Behind Trace, the sound of shuffling steps broke him out of his stupor. There were still a few lingering effects from the poison and lack of oxygen. The nanites had broken down everything fairly quickly, but it hadn’t been immediately.

  Turning around, he saw Monroe and the other three staggering towards him.

  Each of their faces was pale, and the grip they had on their weapons was weak. Exploring the tunnel would have to wait until later. These four needed help first, and unfortunately, he didn’t think there was anything in his first aid kits that would help them.

  “How are you feeling, Flash-Fry?” He asked the big man, who proceeded to blink at him slowly.

  Monroe bent over and vomited, before beginning to cough, each time flecks of blood hitting the ground. Mercury vapor along with the other items were really doing a number on his lungs.

  Behind him, Mel-Gear and her two companions threw up a moment later. The noise from one, causing a domino-like cascade effect. Each of them began to cough up flecks of blood afterward as well.

  “That’s better,” Monroe said weakly, after his initial coughing fit was over, stumbling weakly over to the wall as he began to wheeze. His hands were on his knees as he struggled for breath, acting as though they had just run a great distance.

  The others were no better. Vomiting had helped, somewhat, in that they were no longer acting completely out of it. However, during their short time in the miasma, their lungs had suffered severe damage.

  “Come on, we need to get back to the pit. Do any of you have anything in your first aid kits that might help in this situation?” He was assuming that they even had first aid kits. His kits had meds for poison, and they might work for the gasses. The worst issue was the damage to their lungs from the metallic mercury vapor. Stims, healing or otherwise, wouldn’t do anything as long as that was still infecting their lung tissue.

  “What even is it?” RapidStrike asked, weakly wiping away the blood from the inside of his mask. He wiped it down a couple of times before putting it back in place and covering the metallic jaw it had been hiding.

  “There was a mix of poison gases down in the tunnel. The kind found in deep mines, including mercury vapor.”

  Mel-Gear was on her knees as she shook her head. “We have stuff for poison, but not for something like that. I’m not even sure I can climb the ropes to get back up there right now.”

  They slowly made their way down the tunnel, passing the body of the creature Trace had taken down earlier. This job was certainly turning out differently than they had expected.

  It took far longer to make it back to the hole than it had to go down the tunnel. Trace was feeling better by that point. Meanwhile, the others all looked as though they were about to fall over and die.

  The odds of them being able to make the climb back up the ropes were not very good.

  While they collapsed onto the slabs of concrete, he called up Stick-Point.

  “Have you already finished inspecting the sinkhole?” The older man asked as soon as he answered the call.

  “No, we’ve run into a bit of a problem, and I don’t know what to do.” You weren’t really supposed to call your job broker for things like this. However, his relationship with the man wasn’t exactly normal. “This isn’t a sinkhole. It’s a thousand-foot-deep pit, with weird tunnel digging creatures at the bottom of it. I don’t know how many of the other edgers have run into this issue, but the team Flash-Fry and I joined went down a tunnel that had poison gases and mercury vapor in it. Their lungs are all wrecked and they can’t climb out of the hole.”

  “Son of-” The sound of Stick-Point grinding his teeth came over the call. “What is with you and these jobs?”

  “Hey, don’t blame me. The first two we did were fine. It’s not my fault this one is turning out like this.”

  “No, it’s mine!” The broker reminded him. “My job is to ensure shizz like this doesn’t happen. I’m going to need to revamp how I check the jobs, all because of you.” He sighed. “I didn’t realize my people had gotten this lax.” Something shattered in the background. “Which team are you working with?”

  “Uh, I don’t know, it’s Mel-Gear, RapidStrike, and Sonar. Not sure what their team’s name is.”

  “Pretty Boys,” Stick-Point said somewhat distractedly.

  “Huh, say what?”

  “Pretty Boys, it’s their team’s name. Mel is the pretty part of the name, and the other two are the boys.”

  Trace grunted. “Do Flash-Fry and I need to come up with a team name?”

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  “Not until you have three or more members. Ah, here we are. Good. They all have decent plans. This is something we need to talk about as well when you return. Hopefully, they all think this is worth it because the trip is going to be expensive, even with their plans. Emergency services have been summoned and are already on their way to your location for all four. How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine. I was the first to notice the effects, so I got a smaller dose of everything than the others.”

  “I’m sorry to do this, but can I ask you to do something? After emergency services have retrieved them, check on the other teams.” The tunnels were far enough underground that there was no signal.

  “Yeah, I can do that. You need to know that even if they didn’t run into poison, the creatures down here are trouble. They have natural armor weave for hair, and their claws are metal.” Trace found a chunk of concrete to sit down on as he began thinking over how much trouble they could all be in.

  “Do what you can, but stay safe. I’ll send more edgers and specialists your way as soon as I can. It’ll be a couple of hours before they arrive. So, take care of yourself until then. If you can’t handle it, then get out. Do you understand me?”

  “I got it. I’ve got some tunnels to look through, so hurry up and contact some backup for me.” He joked, trying to lighten the mood. They both hung up a moment later.

  Trace slapped his thighs and stood up. “Emergency services have been called for each of you, and they’re on their way now. I was told the trip will be a little expensive though, so hopefully they will give you a group rate.”

  The four groaned but didn’t complain overly much. They weren’t happy about it, but this was one of the reasons why they paid for it.

  Trace stood over Monroe. “Stick-Point wants me to go look for the other teams. I was hoping you would let me borrow your assault rifle while you’re off playing princess.”

  Monroe groaned and gave him the middle finger. “Yeah, I have three extra magazines in the pouch on my thigh as well. Be careful when you fire it. It’s strong.”

  He spent a few seconds putting some of the shotgun shells back into his bag, along with strapping the shotgun to the outside of the bag. The three magazines went into a large pocket of his cargo pants.

  While waiting for emergency services to arrive, Trace began the process of moving the edgers that had fallen out of the way. He was just taking their bodies over to the wall and lining them up.

  Ten minutes after he and Stick-Point had spoken, the sound of thrusters dialing back, and rotor less fans spinning up appeared overhead. A large, sleek-looking craft began to descend into the pit. The force of the downward thrust kicked up a huge cloud of dirt and dust, momentarily obscuring everything from view for those below.

  The craft halted its descent ten feet from the bottom. Large doors on both sides opened up, pushing out a couple of inches first, and then sliding up above the roof of the hovering craft. Four arms extended out, two on each side, under which a flat gurney was hanging by several steel cables.

  Eight fully armored emergency services personnel jumped out, landing with a concrete cracking thump. Two operated the gurneys, lowering them down, while the other six hurried over to their patients or took up positions with their weapons.

  No words were spoken by any of them. Each worked with maximum efficiency, simply doing their job. Inspect the patient, administer a dose of something, load them onto the gurney, and move on to the next one. The entire operation took no more than thirty seconds, and then the eight heavily armored and armed emergency services personnel were being raised back into the ship on cables.

  The whine of the fans grew louder as it began to lift into the air. As soon as it was clear of the hole, the thrusters engaged and it rocketed away.

  Trace stared after it for a second longer, before finally moving, something he hadn’t dared to do the entire time they had been there. Something about having a large weapon pointed at your face discouraged that.

  Now that no one was around, he was free to do something that he had been leery of doing earlier. Bending over, he removed the leather holster from the leg of one of the dead edgers. He wasn’t sure that any of them would have said anything, but he hadn’t been interested in finding out either.

  Taking his revolver, he slipped it into the new holster and wiggled it back and forth a few times. It was snugger than he would have liked, but that could be fixed with time. Still, it was far better than the holster for his K-10 that he had been using. This one also had a snap strap for the handle, as extra security.

  He swapped the two out and shoved the other holster, with the K-10 inside it back inside his courier bag. It was too bad the revolver that the edger had been using got lost in the fall. Judging by the ammo stuck to the outside of the holster, while the revolver had been decent, it wasn’t anything as large as his 700.

  With that matter taken care of, he placed a piece of concrete in front of the tunnel they had gone down. He was just going to go down the line, working his way through them as quickly as possible.

  Holding the borrowed assault rifle at the ready, he flicked the flashlight attached to its barrel on and headed inside.

  Thankfully, he still had his earbuds in, as only a couple of minutes of jogging later, he began to hear the sound of gunfire reverberating through the tunnel. It took him another couple of minutes to find the team and where they had been pinned down. They had managed to get themselves surrounded by three different types of enemies.

  Two of which he had already seen.

  The third was new and looked as though someone had attempted to splice a human and an insect together. The hands were chitinous claws, while their mouths resembled a cockroaches with little grabbers. The legs and eyes were normal, but a dense chitin scale that stopped bullets covered the rest of its body.

  It was all the team seemed able to do to hold the creature's back, and they had managed to partially collapse the tunnel behind them. Even as he watched, the clawed hands of a pygmy were furiously swiping at the dirt, digging away.

  They were burning through their ammo at a furious pace, and already two of them were down to using a sword and knife to keep them back.

  Trace glanced behind him to make sure nothing was sneaking up, set his stance, raised the unfamiliar assault rifle, aimed, and took a single shot. Even holding it firmly against his shoulder, he had felt that kick. Thankfully, it was against his cyberware reinforced shoulder that had also been upgraded through the use of the G.H.O.S.T. System. The surrounding area might be sore later, but nowhere near as much as when he had done this with the railgun before.

  The chitin on the creature exploded out, as the round in Monroe’s assault rifle punched through the medium-grade natural armor.

  As one, they all turned to look at Trace, causing him to gulp.

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