Comrades in Arms
"Everyone, close the curtains!"
Everyone pulled down the curtains in unison and backed away from the windows.
Thud!
Thud!
Thud! Screeech...!
A machine species was moving across the top of the bus. Every time it stepped, the bus lurched violently, and the screech of twisting metal plating echoed through the cabin.
Beyond the black curtains covering the windows, the red light of its scanning sensors flashed.
The driver whispered, "Nobody make a single sound."
The machine species. The very entities that had driven humanity to the brink of extinction, now ruling the Earth.
They were monsters of steel, birthed by the rogue AI that now occupied every network on the planet.
I peered outside through a tiny gap in the curtain.
The machine species lingered around the bus for a long time, seemingly searching for something.
A search-type...?
Among the machine species, those specialized in scouting, surveying, and detection were called search-types.
The creature before my eyes looked a bit different from what I remembered, but the excessive number of sensors and the swarm of drones hovering around it were the telltale signs of a search-type.
But something was off.
Where are the drones?
"What the hell is going on?"
"Why is a machine species here? I thought the high-radiation zone was supposed to be safe!"
"Damn it, is the city not even safe anymore...?"
A few passengers voiced their anxiety.
High-level radiation was lethal to humans, but the machine species weren't immune to it either.
For this reason, Maetan had artificially created a high-radiation belt surrounding the city to minimize the approach of the machine species. Scouting within this zone was typically left to expendable drones.
Yet, what stood here now was not a drone, but the main body of the search-type itself.
"Pant... pant... pant..."
The man in the seat next to me began to gasp heavily for air.
Looking closely, the filter canister on his gas mask had turned pitch black.
His canister had run out of time.
And he wasn't the only one.
While a few passengers were in the middle of swapping out their canisters, most were still wearing theirs, completely blackened.
The same went for me.
My canister's duration was thirty minutes.
But we had entered the high-radiation zone, and well over thirty minutes had already passed.
...There was no time.
I crawled along the floor toward the driver.
"What are you doing! I told you to stay quiet!"
"We need to leave right now."
"How can we leave when that machine is right in front of us?!"
"Search-types have no armaments. If they engage, they'll call in combat-type machine species, but we'll be fine if we clear the area before that happens."
"How the hell do you know that?!"
The agitated driver grabbed the gun kept by his seat.
I rolled up my sleeve and showed him my prosthetic left arm.
The driver flinched, his eyes shifting.
"...You were a soldier?"
"Listen to me. That thing is acting strange. Normally, large search-types rarely move. They root themselves in one spot and deploy drones. But right now, that thing is searching the high-radiation zone all by itself, without a single drone."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Machines do not act irrationally. There is no reason for the main body to risk damage by entering a radiation belt instead of using expendable drones."
"...What are you trying to say?"
"When a machine species acts irrationally, it's due to an external factor, not the machine itself. And most of those external factors are—"
"The machine is leaving!"
A quiet cheer rippled through the passengers.
The heavy, thudding footsteps of the machine species slowly faded into the distance.
The driver let out a sigh of relief.
"Whew... thank god that's over. Go back to your seat. I'll start the engine and get us out of here as fast as I can."
It wasn't over.
Bang!
With a loud explosion, the bus slumped to one side.
"Aaaah!"
"Oh, my god!"
The passengers screamed and threw themselves onto the floor.
A warning light flashed on the dashboard, indicating tire damage.
The driver stammered, "W-what happened? Did the machine come back?"
"No. It's not the machine."
The external factor that caused a machine species to act irrationally. In most cases, it was...
"Humans."
Raiders boarded the bus.
Seven years had passed since the war ended.
In exchange for abandoning the vast lands and the expansive network, humanity had managed to claw back a fragile stability.
But that stability was strictly confined within the narrow borders of the cities.
Step outside the city, and you were instantly thrust into a world ruled by the law of the jungle.
A world where machine species hunted humans, and mutants born from the deadly cocktail of radiation and chemical weapons roamed free.
"Raiders" was the term used to describe those who lived in this wild wasteland.
Humans who couldn't enter the cities, or had been cast out.
Unable to settle down in one place, their primary means of survival was exactly what their name implied.
Just like right now.
"If you don't want to die, keep your heads down and don't move!"
The raiders shouted, brandishing their rifles.
The driver, who had tried to resist with a shotgun, was already down.
"Eeeek!"
"Out of the frying pan and into the fire... we're all dead..."
The passengers wailed, burying their faces in their seats.
I rolled my eyes to scan the raiders.
One with a ballistic shield, one with a rifle, and two with pistols.
Four of them.
Not a difficult number to handle.
The problem was the one person waiting outside, not entering the bus.
A woman? She was wearing a gas mask and an anti-radiation poncho, but her build was small and slender.
She's holding a drone in her arms.
"Is she the operator?"
To hack a search-type, she must be at least wizard-class.
"Can't you hijack the hack on the search-type?"
...If I only had a quantum processor, a search-type or two would be a piece of cake, but...
"So you can't. You're a more useless AI than I thought."
T_T
I couldn't beat the machine species.
Even if I neutralized all four inside the bus, it would be over the moment she set the search-type on a rampage.
In other words, she had to die first.
"Keep your head down! I said down!"
Just as one of the raiders passed by my side.
"Hup!"
I drove my steel left arm straight into his jaw and snatched the pistol from his grip.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Another raider fired his pistol, but I ignored him.
My target was the woman holding the drone outside.
I shot the window to shatter it and threw myself out of the bus.
"Kyaah?!"
The woman holding the drone shrieked in surprise and fell backward.
Just as I thought. She was a non-combatant.
Without even correcting my posture, I rolled on the ground and aimed the gun straight at her.
Just as I was about to pull the trigger.
Flinch.
A chilling sensation, like a needle piercing my nerves.
It was the sensation of death, one I had felt countless times on the battlefield.
Reflexively, I raised my left arm to shield my head.
Clang! Clang!
The bullets aimed precisely at my temple deflected off my prosthetic arm.
Ahhhh! My body!!
My prosthetic arm, which was already a piece of junk, had become even more of a wreck.
Even as the impact of the bullets threw off my balance, I pulled the trigger toward the operator.
Bang!
"Ugh!"
Another raider had rushed over in the nick of time, shielding her with his body.
The moment I quickly regained my footing and aimed my gun once more.
"W-wait! Let's talk! Let's talk this out!"
The raider who had blocked the bullet threw his pistol aside and raised his empty hands, shouting.
"I-I'm going to take off my glove now! Look at this and then decide!"
As he slowly pulled off his left glove, a metallic prosthetic arm was revealed.
"...You were a soldier too?"
"Staff Sergeant Yang Guk-tae, 37th Engineer Battalion. And you?"
"Middle Sergeant Yoon Juhyuk, Shoeshine Company, 7th Corps."
"The Shoeshine Unit?!"
The raider who identified himself as Yang Guk-tae took a surprised step closer.
I slowly sidestepped and spoke.
"Are you trying to buy time? For a former soldier to resort to raiding civilians... how fallen."
"Wait! I know how this looks, but our original goal isn't raiding! Just hear me out first!"
I stopped walking, keeping my gun aimed at him.
"Thank you for believing me."
"I don't believe you. I just have no other choice."
I looked at the raider hiding behind Yang Guk-tae. The camera of the drone she was holding was pointed directly at me.
"Did she hack the search-type? She's a highly skilled operator."
"Impressive, isn't she? Thanks to her, we were able to make it all the way here through the wasteland."
To hack a search-type, even temporarily, meant she was no ordinary talent.
"If your goal isn't raiding, why did you attack the bus?"
"I heard this bus is headed for the Pyeongtaek ruins."
"It is."
"Do you know what Maetan is excavating there?"
"I heard there's a supply depot."
"Haha... of course that's what you were told. Then again, if a former soldier knew the truth, there's no way they'd head to those ruins."
What is he talking about?
Don't tell me...
"Maetan is excavating an artificial intelligence in Pyeongtaek."
"That's impossible!"
Shouts erupted from the passengers inside the bus.
"Excavating an AI?"
"The war barely just ended... What the hell is Maetan thinking?"
"A-are you all seriously believing a raider?!"
Yang Guk-tae quietly watched the agitated passengers.
Seven years of war, followed by another seven years.
People still carried the deep scars left by the war.
They were struggling desperately just to survive, and now, another artificial intelligence?
To them, it must sound like the beginning of a new war.
Yang Guk-tae spoke loudly, making sure the passengers could hear.
"I don't know what Maetan's goal is in excavating an AI. I don't need to know. But one thing is certain: humanity does not need any more enemies. I'm sure you agree."
Any human, especially those who had fought in the war, harbored a deep-seated hatred for artificial intelligence.
"Are you certain? How do you know that?"
"On the Internet. We found information left behind by North Korea before the war ended."
Ah;;
CC flustered, adding two semicolons to her message.
It was clear that they, too, had stumbled upon the information we had scattered across the Internet to lure Maetan.
Did I spread it around too much...?
...I'll have to clean that up the next time I log on.
"We came to Pyeongtaek as soon as we got the intel. But Maetan's security forces had already occupied the area. So, we hijacked the bus to disguise ourselves as workers and infiltrate the site."
Maetan distinguished workers from outsiders using the employee numbers assigned to their Neck-Hubs.
If they ripped out an employee's Neck-Hub and performed a transplant, they might be able to bypass security.
Especially with a skilled operator on their side.
But transplant surgery was no simple task.
Because the Neck-Hub's electronic nerves extended deep into the brain, nerve damage was inevitable without proper equipment.
It meant becoming a cripple.
"Transplanting a Neck-Hub isn't easy. Besides, I doubt a mere five people infiltrating the place can accomplish much."
"Do we look like we lack that level of resolve?"
Yang Guk-tae smiled bitterly.
It was the look of a man prepared to die.
"But the situation has changed. Thanks to you."
"Me?"
"You're a Maetan employee, aren't you? If you create an infiltration route for us from the inside, there won't be any issues. We won't have to risk transplanting Neck-Hubs, and we can escape after destroying the AI."
"How can we trust him?!"
The operator watching from behind Yang Guk-tae shouted.
"Guk-tae, are you out of your mind? You want to trust someone we just met today and put our lives in his hands?!"
She made a perfectly valid point.
A normal person wouldn't trust a stranger.
But.
"Of course I trust him."
Soldiers were different.
Yang Guk-tae raised his steel left hand and spoke.
"Those who have never stood on a battlefield raining with bullets wouldn't understand. Do you know what weapon we held to face the cold steel of the machines? Powerful guns? Bombs? No! The strongest weapon we had was none other than our comrades! The comrades who fell beside us, spilling blood and spilling their guts!"
Yang Guk-tae cried out, his voice raw with emotion.
It was a voice filled with desperate appeal, not logic.
"We stand with our fallen comrades! We will do whatever it takes to destroy the machine species! Isn't that right?"
Yang Guk-tae thumped his chest with his steel left hand.
I, too, lowered my gun and thumped my chest with my prosthetic arm in response.
He smiled and said,
"We never betray a comrade."