A Place to Return To
The day after we sent the corporate handler, knocked unconscious by our deception tactics, back to his company, the rain continued without pause. We drove through the downpour, heading for the address the fake broker had given us.
The city—especially its downtown district packed with skyscrapers—was divided into lower, middle, and upper layers. The distinction was simple: altitude. Anything below roughly one hundred meters was considered the lower layer, while anything above three hundred meters belonged to the upper layer. Since the roads were concentrated at the bottom, the higher up you went, the less noise there was. Each building was practically a small town in itself. From the ground-level roads and sidewalks, those massive ceramic and concrete structures looked like enormous walls blotting out the sky. Walls that formed a labyrinth called a city. Their overwhelming, hollow scale was almost terrifying.
When you looked up at the drizzling sky, you could see dozens, even hundreds of skybridges connecting the buildings, tangled together like a web. From the ground it was hard to even see the sky properly. Yet the rain still managed to pierce those towering walls and reach the streets below. Even though it was daytime, the heavy clouds covering the sky kept everything dim. We raced through the downtown area, which was nothing but shades of gray except for the neon signs.
After driving like that for about three hours, we finally reached our destination. The rain falling from the sky had grown even heavier.
“Whoa, it’s really pouring out there.”
Eileen stepped out of the car and opened an umbrella. JL and I followed her out.
The place we’d arrived at was a small factory on the outskirts of the city. Beyond the torrential rain, a worn-out neon sign glowed faintly. Judging by how heavily tarnished it was, the factory had apparently stopped operating a long time ago. The downpour had washed away some of the grime, but it couldn’t erase the marks of time.
There was no proper lock on the door. A cheap padlock hung there, but it was so rusted it was practically useless. When I gave it a light tug, it snapped off on its own.
With Eileen in the lead, we entered the factory. Most of the paint on the floor had peeled away, making it impossible to tell where the path was, but upon closer inspection there was a side passage leading to the factory’s backyard. The ugly, overgrown thorny vines had been pushed aside, suggesting someone had passed through there not too long ago.
The broker’s information had been accurate. We followed the side path to the backyard and, sure enough, found a small warehouse exactly as he’d described. The door was fitted with a high-performance lock that seemed wildly out of place for such an old facility.
Eileen approached the lock and examined it closely. After a moment, she shook her head. For a mechanic like her to react that way, it clearly wasn’t just a matter of good performance.
“Looks like it’ll take more than ten minutes. I’ve never seen this security pattern before.”
“Hmm.”
I had no intention of wasting time. I pushed Eileen aside, reached into the bag at my waist, and pulled out one of the adhesive bombs. Eileen clicked her tongue at the sight.
“You really are a crazy bomb maniac.”
She said it, but she didn’t try to stop me. She must have agreed that this was the most efficient way to handle things. Or maybe she’d simply gotten used to me. Either way, it didn’t matter.
BOOM!
The bomb I’d attached to the door exploded with a deafening roar. Since I’d modified it with military-grade explosives, its destructive power was on another level. Of course, I got called a crazy bomb maniac one more time, but that didn’t matter either.
“Goddamn it…”
We stepped straight into the warehouse, where dust still hung thick in the air, and rescued the broker. Fortunately, there was no fatal damage to his life, so we didn’t have to deal with a corpse. It seemed he was willing to call it even since he’d gotten caught up in our business and we’d saved him in return.
As his gang gathered at the factory after receiving his call, he waved at us.
“I’ll sort things out and see you tomorrow afternoon. Thanks for today.”
As a gesture of thanks, the broker lit Eileen’s cigarette for her. We’d taken quite a long detour, but the deal could now proceed normally.
The next day, we gathered at his hideout and gave the NTM one final inspection.
“Looks good. The NTM is clean, serial number’s been wiped too. No problems with the item.”
“Then we’ll proceed with the transaction as is?”
“Yeah. I’ll erase the information on our end too. Normally I’d knock the price down a bit for that, but since we have a connection, I’ll give you the full value.”
Before handing the NTM over to him, I examined it one last time. It was small enough to fit in my arms now—once, it had been large enough to require both hands. A filthy heavy sphere. A black orb. It had once been my sanctuary, but now I was letting it go. I had finally found the place where I truly belonged. There was no need for a substitute like this anymore.
“No regrets?” JL asked me.
I turned the NTM over in my hands, feeling its considerable weight, then passed it to the broker.
“Yeah. I don’t need it anymore.”
It was an unstable and destructive sanctuary, but this place was my home. I cast aside the lingering attachment I had felt toward the NTM.
That evening, in the downtown area where the rain was still falling steadily, Eileen lay back in her custom chair, drifting through an ocean of data. Wearing VR gear no larger than a pair of glasses, she dove deep into corporate networks.
New weapons, troop reinforcements, next-generation enhanced human units…
She tracked the latest trends among the corporations using various keywords. Of course, Eileen was able to make a decent living as a mercenary thanks to her connections with the companies. Her background as a former mechanic made it relatively easy to pick up work from them. Still, officially provided data and data obtained directly were fundamentally different. Even if you received basic information, you couldn’t afford to slack off on gathering your own intel.
“Eileen, I have something I want to ask.”
After swimming through the sea of data for a while, a voice reached Eileen’s ears. It was the voice of a young girl deliberately lowering her tone—Asa.
Eileen answered without removing her gear.
“Later. I’m a little busy right now.”
Even though she’d said that, the other girl continued as if she hadn’t heard.
“What you said before. That if I don’t go into Syncai, you’ll stay by my side. What did you mean by that?”
“……”
Eileen remained silent. Or rather, she pretended to be silent while continuing her netrunning without pause. Information from the deepest parts of the corporations related to a human called Asa poured out in streams. Among them was a photograph Eileen knew well.
Missiles rising in all directions against a gray sky, as if spreading enormous wings. Because of the gun smoke, they looked like wings of ash.
Asa stood beside her for a while, waiting for an answer, then silently turned away. Since the other party clearly didn’t want to speak, she had no intention of forcing it out of her. As always, her attitude was do as you like.
Eileen listened to Asa’s receding footsteps and stopped her netrunning. The swirling data floated in the air like white foam. Eileen, who had slightly lifted her netrunning gear, looked toward the kitchen where Asa was preparing dinner.
Asa stood on a footstool in front of a sink that didn’t match her height, moving her arms this way and that. The sight, so different from her usual self, somehow looked a little cute.
Watching her, Eileen recalled what Asa had said not long ago.
The place where I belong is here.
The battlefield. By any normal standard, she was a terribly twisted human being. She only felt psychologically stable when explosions rang out, bullets flew, and blood sprayed. There was something about her that couldn’t be expressed simply as a battle junkie.
Asa was someone who knew she was broken, yet still regarded the battlefield as her home.
Eileen let out a deep sigh and put her gear back on. Even so, she didn’t dive back into netrunning for quite some time. What hovered before Eileen’s eyes was her own Hound. A Hound who no longer existed in this world.
Just as a normal mechanic and a Hound would be, they had been especially close comrades. That was why Eileen didn’t regret taking his side and the Hound’s side. The only thing she regretted was his absence.
I might not be so different from Asa.
Eileen resumed her netrunning.
The place where I belong is by a Hound’s side.
They were all twisted humans. Both Asa and Eileen herself. The reason Eileen stayed by Asa’s side was simply because she was a Hound. If she thought about it a little more deeply, perhaps she was simply trying to fill the void left by her own Hound through Asa. She hadn’t seen Asa as a person in her own right. To Eileen, she had only ever been a Hound.
The story seemed complicated, but the essence was simple. This was a story about each other’s homes. It was a story about sanctuaries for wanderers who had lost their homes.
Asa’s sanctuary was the battlefield—the place where her soul had become bound. Eileen’s own sanctuary was by a Hound’s side—the place where her past and lingering attachments were tied.
That was why Eileen stayed beside Asa. To anyone watching, it was not a normal bond of camaraderie. Yet at the same time, because they were such twisted humans, they were inextricably entangled with each other. It was a destructive and unstable relationship, but precisely because of that, it was also dry and tenacious. Thorned vines, once entangled, could not easily come apart.