“You are kind of scary when you want to be. You know that, right?” Ko said to Trace a few minutes later as they headed to the second floor.

  He chuckled mirthlessly and did another scan. “You know what the funny thing about that is? Part of what attracted me to the idea of becoming a wraith years ago was how versatile they were. They do a little bit of everything, stealing, protection, information gathering, anything stealth-related, obviously, and assassination gigs. It sounded great, especially to a kid who couldn’t even afford bullets to practice shooting, let alone hit something not a few feet in front of him.”

  “You regret all of this?” She asked, keeping her voice low as they entered the second floor.

  Trace shook his head. “No, I have no compunction against killing these people. At the same time, I don’t want to become a wraith assassin. I want to be able to protect myself and those I care about, but I really just want to work on my projects and keep learning.” He grinned back at her. “Designing and creating my stealth suit was some of the most fun I’ve had in forever.”

  “After we get back, then are you going to focus more on information gathering and jobs that can make use of your stealth suit?”

  There were always edger jobs for those sorts of things. You just had to prove that you were competent, and also be of the appropriate tier. With his stealth suit and existing skills, Trace should qualify for the competent part on many of them. Unfortunately, as a first-tier edger who had only recently begun, that would be the limiting factor.

  It was possible that the job broker would bypass those restrictions if they knew him and his skills. However, the job broker would then be taking on some of the blame should he fail. Not many of them were willing to do that, no matter how good they thought he was. There were still other edgers they could toss the job to without that personal risk.

  “I’d certainly like to, but finding jobs in my tier will be a pain, and I won’t be eligible to rank up for a while yet,” He replied while sliding away from the open door.

  They were looking for one of the surgery rooms. The man down below had told them everything he could, which wasn’t much. The group had indeed come from the Manitou Springs scarpo town; however, they did have a reason for attacking this place.

  Namely desperation.

  The raiders had taken over the place while they had been away on a supply run. All of their families were back there still, and when they had approached to reclaim the place, things had gone horribly wrong. The raiders weren’t playing around. Dead and desecrated bodies were tossed over the wall at them as soon as they approached.

  From what the man had told them, the situation hadn’t been quite so clear-cut as the people in the parking lot made it sound. They had shown up desperately seeking help, and everyone here had turned them away. An exchange of fire had occurred, and they had taken control of the place. Unfortunately, Hannah had also been injured in the process.

  It was a nice-sounding story, but there were still too many items that didn’t make sense to Trace and Ko. Like why they were still here instead of going back to their town, forcing everyone to fight and liberate it. Or why the men below had appeared to be sleeping so peacefully, despite having just seen their family members being killed and who knew what else.

  The truth might be somewhere in between the two stories, or something else entirely. All they knew was that no one had called in the edgers for help and that they were all lying. Oh, and that Hannah had definitely been injured. Nothing else mattered beyond that at the moment, as she was the sole focus of their mission to begin with.

  Everything, and everyone else, was secondary. If they could help them, then great. If they couldn’t, well, that was fine as well.

  Together, they snuck through the second floor, bypassing the waiting areas with people inside whenever they could. There was only one they couldn’t, and it was just outside the surgical room, where they hoped to find Hannah.

  Trace tapped Ko on the shoulder and then sent her a point-to-point message. They were still out of signal range, and this was the only way to silently communicate at the moment.

  ‘There are four of them in there. I’ll handle the two on the left, however, the two on the right are farther away sitting together, I think. If I tried to take them all myself, it would give them the opportunity to yell or otherwise raise an alarm. Use the shotgun and shoot them both. Two shots, right in the chest. If that doesn’t finish them, it will have given me time to do the job myself.’

  ‘Is the shotgun going to be quiet enough?’ She sent back in the same manner.

  ‘It’s not as quiet as my pistol, but as long as the door is closed, we should be fine. Can you do this? I know some menders have a thing about killing people.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Only morons have that problem. That oath only applies to my patients, not everyone.’

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  They both checked their guns, and with a nod to each other, burst into the room.

  Trace aimed and squeezed the trigger, before switching to the woman standing only a few feet away. His next shot hit her in the chest, sending her stumbling back into the wall, gasping for breath. Both people were wearing armored vests, which kept them from dying, but they would still feel the hits.

  On the far side of the room, the suppressed shotgun coughed once, and then a second time.

  Ko’s targets had been closest enough that the shot hadn’t been given enough room to spread. So, while their own bulletproof vests kept their chests from getting mulched, they did still have several pellet holes in their arms, legs, and faces.

  Trace quickly made a fist and punched both his targets, knocking them out, before doing the same to Ko’s. Having the wind so thoroughly knocked out of you like that kept you from shouting, it turned out. He wasn’t worried about them having subdermal armor or anything too advanced. People tended to live in scarpo towns because they wanted to get away from the influence of corporations. While they would still have cyberware, it was usually the generic models and nothing high-end.

  Ko raised an eyebrow at him and then motioned at the people he had knocked out. “I thought the plan was to kill them?”

  “It was, and then I decided it was maybe better to leave them alive, just in case more than a little of that guy’s story was actually true.” He muttered while looking away. “Come on, let’s get Hannah and find out what is actually going on here.”

  “Yes, lets…” Her voice trailed off as she noticed something sticking out of the pocket of the woman Trace had knocked out.

  The waxed tinfoil wrapper was a corpo good, not something made independently in a scarpo town. While all the wastelanders still bought supplies from the nearby cities, a necessity that was growing with winter looming right around the corner, they typically did their best to grow or hunt for their own food. Seeing a food wrapper on one of them wasn’t exactly out of place, but it was still somewhat unexpected, even if they had just returned from a supply run.

  Unexpected enough that Ko had already bent down to retrieve the wrapper before even remembering that the group had gone on a supply run. Still, her fingers snagged around the edges of the half-eaten calorie bar and pulled it from the woman’s pocket.

  Ko rolled the bar around until the labeled faced them. ‘DelGreen’s Pocket Meal – Synthetic Beef Flavor – You’ve enjoyed our Meal-in-a-Cans, now you can enjoy our Pocket Meal too!’

  “I wasn’t aware DelGreen had launched a new product,” She muttered curiously, otherwise dismissing the find.

  “They haven’t,” He replied, already taking pictures of the object, as his mouth dried out in sudden apprehension. “Monroe, Deckard, and I have been looking into four of the bigger food corporations in New Denver as part of an ongoing gig. DelGreen hasn’t released any product by this name, nor do they have any public listings to do so.”

  That had her going back for a second closer look at the wrapper.

  “It definitely looks like something they would make. But the stuff to put something like this together can be had for relatively cheap all told. I mean, still far outside our budget, but for a proper decent-sized gang, they could probably buy the equipment and then bank on the name to sell more.”

  That possibility brought Trace up short. It hadn’t even occurred to him before she mentioned it.

  “Do gangs actually do that?” He asked doubtfully.

  She shrugged. “That example specifically? I have no idea, but all the larger gangs have several forms of legitimate income, you know that. I was just thinking that this could have been one semi-legitimate form was all.”

  Trace groaned and ran his hand down his face. “Honestly, I really hope that is the case because the other option is… Well, it’s not good.”

  “What is your job about?” She asked, handing over the calorie bar.

  “A few different things, but the current aspect is of particular note to you and Pushman.”

  Her hand flew to her throat, and he slowly nodded.

  “I’m sure you’ve noticed the little notifications you’ll get when you eat foods from certain corporations. I first noticed it with a Food-in-a-Can drink while I was recovering at Pushman’s place, but there have been plenty of others since then.” Ko gave a slow, jerky nod.

  “Well, the thing with the blood-dogs led to a community that is owned by the four corporations in question. Everyone who lives there is… odd… they act, not robotic, but programmed?” He was struggling to find the right words to describe the people of Edgewater and wasn’t helped by the fact that most of what he knew about the place came from other people. He himself had spent very little time there.

  Ko’s hand covered her mouth as she pointed to the half-eaten food bar with her other hand. “And you think that might be related?”

  He shrugged. “I hope not. It would be odd to stumble on something connected to it out here, but finding a product that doesn’t exist is also strange.”

  She breathed out and set her shoulders. “Well, let’s hope that my theory was the right one, then.”

  Together, they quickly secured the four and then went through the doors. A little farther in, they found the operating room where several more people were gathered.

  On the operating table was the mewling form of a still-conscious older woman, that Trace sincerely hoped was not Hannah. Whoever these people were, it was immediately obvious that there was something not alright with them. Someone only needed to take one look at what they had done to the woman on the table to know that.

  Her eyes had been brutally torn from their sockets. The ripped flesh of her eyelids hinted at how imprecise and uncaring they had been when doing it. Both of her legs were missing beneath the knees, the flesh cauterized into blackened stumps.

  It was her chest though, where they had truly shown their savagery. She had been cut open from breast to navel in a ‘Y’ like someone was performing an autopsy on her.

  The worst part was that they were actively replacing her organs with cyberware while she was still awake. In the corner of the room, two people, a man and a woman, operated the near ancient controls for the surgical machines with precision. Each of them was wearing matching looks of maniacal glee and intense concentration.

  Ko slapped her hand to her face as she gagged and turned away.

  They had not been expecting a torture scene, or whatever this was.

  “Can-” Trace swallowed, looking away. “Can we even save her in that state?”

  Ko nodded after a moment, regaining her composure. “If we were anywhere else, no, not a chance. Since we are in a hospital, with surgical equipment, yes, though it will require me to do a few things I would really rather not do. You have to promise not to hold any of this against me in the future, Trace. I mean it.”

  “Is she that important to you?”

  “To me, no. I’d rather give her a swift death, but she’s important to Sevorah.”

  “Fine, I don’t know what you are going to do, but I won’t hold it against you. I promise.”

  https://www.amazon.com/author/joshuakern

  https://joshuakernbooks.com/