The Ash Crow
Eileen introduced herself as Eileen. She didn't reveal her surname. This only added more weight to the speculation that she was corporate-born.
"Now that I think about it, which outfit were you with?" Anyway, Eileen asked me that while driving. It somehow felt like a question I'd heard before. With no sense of time, I couldn't tell how long ago I'd heard it. Darius's rugged face flashed through my mind. I felt nothing in particular. I gave the same answer as back then.
"North American Integrated Front corporate forces."
"No, don't just lump it all together as corporate forces. Which exact company?"
"So you really were corporate. The government regulars all just called them corporate forces."
It was a fact I'd already guessed long ago. This was the moment speculation turned into certainty.
"Then which one were you with?" I asked her in return.
Her face was split into two colors by the neon signs flooding the roadside. Eileen paused for a moment before answering.
"Jericho."
"Jericho? The Israel one?"
"Why, is that surprising?"
"You don't look like you're from there."
"Well, obviously. The company is located there, but that's not where I'm from."
I let out a sigh at Eileen's matter-of-fact tone and accepted it.
"In this day and age, distinguishing by nationality is meaningless. You're surprisingly lacking in common sense."
"Like you said, all I ever learned was how to kill people."
"......"
I shrugged and sank back into my seat. Eileen seemed to have finished speaking, but then she looked at me again and let out a dry laugh.
"What, trying to slyly change the subject? If I told you mine, you should tell me yours. Are you just going to take information one-sidedly?"
I'd been trying to read the mood and brush it off, but she was more thorough than I expected. I eventually sighed and spoke in the smallest voice possible.
"Ares."
"Ares, huh. As expected."
"What do you mean, as expected?"
"Just as I predicted."
Eileen's eyes, as she drove, began moving nonstop. They shone so clearly even under the streetlights that she was obviously viewing something on her retinal display. After a moment, she spoke.
"There are a total of seven requests stacked up in front of us right now. Out of those, two require complex cooperation. Excluding those and filtering for simple destruction leaves five. And of those, two that we can handle at this hour."
"What does that mean?"
"It means I've picked two requests that fit both the time frame and your taste. How about it? Take a look and choose one."
Eileen attempted to send me a transmission. It was a completely external communication. Well, it didn't matter. I accepted it and checked the data she sent.
All the clients were corporations. Not megacorps, but mid-level lower companies. Every request was to eliminate a key figure in a rival company. They looked like they'd been chosen with extreme care; the reliability seemed quite high just from the briefing.
'Calling it competition, but it's just a bunch of trivial assassination requests.'
I clicked my tongue inwardly. The megacorps themselves were quiet, yet all these miscellaneous lower companies under them were tearing each other apart. It was a survival competition in practice, but seeing it firsthand left me with mixed feelings.
I roughly picked one suitable request and sent it back to her.
"Okay, good. Let's go with this one."
Eileen pressed the accelerator harder and began heading toward the request's destination.
* * *
While we were moving toward the destination, a question suddenly occurred to me.
"By the way, what did you mean by it suiting my taste? Did you run a background check?"
"Background check? Please. Having too much self-awareness is a problem, but having none is also a problem."
"......?"
What was she talking about? Why bring up self-awareness all of a sudden?
"Ares. Hound Number 126. Asa, right?"
Eileen said to me as I tilted my head. It was accurate. Both the number and the name matched perfectly. It was information she couldn't have known without a background check.
"Hmm, so it is a background check."
I said with an unconscious smile.
"No."
But an immediate denial came from her mouth.
"Not a background check. It's just that you're such a peculiar one that I could figure it out with only a few pieces of information. I was corporate forces too, you know. Corporate forces."
The context didn't make sense. What did being corporate forces have to do with knowing me? I narrowed my eyes and asked.
"Does everyone from the corporate forces know me?"
"Even if not corporate forces, the government army would know as well."
This was even more shocking.
"Why exactly?"
"Why exactly? Are you seriously asking because you don't know?"
We stared at each other and blinked for a while. After a moment, she threw her head back and laughed.
"It's quite frustrating how you don't know anything about the world, but seeing that look on your current face makes it kind of cute."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Ash Crow. The one who loved NTM so much. How does it feel to have a nickname based on your favorite weapon?"
"Huh?"
It was so absurd that the sound slipped out. Seeing my reaction, she laughed even harder.
"Why, are you embarrassed? Things like the Red Baron—people on the battlefield gave such cringeworthy nicknames filled with reverence and fear. You flaunted your presence so much; did you really think you wouldn't get at least one nickname?"
"No, that's..."
"Even if you don't know it yourself, most people would probably recognize it if you mentioned Ash Crow. They said there was this insane Hound shooting missiles like they were laying down a barrage. Compared to the other Hounds... it stood out way too much."
She laughed for a long time before sighing and calming down.
"Even back then it was such a crazy piece of equipment that it got a lot of talk. Who the hell would use something like this, they said. Fortunately, because there were guys like you, new models have kept coming out until now."
"......I used it because I actually liked it."
"That's exactly what makes you a madman. It makes sense now why you were always assigned only to solo operations."
I buried myself in the seat without saying a word. The war had lasted over a decade, so it seemed everyone's heads had gone a little crazy.
'Not that I'm one to talk.'
Anyway, after racing down the road for who knows how long, we finally approached the city center. The silhouettes that had been nothing but black shadows began to transform into something brilliant. It was like a shopping mall displaying all kinds of dazzling neon signs everywhere.
"We've arrived. Looks like the target we're looking for is here."
The place we'd arrived at was the red-light district. Among them, an unusually large one situated in the heart of the city. She threw me a heavy ammunition box and said.
"Then get your gear ready. Let's see what you've got."
I checked my weapons and got out of the car following her.
* * *
She was standing in front of the entrance right beside me, looking at me. When I met her gaze, she continued.
With that, she entered the tower. I stood there blankly, watching her figure disappear through the door. I hadn't expected it to be this sloppy. Just blindly charging in with no plan—wasn't that too stupid even for stupidity?
Then I remembered what she'd said in the car and clenched my fist tightly.
'A request that suits my taste?'
She was clearly recognizing me as a simple-minded idiot. Even if it was out of spite, I decided I would finish the job before she did.
I immediately followed her into the tower.
'The scale is fucking huge.'
The ceilings that should have separated each floor were completely open, so the entire tower functioned as one single district. Cheap-looking billboards were plastered everywhere, and scenes hard to look at with both eyes open were visible in every corner. Since it was an unlicensed zone, there weren't many noticeable security measures. Occasionally I saw guards dressed freely and carrying guns, but even they didn't seem to be paying much attention to their surroundings.
I looked at that rotting scenery and boarded the sub-elevator on one side of the street. Perhaps because it was tucked in a corner, no one else was using it. Classical jazz music flowed inside the wide elevator that I rode alone. Even after ascending for a long time, the elevator showed no sign of stopping, so I anxiously ran my hands over the weapons attached to my arm. The texture of rough metal. It was a sensation that calmed my mind.
After rising like that for a while, the elevator finally stopped. I hardened my expression and stepped forward with the same feeling I always had when beginning an operation.