Inside the car heading for Santo with David in the back,
Dustin was still driving smoothly while chattering away with that hellish mouth of his.
In the passenger seat, Howard was steadfastly ignoring his chatter, pretending not to hear a word.
Meanwhile, as I administered first aid to Gloria, I admired David’s face.
Seeing David in reality rather than through a screen was truly moving.
His face still had some boyishness left to it, but he was a handsome kid nonetheless.
"How much farther to Santo?"
"We’ll reach the entrance to Santo in another ten minutes."
"Dustin, can you push it a little harder?"
"I’d be happy to floor it!"
"Director, it looks like the baby bird might be waking up. I think it’s about time we put on our gas masks."
We called them gas masks, but they were actually high-performance masks equipped with the basic functions of a gas mask, night vision, infrared detection, and voice modulation.
There was a reason I was putting mine on now. Hiding my identity was part of it, but honestly, another reason was that it looked cool.
Still, my personal reasoning was why I had not worn it from the start.
I went through all this trouble because I thought that, if David remembered me even vaguely, he would come looking for me in order to find Gloria.
"But now that I think about it, isn’t this straight-up kidnapping? Sure, we can drop the baby bird off at home, but the mother bird..."
"Assistant Manager Dustin, just drive."
"Well, it’s not as if we’ve ever cared about things like a conscience. That was nonsense, then."
"Assistant Manager Dustin, don’t chatter for the rest of the way to Santo. Just drive quietly."
Howard’s deep, low baritone was effective at shutting Dustin up.
For the entire drive to Santo, Dustin did not say a single word and simply drove in silence.
Maybe it was because there was less nonsense coming out of his mouth.
The car reached the megabuilding where David lived even faster than I had asked.
David was still thoroughly unconscious, and Gloria’s condition had entered the safe zone as well.
Once we woke David and sent him home, all that would remain was delivering the vehicle my team was currently recovering from the accident scene tomorrow.
I had already secured the [Sandevistan].
All I had to do now was give it to David along with the paramedic jacket.
"Let’s wake the baby bird."
"I’ll try waking him. Ahem! Baby bird, wake up already."
"Assistant Manager Dustin, I’ll wake him. Ahem! Will you not get up this instant?"
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Only after quite a while did we realize the problem.
Since we had been speaking without turning on the external microphones, of course our voices could not be heard outside.
None of us had noticed the simple fact that we were communicating solely over internal comms.
It had been an unexpected silent shout-out to David.
Feeling embarrassed, we simply picked the lock on the front door, carried David inside, and placed the [Sandevistan], the jacket, and a shard containing a brief message beside his head before hurriedly returning to the car.
Even after we got back into the car, we were all somewhat embarrassed, but the atmosphere recovered somewhat on the way to Heywood.
Now, the issue we had to deal with was Gloria’s condition.
The impact from the traffic accident, compounded by overwork, had left her in worse shape than expected.
Her condition had improved after the first aid, but she was still in danger.
"We must have looked completely incompetent just now."
"Assistant Manager Dustin."
"You’re going to tell me not to talk nonsense again, right?"
"This time, I have to agree."
"Why are you being so scary, old man?"
"What makes me scary?"
"I think you’re better off not knowing."
While Howard and Dustin made trivial small talk in the front seats, we entered Heywood.
From now on, Gloria would receive intensive treatment at the branch facility we had set up in Heywood.
We would not know for certain until we arrived at the facility, but she would likely need at least a month of recuperation.
During that time, David would meet Lucy and join the Edgerunners crew.
It probably would not even take a week.
Even if I concealed it in the meantime, someone might pick up on something.
Lucy was still wary of me, so if I acted even slightly strange, she would immediately become suspicious.
That I was connected to David.
Then Rebecca would naturally drag me away and beat me up, Kiwi would blackmail me, and Dorio would stand by and watch.
You might think I was getting ahead of myself, but after working with them for the past two years, I knew they would not go easy on me just because I was a teammate.
Watching my favorite characters fall in love was damn hard.
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