episode_0015

“Ugh…”

“If I could just assemble it properly…”

Ricardo and I sat beside the sewer waterway, deeply contemplating the utterly shattered Black Case placed on the ground.

It was like a disassembled Rubik’s Cube, with the broken metal fragments not magically reassembling just because two grim-looking men, a mercenary and a gang boss, sat facing each other in this eerie place.

Especially since their only productive activity seemed to be destruction.

“Damn it. If it was so important, they should have made it sturdier! At this point, I’m starting to think the corporation planned this to screw me over.”

“Neither of us is important enough for a corporation to care.”

Leaving Ricardo, who was clutching his head, I examined the fragments of the case more closely.

‘But where’s the content?’

It was called a case, but it didn’t seem to contain anything visible inside.

It was hard to see through the blood, but if there were even a chipset, there should be broken fragments, but I couldn’t see any of that.

*Throb*

“Ugh…”

I felt a sharp pain in my chest, probably from being hit wrong while I was down.

It felt like something had been lodged and then pulled out, leaving my chest wet with blood. If I didn’t get medical attention quickly, there would be some severe aftereffects.

And for a mercenary, ‘severe’ aftereffects usually meant death.

“First… let’s get out of here.”

“Yeah. A fragile meatbag like you won’t last long here. There’s a modified passage in the sewer, let’s go that way.”

As I scraped together all the remaining pieces of the case, Ricardo supported me and we headed through the dark sewer.

“If we get lost, I’ll bleed to death, so lead properly.”

“Don’t worry, friend. Come to think of it, you said you came to Rossboard to find a Street Engineer. The clinic I know is so good, it can revive the dead, so look forward to it.”

“That’s… a relief.”

Praying to a god I didn’t even believe in that this tin can was leading me to the right place, I trudged along.

The frantically rising communication channel logs and the terribly slow software update display on my artificial eye’s retina blurred my vision, so I closed my eyes.

Closing my eyes made me sleepy.

***

“Ugh… why won’t he answer!!”

*Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!* Luna punched the dashboard of the car with a furious fist, gradually denting its shape.

“Aaaargh! My beloved Florinne!!!”

Luna gnawed on her nails as Jay Q’s car was being wrecked in real-time because John Doe wasn’t answering his calls.

It was an old habit she had when her parents were still alive, but thinking about him doing something stupid somewhere made her feel like she would go crazy if she didn’t relieve her anxiety somehow.

Luna ignored Jay Q, who was screaming beside her, his driving becoming erratic as the car swerved zigzag down the road. She vowed to cave his skull in when she saw him.

*Swish* “Combat concluded. 144 Rossboard gang members deceased, 8 K&H corporation soldiers deceased, 1 Trauma Team member deceased. Including the seriously injured…”

“No need to report everything, Raleigh.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Bullshit. This isn’t a number that can come from two gangs bumping into each other. Fuck.”

A major incident with nearly 200 casualties, rounded up.

Even in Eclipse Point’s lower city, where law and order were a mess, this was crossing the line.

“Didn’t the Enforcers deploy?”

“No Enforcer activity detected. Situation judged as concluded.”

“Ugh… The Enforcers not getting involved in this… It’s too obvious.”

Enforcers were special corporate police created by the mega-corp Ayakashi Group after ‘buying’ the deployment rights in Eclipse Point, doubting the case-solving abilities of the EPSB’s special task force, ETF.

They were equipped with next-generation military cyberware from Ayakashi Group, which was heavily invested in cyberware, and supported by a world-class AI combat assistance program, making them superhuman after immense training.

They were essentially Ayakashi Group’s highest-ranking soldiers, and the fact that the Enforcers didn’t get involved in something like this meant that Ayakashi tacitly allowed the current situation.

“That’s a relief. At least it means we don’t have to do something crazy like fight the Reapers.”

Mercenaries and gang members who had joined the ranks called the Enforcers Reapers.

The implication was that the moment they saw them, their lives were already headed to the afterlife.

“Did you at least pinpoint his location?”

“Tch. The last location identified by the news channel was container row 7, so we’ll have to start looking from there.”

“Find him quickly.”

“Hey, I’m driving right now, you know?”

*Crunch* Jay Q shed tears as Luna crushed the dashboard with her grip, showing off her superhuman strength.

“I know! I get it! Please stop destroying my car with your damn strength! Damn it… it was already the worst with this being an unpaid mission, but having Florinne wrecked on top of that is even worse.”

Jay Q’s eyes were moist, as if he was about to cry.

Of course, driving with such a view would mess up the road, but for Jay Q, who was confident he was one of the three best drivers in Eclipse Point, it was just a minor inconvenience.

He was already nonchalantly speeding through the congested road, calculating every centimeter to avoid collisions.

“Based on the last captured video, friendly individual John Doe is estimated to be accompanied by Ricardo “Velo” Sanchez, the head of the neutral healthstream. Recommending heading to the factory district of sector S-117 W-32, which is a major base for Healthstream.”

“Did you hear that?”

“My ears aren’t deaf even if my eyes are.”

“Fuck. If you’re driving, wipe your eyes properly.”

Florinne (a semi-military pickup truck modified to a level that barely skirts the edge of Eclipse Point’s civil law) became a road outlaw, heading towards Rossboard.

To save a stupid newbie who had gotten caught up in a big incident.

***

Pain is one of the senses to which the concept of adaptation cannot be applied.

What people generally refer to as adapting to pain is just a phenomenon where the pain nerves in that area are so screwed up that the pain signal isn’t properly transmitted to the brain.

In that sense, I, who was jolted awake by extreme pain even while unconscious and then had my eyes roll back shortly after, could at least be said to be healthier than those people.

Limited to localized pain nerves, apart from the overall injury rate.

Frothing at the mouth with blood mixed in, my vision flickered black, and each time it cleared, the pain intensified as the update rate slowly rose in the corner of my vision.

“Aaaargh!!!”

“Damn it, another seizure. Friend, I’ll just knock you out, so don’t wake up until we arrive!”

*Thwack!*

‘You bastard…!’

A jarring impact on the back of my head.

A terrible way to knock someone out that was just perfect for killing someone, but what would this ignorant tin can know?

I was able to escape the pain for a brief moment with the concussion.

‘No, thank you.’

My head was smashed by Ricardo’s fist, and I lost consciousness again through primitive means.

How many times did I repeat this?

Each time I opened my eyes, I saw a smelly sewer, a modified passage decorated with bizarre tastes, the outside where I could finally taste fresh (polluted with life exhaust) air, a slum full of closed clinics, and disinfectant and cleaning fluid being sprayed all over my body.

The scenery changed wildly, telling me how long I had been unconscious.

And now, I was lying naked on an operating table in the center of a dilapidated clinic that I doubted even worked anymore.

‘Did I already get treated?’

I raised my head slightly and felt a slight sense of unease, but my chest was wrapped in bandages, soaked with red blood.

It seemed I had been hit by the case or had fragments stuck in me while falling.

‘But it’s not a bio-surgery.’

The reason Trauma Teams were able to save nearly 100% of their severely injured clients if they just managed to get them to the hospital was thanks to the new trauma treatment surgery created with advanced biotechnology.

It was a very simple surgery where all you had to do was replace the shattered area with bioware, so it was more like a procedure.

So, stopping the bleeding and compressing the wound with sterilized bandages in a clinic or hospital like this was a rather old-fashioned… more primitive response.

At least, it wasn’t the kind of treatment that Healthstream, which was trying to change its whole body into a machine in accordance with the latest trends, would bring me to.

“Ugh… damn. They didn’t bring me to a weird place, did they?”

Fortunately, the excruciating pain had subsided, and I only felt like my whole body was bruised and hard to move.

‘But what is this feeling?’

My body was clearly still made of flesh and blood, but I felt as awkward as if I had replaced my whole body with cyberware.

It felt like my body wasn’t even mine.

[Software update 73.8%…]

‘How long is this going to take?’

I was afraid of how much they would charge me for the update next month, considering how much remote updating was going on.

“Leaving that aside… damn it. Is anyone here?!”

And now that I think about it, even my voice sounds…

*Clunk!* Just then, a heavy object, at least the size of a person, flew in with a noise from somewhere.

I had no choice but to receive it with my bare body, without any preparation.

“Keuhaaaack!!”

“Hi~ Oppa, you have something interesting, don’t you?”

I trembled for a while at the tingling signals of my pain nerves as I was suddenly straddled by a stranger, and then I lifted my head to see the face of this rude person.

Her twintails were made of a gaudy color combination, and her fashion sense under the lab coat was something that no one in their right mind would wear.

Much of her seemed to have been replaced with chrome, with traces of chrome remaining except for a part of her upper body. (Of course, the surgeon can remove it if the patient wants.)

So she seemed like a prostitute that Healthstream would keep around.

“What is it? Ricardo, did this crazy bastard put a prostitute on a patient?”

But I couldn’t throw away what was given to me, so I fondled the prostitute’s buttocks, who was straddling my pelvis, and erected my penis.

Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be modified to the grotesque level that was unique to Healthstream, which was likely to have its own pros and cons.

If I put in the effort, it might be possible there too, but I felt more at ease with something closer to the original form.

Judging by the fact that her buttocks felt so good in my hand despite being cyberware, she seemed to be using a very high-quality outer skin.

“Oppa is full of energy as soon as he wakes up. That’s good and all~ but why don’t you look at your own condition first?”

*Snap* As the prostitute, whose buttocks were being grabbed by me, flicked her fingers, the equipment in the clinic room, which I doubted would even work, started up and a holographic screen showing my appearance was projected in the air.

“Huh?”

I couldn’t help but be flustered.

I could see the prostitute’s appearance, and below her was a kid with green hair that I had never seen before.

It was definitely me who should have been there.

I moved my hand and touched my face. And that kid did the same as me.

He also had an erection and was rubbing the prostitute’s buttocks, and he was wearing a bandage on his chest stained with blood, just like me.

Above all, his black hair and rude black eyes were so similar to me that I thought he would look like that if I were ten years younger.

I had to admit it.

This was me.

“I’ve never seen anything like this even when I was active~ it’s hilarious.”