Trace switched his eyes back to normal and slumped weakly onto a nearby chunk of concrete. He had been going non-stop since early that morning, and the last few hours had been utterly exhausting. His legs were trembling, and he had reached the end of his endurance.

  The nanites had helped his muscles tremendously. He wouldn’t have lasted this long without the work they had done, but at the end of the day, his legs were still normal fleshware.

  The four members of SpitFire’s team that had emerged from the tunnel fell to their knees and began coughing. They were utterly covered in a thick layer of dirt and were unrecognizable.

  “What happened?” Kenshin asked the four.

  One of them rolled onto their back, chest heaving with exertion. “Dead… They were all…” The voice of a man gasped out.

  The other three nodded as their heads lowered weakly to the ground.

  “There were so many creatures in the tunnel, just cutting them apart.” The man turned his head and coughed out some more of the dirt that he had inhaled. “It was all that we could do to escape and collapse the tunnel with our grenades.”

  “We need to get back to the top of the hole,” Trace told the group weakly. “They made these tunnels and the pit. That collapsed section won’t hold them back for long.”

  “Can you even climb right now?” SpitFire asked him.

  He sat up with a groan. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll take it slow if I have to.”

  “He’s right. We need to gather up the ropes behind us as well.” The man who had been speaking sat up enough to look around. “Where are the other teams?”

  “My team was evacuated by emergency services,” Trace said, his breathing gradually evening out. “The third team more or less told us to frack off.”

  “Well, we can’t pull up all the ropes while they are still down here.” The dirt-covered man said wearily.

  “We’ll do what we can GreaseStain,” SpitFire said as she reached for his hand.

  He nodded.

  Trace made sure that everything that was going on was being recorded for later. This job was simply too messed up for his liking. They had brought the semi and trailer in order to fill it with goods to later sell. Not bring it back empty, save for a few guns.

  Sure, he knew that was just how some jobs went, but still.

  Standing up, he swung the assault rifle over his shoulders and tightened the strap down. Walking over to the rope he had originally descended on, he turned to the others. “I’ll take this one back up. I’ll be pulling out the anchors as I go.”

  Without waiting for them to reply, he jumped onto the rope and began pulling himself up. His legs were trembling as they steadied his body’s position against the wall. His cyberware arm was doing the majority of the work, while his fleshware arm was simply holding onto the rope in between pulls.

  The climb up took forever and was filled with plenty of breaks. By the time he reached the top, three other people had already beaten him up there.

  On a more positive note, more edgers had also begun arriving to reinforce and help them. Some of them were even specialists, including one who was a mobile fortress. She had arrived in a large truck, similar to a semi in style with the backend entirely enclosed. By the time Trace reached the top and made his appearance, the rear loading door was open, and she was walking out in a partially completed mech suit.

  She had finished building more than enough of the suit for it to be useful, but it was still missing a lot of parts. They were expensive to create, but absolute terrors to go up against.

  The eyes of the mech panned across everyone present and zoomed in on Trace, or more specifically, the assault rifle on his back. She leaped into the air, previously unseen thrusters kicking to life as they forced her higher, and then helped her descend gracefully. Even still, the concrete cracked, and the ground trembled when she landed.

  “Are you Tra-” The mech shook its large head, the speakers cutting out as the back opened and the woman controlling it stepped out. “Are you Tune?” She asked, trying again.

  He nodded numbly, too tired to say anything more.

  “Where’s Flash-Fry?” She demanded.

  Trace stared past her to the mech, his tired mind finally catching up with how she had almost said his actual name moments before. “Oh, you’re the one he mentioned before. The hardware genius.”

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  A slight blush appeared against her dusky skin as she tried again. “Come on, where is he?”

  “Emergency services had to come pick him and the rest of our team up.” He admitted with a tired cough, the hot saliva that coated his mouth tasted of copper. “The tunnel we selected down there kept going down, and we encountered low oxygen, along with poison gases and mercury vapor, among other issues.”

  “How come you’re alright then?”

  “Who said I am? I’m just too new to be paying for any of those emergency service plans is all. I think I got a lighter dose than the others since I was the first to notice it as well.” He did have a small first aid kit in his bag, which, along with his reasoning, he hoped would also be enough to turn aside any questions that Monroe had.

  The woman sighed and held out her hand. “I’m Sabine, real name Sabrina. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  “Same, I know he has been somewhat leery about the two of us meeting for some reason, but you seem nice enough.” Trace coughed again, lightly thumping his chest. “How did you and him meet, anyway?”

  “How else?” She stuck a thumb in the direction of her mobile fortress. “I had just begun work on this thing and needed some welding done. I’m good with hardware, and even some manufacturing, if I have the equipment, but I can’t weld worth shizz.”

  Trace stepped close to the machine, glancing over to see if she objected. When she didn’t, he leaned closer to start examining it.

  “I can see why you would need him to weld it. These are some thick plates you are using.” He tapped one, and then another, a brow raising as she shrugged.

  “I had to make do with what I could afford at the time. So, yes, one of those plates is basic armor plating stolen from a vehicle, while the other is high-grade ballistic grade plating. Both are honestly too heavy for a normal mobile fortress, but this baby can handle the extra weight.”

  “How come you haven’t finished covering the rest of it yet? If you’re just going for low-grade vehicle armor, that’s easy enough to get. Go out and hit some raider groups and steal it from their cars.”

  Sabine rolled her augmented eyes. “That’s what I did.” She replied snottily. “I had taken them off to work on some upgrades when the call came in. I didn’t have enough time to put them back on.”

  Trace kept looking over the inside workings of the mech while they talked, wondering when he might be able to design and create something that advanced. He was learning, constantly, but sometimes he was reminded of just how far he had to go still.

  Another specialist joined them a couple of minutes later. This one had a patch of a scythe-wielding cloaked figure on their shoulder, a reaper. “Sabine,” The reaper said with a nod, their voice decidedly rough and gravelly, not matching their otherwise bland appearance in the slightest. “What do we know about what’s down there?”

  “Jaco,” She replied with a nod of her own. “Tune?”

  He took the hint and began laying out everything they had encountered down below. He even went so far as to send them point-to-point messages that contained images of everything.

  Jaco took all the information in without saying a single word until Trace finished. “They’re all the result of some or multiple corpo experiments, for sure.”

  Sabine quirked her head as she looked at him. “How can you be so sure?”

  The reaper’s face was carefully blank as he stared back at her. “Because of what happened to Richy.” He spun on his heel and stalked away, his entire body practically vibrating with anger.

  “Uh, who was Richy?” Trace asked Sabine softly.

  “He was Jaco’s best friend. They grew up together, always had each other’s back, worked the same jobs, everything. Then about a year and a half ago he went missing. Absolutely no word to be found for four months. Then he randomly turns up one day, wandering the streets with a needle in his arm. He was utterly strung out, and missing all his high-tech cyberware, it had been replaced with generic bargain bin garbage. It looked as though he had sold it all for drugs.”

  She took in a breath before continuing. “Jaco never believed that was the case, but Richy was in no case to tell anyone anything. Anyway, about two weeks after he was found, his fingernails started to turn dark and grow hard. The problem is the transformation didn’t stop there. All his hair began to take on those properties as well, turning razor sharp. Richy diced himself to ribbons in the middle of the night while Jaco was sleeping in the room next door.”

  “Oh, so when I showed him the pictures of their claws?”

  Sabine nodded. “Yeah, he recognized them, and this became personal for him. It’s the first time he’s had a clue as to which corporation might have abducted Richy a year ago. Trust me, he’s not going to let this one go, no matter how many of those things he has to kill.”

  “Why abduct someone like Richy in the first place though? Surely, someone weaker or less noticeable would have been better, right?”

  Her lips were set in a grim line as she climbed back into her mobile fortress. “He wasn’t the first, he was merely the last. For now, anyway.”

  With that, Trace understood. Whichever corporation it was, they had worked up to ever more powerful people. There was little doubt in his mind that they would start up again at some point as well. Unless they had gotten all the information they needed and perfected the process right after that last test. Which seemed unlikely. This corporation would be needing at least one more round of forced volunteers in the future.

  The back of the mech closed up, sealing her inside with a hiss. She stomped off to join Jaco and the other specialists in a planning session.

  Trace gathered up all the lengths of rope, along with the various anchors, and hauled them over to the semi. Only then realizing that Monroe had the key for it slotted into his NetConnect still. He threw everything into the trailer in disgust and sat by the side, content to rest for the time being.

  He would have liked to have done it inside the semi, but that wasn’t an option without Monroe around.

  The rest of the people from below trickled up, slowly. Each one dragged several ropes up behind them. Even with each of them pulling the ropes up after them, there were still several complete sections left over for the new arrivals to go down.

  The planning session with the specialists devolved into a shouting match, as Jaco screamed at the others and stomped away. The plain-looking man ended up at his vehicle and proceeded to load himself down with armor and heavy weapons.

  It hadn’t been apparent before, but Trace was willing to bet that both of the man’s legs were cyberware. There was no way he was hiding that much muscle on his regular-looking frame otherwise. He even had a helmet for his suit of heavy armor, completing the look of being a miniaturized mobile fortress.

  The entire setup must have cost the man an absolute fortune, but would still have been cheaper than an actual, proper mobile fortress.

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