Trace stopped once he was on the right balcony and simply took a few minutes to breathe. Doing all of this was hard work, and his body wasn’t exactly in the best shape. Years of barely being able to afford the bare necessities nutrition-wise had done a real number on the condition of his everything. He was slim, well skinny, but had little actual muscle, and next to no stamina.

The nanites had been working to improve the condition of his body, but they were obsessed with his bones at the moment. Anything they improved outside of his skeleton was incidental for now, it seemed. Perhaps later they would do more, but for now, at least, they had their work cut out for them, simply fixing whatever issues they had found in his bones.

When he was ready, he pushed the button next to the door, hoping he would get lucky. There was no response.

It was a matter of moments to pop off the button and reveal the data port hidden behind it. He jacked in and let the system breaching module do its thing.

Drawing his suppressed semi-auto, he waited for the door to open before using his eyes to perform an S&R scan. There was one person in the apartment, currently lying down in what should be the bedroom.

Satisfied with the target’s location, he next scanned for cameras and other detection devices. It was only after he was sure that there was nothing there did he dare move farther into the apartment.

Keeping his steps slow, and even, Trace slinked toward the target’s bedroom.

With a soft hiss, the doors to the room opened, and the previously sleeping target sprang into motion. The light sleeper rolled to the side and off the bed in one relatively smooth motion.

Trace was too slow to get off a shot, so he held back off to the side and waited. He wanted to see what the target would do while running S&R scans every few seconds. As long as he didn’t go overboard, his eyes wouldn’t start to heat up from the constant scans, let alone risk getting overheated.

Nearly thirty seconds passed in total silence before the target edged his head toward a thinner part of the mattress. It was good enough for Trace.

His eyes were integrated into the targeting reticle on his semi-auto. Even if he hadn’t been practicing, he could have made this shot. Probably. Now that he had been, it was practically a guaranteed thing. The reticle hit the spot where the mattress was thinnest, behind which the target's head was, and he pulled the trigger.

Due to the ill-fitting nature of the suppressor, the report of the shot was louder than he would have liked. Not that it was more than the equivalent of a regular person's clap. It just sounded louder due to how silent the apartment was.

Trace waited a few moments before entering the room to ensure the target was dead.

Sure enough, his bullet had taken the target in the side of his head. A gun he had been in the process of loading was spread across the floor beside him. It was foolish not having it already loaded and ready for use. It wouldn’t have saved him, but it would have kept him from looking like a total idiot in death.

Whatever, he didn’t care.

Trace took multiple photos of the scene, making sure he had the target’s face and the bullet hole in them.

Leaving was as easy as retracing his steps. Granted, climbing back up was a little tougher, but not by much thanks to the suction equipment.

Once he was back in the apartment several floors above the target, Trace searched for a bag to store everything in. A few minutes later, he was exiting the elevator and walking out of the building, dragging a suitcase behind him.

The job hadn’t gone quite as seamlessly as he would have preferred, but it had been better than the first. Not a high bar granted, but one he had still cleared, regardless.

Trace waited until he was back at his apartment before sending the images to Stick-Point, along with a message letting him know the job had been completed. The new equipment, rope, and suction cup climbing pieces he found places in the office to store.

The suitcase he left in the living room for the moment. He wasn’t sure what to do with it, as he preferred the duffel bag that could be easily stored inside his courier bag. That said, he was smart enough to understand that the hard-shelled case had uses of its own.

Within just a few minutes of sending the message, he received a surprised confirmation message back from Stick-Point. The older man had been under the impression that he was still laid up healing, and then suddenly the job was completed. It was a nice surprise for him.

The credits came through to his account a few seconds later. Just like that, he was fifteen hundred credits richer.

Another message followed a bit later, telling him to let the man know when he wanted more jobs.

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A smile graced Trace’s face as he relaxed in the office chair. He had done it. He had completed both jobs without disappointing him. It felt good.

With that in mind, he would hold off on taking more jobs for the moment, he decided. He had three thousand credits in his account, which, while not necessarily a lot, was far more than he had ever had before. It would last him a few weeks minimum, depending on how careful he was with it, months if he needed it to.

That wasn’t what he had in mind though. This wasn’t the time to be careful with money. No, now was the time to delve into the G.H.O.S.T. System and learn everything he could. It was time to get his body healed and back to a decent standard. Only then would he start taking jobs again.

He had advantages at the moment, but he needed to actually use them, not just let them gather dust by the wayside.

First up, he needed to contact Ko and get more titanium, along with seeing where she was at on the matter.

‘How are you doing today?’ He sent off the message to her and then turned on the computer on the desk.

It was time to get more familiar with this thing. He had gotten tripped up last time because of his unfamiliarity with the system. For most things in day-to-day life, the NetConnect worked perfectly fine and there was no need for a full computer system. Sometimes, though, you simply needed more computing power or wanted to sit at a desk while you worked.

Every time he compiled a program in his lessons, it was being throttled by the capabilities of his NetConnect. He could only assume that it was the same case for when the G.H.O.S.T. System recompiled one of the teaching modules. However, he doubted that it would ever offload anything to an unsecured system.

The point was that a full computer had its uses, even if using one was unfamiliar to him.

It was something that was easy enough to overcome by simply using one as much as possible.

While he was using the computer, Trace had ordered the nanites to ‘Build More’ again. For the moment at least, it was his go-to option and was what he selected every time it was available. He doubted having more of the special nanites which the other options needed were a bad thing.

At some point though, he was going to simply need to grit his teeth and choose one of them.

‘Fine, I’ve calmed down some. I’m still not entirely alright with how it went down, but I can see how useful it will be. Learning of his identity freaked me out more than I wish to admit at the time.’

He quirked a brow at that. She had been plenty freaked out in his opinion, so if that was her holding back, then it must have been really bad.

‘Are you going to use it?’

‘Yes. It would be stupid not to. I have to wait for the factory to be built first and then create all the other things. So, it will take a while yet.’

Good, she was being circumspect even with their messages and not outright mentioning what anything was.

‘Well, you know where to find me. I’ll probably be going more or less dark for a week or two as I dive into some of the menu’s functions and teaching modules here. There is a lot I need to learn and while two weeks isn’t enough time for anything, I have credits for that long. Speaking of which, can you have more titanium sent to the apartment?’

‘Done and be careful. We don’t know what it does yet.’

‘I know. That’s why I’m doing it instead of you. So, hold off on being too adventurous until you hear back from me.’

***

Trace opened his eyes and rolled off the bed. His body popped and cracked a couple of times, but the number had been decreasing each day.

- Skeletal System Repair (Percent Completed): 76%

- Muscular System Repair (Percent Completed): 31%

The speed at which his skeletal system repairs had been completed had slowed after it reached seventy-five percent. He wasn’t sure why, and it didn’t really concern him either. His bones felt stronger than ever, and the small stoop he had developed had completely vanished.

Trace felt fantastic! The same went for his muscles. He had never been a muscular person, and he still wasn’t. However, you could now see that he had muscles instead of just veins and bones.

It had been a little over two weeks since he had completed the icework job. During that time, he had been running the teaching modules nearly constantly. He had completed the enhanced basic and intermediate programming courses, along with the enhanced guns, knives & and not dying. He hadn’t touched the sword version of that particular course yet.

After finishing them, he had deleted both of the programming courses and loaded up two modules on electrical engineering.

He was honestly a little hesitant to get rid of the programming modules. As while he had completed them, he didn’t feel confident in the knowledge just yet. His mind seemed to know what to do, but his fingers hadn’t entirely caught onto that fact yet.

It was the same with the items related to the guns and knives, at least to a degree. He had run through both of those modules enough times that his hands had begun adopting the information that his mind suddenly knew. The enhanced version of the modules helped to implant information on the subject into your mind. You had to be paying attention for it to work, but it helped you learn the subject far faster than before when it worked. However, even after that, it was still up to you to familiarize yourself with the information and movements needed to accomplish the required actions.

Just because he suddenly knew how to field-strip and clean each of his guns, didn’t mean he could do it proficiently. That only came with practice and fine motor control.

What the last two weeks had done was make him more confident in his ability to handle certain situations. He had been exploring the computer when he wasn’t actively learning in a module, and he had been actively researching different subjects whenever he had a free moment.

Apparently, he had underestimated the effectiveness of the facial blurring that his new eyes were capable of. Due to them being a military model, there wasn’t a lot of information to be found on their capabilities. A search that was hampered by the lack of any model specs on the info screen.

Thankfully, Ko had been able to get a few details on it from Sevorah, and he had done the rest himself. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best he had access to.

There were a few of them that had made their way into civilian hands. However, they were usually neutered in various ways, with fragments left in the coding that hinted at the hardware that had once been there. If Trace’s guess was correct, and based on what he was reading, his eyes hadn’t received that treatment. They were the complete, true mil-spec version.

The model that was never supposed to reach civilian hands, and he really wanted to know how Sevorah had managed to get it.