The Test
Dr. Myeong dropped the severed finger into a small test tube, filled it with formalin, and stoppered it. The result was neat, tidy, and easy to carry.
"It's already badly damaged. You should have brought it sooner."
"Doesn't matter. The ring on it is what counts."
The ring was what proved the finger had belonged to the Special Forces Commander. As packaging went, it was almost tender. Hand this over to the Human Meat Factory and they might take the gesture as sincerity and let me into the settlement.
"And the thing you're hiding in your left hand. That really is a gift?"
Dr. Myeong's eyes had been dull for a long time now. Even so, she wasn't charging me for processing the finger. If she ever realized the thing in my left hand wasn't a gift either, I had a feeling the invoice would come flying. Still, I showed her the two lipsticks I'd been holding.
"Hm? Where'd you get these?"
Her face lit up at once.
"Are these real? Or just the casings?"
"Check for yourself."
She snatched one up. Aside from when she was operating, I'd never seen her hands move that fast.
"This is... Raspberry Shine?"
"Isn't it just red?"
"You dare call a shade this precious just red? Lipstick, don't listen. Cover your ears."
Dr. Myeong held the lipstick up to the fluorescent light. It was the same look Elder Heo wore when he appraised a Core.
"Doesn't look like it's ever been used."
"Opened, but otherwise new."
"Where'd you get it?"
"Picked it up on the way."
"No, seriously. These only circulate inside the Geofront. Where did it come from?"
If I meant to sell it, I owed her a proper history. I gave her the short version of how the lipstick had come into my hands.
"Hm. Nothing that should cause trouble."
"Which is why I'm selling it."
"...It's not a gift?"
"I never said it was."
Dr. Myeong narrowed her eyes again and opened the other one.
"After Midnight."
"Where's the name written?"
"It isn't. I know it by the color."
"To the eye it's just blue."
"To your eyes, maybe."
She met my gaze. For an instant, a red light flashed in hers.
"I didn't know those eyes did anything."
The crimson eyes that marked an Immune. So it wasn't only the appearance that changed.
"I wasn't exactly hiding it. The ability isn't impressive enough to bring up."
"Lipstick identification?"
"...Color discrimination. I just see color a little more sharply than other people."
She stood both lipsticks upright on her desk. She was buying them no matter what.
"Three magazines."
She named her price at once. A tidy sum, though two lipsticks ought to have fetched more than that.
Whatever. Fine.
It felt under market, but I didn't care.
"Have it your way."
I hadn't come to haggle. She'd packaged the finger for me, and she'd helped me plenty of times besides. Trading at the price she wanted felt like paying a little of that debt back. She wasn't lowballing me to skin me, either. She was probably thinking the same thing I was.
"Good. I'll have a runner send it to your room."
You weren't supposed to close a deal when you couldn't collect on the spot, but there was no point being stiff with Dr. Myeong.
"Deal."
Buying Cores had nearly emptied the magazines I'd stockpiled in the cabinet. I still had twenty Cores left, plus three out for appraisal—twenty-three in all—but what mattered was that Probability Reversal burned six of them every time.
Three finishing moves...
Used well, a single activation could end a situation outright. The problem was that this was a world where a crisis like that turning up every day wouldn't even be strange. So I had to make as much money as I could. I needed to keep buying Cores and laying them by, and survival supplies kept getting used up besides.
It was obvious the jobs Jo Yong-han handed me would only get harder, and on top of that the situation outside was bad.
Something Dr. Myeong had said before. Now there was word that the mood at Headquarters had turned ugly, which pretty much said it all.
Which means I need to earn a lot of money.
Money could buy people as well as things. Not every problem had a price, but a problem money couldn't answer usually didn't have another answer either.
"So that's all your business? Nothing hurting? You came all the way to the clinic. Want me to at least put something on it?"
She said it while taking the lighter in hand again. It wasn't empty concern. It was a fierce determination to light up the moment there was nothing left to do.
"Nothing."
"Good."
Click.
Dr. Myeong drew the smoke in deep. I was sure she smoked to bleed off stress, but her face didn't look any better for it. Come to think of it, Jo Yong-han's face had been just as grim when he smoked his cigars.
"Does keeping that in your mouth actually help?"
"All harm, no benefit."
Same as someone else. So was the next line going to match, too?
"A necessary evil, then?"
"Do I look broken enough to need a rationalization that cheap?"
There. A decent line to use on Jo Yong-han next time.
"It's just a habit. A bad one."
"If you know it's bad, you ought to quit."
"Haa..."
Dr. Myeong was the sort of person whose head ran like a calculator. Rational to the bone. Even someone like that had things she couldn't help.
"So even you have things you know and still can't do."
"This is science. Even someone like me knowing cigarettes are bad and still not being able to quit is scientific proof that cigarettes are nothing but harm."
Now I understood the difference between Jo Yong-han and Dr. Myeong. Dr. Myeong rationalized at a higher level.
"You've got your fixations too, don't you? Hoarding ammunition, that sort of thing. Not quite a habit, but close."
"I'm just earning money diligently."
"At your level it's a fixation. You're not even on a desk posting. You work the outside and still prepare for the far future. Most people don't know when they'll die, so they only stockpile so much."
For most people, sure.
"Ah... well, I suppose..."
Her mood shifted all at once.
"...Expecting a far future out of a desk job is ridiculous too. You never know how the world will turn."
Back and forth. She was under a cloud of her own. Either way, I didn't have room to linger here. On to the next thing. I still had to pick up the commission for Clock-out Man—
"You still go to the black market a lot these days?"
Out of nowhere.
"Whenever I'm at Headquarters."
Not this time. No time for it.
"If you've already been, all the better. I hear they're going to sweep the whole place out."
What?
"Keep it to yourself. Don't go spreading it around the market. Stirring up a panic won't do those people any good either."
"Sweep it out? The black market?"
"Exactly what I said."
Dr. Myeong went on as if it were nothing.
"It was illegal to begin with, wasn't it? Black-market dealing inside Headquarters. They only looked the other way. It wouldn't have been strange if those people got run out any time."
"A state policy, then?"
"Something like that, I suppose."
I hadn't heard any news like that.
"Where'd you hear it?"
"From a merchant I see now and then."
A merchant up from the Geofront, then. Politics happened underground. Headquarters only carried out the Geofront's orders. Was this part of the ugly mood Jo Yong-han had mentioned?
"The way Headquarters has been running lately felt off."
I floated it lightly, but she didn't bite.
"Who knows. I couldn't say."
Dr. Myeong had always been good at hiding her face. There was clearly something there, and this was as far as she would go. She'd given me the black-market piece because I went there often. That was consideration enough.
"Guess I should stop by before they wipe it out."
"You'd better hurry."
"Is it that close?"
"Nothing certain. Just go."
She said goodbye without so much as looking at me. It wasn't a side of her I was seeing for the first or second time, and yet today, somehow, she felt like a stranger.
I hadn't planned on going as far as the black market. Too busy.
I stopped at my personal cabinet and took the white bat mask. Required for entry. If Dr. Myeong was right, I wouldn't have many days left to wear it.
The black market wasn't only inside Headquarters. Count the ones that opened irregularly and there were easily dozens in Seoul alone. Places you could actually trust enough to deal were few, though, and merchants like the Boss of the Headquarters market—someone who handled every kind of goods—were rarer still. If I wanted to move something hard to sell, like the spare bomber blueprints Tofu had given me, I needed someone like him.
Let's see what it would actually fetch.
Wonder if Tofu's still hiding in one piece.
Mr. Gwak, who had promised to protect her, hadn't seemed like a bad sort. What worried me more was the sorcerer who had owned the dead Locke. He and Tofu had looked well past any chance of getting along.
First, my own neck. I've got trouble enough right in front of me.
I reached the boiler room in Building K. The little window in the door opened, and the black-market doorkeeper's eyes appeared.
"Bat's here? Good. We were waiting."
"Hm?"
"The Boss wants you."
Did he already know misfortune was coming?
"What for?"
"Didn't say anything else. Anyway, go show your face for a minute. I passed it on. That's for certain."
The doorkeeper looked the same as always. At least this one didn't know the market's fate. Inside was no different.
"I'll take a look around and come back."
"I keep telling you, no need to check anywhere else. Prices are all the same here."
"It was cheaper over there."
"Where? Which bastard is selling cheaper than me?"
Peaceful, same as ever.
"I'm matching this price because it's you."
"Mm, all right. I'm a little short, though. I'll find the money and come back."
"Yeah? Let's go together."
"I can go and come back alone."
"Then leave the bag."
"...Why would I?"
I was on my way to see the Boss when a voice stopped me.
"Hey! Bat!"
The crow mask. Kkamagwi. The merchant I'd met last time, when I brought Hocheol, who was new to the black market.
He'd given me a hundred-sided die last time. It was still rattling around in my bag.
"Come over here a second!"
"I'm a little busy today. I was just going to show my face to the Boss and leave."
"A second's all it'll take!"
What a pain.
"What's this about?"
I'd already come close enough, but Kkamagwi kept waving me nearer. Then he started glancing around, as if he'd stolen something useless and was hiding it.
"Remember I said I'd ask a favor when I needed that eye of yours that sees through things?"
"If I'd known you'd need it this soon, I should have taken a deposit."
"I just want to know if you really can see through things. Take a look at this."
What he pulled out was—
"What do you make of this?"
A very familiar object. No. A component.
"...Where did this come from?"
A wing. A part I'd first seen in Tofu's workshop. It had been disguised as a fan blade, and later built into the aircraft. It belonged on the plane that had lifted off from the Clock Tower.
"You know what it is?"
Kkamagwi's tone was somehow off.
He's got an angle.
Either way, what the thing was was obvious. The section built to fold so it could work as a variable wing, plus the sloppy paint job meant to make it look military. There was no way two of these existed by chance. Tofu's work, no question.
"I asked where you got it."
"Why?"
"You think seeing through things works out of thin air? You put the clues together, and then you get an answer. Where it was found is an important clue."
"Hm."
Kkamagwi didn't answer right away. Something he wanted to hide.
"Hey now, what's with that look? I just figured it wasn't any great information. Where it came from is—"
So he'd decided to talk. Which meant he'd been on the fence about whether to hide it.
"You know the Human Meat Factory?"
"The settlement in Yeongdeungpo."
"Right, that place. You also know they don't deal with outsiders at all?"
"I know."
"But listen..."
Kkamagwi shoved his face in, and I jerked my upper body back on reflex.
"Relax. I'm not going to kiss you."
"I wasn't even thinking that, so don't say disgusting things."
"It's a secret, so you can't go repeating it anywhere. Got it?"
Kkamagwi spilled the secret in a voice no bigger than an ant's, and it wasn't even his secret.
"The Boss has been dealing with the Human Meat Factory for a long time."
So that was it.
"What's with that reaction? You don't look surprised at all. Did you already know?"
"No. I didn't."
"Then why so lukewarm?"
"Hearing it, it makes sense."
"Mm! Fair enough."
The Boss handled an unusual variety of goods. That was why he'd come to mind the moment I got the bomber blueprints. I'd had a vague sense he kept several special trading partners.
"Anyway, this came through the Boss. A deal he got off the Human Meat Factory bastards. He told me to dispose of it however I liked."
From the Human Meat Factory to the Boss, and from the Boss to Kkamagwi. So the plane had reached its destination, just as Tofu wished. The aircraft had only ever been a disposable for flying the blueprints out. If her prediction was right, the Factory people would have taken them. Once that purpose was served, the plane couldn't be reused, so it was fated for scrap. Had that scrap washed up here?
But something was wrong.
Where's the rest, and why only the wing?
The question didn't last long. I caught the reason soon enough.
"So, now that you've heard the clue, what do you think? What's this thing for?"
That unfamiliar tone again. He wasn't asking out of simple curiosity.
This was a test.
How far I could get from this one small part. Whether I could truly see through it. That was what he meant to confirm.
Happy to play along.