Lizard
In the end, I did need Clock-out Man's help. His arms were longer than mine.
"Back when we were active, didn't you call me an inefficient body that just burned calories for nothing?"
"Even dog shit gets used in medicine."
"Times like this, all you have to do is say thanks."
"Thanks."
"......Something about that feels off. I wonder why."
"Thanks."
He worked an arm in through the crumpled plates of special alloy and groped around for a long while before the core finally came free. The Damage Measuring Device that had lain beside it came up with it, a lump of white solid stuck to the side of its housing.
So this was the smell Clock-out Man had been tracking.
Naphthalene. A substance with a fierce stench, and one you almost never saw out here, where it had next to no use. Perfect for tracking, no question.
With the device recovered, I could collect an extra fee from Headquarters. Today's real prize, though, was something else.
A yellow core.
Yellow meant an average chance of successful use. It was the only core found inside the shelter. The Claw Farm settlers had carried off every core in their stores when they left — expensive goods, so of course they had. Which meant this yellow core had belonged to the raiders from the start, and that they had brought it all the way in with them. Something they had bothered to keep even when they ought to have been looting every last thing they could carry. Things like that were usually one of two kinds: something meant for survival, or a weapon.
And an Ability Core is a last-resort weapon for staying alive.
This had to be the core of Postman Kim-ssi that the Physiognomist had told me about. Typical of an Ability Core — everyone who had gotten their hands on the thing had died off, one after another.
I set the core at the very bottom of the bag. It struck the green core I had received from Madangbal with a clink, and the two of them, both reeking of blood, came to rest shoulder to shoulder. If they had mouths, what would they say to each other? Would they sneer at the humans they had passed through? Maybe they were already trying to predict what would become of me, their new owner. Cackling while they did it.
"Just like you said, bro."
"It's certain a boss made it this far, but... hmm."
The problem was that we didn't know whether both of them had come. Whoever pocketed the core would have been only one person, so all that was certain for now was that at least one boss had been here.
"Still no scent of the client?"
"I checked right up until I set foot in the ruins, and there wasn't a trace. Can't smell anything now, what with the poison gas and the gas mask."
Well. Maybe it wasn't worth worrying over. I had the core, and most of the raider band had been wiped out. One boss left behind wouldn't be as threatening as before. And I had no further business with a raider who didn't even have a core. I hadn't set out to do it, but I had managed a modest bit of revenge for Kim-ssi as well.
The Physiognomist would be pleased if I told him later.
No. What was I thinking? Meeting that man was bound to wear me out all over again. Best not to meet him at all.
Once I'm back at Headquarters, there'll be plenty to do.
I ought to see Elder Heo. It had been a while. I had a strong hunch that both of the cores I had just acquired were Ability Cores, but a hunch was not a certainty. I needed his appraisal to verify their failure rates. If both were confirmed, it would be a windfall stacked on a windfall.
She did say there was a hunter who had used an Ability Core three times.
Only a rumor, of course. What mattered was that Min Yeo-jin was not the sort to pass along groundless gossip just for the fun of it. She must have judged that it might be true, or she would never have mentioned it. And her judgment was worth trusting.
Anyway. Time to settle the account.
"Take your pay."
"Huh?"
Business and personal, kept strictly apart. Clock-out Man was a mercenary who moved for money. When the job was done, the pay ought to follow at once.
"To be honest, I can't match the fee your client promised. I'm only a bottom-rung civil servant."
"Oh. You're paying me too?"
"You basically cleared a commission for me. The fee you were supposed to collect from the raiders went up in smoke, so you must be in a tight spot."
"That's true, but..."
Clock-out Man had spent the entire advance the raiders gave him preparing for the raid. The rest of the fee was to be paid only after the raid succeeded. In other words, all of it was gone. He had done the work and still would not be paid.
"From what I saw, it looked like you needed the money."
"Well... I do need it soon. Not like I'm after some enormous sum, though."
"Surprisingly few people actually have to spend a fortune on the spot. Even so, you pull what you can while you can."
"Yeah. That's true."
The sooner the money came in, the better. I took the bag off at once and flung it open.
"I'm not exactly flush with magazines. Plenty of cores, though."
"Cores?"
Clock-out Man peered into the open bag.
"So that's why the thing was stuffed. Cores."
"Nothing especially valuable, but there are quite a few."
Twenty-four in all. Ordinary size, nothing special about their function. Still, a core was a core. The going rate shifted, but one like these fetched the price of two or three magazines packed tight with thirty rounds of top-grade rifle ammunition.
"If you're giving them, I'm not about to say no."
"You don't have the right to say no."
"...That's how it is?"
"If I give it, you take it."
"Mm."
There is no such thing as free in this world. Least of all between people who trust each other. Plenty of things can be staked on trust, of course. But you must never forget that whatever you put up as collateral can vanish at any time. The surest way to keep a relationship is never to use trust as collateral, no matter the situation.
"You figure the price, bro."
"I've never hired a mercenary, so I don't know the rates. You're the one in the trade."
"Mercenary rates? There aren't any. The guy who isn't desperate names a price, the guy who is gets fleeced. That's the rate."
In truth, the outside world had no such thing as a real market price. The cost of goods swung wildly from region to region, and what one settlement had in surplus another needed desperately. Private deals were worse still. In the moment, the interests of the two parties were the price.
I can't shortchange him.
Not only for old times' sake. Clock-out Man's skill was, without question, the best there was. As long as he kept on as a mercenary, there would be more work I would want to hand him. Treating him poorly would be throwing the future away. Old affection or business — the conclusion was the same.
"Here."
"This many?"
Payment for deceiving the raiders. Payment for feeding information to the settlement. Payment for two days and a night of company. And last, payment for the odd jobs — tracking the device, pulling the core free, and the rest. One core apiece, and that came to four.
"You're giving me five?"
I had added one more, by way of compensation for emotional damages. For the things I had said to him: that a man like him would not last long once he went outside, that he was an inefficient body that only wasted calories, and that he was a hypocrite.
"The bag was heavy with cores anyway. Works out for me."
"Since when does a postman have money?"
"What, mercenaries eat beef jerky three meals a day?"
Clock-out Man thought for a moment, then took the cores. He did not take them all. He left one behind.
"Four is right."
"Hm?"
"The fee for making a first-rate mercenary stab his client in the back. The fee for making a first-rate mercenary retract the intel he had already spread through a settlement and put out new intel instead. The fee for a first-rate mercenary keeping you company for two days and a night. And the fee for a first-rate mercenary deploying his ultimate naphthalene-tracking technique."
He seemed to have used a similar method of accounting.
"Is that math right?"
"Dead accurate."
Something about it felt off.
"So one's left over. Looks like you just threw in an extra, bro."
"My method's a little different."
"Fine. We'll say five is right by your count. I'm still giving one back. I owe a debt too."
"A debt?"
Clock-out Man looked at the core still in my hand and waved his own up and down — a gesture telling me to put it away already. He clearly had no intention of taking it, so I did as he wanted and dropped the core back into the bag.
"You're the one who said it, bro. That this was a chance to make up for it."
Clock-out Man had been aiding the raiders all along. He had done it because he needed the money, but that did not mean it had sat well with him.
"Let one core be my thanks to you, for giving me the chance to make up for it."
If that put his mind at ease, then fine.
"So. Feeling any better?"
"Not really. I haven't made up for it completely yet."
"Hm?"
"We wiped them out, but that isn't enough. It's not enough. I'm going to keep making up for it until I'm satisfied."
Well. If that was how he felt.
"Suit yourself."
"Okay. Then we're square."
There was still something to confirm.
"You went to their hideout, didn't you? By now there ought to be only a skeleton crew left."
They had piled up a fortune raiding one settlement after another. I had thought that if we went now, we might sweep up everything they had —
"I thought the same. But it looks like the place has already gone up."
We were too late.
"Gone up?"
"When I went to the hideout, I hid a piece of naphthalene there on the sly."
A meticulous tracker, as expected.
"I kept checking the scent to make sure the hideout was still intact, and then, all of a sudden, it just vanished."
"Which means —"
Tsk. So one of the bosses had survived after all.
"They blew the hideout and ran."
"That's what I think too."
Barely a few dozen minutes had passed since the air raid. A raider band with its chain of command in ruins could not have answered that fast. A boss had clearly been giving orders. And I knew which one.
"Mother's still alive."
"Huh? How do you figure that?"
"Moving the raid up a day must have given him a bad feeling. But Claw Farm was too tempting to abandon over a hunch alone. So he slipped out by himself."
"Well, I follow you that far, but —"
"If it had been Father who wanted out, he would have pulled Mother off the raiding party as well and sent only the underlings. Mother is an asset that can't be replaced if he dies."
"And the other way around, Father wasn't that to Mother?"
"Certain. You can tell just from the fact that the client was Mother alone. Mother always kept the information to himself. The two of them were never equals."
"Hmm. That so..."
Clock-out Man stroked his chin.
"But if you're right, bro, the core shouldn't have been here."
True enough. An Ability Core precious enough that Mother would have kept it himself. No reason to hand something that expensive to Father and tell him to use it as a hidden weapon — least of all on a raid that already felt wrong. But there was no flaw in the logic so far. When one piece refused to line up, there was only one answer.
"Either my luck was good, or his ran out."
The world never turns exactly as you mean it to.
A heavy boom, and the hideout came down.
Large packs rode the backs of Mother and the few raiders still with him. Short on hands, they had been unable to carry everything out, so Mother had gathered, from among what remained, everything that could explode. That blast had just torn the hideout apart. A hideout whose location had been exposed to a mercenary and a postman could no longer be kept. There had been plenty inside too heavy to take. Better to smash it and bury it than leave it in their hands.
"There is no need to regret it. A hideout can be built anew, and money can be gathered again."
"Father, and the others..."
"They can be gathered again."
The hideout, or the money. Father, and the rest of them. All of it replaceable, in the end. It was a pity that the settlement he had held within reach had gone up in smoke, but that too was a goal he could achieve again whenever he pleased. The real problem lay elsewhere: the mercenary's tracking.
For the moment he had masked his scent with perfume, but that could not last forever. Perfume, that expensive luxury, was manufactured only in Geofront to begin with, and even the bottle he was using had come into his hands by chance.
"Of all times, for the air raid to hit right then... I worry our luck has run out, Mother..."
"Luck? Until now, not a single thing we have done has been luck. All of it was skill."
"But the air raid —"
"That, too, was skill."
The postman's skill. A trap built on an air raid. There was no doubt a postman had stood behind the mercenary — almost certainly that handsome postman from before. The grudge over Kim-ssi was certain. And to make use of an air raid: a tactic he had never even heard of, dozens swept away without the lift of a finger. Nothing good would come of opposing that postman.
"Then where do we go now...?"
"First, we leave Seoul."
Fortunately, the mercenary's tracking was useless across a great distance. Getting as far from the man as possible came first.
"How far will we be going?"
"The farther, the better."
"Then...?"
The destination was clear.