Trace had the gain raised in his eyes, slightly washing out the color of the tunnel. Oddly enough, he wasn’t all that worried about that particular issue. Directly behind Trace and RapidStrike -which was the name of the short edger- was a fellow who had needed to have his ears replaced at some point in the past. The man had decided to turn them into a strength and was now known as Sonar. They detected sound waves, and through the use of a specialized program the man had created with friends, turned them into a map.

  His augmented ears were directly connected to his NetConnect and through it to the program. Which in turn then deciphered what the ears were seeing. It was a fascinating bit of programming that Trace was interested in getting his hands on so Deckard could take a look at it. Knowing him, he would be able to modify it to work with Trace’s eyes.

  Sonar reached out and tapped Trace on the shoulder, five times, indicating there was something ahead of them in fifty feet.

  He partially pulled back the slide, double-checking that a shell was in the chamber. He had loaded it earlier when they first entered the tunnel, but it never hurt to be careful.

  RapidStrike saw what he was doing and did the same, as Sonar held up five fingers to him.

  The two slowed, and Trace hugged the wall of the tunnel even more. They were almost waiting for whatever was further in, to make itself known, instead of risking themselves.

  Sonar tapped Trace again at the forty-five and then the forty-foot mark. By the time it entered the thirty-foot range, he had let the shotgun dangle from its shoulder strap and reached for his CD-10. The pistol was better for a shot like this one. Whereas the shotgun would simply demolish the target.

  By that point, he could make out the outline and vague features of what was in front of them. Enough to know that it wasn’t human in any case. Humanoid, yes, the same as the pygmy had been, but not human.

  With his finger on the trigger, the aiming reticle made itself known. Trace waited a heartbeat before squeezing the trigger, aiming at center mass.

  The large thing grunted in annoyance and stumbled back a step as the ten-millimeter bullet hit its chest and then flattened. The soft lead tip had deformed without ever entering any flesh.

  Thinking quickly, Trace raised his aim and fired at the thing’s head. Three rapid shots left the gun, each one barely louder than the muffled release of its gases. The first hit it in the neck, the second in the cheek, and the third right above the brows.

  It fell to its knees, gasping for air, but he still didn’t see any actual wounds.

  Holstering the pistol, he grabbed the shotgun again and ran forward. Standing a mere five feet away from the thing, he angled his body to the side and pulled the trigger. The shotgun was louder than the CD-10, but with the suppressor properly fitted on like it was, the difference wasn’t too extreme. However, it was noticeable in the tunnel.

  Trace winced as a few pellets bounced back and tore through his pants. Those would be painful for a while. This pair of pants would be done for after this job. They now had holes in the rear and in the legs from buckshot. It just wasn’t his day.

  In front of him, the beast gurgled out a mouthful of blood and then tumbled to the side, dead.

  The rest of the group joined him as he was inspecting the creature.

  “Hey Flash-Fry, I think I found your cousin, twice removed, on your ape uncle’s side,” Trace remarked as they all crowded around.

  “Nah, man, even he isn’t that ugly. I claim no relation to this thing.”

  Mel-Gear poked at the bristly, curly hair that acted as natural armor for the beast. Even up close, a solid quarter of his steel pellets had gotten tangled in the hair which covered its entire body. The shot to its neck had partially collapsed the throat and then fallen to the ground. The one to the cheek had gotten entangled in the hair and had actually scored a light, bloody groove. While the one above the brows had maybe given the thing a headache, or a concussion if he was lucky.

  It was tall too, at over seven feet, with muscles just as large as Monroe’s.

  “You all are going to need more firepower,” RapidStrike muttered, patting his assault rifle comfortingly.

  “Yeah, rub it in,” Trace grumbled, thinking about his own assault rifle that he had left sitting in the semi. “I didn’t think I was going to need twenty extra guns for a simple descent into a sinkhole.”

  He knelt on the ground and unholstered the K-10, unscrewing the small suppressor attached to its long barrel as he did so. He stored both in an outside pocket of the courier bag and then retrieved the revolver. It fit in the holster, kind of. It wouldn’t fall out at least, but he wouldn’t trust it to stay in place if he needed to run.

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  Trace shoved a dozen of the large cartridges into his pocket and then began swapping out the shells for the shotgun. All the ones he had stuck in his pockets previously had been regular steel buckshot shells. Now, half of them were going to be heavy slugs.

  Whatever the ugliness on the ground was, he would like to see it stand up to a heavy slug. Actually, no, he’d rather not. That sounded WAY too much like a jinx.

  “That’s a big gun,” Sonar said, eyeing the revolver.

  “And the noise it makes is even bigger. If you see me draw, I suggest you mute your ears.” With that thought in mind, he remembered to pull out his own earbuds and stuck them in. Swinging the courier bag back onto his back, he stood up and looked at the others. “What are you doing?”

  Mel-Gear and RapidStrike were playing with the beast’s claws, while Monroe merely watched on from behind them.

  “Check this out,” She said, flicking the claw with her fingernail.

  It produced an odd sound note different from what one would expect from an organic material. In turn, RapidStrike tapped it with the edge of his metal knife, and the two notes came back similarly. It wasn’t an exact match, but it was enough to tell the group that its claws were at least mostly metal instead of keratin, like normal fingernails and claws would be.

  “That makes me intensely uncomfortable, but also very curious,” Trace said as he pulled the vibro-blade from its sheathe. “Let’s see just how strong and dense these things really are.”

  Sonar winced in pain as Trace activated the blade but waved him on. He had been a second too slow to dial down the sensitivity of his ears was all.

  Normally, the blade cut through things like they were barely even there. This time, Trace had to put some effort into cutting the claw. When it finally fell to the ground, they saw that while the outer portion of the claw had a thicker coating of the organic metal, it actually ran all throughout the inside of the claw. Without anyone asking, Trace cut off a claw for each person in the group, along with a clump of bristled, curly hair.

  The hair at least didn’t act like it was metal, but it was certainly still something denser than what they would have thought was normal.

  Turning off the knife, Trace inspected the edge of the blade. It would need to be sharpened when they returned to the city.

  “Please tell me one of you recorded all of that?” He asked, straightening to continue down the tunnel again. “Because I forgot, but this is definitely something I would like to send Stick-Point when I write up my report later.”

  “You actually write up reports on your jobs?” Mel-Gear questioned him.

  He shrugged. “It depends on the job. Anything to do with corpos, for sure. I’m covering my bases no matter what. If it’s a job with broader implications, like this one, then yeah. There are too many unknowns not to. Personal and smaller jobs, icework, and the like, nah. I’ll just let him, or whichever job broker I’m working for at the time, know it’s done along with a photo if needed.”

  “Huh, we don’t generally do any work with corpo’s we avoid. What tier are you?”

  “I’m at one. I think Flash-Fry is at what, two?” Monroe shook his head when he looked back at him.

  “I’ve never asked Revlock to test me for it. He treats me as a sort of one-point-five tier for now.”

  “And you both are already working with corpo’s? Are you insane?” She shook her head. “I admit we might have gotten a little lax in our own reporting duties since we became tier twos. Still, know your limits.”

  “Uh, I was taking video and photos,” Sonar said when she finished talking.

  “Can you send it to me?” Monroe asked him, as Trace was already focused on walking down the tunnel.

  Trace tuned everyone out as he focused on the darkness ahead of them. As they continued on, there was something about the tunnel that began to bother him, its uniformity. Everything had been hard-packed, and the floor had even been smoothed out to a degree. This wasn’t a tunnel that had been dug by giant animals, but something that was designed… Maybe, he wasn’t sure. At the very least, it had been finished by beings with a modicum of intelligence.

  Yes, that he could go with.

  Trace shook his head and sniffed, wondering why his mind kept wandering off. They were in the middle of an operation. He should be focused, not thinking about who made the tunnels.

  “Heeyyyy,” He slurred out, causing the others to giggle. “Is anyone else feeeellinggg… weirddd?”

  “Ohh, can you tassttee souundd right nowww as wellll?” Sonar asked slowly, a line of drool dripping from his mouth.

  In the corner of Trace’s vision, a notification he had been ignoring for the last few minutes forcefully enlarged itself.

  - Poisonous gases detected

  - Low levels of oxygen detected

  - Carbon monoxide, Mercury vapor…

  - Breaking poisons down to their base chemical components to prevent further injury to the user

  - Current environment is hazardous to the user’s health

  Trace’s mind cleared somewhat as the nanites went to work on him. They could do nothing to help with the lack of oxygen in the area. The changes they had been making to his muscles had already done plenty in that regard.

  He felt himself on the verge of panic as he fought to keep his breathing even, while desperately wanting to take in a deep breath. Not only was there little oxygen to be gained from the maneuver, but he would be drawing in extra poison that the nanites would then need to deal with.

  Without delaying for even a moment longer, he turned around and began heading back the way they had come. The others could stay or follow. He didn’t have the capacity to care at the moment. He pulled on Monroe’s arm as he passed, but that was it.

  His feet felt heavy as he walked, each step seeming to take three times as long as it should have. There was a ringing in his ears that the earbuds couldn’t offset, and it almost overpowered the sound of his blood rushing through his veins.

  With a gasp, he realized that at some point he had stopped breathing entirely. Oxygen flooded into his system, along with poison, though less than before. Without even realizing it, they had been traveling downward the entire time they had been inside the tunnel.

  Coming back made it obvious to his burning thigh muscles and with how the air slowly cleared and became more available.

  Trace was almost back to where they had left the beast’s body when he spotted the tunnel. It was designed in such a way that it could only be seen if you were coming from one direction. The opening was hidden by a curved portion of the wall that blended in when you were heading deeper into the tunnel as they had first been.

  He stopped in front of it and just stared, puzzled. Why would someone go through all the trouble of hiding it from view in one direction, but not the other?

  Had all of this been planned from the very beginning?

  He wanted to say no, that he was giving these beasts too much credit, but something was off about the entire situation.

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