Jacqueline Lopez (2)
I needed to make Jackie understand exactly what she was supposed to do.
"First job."
Jackie, slumped on the floor, stared with her mouth hanging open. Fair enough. The man who had just jammed a bug into her neck was suddenly talking about work.
I ignored the vacant look on her face and tapped the encrypted credit chips on the counter.
"These chips. Have them ready to spend by tomorrow."
"Th-the credit chips... decoding...?"
"Yeah. You can do it."
Still scared out of her mind, Jackie nodded in a daze.
I had no neurochip. If I wanted to slip the surveillance nets of the gangs and the corporations, deal on the black market, and meet with fixers, a proxy was mandatory. From now on, she would be the one running my errands and handling the transactions.
A sudden reek of blood stabbed at my nose. I checked the figure in the mirror and found it filthy beyond words. The moment I noticed, the grime became unbearable.
This patient gown. I ought to burn the thing.
"Where's the bathroom?"
"Huh...? Th-the bathroom...?"
"You see the state of me? You don't expect me to spend the night like this, do you? There's a bathroom. I'm washing up."
"S-second floor. Up the stairs, right away on the right..."
Jackie pointed a trembling finger at the steel emergency stairs in the corner of the shop.
I climbed the creaking metal steps to the second floor. It was cramped, but cozy enough for a living space—a bedroom, a living room, and a simple kitchen. It matched the game screen so perfectly it raised goosebumps. This was the starter hideout you received for clearing the original tutorial, and even the stains on the wallpaper were identical.
I stepped into the bathroom, locked the door, and twisted the old valve. Water roared out. Red rust spat for a moment, then a hot stream hammered the floor tiles, and the narrow room filled with white steam in an instant.
I stepped under the shower, crushed the soap in my hands, and scrubbed away the black blood. Red water spiraled down the drain with the suds. The tension and fatigue that had been clamping my joints slowly melted off in the heat.
"Haa..."
I wiped the fog from the mirror with my palm. There it was—Seven's default face, the one I had seen countless times in the original. A typical East Asian man in his prime. The jawline was sharp, the bridge of the nose pronounced. I ran my hands over the clear abdominals and the broad shoulders, though I had never trained a day. Test-subject trait or not, the body was solid.
Judging by the timeline, there's still a few months before the original's main story. First I build strength from the bottom. If that bastard Owen ever contacts me, I ignore him. Or maybe I just kill him.
He's a famous fixer. Kill him and all I get is a worse reputation and more trouble.
I'll use what I know, gnaw at the bottom of Nowak City, and scrape together escape money. Stay clear of the megacorps as much as I can. Lean all the way into what this body can do, and ripping off the small fry won't be hard.
A gleaming mechanical chassis outclassed me in raw destructive power. I had felt it in the contest of strength with the Scavenger Boss—rushing in like an idiot was a fool's move. Against Zhongtian Group's grand generals, or Galton's cyborg special forces, I couldn't promise a win even if I finished evolving completely.
Even so, not spending a single credit on cyberware was an overwhelming advantage. Shove in meat and calories, and bone or organs alike would regenerate. If the brain developed a little further from here, there would be no problem. Flexibility and unpredictability, the things machines didn't have—that was my strength. Used well, there was no more perfect weapon for surviving this insane city.
Of course, this body carried a fatal weakness, the kind that led straight to a bad ending.
I'll work that out as I go.
I looked the body in the mirror over. Bullets had riddled it, and it had been crushed more than once, yet not a single scar remained. If anything, the skin felt tougher than before. Maybe that was the power of the P-Cells that made up my flesh. Every time I stepped to death's threshold and came back, the body adapted a little and grew stronger.
When morning comes, I'll dump the truck and every firearm I looted. First, raise a stake. My real weapons are these bone claws and this regeneration. I'll keep a Mastiff shotgun or a pistol or two for cover and sell the rest. No reason to chain myself to ammo and guns. Cull Alden's mutants hiding in Nowak City's alleys, absorb their essence, and I'll get plenty strong. Lucky my face hasn't turned into a monster's, at least.
I grabbed the large towel on the shelf. With nothing but that towel wrapped roughly around my waist, I swept my wet hair back and flung the bathroom door open.
"Haa. That's better."
I nearly collided with Jackie the moment I stepped out. She had a tablet clutched to her chest and was heading for her room, dressed in plain yellow pajamas. Plain as they were, they were nowhere near up to the task of containing her. The gaps between the buttons strained so tight they looked ready to tear, and through them showed skin with a faint, scorched-pale glow and curves far too deep. A face that young and gentle, and a body with that unreal a volume.
"...Uh... wh—ah!"
Jackie, who had been blankly running her eyes over me, screamed a beat too late, stumbled backward, and landed hard on her rear. The dull impact sent the flesh under the thin pajamas heaving.
"Aaaah! Why did you come out without any clothes!"
Color flooded Jackie's face all the way to the nape of her neck. She covered it with both hands, but her fingers were spread wide, and I could see perfectly well that she was peeking at my body through the gaps.
A heavy heat settled low in me. She was cute to begin with, and sitting on the floor scared witless stirred something strangely sadistic. She looked exactly like a herbivore begging to be eaten.
An ordinary person, not a scrap of cyberware on her. With her personality, she couldn't even refuse...
The vile fantasy flashed through my head, and I dumped cold water on it at once.
What the hell am I thinking?
The Servant Cell meant she couldn't betray me, but the Jackie of the original had a mind as soft as tofu. Put my hands on her just because I was turned on, and she would break. I had already put several people in the ground, but I couldn't cross this line too. Instinct was warning me.
If I keep doing whatever I want here, my head might get even worse.
Fortunately, Jackie didn't notice me waver. I shook the water from my hair as if nothing were wrong and tossed her a dry rebuke.
"What are you doing. Want a hand up?"
"N-no! I'm fine!"
Jackie scrambled to her feet. Maybe it was the tension snapping all at once. From deep in my gut, a hunger that felt like it would scrape me down to the bone clenched my solar plexus. The body was screaming to be refilled with the calories it had burned through.
Damn it. I devoured that many people and I'm still hungry.
"Food. Where is it."
"Huh...? B-behind the counter, on the first floor...!"
I shook out my wet hair and strode down the stairs, straight to the old mini-fridge in the corner of the first floor. Half to see how closely the Nowak City of the game matched reality, I yanked the door open. The shelves held a few convenience-store synthetic-meat sandwiches, frozen burritos sealed in plastic, a crushed beer, and three or four cans of energy drink.
Even the inside of the fridge is identical. Then I eat.
I tore a wrapper and shoved a whole sandwich into my mouth. It was dry, cold imitation meat, but I had no time to care how it tasted. I chewed roughly, swallowed, and dumped the last one in after it.
Jackie, clinging to the stair rail and looking down, muttered in a voice that was trying to crawl away.
"Eep... th-that was emergency rations I was saving until tomorrow..."
She glanced at my fingers stuffing the sandwich in, then swallowed a yelp and hastily clamped a hand over her mouth.
"I gave you the credit chips. Take it out of those."
I popped the tab on the beer and poured it straight down my throat. Sharp carbonation scraped along my parched esophagus, and at last the dizziness cleared, blood seeming to move through my head again. I tossed the empty can into the trash and turned.
"Clothes."
"Ah, I'll get them! Clothes—I have clothes!"
Jackie, who had been rubbing the back of her neck and watching my mood, bolted for the inner storeroom the moment I spoke. A moment later she came back with a large zip-up hoodie and a pair of cargo pants.
"They were my late uncle's... He was tall, so they should more or less fit..."
I took them. The fit was generous. Worn, but a hundred times better than scraps of a patient gown.
"Um... um..."
After handing the clothes over, Jackie squatted back down on the floor and carefully opened her mouth.
"What... should I call you...?"
"Seven."
"Y-yes... S-Seven... sir?"
"Call me Boss."
"Eek...! Y-yes! Boss? Jefe...?"
She bowed her head flat, her face crumpling like she might cry, and I swallowed a dry chuckle.
I went back up to the second floor. The bed, and the old narrow leather sofa in the corner, came into view at once. I jerked my chin at the sofa.
"I'm using the bed."
"...What? Th-that's my bed...?"
Jackie, her back to the wall, looked ready to cry.
"Then you want to sleep with me? I don't mind."
Her breath caught, and color flooded her face all the way to her ears.
"I'll sleep on the sofa!"
Good. If she had actually crawled in beside me, restraint might have been difficult.
Jackie scrambled up onto the narrow sofa. Knees drawn all the way to her chest, curled in on herself, she looked strangely pitiful—worse because the tear tracks on her face hadn't even dried.
Once I make some money, I ought to buy her another bed.
I went into the room and threw myself spread-eagle onto the soft mattress. The heavy, gentle give that wrapped my lower back made the death match from only a few hours ago feel like a dream.
Still, I fastened the first button right.
I had been forced to fight a tutorial boss that wasn't even in the original, and I had torn several people apart. It was unsettling that being drenched in blood stirred nothing in me at all. But in a few hours I had a safehouse, a broker, and seed money I could put to work immediately. Not a losing deal.
Rest for now. In a few days I'll have to go hunting again.
I let out a long breath toward the ceiling and closed my eyes.