Unfortunately, that was all the meds did for her, numb the pain. She was still awake and aware of everything being done to her on some level. Nothing Ko had brought in her bag was strong enough to knock her out in her current state. The best she could do was make her as comfortable as possible for what was to come.

  “I need you to look through the building for meds, anesthesia, supplies, and anything else that might be useful to me right now,” Ko told Trace as she sent him a point-to-point message with a list and a few images of specific items. “I can do this without them, but her mental state is going to suffer, and after what was done to her… She can use all the help she can get.”

  “I know we decided not to give the system to anyone else,” Trace began, “But, what if in this case, I gave her a specialized version of it? One that is limited to the mental aspect with its counseling abilities?”

  Ko started to protest off hand, only to pause as she took the suggestion more seriously. “I have tried those, not for anything cyberware related, but they are helpful just as therapy. It couldn’t hurt and might help.”

  With the list of items and images now in his memory banks, Ko waved him away, as she needed to concentrate. This old machine was forcing her to do everything herself, and it was a strain.

  Trace went back into the waiting area, finding the rest of the team from the Manitou Springs scarpo town. They were all sitting there despondently, their heads hanging low, with their hands between their knees.

  “What’s going on?” He asked. “What did you find out?”

  The man he thought might be the leader of the group looked up at him. He had one cyberware eye and one natural fleshware, and both were ringed with tears. “They followed us back… or maybe I should say, we led them back to our home. Our supplies were all drugged and as soon as everyone had eaten, they simply rolled right in and set up shop. The experiments began right away.”

  “Wait, so those two in there who were working on Hannah-”

  “They were corpos, apparently part of the group that came to the town. They came here, especially for her. A purist of her age, and a mender at that…” The man shook his head. “When they heard about her, they practically began salivating.”

  “They did all of that to her because she was an older purist?” Trace asked in surprise.

  The man shrugged helplessly, his shoulders falling heavily. “That’s what we were able to get from them anyway. Who knows if that is actually the truth?”

  Trace glanced at the ones that they had carefully trussed up and shook his head. “That can’t be it. There are purists in Denver. I don’t know a lot about them, but I know that there is a whole group of them living there. Regardless, we can discuss that later. Right now, I need your help finding all the medical supplies that might still be stored in this place.”

  He sent messages to each of them with the details and they separated to scour the place for the items listed. While he let them take care of searching the place, Trace went back into the operating room to do what he could to assist Ko.

  As soon as they were finished, they would head over to the planetarium. Once there, they would attempt to wake up the rest of their people while also rescuing any other citizens of the town.

  Inside the room, he saw the first of the bodies on the second table being carefully taken apart. Ko was removing all the cyberware and useable pieces of hardware from the corpse’s body. As delicately as possible, she was cutting out the NetConnect and all of its connectors.

  Soon, she would begin putting the pieces she had gathered together into Hannah. Installing them as carefully as she could and reusing everything she could. Inevitably, there would be damage to some of the parts no matter how careful she was, which is why she needed all the bodies gathered there in that place on the table.

  Unlike the two corpos who had been delighting in their experimental work, Ko’s eyes were closed in concentration. She was fully focused on the sensors and cameras embedded in the surgical suite as she worked. There was a lot of damage that she needed to repair first. Both that which had been caused by the corpos such as her chest and eyes, and then whatever had happened to her legs as well.

  While she was working on the first body, he strapped Hannah in place and then brought a couple of small rollable tables into the room.

  That was all he could do to actively help; anything more ran the risk of simply getting in the way and being detrimental. He left the operating room, moving over to the viewing area where he could still watch as she worked. Trace gave the order for his nanites to start constructing more of themselves. They would be needed when he transferred the system to Hannah later.

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  There was a knock on the door, alerting him that the others had finished looking for supplies.

  “This is everything that we were able to find.” The waiting room had been filled with various items, both those which had been on the list and those which hadn’t. Notably, the items that had been on the list were closest to the door he had just come through.

  “We only managed to find roughly one-third of the meds on the list. All of which are expired by thirty years.” The same man who he believed to be the leader told him. “As for the rest… well, they’re just as outdated.”

  Trace nodded in appreciation. The items would either work or they wouldn’t. Only Ko would know for certain, not him.

  He held out his hand to the man. “Thanks for gathering this all up. I appreciate it, and best of luck with your people and your town. Let me know what you find out if you would. You aren’t the only ones who have been affected by these corporations playing around with people’s lives.” His voice grew more heated than he meant for it too as he made the offer.

  The depth of what they had done was slowly growing more appalling to him as he came to care for Ko. He sent his contact information to the man, who merely nodded. What they had learned from their people before waking them from the drug’s influence had not painted a very hopeful picture. They filed out of the room, eager to catch up with the rest of their team that had gone on to the planetarium.

  Grabbing what he could, Trace began moving the expired anesthesia and meds into the surgical room.

  ***

  Hours and hours later, Ko was dripping with sweat as she slotted the last leg into place. Honestly, she had done far more than she needed to just to guarantee the woman’s safety. However, she had known how the stubborn old bitty would react if she was given a choice on the matter. So, despite the possible implications on what it meant, she had taken the choice away from her and simply done the work.

  Ko had replaced bones, muscles, and damaged nerves. Stitched together torn skin, screwed on the connection posts for the lower cyberware legs, and installed a set of eyes along with a NetConnect. Almost all of those items had been salvaged from the bodies she had dissected. She had also fixed the damage they had done to her insides, though the organs they had already removed were no longer viable.

  Very few of the parts matched, and most of the work would need to be redone at Sevorah’s clinic when they got back. However, as long as she was extremely careful, she could move, barring that, she was at least able to see.

  As soon as she finished, Ko collapsed with a groan, the data-jack ripping free from her neck as she fell weakly to the floor.

  Rushing into the room, Trace hurried to her side and gently brushed the sweaty hair from her face. His fingers touched her forehead, and he recoiled at how hot her head was. He had known she had been pushing herself to work with this ancient equipment and do everything herself. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized just how much strain it had been putting her under.

  With a grunt, he picked her up and hurried from the room. Ko’s body was heavier than it first looked for a girl her size. She didn’t have a ton of cyberware, but the internals required to reinforce the body to support those items certainly added up fast.

  There was a changing room nearby that the doctors were meant to use before and after their surgeries. It also included some showers, from a time before the water had gone foul throughout the world. Unfortunately, cooling her down was the priority. They would simply need to deal with the smell and other problems.

  He removed what clothes he could from both of them and placed them to the side before carrying her into the shower and turning it on.

  Inside the wall, the pipes shuddered and shook as they were used for the first time in years. A moment later, a dribble of rust color water came out of the showerhead. With a desperate, annoyed curse, he ran to the next one and turned it on as well, followed by the rest of them.

  More pipes shook and clamored as they protested about being used again. The ancient pumps buried far beneath the building began to work renewing the water that had long since grown stale in the holding containers.

  It took nearly a minute for the rusty water to start to run clear from the first showerhead. The amount of water coming from the showerhead still wasn’t exactly impressive, as it was clogged with rust. It was the same with the others.

  Reaching up, Trace unscrewed it and was promptly soaked with rusty flakes as all the rust was pushed free. He cleaned the shower head and screwed it back into place, before gently moving Ko underneath its cold spray.

  He cleaned another two of them and then shut all the rest of them off.

  The water was clean and cool, and best of all, it didn’t smell. It seemed a little stale, like it was missing something, but frankly, he didn’t care. There was no scum, or smell, or anything else. It was possibly even cleaner than the water that he got from the filters at his warehouse.

  The metal of his cyberware arm and NetConnect began to quickly soak up the cold from the water, cooling him down. Synth-skin helped insulate augments to a certain degree. However, once they got cold, they absolutely leeched the heat from your body. Pretty much everyone wore scarves or turtlenecks at a minimum during the winter, covering their NetConnects. Those who could afford better did, and those who couldn’t even afford that, suffered.

  This would be his first year with more than that in a Colorado winter, and it was going to be an experience.

  Trace left Ko beneath the cold shower water for another minute before pulling her out. After all, she had been the one who was burning up, not him. At the same time, he didn’t want to over correct and give her a cold.

  Her breathing was less labored and more normal in his opinion as he began to dry her off. It took another minute for the temperature of her skin to return to normal and no higher. Her forehead was still slightly warm in his opinion, but the rest of her body was no longer burning hot.

  With a sigh of relief, Trace relaxed with his back against the wall of the tiled shower, his head between his knees, and wearing only his boxers.

  “Why am I wet, and more importantly, why are we almost naked?” Ko’s soft, tired voice asked him a few minutes later.

  He looked up, only to find a joking smile on her face. “You almost gave me a heart attack. You know that, right?”

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