Two noisy bullets double-tapped Troy in the side, sending him stumbling into the wall of the hallway. Trace wasn’t about to waste the opportunity he had been given and quickly shot the man several times in the chest. His hands were shaking so much that he didn’t even bother to try and aim for the face.

  Trace heard the same pistol as before continue to bark in the other room and assumed it was Monroe’s Lexington. He attempted to stand, only to wince as two tender spots in his rear end protested. It seemed he hadn’t gotten away quite as freely from that last shotgun blast as he had originally hoped.

  By the time he managed to get to his feet and over to the doorway, all the fighting was already done.

  “You dead?” Monroe called out to him.

  “I have some steel buckshot in my butt cheeks. I think I’ll survive. You?”

  “My armor took a couple of hits, but nothing it couldn’t handle.” He joined Trace at his doorway, looking down at the now-dead Troy.

  “What was up with this guy? I’ve never seen anyone move so fast before.”

  Monroe grunted softly as he bent over. The armor may have stopped the shots he took, but they still hurt.

  It always surprised Trace how maneuverable the man’s cyberware arm and hand were. Despite its large size, he was able to use it so naturally. He delicately pulled back some of Troy’s hair and revealed a section of synth skin on the man’s scalp.

  “You ever seen something like this before?” Monroe asked, letting it all fall back into place.

  Trace shook his head, keeping his butt cheeks squeezed together. It was a little more painful that way, but it was constant, and therefore bearable. Without the squeezing, it would have been constantly moving and jostling about. The pain always flaring and twinging, never giving him a chance to get used to it. This was uncomfortable, but far more preferable to that.

  “I’ve never heard of any cyberware augments for the brain. Even the NetConnect only goes up as far as the brainstem.” He paused and tilted his head. “I’ve never thought about it before, but that is sort of odd. I would think some corp would have tried to do something in the past.”

  “They have,” Monroe tapped the man’s skull to illustrate his point. “However, making direct modifications to the brain is harder than it sounds. Cyberware augments tend to be rejected by the brain unless they are put in when you are rather young. They needed to create something new that blended good old fleshware and cyberware together.”

  He carefully straightened and turned away from the body. “They call it bioware, and to my admittedly limited and out-of-date knowledge, only a few brain-oriented augments have been successfully created. Unless something has changed in the last few years, all of them are exclusively reserved for corpos. This guy had some form of adrenal gland bioware augmentation.”

  Trace grabbed Troy’s boot and dragged him into the main room, along with the man’s shotgun. There was no way they were going to leave all this loot behind.

  “How do you know about all of this stuff? It doesn’t sound like bioware is exactly common knowledge.” He questioned.

  Monroe picked up the mewling Jerry and slugged him across the jaw, knocking him out, and likely breaking it in the process. “I wouldn’t call it an open secret to us edgers who have been working for a while, but it is close. Enough of the higher tier members have run into people with various bioware augments that they have spread the word. As for why I know about them,” He touched his cyberware arm and hesitated.

  “Hey, if you don’t want to talk about your past, that’s fine. It's obvious something painful happened back then.”

  The big man nodded thankfully to him. “Another time, I’ll get there, eventually.”

  Trace looked down at Troy. “I don’t know how much you heard, but this guy was a member of a gang from one of my past jobs. If he is sporting an augment that is supposed to be high end and exclusive… Then I’d be willing to bet that he wasn’t just some lackey like he was making it sound.”

  “I was right next to the door. I heard it all, and I agree. It also sounds like the gangs are on the lookout for you.”

  There was nothing he could do about that particular issue, outside of avoiding gang territories. Something that he had already been doing for the most part.

  “Whatever. Do you want to run back and get the truck? I’ll see if I can’t wake our payday here and begin collecting all the loot from the bodies. Make sure to grab the money from the crypto-vaults before you go. Your kills, your free credits.”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  He took photos of each of the bodies and gathered up all the guns and anything else of value. Internally, he could feel the nanites going to work on his rear. Slowly healing the damage and taking apart the steel balls. He could have accomplished it all faster by using the system menu. It was tempting, too. In the end, he decided it was better not to raise Monroe’s suspicions any more than was needed.

  Each of the holes would still be fully healed within a couple of hours. He just needed to deal with it until then.

  With all the loot gathered in one place, he poked the woman’s cheek a couple of times, trying to gently prod her awake. Seeing as there was no response, he tried again by shaking her shoulder, this time eliciting a groan of pain as her eyes fluttered open.

  “Phyllis?” He asked, having heard Jerry mention her name earlier.

  She nodded, her mind still foggy and filled with pain. “What happened? Where am I? You should know that kidnapping me isn’t a good idea.”

  He stepped back in surprise. Of all the responses he had been expecting, being accused of kidnapping her was not one.

  A fragment of clarity entered her eyes as they focused on the bleeding and unconscious form of Jerry lying limp on the floor.

  “That scat-faced, slot-holed shazbot really thought he could kidnap me?” She spat on him, while Trace took yet another step back. He hadn’t expected her to start cursing quite so vehemently. “We’ll see how he likes it when I have his entire family fired and then evicted. Wait, no, that would be too good for them. First, I’ll sink them into debt and make them work it off in the underfloors.” She began to cackle madly.

  It didn’t take much for Trace to understand why Jerry had wanted to take out this woman. Especially if she had been his boss. The gonk had just done it in the wrong way, is all.

  He cracked his neck as she continued yammering on, not stopping to ask questions, or even think about what had actually happened for even a moment. How someone like this had managed to gather even a modicum of power was beyond him. Any person who didn’t take even a few seconds to listen to others, but instead wrote their own narrative, didn’t deserve to be in charge of other people.

  Right as he was about to break and smack her back into unconsciousness, Monroe arrived to save him from himself. It was a good thing they had chosen to record everything that happened during this job. Otherwise, Trace might not have shown so much restraint.

  Grabbing everything he could carry, he walked out the door, paying no mind to her screeches.

  “I take it you didn’t bother untying her?” Monroe asked, already opening the door of the trailer. “Hmm, we should have emptied out one of those crates back at the warehouse for miscellaneous items.”

  As it was, everything they gathered was simply going to be moving around freely for the moment.

  “Let’s bring the guns into the semi for now,” Trace suggested. “Everything else can go back here. And to answer your question from before. No, that woman is an absolute piece of work.”

  A short time later, they had all the loot separated and loaded. As a last-minute decision, they even grabbed Troy’s head. Trace’s vibro-blade proved its ability to cut through more than foam as it sliced through the man’s neck with ease. It was promptly placed in a sealed bag and then stuffed in the semi’s freezer. Monroe, and to a smaller extent, Trace was thinking Sevorah and Ko would be interested in examining it. However, Trace also thought Deckard might be interested in taking a look at it if they could swing it.

  With all of that completed, there were only two things left to take care of. Phyllis and Jerry.

  By that point, even Monroe wanted to drop Phyllis out in the depths of the wastelands. What to do with Jerry was harder to decide on. On one hand, he had organized all of this, making him somewhat of a bad guy. On the other, he also had been hesitant to do anything really wrong. That had all been Troy.

  However, Trace had sort of shot off the man’s leg at the knee. Who knew 10-millimeter ammo had that much power? They had done first aid on the man, so he wasn’t going to bleed out at least. That said, he was still missing part of his leg and had a broken jaw.

  After putting up with Phyllis for the last half-hour, they didn’t really feel like killing him. All things considered, the man had shown remarkable restraint by not going for the easier, and probably smarter, move of just eliminating her.

  “Let’s take him to the scarpo Lonetree town,” Trace suggested quietly after they had knocked out Phyllis with some medical tranquilizers. “They can look after him. Then we’ll drop off this thing, like the job demands, and we’ll keep moving.”

  A short time later, the semi rolled into Lonetree, exactly as Trace remembered it from before. He dribbled some icy soda onto Jerry’s face, shocking the man into consciousness. “Careful, your jaw is broken. Now, unlike Troy, you seem like… I don’t know, actually. Not as bad as him, at least. Sorry for shooting your leg, by the way, I didn’t expect that to happen. Now we are going to leave you here in Lonetree. I would suggest you drop off the map, contact your family to leave Denver before Phyllis makes it back, and then just go dark. This is the most we can really do for you.”

  He helped him into the nearby clinic, and then they were on their way, headed back to New Denver. Trace constructed a message and sent it off to Stick-Point, along with all the photos of the people involved, just in case there were any bounties on them. The last item he did was edit the video they had taken and send it as well.

  When doing jobs for corporations, you could never be too careful. It was why, even though they really just wanted to toss Phyllis out the door while she was still unconscious, they took the time to wake her up.

  “I’m glad that job is done and over with,” Monroe muttered as they sped off toward Newlin Meadows. “I hate working for corporations on the best of days, and that woman was among the worst. Usually, they just act like they’re better than everyone else, or like their emotions are muted. There are some though, who are like her. I can handle being looked down on or working with someone with little to no real emotions. Having to handle someone who just wants to make other's lives difficult for no reason though…” He shook his head and took a shuddering, angry breath.

  Trace uncomfortably readjusted himself on the passenger seat and nodded in agreement. He had less experience and exposure to corpos than Monroe did, but if this job was anything to go off of that wasn’t a bad thing.

  “I need to take my mind off her. What are we doing for this next job?” Monroe asked.

  Trace pulled up the information and began briefing him, feeling himself slowly calm down at the same time.

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