Chapter 7: Guilty (7)

“Get up, get up, get up! Get up!”

The girl with the steel rabbit ears on her head climbed onto the bed and woke the brown-haired woman up.

“Oh, why again… You don’t have work today.”

“Even if you don’t have work, you do have an appointment! Get up quickly.

Did you forget the appointment you made with the broker today?”

“Ugh.

That guy is so fucking aggressive.

Why is it like this when you can just call..”

“I’m full after successfully completing a few requests.

Stop complaining and just get up.

Luna has prepared a meal for me.”

“Ah…”

The brown-haired woman pulled the blanket over her head, but was forcibly dragged under the bed by the girl who was on top of her body.

“Where the hell have you been, what have you been doing now?”

I’ve been waiting for you.

Here, all the time.

The TV turned on without warning, showing a video.

The brown-haired woman rubbed her eyes and looked at the handsome man on the TV.

“What, isn’t it a commercial break?”

“It’s a drama commercial.

It turned on because it was time to get up.”

“But this is a little better.

I like this one thing when I change apartments.”

Rather than being racy, the sight of people who looked bizarrely dressed in clothes worse than taking them off and advertising, “Please find a certain establishment,” steadily eroded the brown-haired woman’s mental strength.

Besides, it didn’t feel that special.

In the slum apartment where she used to live, she often saw women dressed like that.

Just getting on the elevator made her think, “This person is going to sell their body,” and “This person is on drugs.”

No, it would be better if only the clothes were racy.

There were even men and women who were openly having sex in the elevator at dawn.

The people who stopped their actions and hurriedly put on their clothes when she came in were relatively respectable.

“That’s true.

But, isn’t this the time for you to be watching TV commercials?

If you have nothing to do, help Luna, or at least watch the commercials.”

“First, wash up…”

“You have to wash up, Doris!”

“Yes, yes.

Understood…”

Doris was the leader of this mercenary group, but that was only for important matters of the mercenary group, or matters related to battle.

It was not a mercenary group with strict discipline where one could assert authority inside an apartment.

“Understood.

Let’s do it, let’s do it.”

In a way, it could be seen as a kind of group project team.

The three women in the mercenary group were of an age where they would have gone to college in normal society.

However, Stella City was not such an easy and gentle place.

They had to make money, and risking their lives in the process was not a big deal.

“Advertisement… I have to see.

Damn it, can’t we just buy a computer with our money?”

“It’s all going to your implants.

I can’t say anything because you’ll die if you don’t, but… Be careful.

If possible, use a good one.”

“If there are products on the black market that are effective and have no side effects, that’s a department store, not a black market.

Well, if there are side effects that won’t kill you tomorrow, it doesn’t matter.”

Doris turned on the computer.

Slowly, the loading circle rotated.

Soon the computer turned on, but what she saw before her eyes was not the desktop, but a loud and sexy video.

-Do you want to experience a different kind of pleasure?

Are you tired of the same old women and videos?

-If you call the number below right now, you can rent an augmented reality recognition device and unreleased videos for $30 a month!

If you are watching the advertisement carefully, please click the moving ‘Awesome!’ button at the bottom left!

This was a kind of labor.

It was an inevitable price to pay if you used the internet on a cheap rate plan.

Not only the electricity bill, but even the internet bill was ridiculously expensive, so it was not an amount that Doris’s mercenary group, who made a lot of money but reinvested in implants, could afford.

For about 15 minutes a day, they had no choice but to watch this ridiculous advertisement every time they turned on their computer.

“Damn, here it is again.”

“You have to stop doing other things and watch it!”

“Okay… I got it.”

As she had expected, the next advertisement was a drug advertisement.

-There are really no useful things these days.

Aren’t you tired of drugs that are just so damn expensive and have no real benefits?

recommend this to those people.

A new world, a new drug!

New-Jet 4.25 version!

It’s a drug that acts directly on the brain, so you don’t have to worry about side effects!

The best drug that doesn’t even fall under drug-related regulations!

-When you’re depressed, sad, need something to do, spend time alone, party, or make a big mess!

Use it whenever you want!

Just adjust the settings a little, from marijuana-type down-pil drugs to hot and sexy drugs like Philopon!

Call me right now!

“Freeze to death…”

This time, there was no voice guidance, and somewhere on the screen, the message “If you’re watching the advertisement, press this button!”

Doris pressed it and was lost in thought.

Doris, who had been attending a normal school and had thought she would naturally go to college until recently, had lived a life that wasn’t so ordinary in Stella City, but her daily life was completely shattered.

After her mother died, it was natural for her to turn to crime.

Thanks to the mechanical enhancements she had applied to her body, she was able to earn enough money as a mercenary to keep herself from starving.

However, this was dangerous.

Doris knew that this wouldn’t last forever.

For now, she was happy.

Because there were people who needed Doris, people who felt that they needed her.

“Ugh…”

Without being heard by others, Doris carefully stroked her chest.

It was hard to adapt to a peaceful life.

Her heart was beating like crazy, as if her uneventful daily life was abnormal.

Doris hated drug dealers, but it wasn’t much different for her.

She had no choice but to fight.

She was a mercenary.

If Doris had been even a little weaker right now, she might have already been shot in the head.

What was more frightening was that the person behind her would die instead of her.

Even for that, she couldn’t give up anything.

What was scarier than the drug was the implant that was tightening her heart.

Her arms, legs, back, organs.

There wasn’t a single thing that hadn’t been modified for combat.

It was necessary.

Even an experienced and talented fighter couldn’t win against an implant that was a fusion of human technology and science.

Just as a human holding a rifle couldn’t win against a tank, it was the natural law of this world.

In order to become stronger, to maintain this pitiful victory, to continue this time, she had to continue to become stronger.

“Doris, the food is ready!

Come when you’re done!”

“Really?”

When she heard Ravina’s voice, Doris’s depressed heart burned again.

“What’s for lunch today…”

Her pure heart, the moment she saw the monitor, was overcome with annoyance.

I wasn’t watching the commercial.

And that meant that I had to focus on watching the 15-minute commercial again to be able to use this computer.

“… Were you thinking about something else?”

“Oh, that…”

“Ugh… I can’t live like this. Let’s eat first. Turn on the computer later and eat first.”

“Is that okay?”

“You turn the computer back on later. Let’s eat quickly and go! If we’re even a little late, the broker will be waiting.”

Doris ran to the table, smiling brightly.

Even so, her heart was beating fast.

***

The connection between corporations and gangs was an open secret.

It wasn’t like the boss of a gang openly swearing allegiance to a corporation or the corporation openly condoning their crimes.

No matter how much this city was a crime city, they had to at least be aware of the minimum.

It was closer to looking at the other corporations’ feelings than the citizens’ feelings.

However, this was a city where the police had already become half the privatization of the corporations.

This was because of the privatization of the police in the name of “police efficiency.”

The corporations fought each other to the death.

No, more precisely, they fought each other to the death.

However, they could not mobilize proper private soldiers for such a fight.

In this world, when companies fight each other on purpose, it was a more serious problem than a civil war.

It might be less damaging for countries to fight each other.

At least when countries fight each other, they usually fight in places where their territories meet, keeping in mind the feelings of their citizens.

However, companies were spread all over the world.

When Hansan and other corporate conglomerates started a war, gunshots and the smell of gunpowder echoed everywhere in the world.

“If you act like this, won’t it be harmful to the company?”

“This is an opportunity. This is one of the few opportunities in Stella City to improve Hansan’s image.”

The secretary in the driver’s seat asked me with a worried expression.

“Even if we suffer some losses, we have to make this a splash so that we can use it later.”

Having suffered a great loss once and come to understand each other’s power in a rough way, the businessmen regained peace.

So, they tried to avoid fighting directly.

However, once the businessmen had tasted violence, they did not want to fight the fair fight of “fighting with money” that they had done before.

They could make a huge amount of money by shorting an enemy company and successfully carrying out a terrorist attack.

They could assassinate a famous engineer of the enemy company or trample on the competitiveness of the company through hacking.

In the meantime, they could not see the money they made through ordinary means.

So they used gangs.

At least, that was the case in Stella City.

And when such gangs took away other companies’ assets, they received help from the police.

However, there was a limit to this.

In such a lawless city, it was difficult for the police, even if they were somewhat corrupt, to be treated better than the gangs.

When used weapons from companies were secretly leaked to the gangs, the police, who had been armed with citizens’ taxes, fell like autumn leaves.

So the companies reached out to the police.

They could hide their crimes and keep enemy gangs in check, so it was a double-edged sword.

The police, who immediately got a pay raise and new equipment, were delighted.

But it was the devil’s temptation.

Even though the gangs were walking the streets in broad daylight, the police couldn’t easily arrest them.

The advisory group from the corporations made them help them by giving them numerous excuses.

Through the papers and theories created by scholars who lived off of research funds received from corporations, they made the gangs with ties to the corporations turn a blind eye.

Eventually, the police lost trust, and the police chief of Stella City was attacked from all sides.

Every time an incident occurred, a new police chief was appointed, and in the end, they couldn’t prevent the accidents.

As the trust of the citizens fell, the support given to them also decreased.

In the end, the police became even more dependent on the corporations.

“We’ve arrived.”

And, I needed to get involved.

“Give me the stuff.”

“Here it is.”

The standard rifle had not changed much.

Of course, it looked different from the K2 I used in the military, but the fundamental shape and principle had not changed.

It uses gunpowder to fire small bullets, and uses them to kill people by piercing their bodies.

If you were fighting against body modifiers who had their skin encased in steel, against a typical gang, this should be enough.

“Alright. Let’s get in.”

“I’ll take you right away.”

The police station of Stella City was right in front of me.

I took a deep breath and slowly thought about what I had to do.

I had to put enough pressure on them and then confuse them.

I couldn’t be too strong and make them hostile towards me, but I couldn’t be too weak and make them afraid to face Hansan.

“Let’s go.”

I carefully got out of the car door that opened automatically and went straight into the building.