A Beautiful Probability
"Sir, do you remember? This is the trainee I told you about."
I remembered.
For a moment I'd wondered if he was one of those rare talents who surface now and then.
What he actually was, was a rotten little delinquent in urgent need of a Confucian education.
Still, I'd gotten some use out of him. He'd meant to make a fool of me, but thanks to that stunt I'd been able to take Elder Heo and Dr. Myeong to the Human Meat Factory.
There had been no stopping Elder Heo from failing to come back. Dr. Myeong, at least, I'd brought home safe, and I'd gotten on speaking terms with the people at the Human Meat Factory besides. I wouldn't exactly call it a favor, but the ending had worked out in my favor.
"I've heard so much about you from the instructor. It's an honor to meet you!"
Look at this little shit, putting on a performance.
How am I supposed to handle an arrogant punk like this?
A trainee still wet behind the ears. As an adult, and a former instructor, I ought to meet him with some dignity intact. Min Yeo-jin would believe every word out of my mouth, so I could tear the mask off him right here if I wanted. But I still didn't know enough about the kid. No harm in dealing with him after I had the full picture.
Especially since the bastard has serious backing.
A trainee, and yet he could throw his weight around in operations Geofront itself was running. Someone's VVIP protection, no question. Until I knew who, and why, there was no reason to rush.
"I'm just not sure what I should call you..."
"What is there to decide? Postman will do."
You managed it just fine last time.
"Oh, sir, come on. That won't do. You call him sir too. Understood?"
"Yes, sir! Understood!"
The obnoxious little shit, beaming like he meant it. That eye-smile was no amateur's work.
"Keep that up and you'll have crow's feet in no time."
"Sorry?"
"So. What am I supposed to call you?"
"Please use my name. I'm Su-hyeon."
"Su-hyeon. Family name?"
"Cheon, sir!"
"Cheon Su-hyeon."
"Yes, sir!"
"Lousy name."
"Sorry?"
The watcher they'd planted in the visitation room was getting on my nerves.
"Min Yeo-jin."
"Yes!"
I tipped my chin toward the one doing the watching.
"Oh, that's no problem!"
She shot to her feet, said a few words, and the kid yelped and bolted out the door.
"Don't worry. They say there's no way to watch the inside from out there."
That didn't mean I could say whatever I liked. The arrogant little shit was sitting right beside us, listening.
"Why are you here?"
"I heard a postman had gone out with the first wave. I knew it had to be you!"
Not remotely rational. The inference was right anyway.
"But they said you hadn't come back by yesterday, and today's the mission deadline, isn't it? I was worried, so I waited outside, and I saw you return. Then out of nowhere they dragged you off to the holding cell?"
"I walked in on my own two feet."
"It was so pitiful to watch."
"I walked in."
"I was really upset, so I asked whether I could at least get a visit!"
I understood how she'd ended up here. The answer to the question was still missing.
"So what's the actual business?"
"I just wanted to see you. And Su-hyeon had just finished training, so I thought I'd introduce him while I was at it!"
She'd come for nothing, then. The kid held a faint smile the whole time and looked me straight in the eye. Nothing moved but his blinking. He was managing his face, and it showed. The corners of his mouth had gone stiff.
Maybe he was part of the trainee pack Dr. Myeong had mentioned.
The moment I heard that, this one had come to mind. Then again, he was the only hunter trainee I knew. A brat who wore his hostility toward me right out in the open—possible enough.
Still only a hunch.
Either way, Min Yeo-jin had come to me on her own, and that worked out. I'd had something to tell her. She'd saved me the trip.
"First, Clock-out Man."
"Oh—did you meet my senior all right out there?"
Right. He'd said Min Yeo-jin sent him.
"Yeah. He helped. A lot."
That settled Clock-out Man's wish.
"I'm glad! Is there anything else I should back you on?"
I was grateful she always went along with me. Sometimes it weighed a little heavy. Nothing in this world is free, and someday all of this was going to come back with interest. Looked at a certain way, my greatest enemy might be Min Yeo-jin.
"You got Clock-out Man a Backscratcher, didn't you?"
"I did. He didn't ask for one. I just gave him one, because I thought it might help you!"
"Think you can get another?"
"If you need one, gladly!"
"Not me. Clock-out Man will. His broke."
"What?"
"I ate it."
"Aha, got it! I happen to have a spare."
Every time Min Yeo-jin meekly went along with me, the kid's mouth twitched. Live long enough and you get hated for the strangest reasons. A Backscratcher was supposed to be one gun per person, and here she was keeping a spare. She'd come a long way.
"Where'd the spare come from?"
"All thanks to Su-hyeon!"
According to Min Yeo-jin, she'd gotten the Backscratcher through a merchant Cheon Su-hyeon had introduced. I didn't know a thing about the merchant, but if the meeting happened inside Headquarters, it had to be a VVIP. The price, though, had to be paid in full.
"I never used to feel the pinch of an instructor's pay... That merchant's prices are outrageous. Still, they're things you couldn't buy anywhere else, even with the money."
"You all right handing the spare over to Clock-out Man? If money's tight, I can help."
"Oh, please. If it's to help you, I wouldn't mind burning every coin I earn!"
"Maybe don't say burning."
Still, this could be an opportunity. Money, and you could do anything.
And I've just lined up a way for serious money to come in. Perfect timing.
Might as well start with how to make it.
"For a while I'm going to have Clock-out Man working for me. Don't give him any jobs."
"Work him as hard as you like!"
I needed to trade with the Human Meat Factory. Send Clock-out Man and I wouldn't have to go myself. The thing about a closed settlement is that its market runs on a completely different logic from the outside world, and if you work the price gap that creates, you can make a fortune in a short time.
The Human Meat Factory had industry. There would be goods you could call local specialties—common inside the settlement, valuable the moment they came out. And the reverse: ordinary out here, prized in there. Find out which was which, swap them, and take the profit.
Not something you can milk forever, of course.
Every trade dumped what had been scarce onto the market until it turned ordinary, and the more you traded, the thinner the spread. After a few runs you had to dig up a new commodity and chase the high margin again. Do that long enough and the first goods grew scarce once more, and you started the cycle over. Easy to say. In practice, you couldn't keep a trade tilted only in your favor—competitors saw to that. Which was why the Human Meat Factory mattered.
I have the trade there all to myself.
So the job had to go to Clock-out Man. It would bring in enormous wealth, which meant sending someone I could trust. A pile of money from this would make every mission after it a great deal easier. Go out looking like a beggar the way I had this time, and even I had a hard time handling a single boss-class creature. One man against a hundred, empty-handed—that only happens in novels. You need weapons and supplies. And if that isn't enough, you need more weapons and more supplies.
There is someone better suited to making a killing on trade, actually...
The black-market Boss. The problem was that he was a merchant to the bone. Not the type to knife me in the back, but not a man I could control either.
So that's how the money comes in.
Now, how to spend it.
"Cheon Su-hyeon."
"Yes."
"Where do I go to meet this merchant Min Yeo-jin mentioned?"
"Um... that's a little difficult, actually. I was only supposed to tell the instructor. He has his own position to consider—"
Tsk. No help when it actually mattered.
"Oh! Sir, then I can just make the deal and bring it to you, right?"
If she was offering.
"Well... if the instructor says so—"
"Just say the word! Anything!"
Every sentence out of Min Yeo-jin stacked damage on Cheon Su-hyeon, who hadn't so much as moved. I didn't even have to swing. This was practically the realm of winning without a fight. Dignified. I approved.
"Then take this as a down payment."
I handed over a few cores. Five yellow, two green. I left out the rare ones—the cores Kim-ssi the postman had left behind—and passed along everything I could spare. What I'd picked up at Animal Farm, the spoils a boss-class had left, and what the section chief had paid me.
"This many?"
Come to think of it, I'd made a decent amount on this mission. Even with nothing to spend it on right now, money was never the wrong thing to have. I still had spare cores in the cabinet.
"It might not be enough. If the merchant names a higher price, tell me. I'll add more."
"What are you looking for?"
The urgent thing was an equipment upgrade. I'd had a hard enough time getting by on a stock Backscratcher and an officer's shield.
"Besides the Backscratcher, can you get other hunter gear?"
"Hunter gear? Easy! Right?"
"Yeah, well..."
Hunter gear was the hardest thing in the world to get, and he was calling it easy.
"You leaking equipment off active hunters?"
"No. We pull it before it's delivered!"
"Off the production line?"
All hunter gear was made in Geofront.
"Yes. The serial numbers are properly stamped, and they check out. They set it up so a search hits a fake hunter who doesn't exist, then hand the gear over."
Not just skimming the line. Someone who could touch the system itself. This little shit—was he actually connected to someone down below?
...Quietly useful, is he?
He had no intention of being useful to me. That only made it more satisfying.
"First, a hunter-grade shield."
"That's easy!"
It carried every advantage of an officer's shield, plus functions of its own. Not something just anyone could handle. I wasn't just anyone.
A hunter shield, just like that. I went through all this because I couldn't get my hands on one.
Cheon Su-hyeon was turning out to be extremely useful. Sooner or later I'd still have to correct his manners.
"Next. Attachments for the Backscratcher."
"No problem either!"
I didn't share Clock-out Man's hobby of customizing his own gun, but if I wanted more out of the Backscratcher, it needed an upgrade.
"Anything newly developed lately?"
"If there were, wouldn't you already know?"
"Fair."
"Ah... there was one thing that never made it outside. Something called a Frenzy Round. You have to mount a dedicated attachment before it'll fire."
Loved it from the name alone.
"You know how it is. Weapons still in testing go by nicknames, not model numbers."
"So it hits and the target throws a fit?"
"The effect isn't bad either, but that's not why. When they first said they were going to make it, everyone told them to cut the bullshit. The name stuck."
"What's it for?"
"They developed it for hunters whose abilities aren't combat-oriented, to spike their fighting power. Geofront built a prototype, and the material was—"
The Giant Rod recovery crews, who cut the enormous rods driven into the earth with specialized saws and harvested only the parts they needed.
All anyone had known was that the harvested ore was sent to Geofront. This was a new technology built on top of it.
"In the end, the coating is the whole point."
"So you just coat existing ammunition."
"But they folded it at the prototype stage."
"Worse than they expected?"
"No. Much better. Coat an armor-piercing round and punching through body armor was the baseline. Even a barrier raised with a core ability breaks if you hit it in a burst. Coat a high-explosive and the blast multiplies several times over."
"That's on the level of a combat-type core ability."
"That's why it caused such a stir. But, well..."
"Well?"
"A handful of prototypes, and that was the end of it. It was unstable."
That's every new technology.
"Fire ten, get even one that works, and it'd still be worth using."
"The problem was the special coating detonating."
"Ah. That kind of problem."
"In the bad cases it blew inside the barrel. Bad enough to take a wrist off, they said."
Tsk. A shame. Maybe it was the sort of problem I could hand to Tata.
"Any chance the tech overcomes it someday?"
"They said none at all. The performance tests were a disaster."
Too charming by half. Of course something like that couldn't actually work.
"I saw the test data. The chance of it actually working was under one percent. No wonder they scrapped it."
"Under one percent?"
"Yes. Under one percent."
"Sorry?"
They'd made it for me.
"Get it. Now."