The Freeloading Monster (3)
A week since I'd cleaned out the Rusty Dogs' garage.
The moment there was money, the first thing I did was grant Jackie's wish.
"W-wow...!"
Jackie was grinning ear to ear. Out front of the pawn shop, technicians and day laborers bustled back and forth — though all they'd really done was replace the glass and swap the shutter.
Anyone else going to come kicking this door in for a while? The Rusty Dogs, due any day to collect on the debt, I had already liquidated. In the physical sense. There was still about a month before the main scenario started, so nothing serious ought to happen to Jackie.
Everything's running the way it did in the game.
The news spent all day blaring about the large and small contests between Zhongtian and the Galton Group, influencer scandals, and the petty noise of the international scene. Every bit of it followed the current I already knew. For now, it was peaceful.
And even that only holds a few months before this city turns into a battlefield for the megacorps.
By the setting, Galton Industries of the Hudson Federation and the Zhongtian Group of the Shanghai Treaty had been fighting over control of Nowak City for a long time. The Korea-Japan Community, the European Governing Command, and Texas and California had all been keeping the two great powers and their megacorps in check, so until now neither side had quite dared to start the war out in the open. But before long, internal crises would erupt in country after country, and none of them would have attention to spare beyond their own borders. From that point on, the struggle over the free city would come up to the surface. That was why I had to ditch this city, and fast.
Which means I need money.
"Jackie. The guns?"
"¡Mi jefe! Sold every last one!"
The firearms I'd hauled back from the garage, Jackie had moved through her uncle's network and sold down to the individual parts. Every cent of it was stacking up neatly — a war chest, and the funds to defect. Not from the North. From Nowak.
The smile never left her face all day. Clearing the debt must have felt that good, and she was following my orders well enough. Maybe that was why it had been grating on me for days, the sight of her curled like a shrimp on the second-floor sofa. The day they hung the new shutter, I'd ordered a folding cot and tossed it into a corner of the upstairs room.
"¡Madre mía! B-Boss... is this really my bed? Do I finally get to escape the sofa...?"
"You thrash all night. Too loud to sleep through. From now on, sleep quiet."
"Yes, yes! I'll sleep quiet!"
Not that it changed the arrangement. The soft bed in the middle of the room was still mine, and Jackie — once the owner of the house — had her place shifted past a plywood partition.
And money wasn't the only thing.
"Ahem..."
"...Eek!"
Clear my throat and the kid would grab the back of her neck and nearly jump out of her skin. Planting the Servant Cell might have been a mistake. If the two of us couldn't get past a certain line, it was almost certainly because of that pseudo cranial-nerve parasite driven into her head.
Then again. Live with someone who pushes claws out of his palms and doesn't die when he's shot, and I'd be no different.
Even so, watching her brew synthetic coffee every morning and heat up frozen burritos, I had to admit she was a little endearing. The burrito cracked under my teeth, and Jackie came over.
"U-um... Boss? Sorry to bother you when you're busy..."
"What."
Asked that bluntly, she hunched her shoulders and mumbled in a voice that seemed to crawl back down her throat.
"It's just... the high-concentration protein packs we stacked in the basement are already gone. I didn't think you'd go through three twenty-kilo sacks in a few days..."
"Regenerating cells and packing on muscle, I have to eat that much. If I starve and this body shrivels up, you gonna carve me off a piece of yourself?"
"...I-I'm stringy. I taste bad..."
Stringy? Looks plenty soft from here.
"Fine... I'll eat less from now on."
The real problem was my own stupidity — playing gym rat for no reason, just to test the regeneration. The P-Cells that kept this body running would pack a broken bone or a torn organ shut in an instant, and the price was a monstrous burn of calories. Even now, that held.
Already gone. I looked down at the table. Hadn't I just shoveled down three frozen burritos and five shakes? Part of it was the iron I'd been slinging in the pawn shop basement, trying to pack on muscle. Hoist a heavy scrap-metal barbell up and down in the storeroom below, and the muscle swelled in no time. All-purpose cells, true to the setting — and the body craved nutrients like something insane to match.
"Hnnngh—hah!"
I went back down to keep lifting, and footsteps came from the stairs. Jackie was approaching again, like she had more to say, so I answered with a jerk of my chin, barbell still in hand. She eased a tablet screen toward me.
"Um... I contacted a merchant I know, deeper in the black-market alley. Told him to set aside three boxes of protein packs and a box of slug rounds..."
"I have to go? Didn't they say they'd deliver?"
"Their drone and their truck broke down... They said if I want it today, I have to come get it myself."
"Do I look like your errand boy?"
"Eek! N-no! It's not that... it's just heavy... You're the strongest, Boss, and you're the one who's going to eat all of it anyway... and I still have to run the shop..."
She wouldn't meet my eyes. Her interlaced fingers fidgeted, anxious. I clicked my tongue and set the barbell on the rack. Fair enough — that half-starved frame of hers couldn't haul it back.
"I'll go. Lock up properly and keep the shop open."
"Yes, sir!"
I pulled the hood down low and left the pawn shop. The counter was cleanly cut off from the outside by reinforced glass, and the future I knew guaranteed the place would come through unharmed. What could possibly go wrong.
The black-market alley was stifling. Oil and strange stenches rose from somewhere, circled the tip of my nose, and were gone. The merchant's shop Jackie had pointed me to sat in a dim recess of the alley.
"Here we are. So you'd be... the new security for that Lopez Pawn Shop?"
"Security?"
Looks like that was how she'd described me.
"Something like that."
I took the three boxes of protein packs and the box of slug rounds. Together they had to weigh as much as two sacks of rice, but set on my shoulder they sat light. I hauled the load up and turned into the pawn shop alley.
Seen like this, even this rundown alley has a certain warmth to it.
That was when it happened. Static tore out of the smartphone in my pocket.
The line went dead. The Servant Cell buried in the nape of my neck lurched, savage, and Jackie's ragged heartbeat came down the neural link. Her convulsions, shaking like a poplar in the wind, stabbed a sharp tingle into the back of my neck. Coordinates: three hundred meters ahead. Lopez Pawn Shop.
"You laid a hand on my subordinate?"
I clenched my teeth. What kind of vermin were making a move — remnants, maybe? I sprinted the alley at once. Pedestrians screamed and split to either side.
Looping through the streets will take too long. I drew the claws halfway, stabbed them into the wall, and climbed. Once I hit the rooftops I ran a straight line, leaping the gaps from building to building. The pawn shop sign came into view.
The front of the place was a wreck. The entrance had been torn out, the shutter smashed halfway down in a rush. The cause was obvious — the sledgehammer in the hands of the lookout posted at the door. Shattered glass and door hinges littered the floor. I threw myself through.
"Huh? What—"
I drew the claws and brought them down on his skull. Then I Devoured him. A jumble of memory sucked in all at once and welled up to fill me. This absorption trick of mine — the way it drank up scraps of memory along with the rest — I still could not get used to it.
A rough shout burst from inside the pawn shop.
"Hey! Where's the jewelry and the credits that Hector bastard squirreled away?! Talk!"
"Snap her fingers one by one until she gives up the password!"
I strode in. The glass was all shattered, and behind the broken counter stood men with wrenches and a cutting torch at their belts. Jackie was pinned on top of the counter. One of them had a fistful of her hair, and a bright red handprint was swelling on her blanched cheek. Behind them, the one who looked like the leader had a dagger at the nape of her neck. Four in all.
"B-Boss...!"
Jackie, the corner of her mouth split, looked at me, shaking. The men turned toward the front door as one. Seeing my bulk still loaded down, the ones in front snickered.
"The hell is this? Your boyfriend?"
I dumped the load onto the floor. It landed with a heavy thud. The one standing closest drew a large-caliber revolver and aimed it at my forehead. I threw my arms up over my head and ducked. A gunshot, a flashing impact. For an instant, everything went black.
Damn it. Did it punch clean through the arm?
In that dizzy gap, a mocking voice dug into my ear.
"Got him!"
"Punk... all that swagger, and one shot drops him?"
Just as I wondered if I'd let my guard down too far, light returned to the vision that had gone dark.
"Huh?"
My sight swayed up and down. My neck, which had snapped, snapped back into place. Something warm ran down from my forehead. I lifted my chin.
...Huh?
The bullet had definitely punched through my arm and lodged in my skull — all the more certain, given the caliber he was holding. And yet I'd regenerated.
Wait. Did my stats climb in that short a time? Had the body evolved enough to tank a shot or two to the head? The answer came fast. A sticky sensation at my forehead — cold and warm at once — and a hard foreign body pushed out from the inside. Clink. I glanced down. The blood-smeared lead slug that had been buried in my head rolled across the floor. Broken bone and flesh knit back together. I felt my forehead, and there wasn't even a scar where the bullet had gone in.
"Lucky me."
The robbers' faces froze like plaster casts. The sights of the guns in their hands wavered this way and that.
"...Eek?!"
"It hit him in the head! I saw it!"
"M-monster... he's a monster!"
The leader recoiled in terror, stumbling backward. In that gap Jackie rolled off the counter onto the floor, and I saw her scramble into the corner beneath it and curl up. The leader aimed his pistol at the space between my eyes and screamed.
"D-don't come any closer! What the hell are you?!"
I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth and took a step.
"You bastards..."
It was absurd. Touch what's mine, then stand there like they were the ones who'd been wronged. They'd laid hands on Jackie and the pawn shop. No need to leave them alive.
Another one drew his gun. The trigger went back. I saw it — maybe the shock just now had shaken the carelessness off, because my senses read the movement of his finger as it happened. I ripped the claws free and crossed both hands. Clang. This time I blocked it clean. I kicked off the floor.
My left hand swung at the one who'd aimed first. The wrist holding the gun floated into the air.
"Gaaah?!"
I drove my right hand into the nape of his neck and buried the claws deep. The sensation of the spine severing traveled up through my fingertips. Then I kicked him in the solar plexus. His body was shoved back and slammed into the counter, and blood spattered the wall.
"Aaaagh! Shoot! Shoot him!"
Another robber charged, swinging a tool. I ducked low, caught the arm of the one with the pipe, and twisted. A dull sound of bone turning. I drove my fist up into his jaw, and the claws punched through the crown of his head. His torso convulsed like a puppet. I flung it aside; it toppled backward, both arms twitching.
The one left floundered. I had no intention of waiting. I swung the claws, and a line of blood cut the air. His head fell from his shoulders and rolled across the floor. In an instant, three of them lay sprawled in pools of blood.
The last one was the leader. He'd dropped his gun and was sitting in the corner of the counter, wetting his pants.
"P-please, spare me... I'm begging you..."
I stepped right up to his face. Blood dripped from my arm. Once the cleanup was done, I'd have to wash. I grabbed him by the collar and lifted him with one hand. The game had nothing on small fry like these.
"Who are you with. Where do you hole up?"
"W-we're the R-Ratchet Crew! Our hideout's the containers behind the scrapyard in the northern slums! We just heard old Hector was dead and came to scrape a few coins... please, just my life...!"
"Right. Behind the scrapyard. Got it."
"Y-you're letting me live, right?"
I drove the claws in just below his ribs and flung the body, breath already gone, onto the floor.
"Hic... hngh... uuh..."
Jackie, curled under the counter, chattered her teeth and gasped for breath. I retracted the claws and held out my hand.
"Get up."
Seeing me, she startled and backed away until her back hit the counter wall.
"B-Boss... my legs won't hold me..."
I bent down and picked her up.
"Eek?!"
Jackie crushed a fistful of my clothes and buried her face in my chest. Her whole body trembled.
Suddenly both sides of my head throbbed.
"...Ugh!"
Pain like an awl driving into the temples. From the nape of my neck, a sensation of molten iron boiling upward, and my vision went far away.
...Don't tell me. That symptom?
I clenched my teeth and breathed rough. Only after a long while did the heat, like a flame, finally subside. I set Jackie down on the sofa behind the counter.
"Stay put. I'll go deal with the bodies."
"Y-yes... Boss..."
I went to the shutter.
Smashed it good and thorough, didn't they. I nudged a piece of iron plate on the floor with my toe. This time I'd been the careless one. Junk like this won't even stop petty thieves. I turned my head toward the sofa.
"Jackie. The money we made this time — put it into hardening this shop's security."
Jackie wiped her tears and nodded.
Ratchet Crew, he said. I looked up at the sky in the direction of the scrapyard. Leave them be and they'd be trouble later. Bastards. Part of it was wounded pride, from taking a bullet to the head.
Almost got dropped by trash-tier street mobs.
Tonight, I was going cleaning.