The Scheme (2)
Jax-01.
Sihyeon Yujin sat in a garden thick with shrubs and lush green trees.
She gazed absently at a small bird chirping in the branches above her.
Then, from somewhere unseen, servants appeared, wheeling in carts loaded with food.
"Your meal is ready, my lady."
"……"
At the butler's words, she turned her head. The hologram of the garden dissolved, replaced in an instant by a laboratory white as snow.
The servants set up a small folding table and placed dishes of food on it one by one.
The butler introduced each course with meticulous formality.
"For the main course, duck roast with maple glaze."
The Star Union forbade its citizens from owning private property or indulging in luxury. The Machine Council had decreed that all citizens consume only their rationed meals and prescribed nutrition, nothing more.
The capital planet Jax-01 was no exception. Ingredients that did not qualify as daily necessities were nearly impossible to come by.
Yet faced with a dish made from such rare ingredients, she merely stared at it with listless eyes.
"My lady?"
"……"
"My lady, this is one of the dishes you love most."
She knew that well enough.
She knew how desperately she had craved this dish, even back when she had infiltrated the Space Dogs.
Right. It's what Sihyeon Yujin likes.
As if reading her mind, the butler's voice stiffened.
"Regarding the side effects of the clone, 'my lady' gave us explicit instructions. Everything must match exactly — the food she ate, her daily habits, her clothing, all of it."
"……"
Humanity had entered an age of faster-than-light travel, yet some roads still remained beyond its reach.
One of them was the manufacture of clones.
Officially, MegaCorp prohibited the creation of clones. Not for lack of technology — with the Yujin family's capabilities, producing a duplicate identical to the original was entirely feasible.
The prohibition existed because of the clones' inherent limitations.
Sharing the same genes did not mean sharing the same thoughts, the same behaviors. In practice, a clone was simply one more individual wearing an identical shell.
And humans were, after all, a resource that could be mass-produced at low cost. A clone was less efficient than a human being.
Had it been possible to give a clone the original's memories and make it think as the original did, the assessment would change — but that was impossible. In all of history, not a single case existed of a perfect replication, down to the innermost self.
The thing no technology could achieve, Sihyeon Yujin had solved by relying on something unscientific.
She had learned from her Cult master how to transfer a soul and its memories using psychic power.
A bizarre man — a Cultist who refused to use his own name and called himself Beom-ho instead. At the request of Sihyeon's father, Jungwoo Yujin, he had taught her a great many things.
Not merely the arts of combat, but how to wield the equipment of countless alien species — even the types of genes found in living creatures and how to exploit them.
Among his lessons were techniques that used psychic power to protect a soul and its memories, and to move them. Thanks to that, Sihyeon had been able to keep her sense of self intact even when she was forcibly turned into a Shadow.
She speared a clove of garlic fried in duck fat with her fork and put it in her mouth.
The mellow sweetness and crisp texture teased her palate, but she felt no pleasure at all.
This isn't my enjoyment.
The soul-transfer technique had unquestionably succeeded. The memories she had carried up until her death had been passed into the clone, whole and unbroken.
So why does this feeling linger?
Beom-ho had never mentioned this side effect. He had spoken of it as if it were a simple method anyone could pull off.
Of course, Sihyeon was no fool. Under the right conditions, the technique could grant a single person immortality. She had naturally assumed there would be side effects.
So she had leveraged the Star Union's precision manufacturing to build a machine capable of recalibrating the clone's brain to match the transferred soul and memories. On paper, the current her differed from the original by almost nothing. The only discrepancy was that her gene modification was incomplete.
She had also given her subordinates detailed instructions — not only on how to manage a clone, but on how to treat a clone whose soul had been transplanted. Every contingency was prepared, so that no matter what side effect emerged, the response would be flawless.
But she had never imagined she herself would feel this estranged from her own body. Even in the middle of a meal, the thought would not leave her: these were the tastes of 'Sihyeon Yujin,' not of her.
...Damn it all.
Having forced the meal down, she received reports from her subordinates.
"The Board of Directors meeting is almost here, you say?"
"Yes, my lady. According to our intelligence, Akira Yujin will also be visiting the T&C Special Trade Hub, supposedly for sightseeing."
"Sightseeing, is it. It seems the old man has developed a taste for jokes in his dotage."
Sihyeon snorted and sank into thought.
Akira never travels with fewer than two Shadows in tow.
She knew every one of the Shadows' weaknesses. Even those of Code Black — the strongest of them all, and Akira's cherished pet.
Even now, with her gene modification incomplete, she was confident she could defeat at least one low-code Shadow. The Shadows she could handle herself.
"What's the status of the Gallagon transport disguised as a Fairywing?"
"According to Jade's report, no problems."
The original plan had been for her to personally eliminate Akira's guards and escape, leaving Akira himself to the mercy of the enraged Gallagon. Neither his Noble Capital rivals nor the Prime Capital houses had any reason to protect him — once his escort was gone, he would be a dead man walking.
The old man doesn't know I'm still alive.
However formidable a seasoned veteran might be, no one would imagine a clone of the woman he'd killed coming after him.
Even weakened as she was — far weaker than before — her chances were more than adequate.
And opportunities to destroy a space city don't come often.
It was a chance to eliminate Lyla Chamberlain and a large number of the Prime Capital nobility besides. Her body was in poor condition, but this was not something she could postpone or hand off to another.
"What are your orders?"
"Proceed with the plan as scheduled. Tell Jade there are no changes."
"Understood, my lady."
After dismissing her subordinate, she clenched her teeth.
"That bastard...!"
Every ounce of her agony, her confusion — all of it traced back to that creature.
She swore it. The monster who had killed her would be torn to shreds. She would make certain of it.
Two days had passed since Sander presented me with the mutant Gallagon.
I had not killed it.
The nest offers the better reward.
Eating a Gallagon's flesh was a gamble through and through. If fortune favored me, I would gain a powerful trait; if it didn't, that would be the end of it.
Bargaining with the creature, on the other hand, would yield nothing immediate — but once I evolved to the next stage, everything would become far easier.
Gallagon nests are devilishly hard to find.
Even back when I played the game, hunting down a Gallagon nest had been a misery. Knowing a nest's location was a significant advantage.
Granted, the creature would have to stay alive until then.
｢Big Baby, look, look.｣
Number 26, perched on my shoulder, spoke to me as I lost myself in thought.
One of the creatures Sander had paid as tribute today had gone to Number 26. It was to foster her growth.
I didn't hand over just any creature. I passed along only those whose traits were useless to me, or whose numbers were too scarce for the Predation Effect to trigger reliably.
As if she had finally met her growth conditions, a new tentacle had sprouted from Number 26's body. She now bore three.
｢Big Baby, I grew a new arm.｣
[Zzzzz (Indeed)]
Delighted, it seemed, to have grown from the prey I'd given her, she kept showing off her new tentacle to me. Each time the slender appendage swayed through the air, translucent purple energy shimmered into being around it, glowed briefly, and faded away.
She really is stronger than before.
｢Me｣｢Food｣｢Thanks｣
[Zzzzz zzzzz (I didn't give it to you)]
｢Little Adult｣｢Thanks｣
Adhai, the Gallagon perched on top of my head, expressed her gratitude to Number 26 for sharing the food.
The little one had introduced herself as Adhai Or, an exile cast out of the Odd Grad pack. She had then asked me for my pack's name, but I didn't belong to any. Ever since, she had simply taken to calling me 'Adult' — and I, in turn, simply called her Adhai.
｢Little Baby must be protected too.｣
Number 26 on my shoulder lit up with joy, her body pulsing with thought-waves.
Something about the sight reminded me of a small child puffing out her chest in pride. Without thinking, I stroked both Adhai and Number 26.
This never happened in the game.
It was a strange, and strangely fascinating, change.
The Amorph — an Outspacer species built to survive and evolve alone — now trailed two creatures in its wake.
And not just any creatures: a Gallagon and a Sea Demon, both of them untamable in the game.
When I had first arrived in this world, my goals had been threefold.
Survive. Hunt. Evolve.
And reach Ascension.
Those goals had not changed, even now. But the path to them had diverged sharply from anything I had imagined.
Maybe I'm changing too, as I sink into this world?
The prey I had consumed the most, by far, was human. It was possible that their genes had left their mark on me.
Humans were social animals.
They did not survive in isolation; they gathered into packs.
Among Earth's animals, some survived by mimicking the appearance of their own predators.
Perhaps that was what was happening to me — evolving to match the humans I dealt with.
Shifting from a solitary Amorph into a predator that formed a society to hunt.
While these thoughts turned over in my head, the Residential District drew close.
Slipping out of the secret passage and evading the surveillance net, I moved under cover until I entered the apartment complex.
I was just starting to climb the outer wall when one of my auxiliary organs detected an unfamiliar presence.
Hm?
A man stood in front of the apartment next to Lars's. Hard eyes, tattoos covering both arms — nothing about him suggested an honest occupation.
Apparently waiting for someone, he was idly kicking at the corridor floor, boredom written all over his face.
Doesn't look like police. Who is he?
I told Number 26 and Adhai to hide for a moment, then activated my Morphing Organ.
Walking the corridor in the appearance of the man who lived next door, I noticed him looking my way.
"When in God's name is this son of a bitch coming home?"
He spat the curse without a shred of concern for my presence. Apparently he had no idea what his quarry's neighbor looked like.
Should I ask?
Pretending to head for Lars's door, I turned to him.
"Is something the matter?"
"...None of your business. Go get some shut-eye."
"Do you have business with the apartment next to mine?"
He glared at me with irritated eyes, then let out a sigh.
"...You know this place?"
"Yes."
"Fuck. Then you know the guy living here has been running around stealing other men's girlfriends?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"I love my girlfriend a lot, see, so I put a little tracker in her comm. She's been out of contact for a week, and when I checked, the signal comes back to this place."
He held his comm screen out to me. A simplified map of the Residential District glowed on it — with a red marker planted at precisely this location.
"Look, it's showing right now. He's obviously in there pretending he's not."
"I see."
This I had not anticipated at all.
Lloyd had a boyfriend. The woman who'd spent her nights on degenerate entertainment with Lars, actually keeping a lover. I never would have guessed.
Wait — no. Isn't this actually convenient?
Feigning deliberation, I quietly scanned the entire apartment complex with my auxiliary organs. No trace of police or androids anywhere nearby.
The man's actions were, by any reasonable standard, illegal — he hadn't reported his girlfriend's disappearance to the authorities, but had come hunting for her alone.
"Hmm. Perhaps he stepped out to buy something."
"No, I've been waiting for—"
"Don't wait out here. Come inside my place — he'll be back any minute."
He looked me up and down. When his gaze reached my face, he flinched almost imperceptibly, but then nodded.
"...Fine. Whatever. Not like it matters."
The body my Morphing Organ had constructed was far smaller than his. If trouble started, he had probably judged, he could still handle it.
When I opened the door, the man stepped inside without the slightest suspicion.
I flicked my fingers toward Number 26 and Adhai, who were hiding at the far end of the corridor with only their heads poking out.
"God, what a shithole. People should learn to clean up after themselves."
"I'm very sorry."
"And what the hell is that smell—"
The man turned his head and froze on the spot.
Two unfamiliar monsters were blocking the door.
"Didn't your mother ever warn you when you were little?"
"Wh... what?"
"You really shouldn't follow strangers home."
I closed the door.