Trace had never felt worse in his entire life than he did in that moment. The copious amounts of flesh and organs inside the trash bags had soaked up most of the bullets for him. Most did not mean all. What was worse was that he now had to worry about all the unknown nastiness that was currently seeping into his body from his fresh holes.

If you wanted HIV, Syphilis, AIDS, Scurvy, Cancer, tooth rot, hair loss, and toe fungus, well this was how you got them. By letting random blood and other crap mingle with your open wounds.

He felt slightly delirious, but that could have just been the pain and shock talking to him. There was something about having a dozen holes put into you all at once that the body didn’t really seem to like.

The useless piece of scrap iron fell from his fingers as the bags were pulled off his body.

There was so much blood covering him that the scavs couldn’t even tell what was his, and what had come from the bags. They could see the holes in him readily enough though, and those apparently brought them great joy.

With a loud roar, a giant auged-out beast of a scav burst into the room. He had two large revolvers, one clutched in each massive meaty fist. If there was ever a person who looked like they were on the verge of cyberphysosis was this giant metal twitching meatball.

“What happened?” He roared, as a few more scavs peaked into the room from behind him.

“There was a mouse hiding in our trash,” The newly minted she-male told him. At least, that was how Trace's loopy mind was thinking of him. The dude did have two buttholes now. Who was to say what could happen?

He blinked and forced his mind to refocus on what they were saying. He did not want to follow that train of thought down the rabbit hole. Bad things were at the bottom of that hole, gross, nasty, thong-wearing scav things that he didn’t want to ever think about.

Ugh, he needed to go on a date, but they cost money. That’s what he needed, money, and then a date. Yeah, then those bad, nasty thoughts wouldn’t come back to haunt him again.

His focus had slipped again.

A hand reached down and pulled him from the dripping, disgusting pile of refuse and gave him a firm shake.

“This is the mouse that killed Jeeker?” A wave of deathly breath washed him, coming from a mouth that hadn’t seen a toothbrush in years. The giant’s breath was so bad that any toothbrush within a mile radius probably ran and hid from him lest they become unwitting victims.

“You need a breath mint,” Tracer mumbled out around the blood inside his mouth. “Don’t know no Jeeker either. Is a stupid name though. I’m sure he deserved to die with a name like that.” He felt his eyes go wide as his mouth ran away from him and began saying stuff he didn’t intend to say.

What was going on? He didn’t understand. This had never happened before. Then again, he had never been shot full of holes either. Did the more holes you have somehow contribute to how odd you were? Because if that was the case, he felt as though it explained a lot of things when it came to females.

He had made a discovery that all humanity should know about, unfortunately; it was on his deathbed. Wasn’t that just his luck? No one would ever know the truth about women except for him now.

The platter-sized hand roughly shook him, forcing him to refocus yet again.

“What did you say to me?” The smelly beast growled, drawing him in close.

“I said, you need a breath mint! You foul-breathed goat-sucking, Jeeker-loving, DREK INFUSED PIECE OF FUNGAL ROT!” By the time Trace was finished, he was actually yelling in the auged-out scavs face and had unconsciously drawn his knife.

As one last act of defiance, he thrust the blade into the disease-ridden cavity of the man and up through the roof of his mouth.

The razor-sharp ceramic-coated knife slipped into the man’s brain and sliced into it with impunity. There was no worry about this idiot having a braincase. Those were high-end modifications that only the elite could afford.

A shot to the head, or a knife, in this case, worked ninety-nine-point nine-eight percent of the time. The rest of the time they killed you right afterward and it no longer mattered. At least, that is what Trace had heard.

It took a second for his locked-up cyberware arms to disengage and drop Trace to the ground. A second later, the auged-out behemoth toppled to the ground with a resounding thud.

Being dropped like that brought a moment of clarity to Trace as he felt all the terror from before rushing back in. The loopy feeling he had been experiencing fled as he scrambled to his feet. He pushed the stunned scavs aside and bolted from the room, heading deeper into their den. A surge of adrenaline had pushed aside all of the pain from his many wounds. It wouldn’t last long, but it would be enough to get him away from them if he was smart.

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He wasn’t though, since he had headed in the wrong direction.

Trace slammed the door shut behind him and slid to the floor with a groan as he crawled to a desk covered in tech. It was a heavy-looking monstrosity that he hoped would stop a few bullets.

He had enough holes in him already and didn’t need any more.

The door slamming shut broke the scavs from their stunned state, and as one, they raised their guns on the closed door. The shock of losing the big guy to a bleeding weakling had been much higher than they were willing to admit. Now it was time to obliterate him under the might of a thousand rounds of ammunition.

Within seconds, the door and the wall around it had disintegrated and fallen to the floor under their concentrated onslaught.

The desk held up well; actually, it held up remarkably well. The expensive tech sitting on top of it, however, not so much. All of it was turned into a sparking pile of scrap within seconds of him ducking underneath the desk.

The constant impacts against the heavy desk did have the drawers slowly rolling open and revealing their contents to him though.

And what wonderful things they contained as well.

Scavs were a suspicious, always armed, and ready bunch. Apparently, that included even when sitting at the desk doing whatever. There were two different guns in the drawer closest to his head, along with boxes of ammunition for both. A heavy revolver, and a modified semi-auto that barely resembled the original product.

In the drawer underneath it, he found a few stimulants and PlugDocs. A PlugDoc was a wonderful little lifesaving item that he really should have been carrying around already but hadn’t been able to afford. What you did is you took one and pushed it into an existing wound, in his case one of many bullet holes. The PlugDoc would then expand to seal off the wound. Sometimes, more than one was necessary. A blood clotting agent would be released, along with some healing stims.

It wasn’t perfect, and it certainly didn’t keep you from needing to go to the Mender or Doctor afterward either. However, it would, at least usually, keep you from dying.

Grabbing a handful of them, along with a stimulant, Trace got to work. Hitting himself with the stim first, he began pushing the PlugDocs one by one, into the worst of his holes, slowing plugging himself back up. He had leaked a fair bit of blood during all of this and could feel the odd floaty effect that came with it.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time to deal with that sort of nonsense, as bullets continued to hit the desk. Each impact created a divot that slowly cracked and tore as more of them began hitting the same spots. His little hiding spot wouldn’t be safe for long.

Trace shook his head, desperately trying to get his eyes to focus as he grabbed the revolver and the box of ammunition for it. Each cartridge was the length of his thumb and almost as wide. He couldn’t focus well enough to read the caliber, but they were behemoths for a handgun. The revolver only had room for four of the massive things.

Just thinking about firing it was scary, as he could imagine the kickback on it.

Ignoring the panicked grumblings of his mind, Trace jammed it into his holster. It didn’t really fit, but at least it wouldn’t fall out either.

With that done, he put the box of ammunition back and grabbed the modified semi-auto. There was a fully loaded extended magazine beneath it that he grabbed as well. The ammunition for this one at least looked more normal. It was the gun that had been modified this time instead of what it fired.

Not that it mattered. His crappy cyberware eyes couldn’t even connect to the gun. Any other tech it possessed was likewise beyond his reach. It was a small miracle that it didn’t have a cyber-handshake set up for its user. Anyone could use it.

His augmented eyes were having trouble focusing due to the loss of pressure from his blood loss. Thankfully, the stims had his mind operating at a hundred percent, allowing him to keep functioning.

Giving his head one last shake, Trace peeked his head around the corner of the desk and began to fire back at the scavs. He couldn’t see them anymore than they could see him. However, he could see the occasional trail of dust from the destroyed wall.

This group was being uncommonly cowardly and was hanging back. Instead of simply rushing into the room after him when they had the chance.

Not that he was complaining, it was pretty much the only reason he was still alive at the moment.

Trace cursed his low-end cyberware eyes. Whoever thought some of their functions should depend on the pressure from his blood was an idiot. If he survived this, he was taking the eyes from whoever had the most high-end pair among these idiots. Actually, he would probably do that for a lot of things.

Their victims were already dead, after all.

He doubted any of it was high end, but no matter what, it would be better than the bargain basement parts he was using at the moment. The scavs were likely using some of the better items, though they would need to be thoroughly cleaned before he had them installed.

A bullet ricocheting off the side of the desk near the side of his head brought him back from la-la land. He had lost so much blood that it was almost impossible to keep his mind focused, even with a stimulant running through him.

Without wasting any time, he began pulling the trigger on the semi-auto gun while his mind was still focused.

He did try to aim when he could, putting the bullets in the same area as he saw dust trails coming from.

If the pained grunts he heard coming from the other room were any indication, then he was being more successful than he had any right to be. It was apparently the last straw for the scavs as they burst into the room with him. The remaining few pieces of the door splintered and fell to the floor under their feet as they pushed through it and the weakened wall.

This was the absolute dumbest thing they could have done at that moment.

Trace had been having a hard time aiming with his unfocused eyes. Now, that was no longer an issue. All, or at least a large portion of the scavs, had come to him.

Even better, they were unprotected and standing in the open while he was still protected by the heavy desk. Sure, the back part of it was damaged and filled with tears, where it was beginning to let bullets through. However, where he was in front of the drawers was plenty safe, as long as he didn’t poke his head or butt out in the wrong direction.