Chapter 93
Walter checked Paul Lucas’s condition and spoke.
“He’s an android.”
“Pardon?”
Like any artisan, Walter had an inherently stubborn and obstinate look about him, so he did not seem like the sort of person who would make a joke like this, even in jest.
“You mean he’s not just a corporate big shot who’s had an insane amount of body modification?”
“Yeah. And a very well-made android at that.”
Walter checked Paul Lucas’s wounds─, no, damaged areas, which hung limply like a dried squid, then added the rest.
“Until I took a close look, I thought he was entirely human. Hmm…. Thanks to that, though, treatment wasn’t difficult.”
As one might expect from a man with an android daughter, Walter deliberately used the word ‘treatment’ for an injured android.
Could an android completely indistinguishable from a human really be nothing more than a simple machine?
Since blood-soaked battles over that very subject were still raging across the Cyberweb like gladiatorial fights in the Colosseum, I set aside my complicated thoughts for the time being.
Come to think of it, I had also found Paul Lucas’s current condition a little strange.
Even though there were so many holes and gouges all over his body that he could almost have been the torso version of Hoppang Man, I could hear the sound of his heart beating with remarkable regularity.
“…Hmm.”
That was when I noticed one more strange thing.
Paul Lucas himself had clearly said that Beltech International Solutions─, that enormous military-industrial megacorp, neither made nor employed androids.
‘What is he really?’
It seemed I would have quite a few things to ask him once he woke up.
I briefly wrinkled my nose at the overpowering smell of disinfectant, then checked the other empty beds nearby and asked Walter,
“Come to think of it, Grandpa Walter.”
“What do you mean, Grandpa?”
“Anyway. Where did the cat that was lying over there go?”
“Huh? Obviously, it’s right there……”
Then several seconds of silence passed.
Walter clenched his teeth.
“That little bastard…. It crawled off somewhere again. I told you its adjustments weren’t finished yet. It sure doesn’t listen worth a damn, just like someone else I know.”
Then he scratched his head and continued casually,
“It probably went to clean up one of the nearby gangs or something. After replacing so much of its body with corporate cybernetic prosthetics, it must have gotten restless just lying around.”
“…Is that really okay?”
“Would it be? Well, it’s responsible for taking care of its own body.”
Walter seemed to have grown fairly accustomed to the grocery store’s ecosystem, where there were plenty of crazy people.
Even so, his presence was quite reassuring.
Otherwise, we might have had to go somewhere else.
To the slum hospital run by the black fugitive doctor─Florence.
Though I wasn’t sure whether she could treat androids, too.
“Anyway, thank you. You always take good care of me whenever I come rushing over in a hurry.”
“It’s nothing. I’m only repaying the favor. It’s the right thing for a person to do.”
Walter’s spinning eyes fixed on Paul Lucas.
“Isn’t that right?”
Flinch.
Paul Lucas, who had been quietly listening to our conversation, carefully sat up.
Apparently androids did not need a separate recovery process, because he seemed to have no trouble moving his body even now.
“…Yes, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank him over there.”
Paul Lucas’s narrow, thinly slitted eyes turned toward me.
I had previously thought he merely had a suspicious-looking face, but in this awkward situation, he seemed to be watching my every reaction.
I looked at Paul Lucas and spoke.
“…So what happened?”
What on earth had to happen for a perfectly normal megacorp employee to be chased by Mad Max lunatics riding motorcycles?
That was what my question was about.
* * *
The vacant lot was unusually lively today.
That was probably thanks to the newly added ‘bar table’ on one side of the lot.
“Tsk, you have to mix vodka into every drink. Even if it’s made from cheap Biofarm potatoes whose origins you don’t want to know, it still needs a high alcohol content to…….”
My eyes met those of a drunken homeless man muttering as he sat on one of the bar table’s chairs.
“Oh, Boss!!”
How many times had I told them not to call me Boss….
But Hot Dog Man and Boss were similar enough, so I let it slide without making a big deal of it.
“Nothing going on?”
“Of course not!”
He lifted the liquor sitting on the table.
It was liquor that they had started ordering along with their grocery-store deliveries.
“Especially this stuff! Tsk…, I’ve been making money lately but couldn’t think of anything to spend it on. I didn’t feel like going all the way to the New City to drink, either.”
“Good for you.”
Apparently, they were earning a modest allowance by producing wicked items at the homeless shelter.
(Paper straws are wicked items, even if we set aluminum cans aside.)
‘Should I call this corporate welfare, or sophisticated salesmanship….’
It was a thought bordering on a dilemma, but they seemed to like it, so I did not pay it much attention.
“Then keep up the good work.”
“Ooh!!”
Vance Kim, who was serving as the bartender, looked at me with strangely trembling eyes.
But why was he waving a liquor bottle with a carrot drawn on it toward me?
It was probably some kind of shaking.
Anyway.
After that, Paul Lucas and I moved to the grocery store’s logistics warehouse.
We had already cleared out all the megacorp weapons, and Nova was temporarily sheltering at Rivera’s place, so there was nothing to hold us back.
“……”
[…….]
Of course, it felt as though a little girl and a turret were watching us from somewhere, but I deliberately ignored them.
“Hmm…. You’re saying you’re an android?”
When I sat down on the sofa with the broken springs, Paul Lucas stood awkwardly, unable to find anywhere to sit.
“Ah, you can sit there.”
I casually pointed at the cat food box sitting in front of me.
He seemed puzzled about why there was a cat food box inside the grocery store’s logistics warehouse, but he calmly sat on it for the time being.
‘Wait a minute.’
If his true identity was an android, then…
“Don’t tell me you never ate any of the snacks or drinks you bought all this time and just threw them all away…!”
His voice gradually rose in pitch.
Adrenaline, secreted by the adrenal glands atop the kidneys, drives the body’s anger─.
“No, no, no. That’s not it. My core was designed to consume nutrients separately and generate energy internally.”
“Oh.”
Thinking it over, I remembered that he had appeared eating snacks even when I met him in the same place as that crazy woman from Delta Team.
‘An android that can eat food….’
In fact, this was not the first time I had seen an android this well-made.
Nova was one example.
The android who had run Paul Paradise had also been capable of eating food.
Still, it was difficult to call him ordinary.
Then again, this was a world where a brown-bear-like man could digest high-explosive grenades in his stomach.
I asked Paul Lucas another question in a dubious tone.
“Anyway, let’s finish what we were talking about. Who was chasing you like that….”
“I’ve certainly ended up in a rather ridiculous state. Very well. I’ll tell you everything.”
Paul Lucas continued his explanation.
“…A spy from the Ryan Company?”
“That’s right. Unlike Beltech, the Ryan Company is famous for employing nothing but androids, so you must have noticed to some extent already.”
I had not.
No, and why was there a spy involved here?
“Recently, I was carrying out a mission to find the cargo Beltech lost. More precisely, I was trying to discover the identity of the object belonging to that cargo that the megacorp’s chairman wanted to keep hidden.”
“Tsk, just as I thought.”
“…??”
“It’s nothing.”
My guess had been correct.
Otherwise, what kind of lunatic would come to the Area 49 grocery store three times a day?
…….
I composed myself after feeling slightly depressed and listened to the rest of his story.
“Apparently, that missing cargo was found at the Ryan Company’s logistics center. From what I can tell, it seems to be another corporation’s scheme, but unfortunately, I have no way to prove it.”
“Oh, uh.”
“Is there something you wanted to say….”
“No, ahem.”
I cleared my throat and asked another question.
“So what does the cargo being found there have to do with you being chased?”
“At the Ryan Alliance Company, employees are forcibly processed as having resigned. Since most of our employees are products manufactured in-house anyway…. The mobile special operations unit sent from headquarters must have come all the way here to dispose of me.”
“…So.”
That meant.
The people I had confidently driven away.
“They were a mobile special operations unit from the Ryan Alliance Company?”
“To be precise, they belonged to the Risk Management Department….”
The department was not important right now.
What mattered was that they belonged to a megacorp.
Paul Lucas, who knew that danger better than anyone, nodded with an apologetic expression.
“……Yes.”
“Get out.”
“Pardon?”
Oops, that came out a little short.
“Please leave.”
How long had it been since I shook off one megacorp’s pursuit? Why did I have to incur the hatred of another megacorp already?
I had already rescued him and even had him treated, so I thought I had done everything I could for him.
It was a little unfortunate that the grocery store’s one and only customer would disappear like this, but shouldn’t the living do what they could to survive?
On top of that, I had recently witnessed one of their mercenaries fire lasers from his body and completely destroy a giant robot right before my eyes, so I was being even more careful with my actions.
Paul Lucas answered my reflexive words with a faint smile.
“Naturally. To be honest, I hadn’t even chosen this place as my destination…. The unexpected help I received here is more than enough.”
Without saying anything else, he limped toward the grocery store’s entrance.
‘…Tsk.’
For some reason, his silence was making me feel even more bothered.
After all, none of this would have happened if I hadn’t moved the cargo to the Ryan Company’s logistics center—or, to begin with, if I hadn’t stolen it.
I was not a good person, nor was I particularly devoted to obeying the law.
But.
At the same time.
I was not an ignorant person who knew nothing of justice, chivalry, or propriety.
“Wait. Stop right there.”
“…?”
“So what are you going to do now?”
At my question, Paul Lucas thought carefully before speaking.
“For now, I intend to flee into the wastelands beyond the city. Even a megacorp would have difficulty tracking me that far.”
“Okay. Let’s stop right there.”
A question mark appeared above Paul Lucas’s head.
“……Pardon?”
He seemed bewildered, though in a different sense than before.
* * *
After warning the others to be careful just in case, I drove out into the streets in the armored truck the Bogus Gang had given me as a gift long ago.
“So the reason you kept coming to our grocery store as a regular customer really was because of that ‘cargo,’ right?”
“The large selection of rare snacks was also an important reason…. Yes, that’s right.”
On the way, I had a peaceful follow-up conversation with Paul Lucas.
“When I met you there, Manager─, Hot Dog Man, I saw the latest megacorp smart pistol you were carrying. Well, now that I think about it, it was all a misunderstanding, so I apologize once again.”
“……”
What an unnecessarily sharp guy.
If things had gone slightly wrong, he really would have exposed me and caused a huge commotion.
Should I just drop him off like this and head back?
“If I had thought a little more calmly back then, I wouldn’t have misunderstood anything in the first place….”
Paul Lucas, sitting in the passenger seat, looked at me intently.
That gaze was rather burdensome.
“A purist with a pure magic circuit, too. You’re an heir to one of the families in the city center, aren’t you? Someone like Crossfell, for example….”
“Cross-what?”
“…Never mind. I brought up something unnecessary. You clearly want to hide your identity, so I’ll keep my mouth shut from here on.”
What was he even talking about?
When I frowned and glanced at him,
Paul Lucas looked slightly bewildered.
“……You really aren’t?”
Now he was trying to rewrite someone else’s family registry.
I was Abel Anderson, no, Cheon Suho.
The proud son of the Cheon family and……
“Then where on earth did you get that new weapon from Beltech─.”
Gasp.
I quickly clamped my hand over his mouth.
“Hey, that’s far enough. Stop digging into a past someone else has buried….”
I had spoken informally without realizing it, but apparently that felt more natural to him.
“I knew it….”
Whew, I felt like I was breaking out in a cold sweat.
I had almost made a slip of the tongue.
‘Crossfell?’
I had no idea where that was, but he had misunderstood everything on his own.
I had not said a word….
Paul Lucas failed to notice anything strange about me and continued speaking calmly.
“Still, you should be a little more careful from now on. Rumors about the homeless gang ruling the streets of Area 49’s old city are starting to spread to other districts….”
That was when my gaze shifted to the rearview mirror.
A moment later, a sleek shadow burst out of the alley.
“They’re here.”
Paul Lucas noticed where I was looking and made a worried expression.
“I, uh, I’m out of bullets, so I can’t respond from long range….”
“It’s fine.”
I pulled the crudely made smile mask over my head and
sent a signal toward the rear.
“Ready?”
“……”
I did not hear an actual answer, but the sound of something being loaded spoke in its place.
Click.
Along with the BGM from Metal Slug, which I had loved playing at arcades as a child, a cheerful voice naturally rang out in my head.
- Heavy Machinegun!
Mikhail, who was in the cargo bed, nodded.
Incidentally, he said that the implant he had used while working as a corporate mercenary automatically mosaicked his face in video data.
Then there was nothing else to worry about.
The truck’s rear doors swung wide open.
A massive Gatling gun aimed outward!
Ratatatatat─!!!