication.

Boss Yoon would have certainly informed me if he had contacts on that side too. Could Walter track this? It was unclear. He was at least a manager at Belwether’s top partner company. That’s team leader level at Belwether.

Someone like that would know how to monitor, and if he knew how to monitor, he would also know how to avoid being monitored. I processed the voice file slightly, including only the assassination manager’s confession.

Even if I failed, this location wouldn’t be identified. Even Walter couldn’t monitor the Chairman. I sent him the voice file containing the confession, ready to leave.

It was only a few seconds long voice file, but I didn’t expect it would take only a few seconds for him to contact me. He asked half-skeptically.

“The one who recovered Chance back then…”

“That’s right. It seems I’ll be helping Lone Star Rangers for a second time. Or destroying it instead.”

I spoke confidently. My mind was clear after sufficient rest. His voice became distorted. I deliberately sent the file with the Chairman’s voice censored.

“Whose voice is censored?”

“My sponsor. I’ve answered one question, so I’d like to ask Michael whether that recording makes him feel anxious or certain.”

Once again, I willingly make an assumption. It would be more ridiculous if a company that Belwether used as a figurehead when collaborating with nationalists couldn’t notice Belwether’s internal situation or strange vibes.

The silence lasted only three seconds, but three whole seconds was enough time to realize my words had touched something deep. He answered as if muttering.

“Certainty, and simultaneously anxiety.”

Certainty comes first. That means he had suspicions. I started speaking leisurely. I wasn’t in a hurry.

“What’s left on that list if you remove Lone Star?”

“Just the two security departments and the legal assassination team. That’s not enough to disarm the suppression forces instantly… What about the focal point? We don’t know where the Shepherd is attached.”

The only important thing was the Shepherd’s whereabouts. He protected Walter but also spared me. He seems to be trying to maintain the status quo somehow. Why? I tried to deduce the reason briefly but gave up.

“If all else fails, I could leave it to my sponsor. They used to work at Belwether Industries.”

Now working as the chairman of Belwether Company. I didn’t need to say that explicitly. Sometimes imagination creates a greater stimulus than information. I clicked my tongue to gather his concentration and said:

“Honestly, this is a winnable situation. The fact that someone officially designated as a wanted criminal by Belwether’s LA branch can hide and operate covertly like this, do you really think this amateur coup will succeed?”

My voice was confident and clean. The very fact that I could run around undermining Walter’s plans alone, with just one hideout provided, was evidence that his coup wasn’t very efficient.

Moreover, while to me I was a mercenary saved by Belwether’s chairman and working to entertain him, to Michael I was just a mercenary who had successfully recovered a drone, nothing more, nothing less.

The fact that such a nobody could disrupt operations meant the opponent was also a nobody. We see the same things but know different things. That fact could always be exploited.

“No, no. Not at all. My hesitation is… it becomes ambiguous. It becomes a fight worth fighting for both sides. Isn’t that the minimum condition for a corporate civil war? Don’t you think?”

“No, it doesn’t matter. If things become equal, the Market Keepers will side with headquarters. Both corporate civil war and a successful coup followed by purges are market failures.”

I use the Market Keeper I briefly saw yesterday as leverage. It was quite a rational argument. Louisa, whom I had seen with my own eyes, handled matters with such logic.

“It sounds right, but… damn.”

“You probably know how to keep this call and that short voice message from being detected by Belwether. So, the choice is entirely yours, Manager.”

“Is this something that won’t happen without me? Or is something going to happen regardless, and you’re just doing me a favor now? I need to ask this one thing for sure.”

“You already know. You must have contacted Boss Yoon.”

The sound of a fist hitting a desk briefly rang out. He sighed deeply and said:

“Right. Suyeon said that. After work, the three of us would go out, and you’d pay, asking if quail was good or chicken. Tender young fried chicken is the best. And, the building empties at 10:30. You know?”

Today was Tuesday. The day before Wednesday and Thursday, when most mercenary companies take their days off. Our Friday. Since it was a workday, only the emergency response team would be on standby at the company.

This should be easy. With my lips curled up, I answered leisurely. I was delighted to be gradually achieving results.

“Sounds good, partner. I’ll come to Lone Star Rangers at eleven. Let’s discuss the plan first.”

“Yeah, yeah. I don’t know who your sponsor is… but if they’re reliable enough to discover that the branch manager planted outlaws in this sheriff’s office, I’ll trust them. Don’t disappoint me.”

Just as Belwether calls employees they need to rescue “sheep,” does Lone Star Rangers call their company a “sheriff’s office”? It was a funny concept but might be efficient. I decided to acknowledge it.

After ending the call, I check my weapon. I’ll need to shoot this time. Habitually, I disassemble and clean the gun. I hadn’t fired a single shot since receiving it. The tension gradually subsides.

Mr. Günter was watching me. He nods with satisfaction at the polished parts. He asked leisurely:

“Has it been a habit since your school days? Calming your mind while cleaning your weapon. According to the education curriculum… since middle school, right?”

He might not be remembering but rather had just confirmed it with Belwether, but I decided to believe he remembered. Faith is everything in this era.

“That’s right. I was aiming for the security team since then. Knowing how what’s in my hands works and how I’ve maintained it makes me feel at ease. What about you, Mr. Günter?”

Mr. Günter burst into a leisurely laugh. It was too human to be called maniacal laughter. He said in a joking tone:

“I was the type who relieved stress by eating. Mainly snacks. Crispy fried ones with such salty orange powder that it stained not just my hands but my fingers. I loved them since childhood.”

If it was a snack from before that war, it probably wasn’t made with pseudo-food. No, did the concept of pseudo-food even exist in that era? Probably not. The Pacific Ocean would have been alive too.

Mr. Günter continued speaking leisurely. There was no sign of mania in him now. Rather, it was an almost unbelievable appearance.

“My wife hated it. She’d say, ‘You’re not a ten-year-old, why are you going around with snack powder all over you?’ So I thought, this won’t do. What do you think I did?”

“You wouldn’t have given up. Did you prepare gloves or something?”

Mr. Günter burst into laughter at my answer. He nodded as if he had expected it.

“That’s right. I bought a pack of vinyl gloves and kept them in the car’s glove compartment. But this woman was so meticulous. She noticed just from seeing powder on the car floor.”

They must have been a well-matched couple. Mr. Günter put on a seemingly serious expression, but it soon relaxed. He spoke with an expression of revisiting pleasant memories:

“After that, I used my daughter. I got her hooked on those snacks… then started saying, ‘The kid likes them, what can I do?’ Around that time, she started to give up. Thanks to that, the kids loved them even as they grew up.”

For me, who had no parents—or more precisely, had them but lost them before birth—and who had acquired Belwether as an inhuman yet warm foster parent without having memories to cherish, it was an unfamiliar sensation.

But I could tell that when speaking those words, Mr. Günter looked like a very ordinary person. And looking a bit more closely, I could see what was hiding behind that ordinary person’s face.

His Berlin. A place he wanted to return to but couldn’t. An object of longing, already lost. Everything was in the past tense, and none of his words could even be past perfect.

I decided not to ask what had happened. I didn’t think I could empathize with his loss. There was no way to understand the loss of something I had never had or even imagined.

While thinking this, a drone flew toward Mr. Günter. The drone was… carrying a large bag of snacks.

It was a salty tortilla made of pseudo-food, one that Kay often ate too. It tried to taste like corn but didn’t quite succeed.

How odd that two people who seemed to have the most different tastes I’d ever encountered would like the same snack. I chuckled in disbelief, then asked something different from what had actually come to mind.

It would be quite creepy if Mr. Günter knew Kay’s snack preferences, and he probably did.

“I would have thought that someone at the level of a major corporation’s chairman wouldn’t need to touch pseudo-food.”

Mr. Günter, who was opening the snack bag, turned his gaze toward me. His face was still ordinary.

“I don’t need to, that’s true. But a chairman who doesn’t know what his employees eat isn’t right. It’s inefficient. How can you care about something you don’t understand or know?”

With those words, Mr. Günter took out a calorie pack from his pocket and showed it to me. It was the same thing the security team distributed for breakfast and lunch on workdays to minimize variables. It had been a long time.

“Don’t you think this tastes at least somewhat edible for the same reason? If the higher-ups don’t care, who knows how low employee meal quality could drop.”

“As punishment for saying something stupid, I’ll have that calorie pack for breakfast. Please bring me one. That should be enough, right?”

That ends our comfortable morning time. I eat breakfast by rolling up the tube to leave no contents behind, just like when I worked for the security team, then leave the trailer with my gun case. I head to Lone Star Rangers.

I’d been there once before, but then it was a base, not a workplace. With my face hidden by my helmet, I opened the door to Lone Star Rangers headquarters and entered the lobby. Michael was waiting in front of the reception desk.

He had a good eye. He walked up to me—a stranger in the building with a similar build to the mercenary who worked there before—and nodded slightly. Standing with his back to the CCTV, he turned off his display.

After showing my face, I darkened the display again. Michael turned around first and opened the employee entrance for me. I followed him to the elevator. We headed to the Emergency Operations Manager’s office.

When we arrived, lowered the blinds, and sat down, the CCTV automatically stopped operating. Only then did I completely remove my helmet. Michael’s eyes briefly scanned me up and down.

There was nothing to fear, and no reason to be afraid. I leaned back leisurely in the visitor’s chair and faced his scan. Touching my forehead as if I had a headache, I said:

“General Operations Departments 1 and 2 are scheduled for security maintenance in Malibu tonight. If you want to clear them out, tonight would be best. There, I’ve thrown you a big piece. Now tell me who your sponsor is.”

With his words, he showed me a document approved under the name of Lone Star Rangers’ president. His words were true. Then I could reveal something too.

“Someone who doesn’t receive work orders. Isn’t that person sufficient as a focal point?”

After going through several stages of thought at the mention of someone who doesn’t receive work orders, Michael’s eyes widened. It’s difficult to surprise a veteran mercenary.

“Damn! If that’s why the Legal Assassination Manager divided everything, it makes sense. Wait a minute… didn’t you say they worked at Belwether Industries?”

“I never said they’re not still working at Belwether. And there’s a risk of Walter eavesdropping, so it’s difficult to speak plainly.”

He didn’t want principles and righteousness to stand on his side. He came and stood on the side where principles and righteousness already existed. That made him a valuable person. He lightly tapped the desk with his reinforced suit’s fist.

“I’ll gather the entire Emergency Operations Department. We can hit them from behind while they’re working. In terms of raw power, Emergency Ops can easily handle General Ops 1 and 2. But the problem is who’s working with General Ops now…”

He turned on the holographic projector on the desk. A work record photo appeared. Among people wearing helmets engraved with Lone Star Rangers’ large star, one ominous silhouette was visible.

There was someone who, like Vola, wore a full-body prosthetic, but with even more parts replaced than Vola. They covered their entire body with a black helmet and black clothes, and the helmet had a sheep with a bell engraved in intaglio.

It was the LA branch’s Special Operations Department. They would be the only people in this city besides the Shepherd wearing Type 4 suits, or perhaps the highest-grade full-body prosthetics. Could I handle this?

I didn’t know, but assigned duties must be performed. To cleanly strangle Walter to death, finding a way to succeed would be much faster.

“How many?”

“One. The problem is, if that one starts wreaking havoc in the rear, I’m not sure if we can subdue them. It’s Special Ops. The kind that smokes a cigarette and rests until Belwether is about to be completely screwed, then steps in just before total collapse.”

If there’s only one, the job becomes much more realistic. Then the full-body prosthetic in the photo would be all there is, and full-body prosthetics were vulnerable to hacking and radio interference. I had a jammer installed.

“Good thing I had a jammer implanted in my head. With radio interference, our physical performance should be similar. I’ll try to subdue them. Even if I fail, I can buy time until General Ops is subdued.”

I remembered fighting Adrian, Walter’s brother and that biological monstrosity. I was wearing a body that performed sufficiently well. If I started from an advantageous position, I definitely had a chance of winning.