episode_0044

Fragments of tempered glass, transformed into tiny, flying grains of sand, poured down like droplets falling from a waterfall, and I hugged Martina, shielding her.

And then, I remember nothing.

When I opened my eyes again, I was sprawled, having knocked over several food aisles. Strange men in high-quality suits, who definitely didn’t look like ordinary thugs, were getting out of the truck.

“Gah… Damn it, Martina. Are you okay?”

“Affirmative. However, actions that put myself in danger to protect this unit are contrary to the established AI behavioral principles, therefore, I recommend abandoning this unit.”

“You finally became human, so how could that be?”

I brushed off the tomato spaghetti cans that had spilled on my head.

I guess my hair will smell like tomato spaghetti for a while.

“…This unit only possesses an organic terminal; it is not a Homo sapiens sapiens.”

“Tsk, why is everyone making such a fuss about that…”

Barely standing up, I thought it was fortunate that I had been thrown into a flying display shelf after being hit, rather than directly into the rushing dump truck.

If I had been directly hit by that truck, parked in a way that completely blocked the building, as if they’d bought their license, even I would have been shattered into pieces and rolling around on the floor.

“Find them. Don’t let them get away.”

There were a total of eight people who got out of the truck.

All of them were wearing gleaming equipment that mercenaries rarely even get to touch, suggesting they weren’t ordinary mercenaries or gangsters, but rather corporate soldiers in disguise.

If this incident is reported, it’s common sense for corporations to pretend not to know anything about it, so they’d probably broadcast something about strange men presumed to be gangsters, along with compensation.

“Sir. It’s difficult if you burst in like this.”

Meanwhile, the employee, seemingly fearless, confidently approached the strange men and demanded they move the parked truck.

‘Can that even be called parking?’

Calling the madmen who stormed the market with guns “customers” and calling the truck that half-destroyed the market “parked” was beyond fearless; I couldn’t help but admire the employee’s response, which seemed like they were working without a brain.

Their brain must surely be asleep, with only their body moving to work.

If all the salarymen in Eclipse Point worked like that, life might at least be bearable; it’s something to emulate.

*Crackle!* “A distorted buzz.”

The assailants, perhaps hesitant to harm even a corporate employee, jabbed them in the neck with a stun stick, knocking them unconscious.

I had a reasonable suspicion that perhaps they just knew this would happen and went to sleep.

One, who appeared to be the leader, turned on a microphone connected to a speaker, and, observing the unfolding situation, addressed the frozen supermarket customers.

“Attention, attention. This is an announcement to everyone in this building. Everyone, abandon resistance, surrender, and lie prone on the floor and wait. If you cooperate, there will be no threat to your lives.”

“What the hell is this sudden bullshit…”

Naturally, some customers resisted.

After assessing their armament with my combat ocular implants, I saw that there were also a few who appeared to be mercenaries mixed in.

In the first place, who other than the rich or mercenaries who’d made a quick buck would even come to a fresh food supermarket from the Lower City?

*Bang!*

One of their heads exploded.

Most of the expensive fresh produce displayed nearby became unsellable, increasing the supermarket’s losses.

The atmosphere in the supermarket instantly turned chilling because of that one dead person.

Madmen who, as if to set an example, didn’t shoot to incapacitate arms or legs, but instead shot the head, instantly killing them.

“Ah, aaaahhh!!”

“Help me, help me! Please, I’ll give you everything I have!”

“T-Trauma Team! Damn it… do I have insurance?!”

The ordinary people fell into a panic and were neutralized on their own, while I and the mercenaries, accustomed to seeing people die, made sour faces and exchanged glances.

We all knew.

Terrorists who literally kept their word of “no threat to life if you surrender” did not exist, at least not in Eclipse Point.

If they were going to keep their promises so well, they should have been politicians… No, the only honest thing in Eclipse Point was corporate work quotas.

‘Martina. Are there any covers inside the building that we can use for confrontation?’

‘This AI is Ayakashi, and Martina is an alias for this organic terminal, I remind you again. There is a Level III blast door in the corporate employee-only passage 5m behind you.’

‘Then prepare to close it and inform the others via comms.’

Even with their level of armament, if Martina, whose performance has increased several times over since her AI days in my head, assists, we could probably defeat about two of them if we fought.

But protecting Martina against eight of them would be difficult, and my own survival wouldn’t be guaranteed.

In that case, we can only form an alliance to match their numbers.

The other mercenaries, perhaps having received the message, flinched and glanced at each other.

The content of the communication was a plan to use the blast door in the employee-only passage behind me as cover, and escape through the back door while keeping those damn bastards at bay.

I also added a message for those who wouldn’t comply: to stay down and not make trouble before I shot them, and about two of them subtly lowered themselves to the floor.

Good. Now that the interference of troublesome obstacles has been cut off, all that remains is to execute the plan.

*Gulp*

The fresh food supermarket, where frozen foods were scattered on the floor, was thick with tension.

The assailants, who seemed to think the situation was completely under control and began searching every corner of the supermarket, and the mercenaries, who always carried a gun on them, each had different thoughts.

To mercenaries, whose self-preservation was paramount, rather than terrorists offering unknown chances of survival, a path to escape by using their fellow professionals as shields was far more important. So, the mercenaries, who had been glancing at each other, gauging the timing, all began running the moment the one who looked like the leader turned his head!

“Run!”

Starting with that signal, six mercenaries, including Martina and me, began to run, and the assailants quickly raised their muzzles and fired at us as we fled.

*Crack!* *Bang!* *Bang!*

As if they were using expensive tungsten-core armor-piercing rounds, the back of the mercenary who started latest was pierced, becoming a shield.

The reduction from six people to five happened in an instant, but no one looked back.

It was enough that the person who became the shield wasn’t themselves.

‘Lower it!’

*Whirr!*

Martina followed my command; simply by looking at the supermarket’s security system, she easily hacked it and lowered the blast door.

It was such a short time that it was hard to truly perceive, but the speed was several times faster than before.

Moreover, not stopping there, she interfered with the cyberware of the two terrorists who were firing their weapons, disrupting their recoil control systems, killing one, and making the other’s gun muzzle jump in strange directions, preventing further casualties.

Certainly, compared to using only the computational power of a standard cyberdeck, the performance was on a completely different level when receiving advanced computational assistance from Little Vampire’s enhanced brain, cyberdeck, and Decked Spine.

Looking at Martina, who was tucked under my arm and had a face that seemed to demand more praise, and who had now become a coolly rational AI claimant, I ruffled her hair wildly as I stroked her.

*Thud!*

As the blast door closed, *pinging!* the sound of bullets embedding and ricocheting off the door could be heard.

But considering their level of armament, whether they used bombs or simply a hail of gunfire, it would eventually be breached.

“Damn it! Who are those bastards suddenly?!”

“Maybe they have a grudge against Wild Foods. It’s common to take hostages and drop stock prices, isn’t it?”

“If that were the case, they should be incapacitating them, not killing them. It was like the hostages didn’t matter at all, wasn’t it?”

The three mercenaries who ran with me and Martina and hid behind the blast door each threw in a remark about the situation.

The first was a man whose face was covered in scars, as if he walked around announcing, “I’m a mercenary,” yet he didn’t seem to have enough money for cyberware, so he had fashion lines tattooed on his arms like cyberware.

The second was a woman with a katana, who, unlike the boastful man, yawned as if she were accustomed to such situations.

The third was a man who, perhaps because the glasses he was wearing were high-tech equipment with X-ray vision, was touching the temple of his glasses while looking beyond the blast door.

As is typical of mercenaries, there were those who were too embarrassing to even be called mercenaries, and those who, though not quite up to Blake’s or Jay Q’s level, could still be called mercenaries; their skill levels varied widely.

“Anyway, let’s get out of here before the door is breached from dawdling around.”

The three mercenaries all stared at me, who was urging them to move down the corridor.

“Come to think of it, I don’t know how you found our communication channel, but you called us.”

“Two are better than one, three better than two, and more are better than three. Though in this city, where individualism is rampant, this might be a phrase that doesn’t work.”

I had no intention of explaining how I found their personal communication codes.

In the first place, they were people I would only see today, so it would be enough if they just helped Martina and me escape safely.

“Is there really a need to escape? Can’t we just wait here until the EPSB arrives? Fuck. I need to get compensated.”

The man with the fashion cyberware tattoos gritted his teeth and glared at the blast door.

That won’t last long…

“If you don’t want to go, I won’t force you, but this kid and I want to go home quickly.”

Martina, who knows when she picked it up, put down the shopping basket full of food she was hugging, and gently held her skirt and curtsied.

Her unnaturally pale white skin and inverted eyes drew attention, but in 2099, where all sorts of bizarre modifications were common, it was unique but not enough to cause alarm, so the mercenaries simply nodded.

“Alright. I guess I’ll just order delivery for dinner.”

“I took the time out with difficulty, but it was all in vain.”

The katana woman and the man with glasses nodded, indicating they would follow me, and left the man dreaming of futile compensation behind as they walked down the employee corridor.

Although it was fairly clean, the corridor, which was rather dimly lit, was about 30m long with several turns, and as we walked slowly, the back door was wide open, as if someone had already gone through, and from the direction where the corridor began, a man’s scream was heard, accompanied by the sound of metal tearing.

Farewell.

“How foolish… what good is compensation if you’re dead?”

The woman, who let out a cynical laugh, casually moved her feet, and the man with glasses let out a deep sigh and seemed to check the time.

*Tug*

Just then, Martina grabbed my hand and tugged, as if trying to get my attention.

“What’s wrong?”

“Hacking the security cameras revealed that the entity that opened the back door did not go outside, but headed to the restroom.”

“They were trying to leave just as the terrorists arrived, so maybe they suddenly had an urgent need to go.”

“…”

“Ah, alright. It was a joke. A joke.”

As Martina’s eyes fixed on me, becoming disturbingly unsettling, I threw up my hands and headed towards the restroom where the strange person was said to be hiding.

It was certainly suspicious.

To deliberately leave the door open and then hide in a dark restroom…

*A booming rumble*

“Oh no..!” “Gasp…”

As I pushed open the restroom door with a *creak*, the katana woman and the man with glasses, slightly wounded, ran back into the back entrance, accompanied by loud gunshots.

“Why aren’t EPSB or Trauma Team here, but instead those bastard masked figures are surrounding us?!”

“So it’s not an ordinary crime organization, then. We’ve really gotten tangled in something big.”

“Is this for real…”

It seemed that not only the ones who crashed the truck into the entrance were here, but they had also occupied the entire area.

The two approached me as I was about to enter the restroom, and informed me about the situation.

“But what are you doing here?”

“Hmm…”

I wondered if I should tell them, but since it seemed unlikely we’d separate immediately anyway, I shared the information that someone was hiding in the restroom, just as Martina had told me.

I was met with faces that seemed to ask why I cared about such things, but surrounded by masked figures from both front and back, the restroom was the only place we could go anyway.

I pushed open the restroom door.

*Thump!*

Feeling a heavy weight, like that of a person, collide with my chest, I caught a glimpse of a green hood in my lower vision.

“Y-You’re mercenaries, right?! I-I have a request!”

The green hood, which had hit me and passed by just before the truck charged into the supermarket, shouted in a trembling voice.