The Merchant's Bargain
"Good to see you again, Super Rookie."
Honestly, the title still made my skin crawl every time I heard it. Then again, it was also the most reliable proper noun anyone had for me in this place, so I let it slide. Not like I could tell him to call me Lucky Seven after my inmate number, or Han Seungho, my actual name.
I gave a perfunctory nod and took his handshake, and Vladimir grinned as he ushered us inside.
Looks like my timing for this visit was pretty damn perfect.
In most business relationships, the consumer is the one who needs something. When a merchant turns around and starts being this warm and friendly, it means he's the one who's hurting.
"But is it all right if your friend here comes downstairs with us?"
Vladimir, who'd been walking ahead, suddenly tossed out a sensitive question. Put simply, he was asking whether Lucy, walking beside me, was close enough—or trustworthy enough—to sit in on a business conversation.
If you weren't actually that close and someone asked you that in front of the other person, there was a pretty high chance it'd set off a fireworks display of jealousy, envy, and inferiority. Lucy, though, just kept walking at my side, looking like she couldn't care less.
"We've already been through a Dark Zone together. I don't see any reason to sweat the 'small stuff.'"
"Hahaha! Fair enough. That was a slip of the tongue. If you've had each other's backs through a Dark Zone, what wouldn't you share?"
Vladimir brushed it off with a hearty laugh and opened the door to the reception room in the basement of the General Store.
The reception room was surprisingly bright and elegant for a basement still faintly scented with gunpowder and blood—more like a high-end café in St. Petersburg than anything that belonged underground. The man sitting across from us, of course, was about as far from elegant as a human being could get. Siberian tundra stock, through and through.
"Have a seat. Do you like black tea?"
"I've heard that when a Russian invites you in, there are only two things to drink. Black tea and vodka."
"Well informed, for an East Asian. You don't look like you've got anything to do with this business, and yet you carry yourself like a veteran who's been knocking around for decades. I like that about you."
"I'm flattered you think so."
Following the etiquette of the invitation, I waited until Vladimir had taken a sip of his tea before picking up my own cup. The aroma was quite decent. Lucy, for her part, didn't even touch hers.
"People like us have a certain temperament we can never quite hide, though. No matter how fine a suit we put on, no matter how elegantly we sip our tea, we never quite become aristocrats."
"Agreed. That kind of thing is outdated and inefficient. This is the cutting-edge 2040s. History moves on. Culture should too."
We traded light jabs like that until our eyes locked across the table. The stuffy, tedious probing ended there.
"Then, as the proprietor of this establishment, I have to ask. Coming here with a partner the moment you get back from a Dark Zone—there's a special reason for that, I take it?"
"I won't deny it. We just wrapped a successful Dark Zone run, so our Prison Banking accounts are looking healthy, and we've also confirmed just how critically short we are on gear. But it'd be pretty cold to come in, take care of our own business, and walk right back out. So!"
I yanked a bundle of bodycams and GoPros, lashed together with cable, out of my pouch and set them on the table with a heavy thud.
"...I brought these. Thought they might make for a good deal."
"There's blood on them. I can smell the gunpowder, too. Looks like loot you pulled off a fresh corpse that hadn't even been dead five minutes. If you wanted a pawnshop, you should've gone down the alley next door."
"I'd rather not play coy with people who already know the score. We're not stuffy aristocrats, remember? I think you need the video files stored on these."
"Figured out this side of the business already? I'm not even surprised anymore."
In the end, Vladimir was the one who folded first. But he was a merchant to the bone, and he had no intention of making it easy.
"That aside, I don't see why I'd specifically need the video files on those things. The bodycams and GoPros I've supplied to inmates already number well over ten thousand."
"Impressive. But how many of those ten thousand bodycams and GoPros actually come back? And how many of them produce footage worth a damn? I heard merchants don't like to gamble."
"Even by simple probability, this isn't a gamble. It's a sure thing. Those bodycams and GoPros I scattered around started coming back to me before you even showed up, and more will keep coming. I just pull the footage and put in the next 'order' with the inmates. What would I possibly be short on?"
"......"
It was a cringeworthy line even coming out of my own mouth, but it wasn't wrong.
How many of the inmates deployed to the same Dark Zone as us had contracts with Vladimir? And of those, what percentage made it back alive to deliver the footage? Among that tiny handful of products, how many had the Super Rookie brand stamped right on them?
One, maybe? Two, if we were lucky? Definitely not three.
"This is a harvest we just pulled off a fresh corpse. And since this harvest is connected to us, there's naturally a lot of footage of us in it. That's what you want, isn't it?"
He was a merchant, but he was also an entertainer to the bone. He didn't want the greatest show on earth. He wanted the worst show underground to be consumed as entertainment, without anyone batting an eye.
"...Did the two of you personally take care of the owners of these bodycams and GoPros?"
"You'll know once you check the contents."
"Cunning. But clever. All right, what do you want? Gear? Consumables? Or a service you'd never get in an ordinary prison?"
At the word "service," I caught Lucy's eyes sharpening as she glanced sideways at me. Not that I had any interest in that direction anyway.
"I want custom-made products. And information."
"If it's custom work, shouldn't you have gone to Cutie's workshop instead of coming here?"
"She's a weirdo who only trusts her own head and her own hands. Slightly different role from yours. What matters to me is versatility and compatibility that's been thoroughly proven on the outside market."
Implants and boost drugs both enhance physical capability at a fundamental level, but this was the same reason I didn't take Ted Chan's advice when I used boost drugs. Everyone has their own expertise and their own role. I knew every strength, weakness, and secret of the Special Merchant NPCs, and I had no intention of wasting time or money.
"Fine. I'll take the custom-order job. If you need it, I'll even provide a catalog of the products I handle. Just fill out an application and send it over later. But the information I can provide will necessarily be limited in scope. I assume you know why."
"That's fine. It'll be surprisingly simple information anyway."
"Then are we done talking? I'll take the footage."
We hadn't even written a contract, but I handed over every memory chip without hesitation. Lucy looked like she was having a hard time accepting it, but she didn't voice any objection to my decision. I think Lucy is a pretty decent partner, for a criminal.
"...Jackpot."
After a brief skim of the memory chips right there in his seat, he didn't need to say another word. He sent a subordinate to fetch something.
"I've agreed to the custom work and the information, but that's separate. You just helped me break ground on this business in spectacular fashion, and I'd like to show my gratitude."
"I won't turn it down."
I'm a born-and-bred Korean. I never refuse something free, and I don't rest easy until I've paid a debt off on the spot.
What his subordinate brought back was a heavy equipment case, packed with basic gear. A pistol, flashbangs, a ballistic gas mask, body armor, stab-proof gloves, and so on. Every piece was a grade above what we were currently using.
"Making that much money and still stacking it up means you've got a big expense coming all at once. That's why you want custom-made gear. Am I wrong?"
I shrugged instead of answering. Custom-made equipment is extremely expensive by nature, so there was no way we could outfit a full set from a deal this size. At best, we could request one weapon or one piece of support gear per person. Vladimir had sniffed out our financial situation.
"I'll gratefully accept the goodwill."
"Then while you're accepting goodwill, how about taking a contract along with it?"
"If it's a footage-supply contract, I'll have to politely decline."
"A shame. I was hoping you'd be the poster boy for this operation."
Becoming the marquee star of Vladimir's business wouldn't have been hard. But I'm as sensitive about my own information leaking as I am aggressive about collecting other people's. Hand over every last scrap of precious footage capturing my every move in a Dark Zone to a merchant like Vladimir? I'd refuse even if he offered me a fortune.
"There are plenty of inmates. Even if every prisoner you're currently contracted with drops dead, you can just sign new ones with whoever comes in next."
"But talent like yours is hard to find. Well, if you don't want it, I wouldn't mind contracting just your friend here."
"I'm not interested either."
Lucy's blunt reply made Vladimir raise both hands. No matter how excellent a contract you put in front of someone, if they say no, there's nothing you can do.
"Then our business is done, so I'll take my leave. I'll put your goodwill to good use."
I stood first, hefting the heavy equipment case, and as Lucy walked out a step ahead, I slipped him a small note. The moment he checked the contents, he looked at me like he'd just seen every kind of lunatic the world had to offer. But I genuinely needed that information, so this much, at least, wasn't a joke.
We walked out of Vladimir's General Store and headed for a quiet common area to rest for a while. It hadn't been much of anything, time-wise, but the mental fatigue was considerable. I was starting to think a physically exhausting Dark Zone run was actually preferable.
Lucy, sitting in the lounge chair across from me, seemed even more mentally drained than I was.
"He's from the same part of the world as you, but you two don't get along?"
"...He's not normally that warm with customers."
She was right. Vladimir Borshch was a man missing something that ordinary people were supposed to have. He was just well socialized enough to know which mask to put on in any given situation—a model citizen, in that sense.
I already knew exactly what type of person he was, so it didn't bother me. But Lucy, who for a criminal had a strangely naive streak, had probably found his attitude deeply off-putting.
Or maybe it's just same-species aversion.
Unlike an upstanding citizen like me, Lucy and Vladimir were both Slavic criminals, after all. Either way, it had nothing to do with me.
Rather than wasting energy on something that inefficient and unproductive, we needed to focus on the Dark Zone—the place where everyone's hopes and dreams lived.
"Lucy, go ahead and pull out the security case."
We've already had the field lesson in the Dark Zone. Time for some theory.