The Red Queen Hypothesis
Eileen glanced at the unconscious Asa before stepping toward JL. He was still staring down at Jude's corpse with a stunned expression, as if he couldn't quite believe the man was actually dead.
"In a world where everything outpaces you, you've abandoned your longtime home. It's a world steeped in wanderlust for everyone. In the raging current, there must be some house you can rely on, right?"
JL let out a small chuckle at the poem Eileen had improvised on the spot. He didn't look entirely relieved, but his face showed that he'd shed at least one burden. If it was a nightmare you believed yet couldn't believe, one that haunted your dreams every night, then in the end either you or your opponent had to be destroyed for it to finally stop.
"Hey, Eileen." JL slid the revolver back into the holster at his waist. It was the same model Jude had used to put a bullet in his side that day. "It's only been a short time since I learned that even bonds of trust can shatter overnight in this world."
JL paused after speaking. The red flames reflected in his eyes were fixed on the distant figure of the collapsed Asa and Eileen standing in front of her. The wariness born on the day he had been afflicted with distrust of humanity, the house he had entered with the mindset of letting everything go to hell. Just like the lesson learned from a comrade's betrayal, this house could collapse in a single day.
Wariness. Even as JL accepted the partnership with Eileen, he had refused to attach any real affection. To him, a house was nothing more than that past relationship of trust that had already crumbled. He had only ever yearned for a home he could never return to. He had acted as if he could go back anytime, even though it was already a ruined building with nothing but fragments left.
"Knowing all that, I was still a fool."
In the end, JL had faced the collapsed house. He had confronted Jude directly. The same Jude who had put a hole in his side that day and then vanished. If he was going to be wary, then like any wary man, he might have clung emptily to the memory of that shattered trust, that house. He might have let himself be buried in the past alongside the debris swept away by the world's torrent.
But he hadn't.
"Huu."
JL looked at Asa, beaten half to death. For some reason, at this moment, the words she always said like a habit came to mind. With that small back of hers, telling him to 'believe in yourself.' It was ridiculous, yet for someone as wary as him, it had been desperately needed. Maybe the words held no real meaning for Asa herself. But for a man like JL, constantly at risk of being buried in the past by the raging current, they had been like a single ray of light.
JL moved forward along that ray of light within the past that threatened to swallow him. At least he had chosen to look at the present.
He drew in a deep breath. The air swirling around him was unbearably hot and humid. Still, it was far more real than the scent of the past he could no longer even smell.
"The job's done. Nothing left to see here."
"You rescued Asa successfully."
"More precisely, she got herself out."
JL said this while looking at Asa. She had told him to believe, and the result had been solid. Perhaps he had grown used to becoming someone's house to lean on. Of course, given Asa's personality, it was probably better not to read too much into that habitual 'believe in yourself.'
Eileen and JL hoisted the exhausted, collapsed Asa between them and left the area.
This time I didn't wake up as easily as before. It wasn't just because my injuries were worse than usual; I had also overloaded one of the implants in my head and completely burned it out. There was no threat to my life, but in the end I had to have the implant in that area removed. Thankfully it stopped at just the scan implant. If things had gone worse, the heat from the overload might have damaged the surrounding implants and forced me to remove them too.
"Of course, that probably means nothing to you Hounds whose entire bodies are implants."
Eileen opened up the area near my head and showed me the extracted implant now that I was awake. It was charred pitch black, clearly in terrible condition. Looking at it, I keenly felt the current state of my own body. I couldn't even handle a single load properly and had to hesitate before activating any implants. In the end, I finally spoke the thought I had kept only in my mind until now.
"I need a stabilizer. My body can't endure the load on the implants."
"Going back to being a front-line Hound? Impossible."
Eileen shot me down immediately, as if the idea wasn't even worth considering. I tried to add some rebuttal, but her next words forced me to close my mouth.
"A stabilizer is a device dedicated to managing load. Of course I understand how you feel. That frail little body must feel like a curse. But there are minimum requirements. At least your physique has to be above a certain level, which means you'd have to completely rebuild this body. You'd need an entirely new vessel. It's a major operation that would take a full week even if a megacorp's elite medical team handled it. What exactly are you planning to do?"
Every word was realistic. There was nothing more to consider. She was pointing out the equipment, the finances, and the limitations of my current body. If Hounds were that easy to create, megacorps and other massive corporations wouldn't be the only ones operating them.
In the end I stayed silent and accepted Eileen's assessment. I hated this and hated that, yet my dreams had been too high. With a gloomy expression I lay back down on the bed. It was a time when this softened lump of flesh felt particularly cursed.
Eileen watched me collapse back onto the bed and changed the subject.
"About what happened then, how did you activate the scan implant inside the truck? Weren't the people wary?"
"Ah, that."
Of course a few had been surprised and approached, but they never connected it to the side effects of activating a scan implant. They simply assumed my body was messed up from taking too many hits. I recalled how Jude had seen the adapter on my arm and not thought much of it.
"From the start, they didn't know I was a Hound. They lacked the prerequisite knowledge. They thought the adapter was just decoration or some implant with no real function."
"So there wasn't a single corporate agent who knew about Hounds?"
I blinked at Eileen's sudden question before nodding. Was that how it added up? But Eileen wore an expression of certainty.
"It looks like Jude was operating independently without borrowing any corporate hands."
"What does that mean?"
"It means the corporation doesn't know we were the ones who stole the Rish."
I didn't fully understand, but I nodded anyway. If that was what Eileen thought, then that's how it was. She continued.
"Jude probably planned to follow up with a backroom deal after securing the Rish. But he didn't give the trading corporation any information. He must have been worried that the company he originally contracted with would snatch the Rish using their own power without paying him a single thing. So he couldn't even reveal information about us. He tried to handle everything himself by borrowing the gang's hands."
"He avoided using corporate hands to make sure he got his own cut."
Eileen nodded at my words. It seemed I'd understood correctly. Still, there was one part I couldn't grasp, so I asked.
"But why is that something to smile about? Why is it good news that the corporation doesn't know about us?"
Eileen answered my question with a smile.
"It means we can put on a mask and stage a hostage situation with the Rish."
"What?"
"It means we can trade the Rish safely from behind the mask of anonymity. Through a broker, of course."
I quickly realized what Eileen was getting at. There really was nothing as reassuring as the mask of anonymity. I'd been worried we'd taken on something we couldn't handle, but if we remained anonymous, there was nothing to fear. If our identities were known, the attention would focus more on us holding the Rish than on the Rish itself. Even if we disposed of it, we might still face attacks later. But if we kept our identities hidden and directed all attention solely at the Rish, the corporations would focus only on its movements and look away from us. It was the difference in what received the focus. The seller or the goods.
Now the only thing the corporations knew was the movement of the Rish.
"It comes in handy at times like this."
I rubbed the spot where Jude had hit me. I didn't know how hard he'd struck, but the bruise was still there. The pain was only temporary, though, and the result had brought us profit, so there was no reason not to be grateful.
Some time later, Eileen leaked the Rish sales information onto the network through a broker. Naturally, our hideout was never attacked. We were the ones shaking the Rish while hiding behind anonymity, which put the corporations in the weaker position. They fought shadow wars among themselves. The ones who approached while pretending to be individuals while hiding their corporate identities were almost comical. They offered absurd sums of money that only a corporation could provide, then played a blind man's bluff. Anyway, the fierce underwater battle continued that way until it finally ended after a week. It was because a prospective buyer had appeared who brought not only money but also the additional information Eileen had offered. The broker had even verified them.
On the day of the transaction, we began watching through real-time video comms as the broker carried out the deal as our proxy.