episode_0025

Emily Miller, a TNEP reporter on assignment in Tonyboni to cover Bram Stoker, opened her eyes and realized she was in her hostel bed.

An unpleasant feeling.

Her whole body felt sticky, and a strong body odor seemed to permeate her entire being.

And Emily slowly began to recall the memories of that night.

It started with her senior reporter, who had gone missing a week ago and seemed to have become a victim who would never reappear, appearing wearing strange cyberware, turned into a chrome psycho, and trying to kill her.

Then, running frantically through the back alley to escape, a man who looked about six years younger appeared just before she was caught, instantly killed what used to be her senior, and saved her.

The man, who introduced himself as a mercenary hunting Bram Stoker, said he would take her to a safe place, dragged her all the way back to her hostel, and even offered her some cheap synthetic instant tea.

When he asked for cooperation, she hesitated, wondering if all the accomplishments she had risked her life to gather would be taken away, and then her body suddenly began to heat up.

And taking off her clothes…

And falling onto the bed…

And, and, and.

“Oh, oh? Wh-why did I do such a thing…”

Emily realized that something had felt off from the middle part, but even when she searched her personal net space with the vaccine distributed to reporters by TNEP, there were no traces of hacking or viruses, nor any signs of drugs.

That’s because the malicious program, coded just before by the quasi-super AI Ayakashi, was designed to self-destruct after a certain period, completely erasing its traces.

Only her tingling lower body and her weak waist spoke of belated regret.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

“Y-you! What did you do to me!”

I was eating instant ramen, and seeing Emily pointing a finger at me and pulling the blanket up as soon as she woke up, I took another mouthful. *Slurp*. The ramen noodles were a bit tough, but the strong seasoning made it edible.

“What’s so special about it? We just looked into each other’s eyes and spent a fiery night together.”

I instantly slurped down the remaining half of the ramen along with the broth, and feeling my hungry stomach somewhat appeased, I licked my lips, sat on the edge of the bed, and put my arm around Emily’s shoulder. My hand naturally moved to a position where I could grasp her natural, unaugmented chest; I kneaded Emily’s breast, enjoying the lingering sensation of a woman I had taken.

“Don’t touch me like that!”

“You enjoyed it too, so it’s too late to pretend to be innocent now.”

“Ugh… How can I face Harker now…”

Of course, Ayakashi helped out just a little, but it was consensual sex.

As I wiggled my fingers, Emily, whose face flushed, became visibly gloomy and muttered a man’s name.

Harker, Harker, I’ve heard that somewhere.

[The identification name of the male secured in the key figure acquisition mission 29 hours ago was Harker.]

‘Ah, right. Well… it can’t be the same person, can it?’

By now, he’s probably caught by bad people and screaming in some underground place; wouldn’t it be too pitiful if his girlfriend was also taken by the mercenary who kidnapped him?

Then, on Emily’s physical display pad, which she took out, the image of a man wearing an anachronistic pair of glasses appeared as her wallpaper, and I subtly gazed at the ceiling.

‘My apologies, Mr. Harker.’

“Anyway, if anything happens, you can contact me. And we’ll contact you first when we catch Bram Stoker.”

“…”

It was about time I stopped fooling around with women and slacking off, so as I left Emily’s hostel, I gave her my comm channel code.

With the door between us, from inside the room, Emily, who had washed away the night’s traces and returned to her reporter’s attire, hesitated and couldn’t meet my gaze.

“5,000 credits is the advance payment, and…”

Having gotten off the bed, it seemed so awkward for her to look at my face; Emily was just staring endlessly at the floor.

After a moment of thought, I came up with a humorous way to break the awkward situation.

[Denial…]

‘I’ll show you the greatness of humanity. AlphaGo.’

[This AI’s designation is Ayakashi, not AlphaGo, I repeat.]

I pulled Emily strongly into my embrace, and with both hands, I firmly squeezed and lifted her plump buttocks hidden beneath her beige pants. Emily, pressed tightly against me with no gap between our bellies, tried to push me away in a flustered manner, but not only was she in a position where she couldn’t exert much strength, but my musculoskeletal system had also been augmented by nanoweare to perform beyond human limits, so a mere journalist like Emily stood no chance of resisting.

“Even if it’s not about Bram Stoker or a mission, you can contact me if you’re lonely. Because I’ll make you spill everything you know, just like last night.”

“To someone who’s already troubled…”

“Maybe even sexual needs can be outsourced to a mercenary?”

“…At first, I thought you were cool, being young, skilled, and gentlemanly, but in reality, you’re no different from a street mercenary.”

“Well, I *am* a street mercenary. But isn’t this gentlemanly enough?”

It seemed that dragging her to the hostel was partly due to my appearance, which seemed to suggest I hadn’t been corrupted by society yet, lowering her guard.

If I were to count my actual age, I might be about three years older than Emily.

Emily, held in my arms, lightly tapped my arm as if asking to be put down, so I gently lowered Emily, whose feet hadn’t been touching the floor.

“…I can contact you anytime, right?”

“Even so, not when I’m working. Alright, I’m leaving.”

Somehow, thinking that I would frequently receive personal designated requests from now on, I walked out onto the streets of sunny Tonyboni, thick with smog, smoking a cigarette.

I was definitely smoking a cigarette, but it felt like I was inhaling more factory exhaust and engine fumes, but I had to stay here for a while.

Thinking it would be good if I could find a free place to stay today as well, I entered a nearby electronics shop, went to the TV display corner, sat on a sofa, and naturally switched to a news channel.

“Hey, who told you to switch to a paid channel on your own accord!”

*Inhale—exhale~*

As I took a long drag from my cigarette and exhaled, I couldn’t tell if I was inhaling factory exhaust or cigarette smoke outside, but inside the shop, perhaps due to the air purification system, I could taste the cigarette, which was nice.

On the 8K 3D display, the local Tonyboni news channel was reporting various events that had occurred in Tonyboni yesterday.

“This goddamn bastard! Can’t you hear me!”

*Click*. The muzzle of a pistol pressed against the back of my head.

Regardless, I watched the news.

-[“Last night, the A-C3X building in Tonyboni’s B-sector was half-destroyed, resulting in 35 fatalities and 168 serious injuries…”]

-[“Tonyboni Chairman John Wheeler Garcia declared war on smog…”]

-[“The EPSB has set a bounty of 300,000 credits on Bram Stoker, who has recently terrorized Tonyboni, and…”]

“Oh, a bounty’s finally been placed. If it’s even on the news, a lot of mercenaries will gather, right?”

“Has this bastard gone crazy?! Can’t you hear me!”

I grabbed the pistol held by the loudly nagging owner and simply crushed it with my grip strength. *Crumple*. The Smash Grenade is nothing more than a primitive grenade launcher using inertial force, but its basic functions are not much different from a Gorilla Arm, so crushing the gun in my hand was a simple matter.

“Uh… uhh…”

“I’ll leave on my own. Let’s not bother each other by reporting this to the EPSB.”

Getting up from the sofa, I patted the owner’s shoulder lightly, and then walked back out onto the pollution-hazed streets, where neon lights scattered, leaving the paid channel on.

“It’s probably right to search Sector A, after all, isn’t it?”

According to the information Emily investigated, there have only been 3 incidents of Bram Stoker’s attacks in Sector A.

And in the 8 sectors surrounding Sector A (B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I), damage occurred evenly, although with variations in each.

One might think that the possibility of him being in Sector A, where the least damage occurred, is low, but if the crimes are spread across all of Tonyboni like this, he would probably want to commit them far from his own residential area to make it difficult to pinpoint him.

However, if one maintains such a way of thinking even when there are many possibilities, an unnatural map is bound to be drawn.

When I marked the sightings and attack locations of Bram Stoker on a Tonyboni satellite map with red dots, the map of Tonyboni looked like a donut with a hole in the middle.

“Jay Q, let’s go.”

[“Look at you, getting cocky just because you’ve had a taste of mercenary life. I was going to Sector A anyway, you know?”]

*Vrooom—*. Listening to the familiar, explosive exhaust sound piercing through the smog, I licked my lips at the 300,000 credits that would soon fall into our hands.

***

Despite it being daytime, due to the thick pollution, the light from the ceiling of Tonyboni’s sky couldn’t reach, leaving the back alley dim.

With white light descending from the sky and colorful neon lights scattering, an old man stood in this place, emanating a bizarre atmosphere.

His white hair was swept back, his face was deeply wrinkled, and unintelligible mumbles flowed from the old man’s mouth.

The old man, walking through the alley with a hunched posture, held a single sword.

Unlike what mercenaries of 2099 carried, it was a traditional scabbard, not adorned with flashy gimmicks, LEDs, or neon lights.

In this era where bullets flew if even a slight misstep occurred, the old man looked utterly unthreatening, as if he had lost his mind.

-“Grooaaah! Keh-hek!”

-“Kraaah..! Grrrk.”

The old man was surrounded by thugs wearing cage-like prosthetics on their heads and long fang-like chrome teeth, in the polluted air where various lights scattered, creating a mystical atmosphere.

There were no less than five of them.

These biological laborers, whose brains seemed to have been tampered with to the extent that they wouldn’t care if an arm or leg was blown off, charged at the old man, who was muttering in an incomprehensible voice to himself.

Their sharp fangs would pierce the old man’s fragile skin and drain all his blood.

But instead, the faces of the laborers, which should have been doing that, split in half and fell to the ground.

The cross-section of what had been precisely severed was incredibly smooth, but soon, moisture erupted from the severed tissue, and the trace of that artistry disappeared.

*Click*.

As the sword, which no one had even realized was drawn, disappeared back into its scabbard, only the old man remained standing in the alley.

He continued his footsteps that had briefly paused.

Along with his unintelligible mumbles.

The alley floor embraced the disgusting stench of flowing entrails from the corpses.