“So, here we are.” Three muttered. The four of us sat at a table I had conjured after releasing Lilian from her bindings. Upon request, she was provided with a pink tank top and black cargo pants.
She had sat in an embarrassed silence following her release, and only occasionally shot me murderous glares to communicate her feelings.
I actually smirked a bit at that. If she wasn’t too hurt mentally by my torture, all the better. Physical wounds healed quickly, but mental ones lingered until death.
“Yes, here we are.” I answered back. “Well, while we’re waiting for your body to arrive, do you have any questions for me?”
I directed the question at Lilian, but she was too busy trying to ignore me to see my gaze on her. Three elbowed her arm, and Lilian flinched, nearly falling off the stool she was sitting on.
“W-what, Judgment?” Lilian looked mildly displeased, but an equally unpleasant look on the face of Three made her back down.
“First of all, because of your idiocy, I am no longer Judgment, but Three. Please refer to me as such. Secondly, your new employer is speaking to you, and you have the gall to ignore him like that? Why did I even vouch for you when you were busy choking on a dildo?”
Lilian’s face lit up crimson and she pushed Three, almost knocking the A.I. out of the chair. “Don’t remind me! I can still taste the rubber in my throat.”
“Good. It will be a reminder of our defeat today. Your employer asked if you had any questions he could answer.” Three said, sending Lilian a vicious glare.
Lilian averted her gaze to me, and frowned. “What kind of work will I be doing, exactly? You mentioned a teacher, and then a maid, but could I get something a little more concrete?”
I thought about it for a second. X, what is the probability that letting Lilian and Three in on my plans will cause them to go awry?
“There is no probability of that, Master. I included a clause in Lilian’s contract that would purge her of all her memories if she ever found a way to get out from under the contract.”
What if she has a backup on Three’s cloud somewhere on the Judgment Network?
“Impossible. Part of her signing clause was to have Three’s data be localized to her Judgment Panel. Once her body comes in, she will delete the cloud.”
My brief conversation with X done, I said to Lilian, “Well, a teacher in the aspect that you would be telling me what you know of the Judgment system, and things you have been able to do using Three’s help.”
Lilian nodded, and said, “That’s what I was expecting, but honestly, it doesn’t ever hurt to confirm the obvious.”
I gave her a brief smile and added, “As for the maid part, you’ll be following me around the world as my subordinate, and taking care of any dirty work I give you.”
She raised her eyebrows and looked at me skeptically. “Dirty work? What kind of work are you doing that requires you to do that?”
This time the smile stayed on my face. “The kind of work where I need to get rid of cancerous beings in this world… is what I want to say, but I’m honestly just playing it by ear. I want to make this world safe.”
Lilian tilted her head, and studied me. “That’s… admirable, if you’re doing it for the right reasons.”
“Sadly, I can say with 100% certainty that wish is due to my own selfishness, and fear of the unknown.”
“Oh, well.” Lilian shrugged. “Better to have an admirable goal for the wrong reasons than to have an unjust goal for the right reasons.”
“I don’t want to hear you talk to me about ethics. You murdered a whole club full of people, including Imperial Princess Akahime’s subordinates.”
Lilian shrugged. “Not all life is created equal. Saying things like that is just a comfort that less successful or less powerful people give themselves to feel better about their shitty lives.”
My eyes widened as I realized something. “You honestly feel that way, don’t you? You honestly believe that those people have less value.”
Lilian’s eyes narrowed as she spoke. “Of course. I’d kill those people again, if I had to. There’s no way I’d hold their own selfish desires above my own. You feel the same way, don’t you? That’s why you took down that criminal in the arena, after all.”
I wanted to deny her statement, but no words came to mind. Had the antidepressants really numbed me that much? Or, like I feared, had they just awakened something in me that had always been there, blocked by an instilled sense of morals?
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Before we could move on to another topic, X put a hand on her hip and exclaimed proudly, “Master also wishes to have a harem of princesses.” I turned to give the A.I. a death glare.
“Well… that’s, uhh…” Lilian looked around awkwardly for a moment, and then sighed. “Why did I even feel a modicum of respect for you there? And what’s with your Judgment? Why does she call you ‘Master?”
“Firstly, it’s an A.I. don’t go gendering it like that. Just because it looks like a woman, doesn’t mean it is one.” Three regarded me cooly, but said nothing, so I continued, “Second, it chose to do that on it’s own. Ask X if you want.”
Lilian turned to X, who shrugged. “It seemed to be a title that Master was very fond of being called the night he was released from prison. So, to comfort him at all times, I have decided to refer to him as ‘Master,’ when speaking to him.”
Lilian stifled a laugh, and it took all I had not to react to X’s reason for addressing me as such. “Just to let you know,” I started, “I tried to get the damn A.I. to stop calling me that, but it refused.”
X shrugged. “I am just being the best support A.I. that I can be for my user. What’s so wrong with that?” I didn’t dignify her response with an answer, and instead went to open the message that Lucina had just sent to me.
I gave it a once over, and my heart sank to the bottom of my stomach. With shaky hands, I closed the message box and relayed what was written down to Lilian and Three.
“What did you just say?”
---
Even three hours after I left my subspace, I couldn’t get Lilian’s wailing out of my ears. I was acting tough on her, but it pained my heart to see her display her raw sadness over her body’s death.
Even now the two of them were still inside my subspace, with Three trying to console Lilian that spending the rest of her life as data wouldn’t be too bad. Truth be told, I did have a solution, but it was best to bring that up after she had calmed down.
I opened my eyes, and found Lucina sitting down on the bed beside me. I sat up and looked to my right, where the remains of Boss, the sexual relief android lay in a heap.
Lucina turned to meet my gaze, and she smiled. “It looks like you had a wild time last night. You completely trashed the poor thing.”
I rolled my eyes at her joke, and pointed to the discarded android. “Completely trash that thing. I don’t ever want to see another one ever again.”
“You forget that I’m technically your commanding officer.” She chided, but obediently got up from the bed and picked up the heap of scrap that used to resemble a person.
She dragged it over to the corner of the room, where she pressed a button on the wall, and a large hole opened in the wall. She tossed the scrap in, and the noises it made on the way down were some of the most satisfying I’d ever heard.
“It’s not very intelligent of you to take joy from the destruction of an inanimate object, Master.” Judgment chided me in my head.
Shut up. Lilian’s been punished enough as it is, so I can’t really take out any more frustration on her decisions. Feeling happy about seeing something being destroyed is just a popular human pastime.
“So, what did you learn from your prisoner?” Akahime walked into the room and sat next to me on the bed. Lucina sat beside me once more as I began to speak.
I told them about the deal that I had worked out with Lilian, and about the locations where she stored her wealth and information.
I then told Akahime specifically about the properties and businesses that Lilian owned that would soon be making their way into Goto’s hands.
She looked especially pleased with that, and when I asked why, her bluntness threw me off guard. “It’s because everything is balancing out. I believe in karma, Joshua. Gedo murdered so many innocents, that it was bound to come back and bite her in the ass. That just so happened to be the death of her body, and the seizure of all her assets.”
She must have noticed the confused look on my face, because she added, “I wanted to kill her myself, but this is the next best thing. Hatred is a powerful tool, and I must admit that it had consumed me before I could use it to my boon.”
“I don’t believe you would have done it.” I said bluntly, and the imperial princess smiled sweetly.
“I also want to believe I would have followed your orders, but I had my gun pulled when I discovered her body. There was no telling what I would have done had she been alive.”
I shrugged, and then moved on to the existence of the ten Judgments. The two princesses listened intently, and Lucina was the first to speak up after I had finished.
“So what are you planning to do about it? I understand that to you it’s a big deal, but our Kingdom can’t really spend the resources to look into a group of shady individuals who may or may not be playing a game to become the king of something. No offense.” Lucina averted her gaze.
“None taken.” I said, rubbing her back. “I understand that point of view completely. I assume that the Luong Empire is in a similar position, right, Akahime?”
The imperial scion rubbed her chin and crossed her legs. “I would like to answer similarly to Lucina, but I am unsure of how much my father would sacrifice to bring you into the royal family. You’ll have to ask him directly.”
I nodded, still unsure of what to actually do about it. “I don’t really think I’ll need too much other than sufficient resources to defend myself. Like Lilian pointed out, I did make quite the target out of myself fighting Gazix in the colosseum, and subsequently killing the cyber-stein. I would think that any Judgment user would try to find me first, like Lilian did.”
“Still, I wonder what links all the Judgment users. It’s a pretty large coincidence to have ten people manifest the same A.I. as a Neuromancer power.” Lucina’s words made me wide-eyed, because she had just figured out what I had been missing.
X, can you ask Three whether Lilian was a Neuromancer or not? My heart beat faster and faster at the thought that I might be onto something, and I eagerly awaited X’s response.
“Yes, Master. Apparently, Lilian’s mother was also a Fallen.” She slipped from another dimension then? That’s great! We can use that as a starting point to search the globe for-
Judgment Universal Notification- One Slain, Nine Remain.
I stared at the bright green box for a moment before dismissing it with my middle finger. Fuck.