The Laboratory Director died submerged in his own blood.
Should this be called excessive bleeding, or drowning? It was because the supernatural ability I had not perfectly controlled manifested a little too strongly.
'Did I send him off too comfortably?'
I shoved the Laboratory Director's fallen body aside and fished out the briefcase.
Inside, as expected, were the research summaries on paper along with a USB drive.
'I'm counting on you.'
I roughly wiped the blood-smeared bag on the Laboratory Director's clothes and hurried toward the secret escape exit.
I did not know the exact time of the detonation, but it had surely been set to the Laboratory Director's running pace, so I could not afford to dawdle.
On top of that, there was a high chance of getting swept into the pursuit by the government troops who had come for the purpose of disposing of the Laboratory Director and running straight into them.
Rather than getting caught while claiming to decrypt the encrypted information, pulling my foot out before that came first.
'It'd be perfect if it would at least rain.'
Rain erases traces without any effort on your part. Sound, footprints, even the smell of blood, just in case. It was also a decent environment for frail me to plod away on two feet.
'I remember the explosion, but I don't remember any scene with rain.'
I rubbed between my brows and dragged out the locked-away memories, but it was not much help.
The laboratory blowing up had itself been spent in barely one panel before the scene switched. Wasn't the whole of the original work just finding the surviving 99 among the pitch-black scorched debris and returning to base?
'Enough stray thoughts.'
Soon the door leading outside came into view, and I opened the iron door without hesitation.
The emergency passage the Laboratory Director had built led to a small warehouse on the outskirts of the laboratory, and the choice of location was good.
Being a security blind spot, it was a place where even if someone caught on and gave chase, it would be hard to gauge which direction I had bolted.
Naturally it was a spot no CCTV covered, and it had been omitted even from the security blueprints I found in the control room.
'Was he good at scheming to survive, or good at sniffing out money?'
One of the boxes stacked in the warehouse even held heavy gold bars.
He had probably meant to use them as bribes to buy himself safe protection, but there is no reason for me to refuse.
It was around the time I had barely stuffed six or seven gold bars into the bag that an unexpected smell reached me.
At first I thought it was the smell of water coming off my own body.
You know the sort of thing. Like the salty, fishy stench you catch as you draw closer to the shore.
Since the supernatural ability I had was water, naturally I took it for a side effect coming from that.
But the smell of water that seeped in on the damp wind was clearly coming from outside.
And it was the force of an immense volume of water, enough to soak a wide stretch of land.
'Rain.......'
The instant I pinpointed the exact source, the range of my perception expanded in a flash.
At the unintended manifestation of the ability, my breath caught for a moment.
My spinning field of vision shook up and down as it pleased, as though dizziness had set in, and soon a corner of my consciousness was dragged out and hurled up into the sky.
As raindrops began to scatter down one or two at a time, the sensation shook me with something even more unfamiliar.
The power I failed to control shot straight out past thousands of meters of altitude and plunged headlong onto the rain-soaked ground.
On the leaves of the round garden trees, on the hard concrete ground, on the footsteps of the gathered government troops, on their pitch-black uniforms, even on the lashes of their blinking eyelids. The entire range the raindrops touched came into view at a single glance.
My senses reached across the whole world where the rain fell.
'This is......, a little frightening.'
From the dynamic motion of the rain falling drop by drop, a fullness surged in, as though it had become my own body.
It was as easy as breathing. Stopping the rain without even meaning to, making it fall again, and using that rain to block a person's windpipe as well.
The more I learned, the more it could only be a cheat ability. And if I came to wield it freely, then later on.......
"Blegh!"
A backlash far stronger than mere dizziness surged in all at once and churned up my insides.
Of course it would be like this.
At the throbbing headache, a hollow laugh trickled out of me.
"Heh, heh heh, in...... sane."
In the original work, wide-range detection, one of 99's cheat-level abilities, grew even sharper especially when it rained.
At those times even the protagonist found it considerably hard to handle and avoided it, and quite a few of the protagonist's faction ended up as prey caught in a spider's web.
However, the recoil that came with it was substantial as well, making it a high-risk power.
'Didn't the author balance this a little too well? Haaa.......'
A mere minute or so of manifesting the ability came with serious aftereffects.
As I stared at the spinning ceiling, laughter kept leaking out of me in disbelief. Because in the long view, these aftereffects were the starting point of a life on borrowed time.
99 learned control in order to live, and in the process became overpowered, and inevitably died as a villain.
In terms of the story, he died well.
I truly thought that for a villain, he had wrapped up his narrative and gone out gallantly.
That was because he was not a character I particularly cared for, but anyway.
'Suddenly the affection is boiling right up.'
At this rate I really am going to kick the bucket. Death is genuinely beckoning at me.
I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth and took in the scenery beyond the gap in the door.
I had done far too much the moment I manifested the ability. The body that had been floating in liquid was still weak, and taking on that recoil was too much for it.
Realistically, just getting out of here and reaching my destination was beyond these frail legs.
After checking the rain as it grew heavier, I hurriedly pulled myself out of the warehouse.
By now it was about time for people to register that something had happened at the laboratory. The evacuees were all gathered not far off, and the atmosphere there was in disarray.
Straining alone, collapsing from exhaustion, and getting found. That sort of thing would be a problem.
'I can't keep this up, seriously.'
Escaping quietly and steering the first meeting according to plan should not be this hard.
I swept back my still-damp hair and let out a sigh.
***
Live long enough and things happen that cannot be helped. For instance, a first meeting where, without even being decently groomed, you buy sympathy looking like a mouse fished out of the water.
'No, but really, this isn't right.'
With only a rough location, finding the properly agreed-upon spot was difficult.
Taking into account the Laboratory Director's physical condition, the pressure of time, the government troops' response, and so on, there were only three or four candidate spots that were discreet yet would not draw suspicion at a glance.
Fortunately, narrowing it down to places resembling the backgrounds I had seen in the original work left one strong candidate.
Setting that aside.
At any rate, the minor problem was that my current state was rather, well, like that.
"F*ck, nobody told me it'd be a bastard like this?"
Since the route had shut down long ago, I had been crouched beside the rusted pole of a bus stop, and naturally the person I was supposed to make contact with spoke to me.
The problem was that I was not the Laboratory Director he had come looking for, but that was something I could talk him around on. More than that, the bastard standing in front of me with an umbrella, looking down at me at a slant, was more real than I expected, and I ended up a little flustered.
Carelessly tousled hair with a slight curl, deep dark circles and bloodshot eyes with the whites showing on three sides, coarse stubble that looked days neglected, an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear.
This is 'Seo Mok,' the one I had been waiting for.
It was not entirely identical to the line-drawn image from the original work, but the features were a dead ringer.
It was stranger than I expected. The character was alive and breathing.
Seo Mok, carrying three dimensions and running loose in reality, no less.
Only then did it sink in once again that this place where I stood was inside a boys' comic.
"What kind of insanity is this, a nude show?"
A blunt assessment shot out at once, befitting Seo Mok's personality.
The procedure gown, gaping wide open at the back and even barer than a robe, had long since lost its function as clothing after being soaked through and dragged all over the place.
No, look. My own limbs were unfamiliar and so were my surroundings, so where was the room to care about a thing like that? Shame gets buried for a while, all right?
I quietly pulled the gown closed and awkwardly tugged up the corners of my mouth. Right, the first impression has to be good. Though it seems already ruined.
I put on the most harmless smile I could and spoke.
"Why are you so late?"
The fortunate part was that my throat had recovered considerably while I fled a fair distance. It was not smooth, but a functional voice came out. As a bonus, it also sounded a little like the voice of a sick person.
"Who cares if you're a pervert, as long as you're the right person......? But this is pretty different from what I was told."
Unlike his expression, caked thick with annoyance, his serious gaze raked over me from top to bottom. However young someone looked, this was an age in which a supernatural ability could turn them into a lethal weapon. Suspicion like that was a reaction I had naturally expected.
"Ahem. You came to make a delivery, didn't you?"
"That much is right. But a change in the merchandise is a breach of contract."
"Wow, the party in question is standing right in front of you and you really do treat me like merchandise."
"Tch, forget it. It's void."
"Want me to tell you a secret?"
Seo Mok's languid eyes narrowed. He had already looked at me and caught on to how suspicious I was. And he did not have the sort of career that would let him be won over by pointless excuses and coaxing.
"You're used to silencing people, aren't you? Doing this kind of work, it's not as though you've never been involved in it."
"What do you mean."
"Why play dumb? A discreet commission inside a government-linked security facility, and on top of that, what reason would there be to use a Black Zone mercenary of all things?"
"You're saying it's illegal?"
"Come on, you're not the sort to weigh the law while you work."
Seo Mok raised one eyebrow, seemingly dumbfounded.
"Hey, your mouth scrapes at a guy pretty hard, doesn't it? So what's the secret? Just spit it out."
"Ahem. It means you're perfect for cleaning up afterward. Have you taken out life insurance?"
Seo Mok's face turned grim, as though he had belatedly grasped my meaning. Probably because he had roughly inferred his own future from the exchange.
Of course, Seo Mok being eliminated over this job never actually happened.
There was his importance in the original work, and the place that commissioned this job would even prepare a substitute to pass off as Seo Mok's corpse. Of course, he was slated to learn the truth later, that he had been dragged into a troublesome mess, and to go on a rampage about it.
So my intentions right now were not purely for my own benefit.
"Now, a question. Why would I, nothing but the goods for delivery, go out of my way to tell you all this?"
"How would I know?"
"Wow, even for someone who doesn't use his head, when he's been spoon-fed this far he ought to do that thing called thinking......, ahem."
"What did you say? Say it again. Are you calling me ignorant in a roundabout way right now?"
"Of. Course. Not."
I stretched out my crouched legs, stood up, and dusted off my backside.
"I was in the laboratory's information management team, you see. I heard a lot. Having you disposed of unjustly is a bit......, and standing here asking for help, leaving it alone would prick my conscience."
Of course, I knew there was no way Seo Mok would believe it. Having ruined the first impression and handed him nothing but suspicion, I was bound to look strange.
'But that's not a bad thing.'
Seo Mok tends to be wary of excessive kindness. Conversely, once he had doubted someone and judged them safe, he would let his guard collapse with disappointing speed.
'He's the type who does the approaching himself.'
Seo Mok moved the cigarette tucked behind his right ear over to his left and rolled his eyes.
He was running through whether to pretend he had seen nothing and scrap the contract, what kind of bastard I was, whether there was any money in it, whether this commission really was a shitty one, and so on.
"A coup?"
"By me?"
"A defector?"
"Not yet."
"Not yet?"
"I want to hijack the commission. The goods for delivery are me. As for money......, there's probably something usable inside."
I patted the briefcase. Good thing I brought it along.
"Do you even know what you're saying?"
There was a most basic rule among Black Zone mercenary teams.
Do not get overly involved. In this damn world split into three, living quietly with your eyes covered is best.
A commission is a mutual agreement. Black mercenaries are cursed at enough already, so do not go blowing your own head off.
Come on, the other side is the one who strikes the back of your head first.
I decided to use my last resort.
The rain was drizzling down as it happened, the perfect environment for acting.
'Naturally......, naaaturally.......'
I glanced up at the far side of the sky and smiled broadly. Then, with a SPLAT, I flung my body down onto the ground where blood and rain mixed into half-hearted ripples.
"Hey. Hey? Did you die?"
As if I would die.