The Fence
"Don't tell me—that mirror!?"
Clock-out Man. So he remembered.
"Yeah. All the way through my instructor days, it never left the bag."
"I always wondered why you hauled a broken one around. Got attached, huh?"
"Attached..."
"Huh? There's more to it, isn't there?"
Maybe I shouldn't have said anything.
"What? What, come on, what?"
"Aren't you sleeping?"
"Wide awake now."
"Damn it."
"So what happened to the mirror?"
"It's in the cabinet."
"You still haven't thrown it out? I knew there was something!"
Tsk.
"So? You make the trade at the shop, and then what?"
Going to be a long night.
I finished the trade and was hurrying out of the settlement when a voice caught me.
"Kid? Back sooner than I figured."
It was the search-team man who'd first shown me around the place.
"You try out that shield you bought off me?"
"Not yet."
"Lucky little thing, aren't you?"
The shield. I'd bought it on impulse, more or less. The Old Man had taught me once that a shield was essential, but the shield he'd meant was nothing like this one. His folded away onto the forearm—specialized gear, standard issue for the army and for hunters, or so he'd said. Gain a Core ability and you could become a hunter, and then the state would see to it you got one. No need to go scrounging on your own.
Which meant, of course, that I had to go scrounging on my own.
The one I bought doesn't even fold. On the bright side, it made a fine pillow.
About an hour later.
Ting!
The shield earned its keep.
"You half-grown little rat!"
The first time I'd ever been shot at. A raider? Just in case, I'd kept the shield clamped tight to my forearm, and by some miracle it stopped the round. If I ever had the means to spare, I'd need body armor too. The shots that followed, I dodged by dropping behind cover.
Looking the shield over, I saw the bullet had struck the rim and skipped off. Close.
"..."
Quiet. No footsteps coming. Which meant the one who'd fired was still out there somewhere, still drawing a bead on me. Burning real ammunition on a kid who clearly owned nothing. What was he? Someone I'd already thrashed once? Come back for revenge?
Tch. Of all moments for the Old Man's lessons to crawl back up.
Right. Jeong-gu had said that. There was a chance the other man had already pinned where I was hiding. Stay still and you're dead. I had to move.
So where is he.
The cover hiding me was a collapsed earthen wall. A little farther left and the wall ended; to the right it had caved in, leaving a hole punched clean through—big enough for three of my head.
One chance. I have to find him in that one chance.
I eased the shield left with my foot. The instant its edge slid out past the left side of the wall and pulled his eyes, I looked out through the hole on the right.
Found him.
Ten o'clock. A figure breaking for the next piece of cover, eyes on the shield I'd pushed out. The way he shifted cover was practiced work. Which meant he might already have read that I'd used the shield as bait. He'd know his position was blown, so he'd choose his next line carefully.
From here on, it's a mind game.
What I knew about him: nothing at all. Then what did he know about me?
"You half-grown little rat!"
That. I was a kid. Hee-ju had said it once.
So I'd act like a half-grown little rat of a kid.
The seasoned mercenary was rattled from the start. A gun, against a mere kid. But that was what the job called for, so there was no help for it.
"...Tsk."
And then, actually laying eyes on the kid, he hesitated all over again. Not out of pity. There was no proper order to dying. A fine mercenary carried out a client's demands to the letter. Even so, his pride would not permit him to shoot a child like that. What a waste of resources.
Click.
Still, a job was a job. He'd made up his mind to throw his pride aside, the way a fine mercenary ought to—
Ting!
—and that brief hesitation was the problem. One moment of carelessness. The kid had snapped the shield up, quick as anything, and the instant the round was stopped he vanished behind cover.
"You half-grown little rat!"
He spat it, and then, thinking it over—
"...Heh."
—found he was grateful. Relieved, even. At least the kid was good enough to stop a single bullet. And that sharp dive behind cover afterward! He was ashamed, now, of having dismissed an opponent like this as a child. The will to grant the client's wish welled up of its own accord. Time to mean it.
Shff.
Tactical movement. He'd crack this with everything he had. Cover to cover. Light on his feet. He was just thinking the kid wouldn't even know he was closing in—
"...?"
—when the kid stuck the shield out past the cover. A warning. The mercenary halted at the next piece of cover. Time to think it through, calmly.
The cover the kid was hiding behind was a collapsed earthen wall. Most likely he'd drawn the eye with the shield, then looked out through the hole. As expected: no ordinary kid. The terms of the job were starting to make a little sense.
But even if the kid had looked, he would have been hard to spot. The gaps between the covers the mercenary had crossed were razor-thin, and he'd made almost no sound. Granted, the kid knew where he'd started and would have been staring that way—but even that wouldn't have been enough. In all likelihood, the kid had failed to find him.
So what would the kid do next? At least once more, he'd repeat the trick of showing the shield. The reason was simple. Fail to spot your enemy, and you assume your enemy has failed to spot you. That was how the dead tended to think, at the end. Just as he himself had failed to find the mercenary, he'd figure the other man had failed to see the shield he'd held out. So he could hold it out again without a second thought.
Just like a half-grown little rat of a kid...!
Ssk.
He drew the shotgun. That was the moment. The instant the shield showed itself again, he would fire at the hole in the wall, then rush out and finish the screaming kid.
"..."
But—
"..."
—nothing. No reaction at all.
"...Heh."
Maybe he'd expected too much of the kid. Frozen stiff, the brat had apparently decided to play dead behind the cover. Play dead long enough and you really do become a corpse. And the kid didn't even know it.
The mercenary decided to wait a little longer. If the kid would just stay put, all the better—the job got easier. Still, now that he'd read him, he wanted to beat him the way the plan said. The finger resting on the shotgun itched.
"!"
The shield peeked out. In the end the kid had gone and used his little trick again, never knowing it was the road down.
Bang!
The shotgun fired.
"Haha!"
The mercenary vaulted out from behind cover.
Thud!
The instant he landed—
"Ghk!"
—something sharp drove into his side.
Good. It went in clean.
"Ghk!"
What mattered was driving the knife in as deep as it would go, all in one thrust.
"Wh—when did you—!"
Shove the buried blade upward and twist as you haul, and—
"Aaagh!"
—his balance collapses in the direction of the pull, and the pain folds him in on himself. The textbook finish was to strike the exposed temple, the back of the skull, the side of the head, and put him out. But—
"Why'd you shoot?"
I wanted an answer.
"Gyaaah!"
Fail to put him down at once and he'd end up wrapped around me, so I had to be careful. With no weapon in his hand just then, I could cope well enough.
"You—! Aaagh!"
The will to fight back, I metered with the knife I'd left in him. Twisting a blade wrapped in muscle was harder than it looked, of course. Torque it too hard and it slips right out of your grip. A little twist did the work. No need to force it.
"Your answer?"
"Hurk..."
He'd passed out. Failed to meter the force. Still short on experience. Nothing to be done about it.
You came at me first, anyway.
I'd managed to see blood. Him opening with the gun had made putting the knife in that much easier. A raider, then. Had to be. Word of the rumored kid must have gotten around, which would explain why he'd gone for the gun straight off.
Searching him turned up a fair amount of ammunition. Grenades, too. A big haul. So this was why people looted... Couldn't let it become a habit.
I dumped the unconscious man on a search team passing by, more or less. Leave him and he'd die, but if someone patched him up he'd live. At least it would mean I hadn't been the one to kill him. I didn't forget the shield, either. I'd rigged it so that, given a little time, it would slide and creep on its own.
Time to do some real looting.
I'd heard there was a notorious raider den somewhere around here. If I could clean those people out...
A successful raid. It had gone according to plan.
I did it!
Six raiders, taken down in a single ambush. One more had wandered in partway through and made it seven, but that hadn't been a real problem. Every one of them put down in a single stroke, knife only. None of them ought to be dead. They were collapsed in front of the den; if their friends came out fast enough, every last one of them might still live.
I'd stolen their bags. Bags crammed with a full day's plunder. Was this what they called stolen goods?
With this much...
I wouldn't need to hunt or loot for a good long while. A relief.
Haul it to the settlement and sell the lot, right?
The very idea of fleecing raiders had only occurred to me because I could walk into the settlement now. Hand all the stolen goods over in trade, then buy food and whatever else I needed.
If Jeong-gu could see me now, would he have praised me?
Hmm...
I piled the goods for sale so high in front of the settlement merchant that I could barely see his face.
"...Kid. Where did all of this come from?"
"You know. I'm out there fighting raiders every day."
"Last I heard, you fought them and didn't loot them."
"I just borrowed it."
"Listen to the brat."
He checked the goods one by one. He'd lowball me again. Still, better than no trade at all, and there was a lot of it. I ought to come away with a fat stack.
"...You borrow this yourself, too?"
I looked.
"Yeah. Why?"
A thin metal plate about the size of a fist, and I had no idea what it was. It had been stuck to the inside of a raider's bag. Every single bag had one, and I couldn't tell what any of them were for. Figured it might be worth something, so I'd put it up.
"Do you know what this is?"
"Guess."
"Hoo... Our little kid. When are you going to learn to speak with a little respect?"
He abandoned the inspection and came out from behind the counter.
"This kind old man will tell you what that is."
Whatever. All I needed was the money.
"Yeah."
Tsk. How impressive could the lesson possibly be. Still, if he wanted to show off what he knew, I supposed I had to listen. It made me think of Jeong-gu. He'd always liked explaining the things I didn't know.
"Come over here."
Fine. Not that this huckster was worth the dirt under Jeong-gu's—
Wham.
Careless.
Thump.
"Cocky little bastard... How are you even still alive?"
Part of me was grateful, though. Never drop your guard. Not even in a settlement shop. He'd taught me something tremendous.