IBACT Chapter 6

Guilty (6)

“Abnormal brainwaves detected. Please stop at your current location and obtain permission from the Hansan security team.”

“Ah, this again…”

As I passed through a facility similar to an airport metal detector, a loud alarm rang out.

“How long are you planning to keep this piece of junk? Get rid of it immediately. It’s not the first or second time, and I’m starting to get annoyed.”

It’s a world where appearances can be changed. Once you’ve subdued someone and have enough time, you can forge anything through pattern recognition and skin grafts.

You could also forge voices through vocal implants, so passwords weren’t exactly a reliable security measure.

Hansan Tower’s security measures were one step ahead of such imagination. It checked for brainwaves that would never occur in the real person, triggering an alarm when ‘impossible’ brainwaves were detected.

“M-Mr. Han Sanwoo! I apologize. Please come in.”

Even if a password was hidden somewhere in the brain, it could ultimately be discovered by kidnapping someone and ‘cracking open’ their head.

But if security checks for the absence of specific brainwaves rather than the presence of specific information, ‘real intruders’ like me couldn’t easily pass through.

“…Fine.”

Making a show of my annoyance, I walked confidently into Han Tower.

“If this goes off one more time, I’ll smash it with my own hands. Understand?”

“Y-yes! Understood!”

It was an impressive device, but even with this amazing future technology, the security system was still a prototype. It had clear limitations.

It frequently malfunctioned, setting off the alarm for perfectly normal people about once every two days. It could detect that something was off but couldn’t easily find or report specifically why the alarm had gone off.

It was just a security device. If it thoroughly examined the minds of Han family VIPs, that would defeat its purpose.

Moreover, it wasn’t a device that fully utilized Han’s technological prowess.

Outside of lawless zones like Stella City, they would use more sophisticated, classical, and efficient methods than such an invasive surveillance device.

“Be more careful next time.”

As I stepped into the elevator, I could feel sweat beading on my face in the reflection.

Despite being such a crude device, I couldn’t help feeling tense every time I entered Han Tower.

It felt like that cold mechanical device was constantly reminding me of my identity.

That I was just a possessor who had fallen into this world, not the real Han Sanwoo.

I said it was a machine prone to malfunctions, but that’s only true for the first couple of times.

Repeated malfunctions for the same person were rare, and even when they did occur, they’d stop after a few recalibrations.

If the ‘Han Sanwoo’ before me hadn’t had such a nasty and terrible personality, I would have had to come up with reasons to avoid repeated examinations.

“Huff…”

This quiet, clean elevator was an extraordinary luxury that only Han could provide.

By luxury, I don’t mean it was covered in jewels. It was a seemingly ordinary elevator with two mirrors facing each other.

Of course, a considerable sum must have been invested to make it safe, well-built, comfortable, and fast, but that wasn’t all.

There were no advertisements.

In the game, you typically live somewhere between lower and middle class. You only get to live comfortably right before completing the game.

And those elevators were covered with advertisements that made your ears ring. So much that ordinary people couldn’t even have a casual conversation inside.

Everything about living in an apartment cost money. The prices of privatized water and electricity showed no mercy to the poor.

No matter how you look at it, it’s a hellish place. Many people must think of this city as hell and corporations—and me—as devils.

I finally made it back to my room. The only safe place for me, free from surveillance and wiretapping.

“Let’s talk.”

I called my secretary and, sitting her down, looked into her eyes seriously.

It’s not good that all my actions go through a single secretary.

But I need at least some basic knowledge to do anything. Ironically, even the Han Sanwoo before me wasn’t much different.

Still, I need to stay calm for now. Or rather, whether I’m calm or not, I have no other choice.

Her life was directly connected to mine, and as long as I didn’t openly antagonize the Hansan Group, that connection would continue.

“The group we were connected with was… Macheonpa, right?”

Hansan is a Korean company. While they hire locals for positions overseas, many executives are Korean.

Naturally, they were familiar with East Asian culture. They were skilled at giving people what they wanted and threatening what they feared to control them.

“That’s correct. But… they’re far beneath your dignity to deal with, young master.”

It was very Hansan-like to talk about dignity rather than law or ethics, but her words weren’t wrong.

Macheonpa is a gang. While they call themselves samurai or martial artists or heroes among themselves, they’re nothing more than an Asian-dominated criminal organization.

Dealing with such people should be done by someone dispensable. Someone at the edge of the organization who wouldn’t be missed if handed over to the police or caught up in gang warfare.

Having extensive knowledge isn’t always beneficial. Minor issues like which criminals we’ve recruited shouldn’t be known by someone like me.

Perhaps they intentionally kept it from me. After all, ‘Han Sanwoo’ wasn’t known for keeping secrets.

Rather than risking me spilling important information while drunk, it might be better not to inform me of such sensitive information in the first place.

“I’m not interested in gangs either. What I’m interested in are mercenaries.”

“Mercenaries, sir?”

“I want to hire someone to investigate this incident. They may have covered it up in the media, but… what happened wasn’t exactly ordinary, was it?”

In truth, there were suspicious elements. It was one of the hypotheses that emerged among people who had played the game for hundreds of hours.

And if that hypothesis was true, no ordinary mercenary, no matter how skilled, could uncover it.

“It seems better to use Hansan employees to look into it…”

“Everyone’s busy. And I can’t keep the information to myself when it comes out. It’s too high a price just to satisfy my curiosity.”

“Curiosity… is it?”

Her expression twisted ever so slightly. So subtly that only I would have noticed.

She seemed a bit disappointed to hear that I wasn’t seriously working for the group and company, but merely curious. Well, it didn’t matter to me.

“But they’re mercenaries. Their reputation is barely better than Macheonpa’s… or perhaps not even that. How would that help?”

The secretary’s words weren’t wrong. The public perception of gangs wasn’t nearly as bad as people like us in the upper class thought.

Not all mercenaries were bad people. While some chose their missions carefully for justice, most took whatever job paid well.

Crime, theft, and terrorism were common. There were legitimate requests to save people or take down criminals, but…

Originally, mercenaries don’t take requests directly. Most receive jobs through reputable brokers.

The more selective a mercenary is about jobs, the fewer requests they get, and the less they earn.

Unless they’re prepared to work for much less than they’re worth, mercenaries are essentially criminals. Naturally, their reputation was poor.

“I’m not unaware. I’ve lived in this city for years, so I know the basics.”

Gangs typically start as vigilante groups. Even the most notorious gangs known for human trafficking, drug smuggling, violence, and murder usually began that way.

Of course, they tended to be close with local residents. Hansan’s constant labor shortage was partly because few people weren’t under the protection of such gangs.

Macheonpa was no different. Asian immigrants who came to Stella City chasing the American Dream needed Macheonpa’s help, whether they liked it or not.

“They’re just individuals, at most a group of about ten people. You needn’t concern yourself with them.”

“Well…”

Her words made sense to someone living in this world.

Individuals can’t defeat organizations. That’s an unchanging fact throughout human history.

“Compared to those gang members, they’ll bring much more convincing results.”

But she was wrong. It was just thinking that occurred within the mistaken mindset commonly held by corporate people.

The ‘organization’ that Hansan refers to is different from that of an ordinary gang.

Most mercenaries are ambitious. In other words, they’re completely insane.

They’re different from gangs that enjoy immediate pleasures and are bound to the people they protect.

They don’t fear taking far more dangerous actions. The people who didn’t hesitate to blow up General Machina’s air vehicles with anti-tank missiles in broad daylight were certainly mercenaries.

Gangs have things to protect. No matter how much corporate backing Macheonpa has, Hansan couldn’t protect them if they did something like that.

Of course, most of these crazy mercenaries die. They disappear, leaving nothing behind but cold corpses.

But the corpses of these countless people willing to die leave behind one who succeeds. People who achieve feats worth talking about for a lifetime.

I couldn’t say, even as lip service, that it was moral or desirable. But it was powerful.

“…Not to doubt you, young master, but you’ve never actually met them, have you?”

“Well, that’s true.”

That doesn’t mean they’re stronger than Hansan. From the start, the quality of people they recruit is different. The equipment, support, and training those people can use are different.

Hundreds or thousands of ordinary people charging with rifles couldn’t defeat a single Hansan employee covered in implants.

Even that single employee would be an extraordinary talent recruited from among thousands or tens of thousands by Hansan.

But with luck, I might be able to hire one of those successful ‘ones’. The player wouldn’t have appeared yet, but there were other mercenaries who had tasted brief success.

I couldn’t use the ‘original protagonist’, of course. But the Doris mercenary group from the spin-off, or other legendary mercenaries who existed only in the lore, might still be around.

“Anyway, look into it. In the long term, creating a broker… would that take too long?”

Brokers need trust. Usually, a long-time mercenary or a trustworthy businessman becomes a broker.

They need escape routes for when things go wrong, the force to subdue problematic clients or bad mercenaries, and systems to punish those who lie about canceled requests to cut out the broker and split the money.

Most importantly, they need the expectation that they can deliver when entrusted with a job.

In the end, it was a strategy I couldn’t use without leveraging the Hansan name.

“I don’t understand why you’re so fixated on this… but alright. I will do as you ask.”

Fortunately, the secretary agreed to my request.

“…Good.”

Then it was time for me to trust her and get on with my own work.