“Would you check this fracking beast out?” One of the goons in the back of the truck exclaimed as they went through his bag.

“Careful with that, you gonk. That’s a Colter 700 Special 4! If it goes off, it has enough power to take us all out.” Another of them said almost reverently.

Trace nodded at his words, having seen firsthand how destructive the revolver was.

“What’s someone who’s going to their uncle’s place doing with that kind of hardware?” The driver asked dangerously.

“I said I was going to my uncle's place because I had a problem. I never said what the problem was,” Trace replied back with a snarl. His eyes darted down to the gun the driver was holding in his lap. HIS gun. The man held it in a loose grip while keeping the barrel aimed mostly at him.

“No, no, I don’t suppose you did.” The driver mumbled to himself.

Trace reached across and yanked at the steering wheel. The driver’s cybernetic hands clamped shut on it with enough force to indent it around his fingers just a few seconds too late. The front wheels had already turned to meet the old concrete ridge that lined the road.

With a jolt of compressing shocks, the truck went airborne while slowly twisting. It landed badly, the front struts that held the wheels in place twisting and breaking from the force and awkward placement. The four goons in the back were all launched into the air, their arms flailing wildly as the extra weight from their augments brought them down with a thunderous crash.

Trace’s shoulder ached from where it had hit the door. The seatbelt had been next to useless, something that he should have known with how loose it had been.

The driver had been able to keep his body in place by locking his arms in position. However, that hadn’t worked out so well for his head and neck, which was quite obviously broken just below the man’s NetConnect.

Without waiting, he reached across and retrieved his CD-10 from the oaf. He gave it a quick once over, tightened the suppressor a half-turn, and then put a single bullet in the man’s head. Better safe than sorry.

His fingers rifled through the man’s pockets and various net ports as the gain on his eyes made the night brighter. They were far enough away from the city by that point that the light from it was little more than a memory. The moon was still nice and bright, but it couldn’t compare to the truck’s headlights.

At least it couldn’t before his eyes went to work and made everything seem brighter than it actually was.

The passenger door opened with a creak as he stumbled out, his pockets a few items heavier. He would have preferred to come away from the encounter with a working truck. He would settle for his life.

Ducking down beside the wheel, where it was darkest, Trace waited for one of the goons to make an appearance.

The four had taken hard, painful tumbles that he doubted would be enough to keep them down for long. Not unless they were as unlucky as the driver had been with his weak neck.

They couldn’t be too far out; the truck had only been going around sixty miles an hour. A decent speed, sure, but each of those gonks had been carrying extra weight with their augments and gear.

Trace waited another minute before slowly edging out from the protection of the truck at a crouch. He didn’t particularly care about them, but he wanted his bag, scout rifle, and revolver back. Especially that revolver. It was next to impossible to replace.

A quick glance inside the bed of the truck told him what he already knew. It was empty. Nothing had been dropped inside.

He ran an S&R scan on the surrounding area but only picked up two people. One was the dead driver; the other was lying in a shallow ditch of some sort, back near the road. There was no one else detected inside his scan radius. Which meant the other three had already left.

Barely holding back his growl of annoyance, Trace hurried over to the body. It was with some satisfaction that he saw it was the one they had called Belcher. The perverted one. Apparently, he was as unlucky as the driver. He had originally landed on an old metal fence post that had skewered him right through the chest. His additional weight had ripped the rust-weakened metal from the ground, and he had rolled back into what he now saw was a small culvert used for water.

The revolver was still clutched in his hands. The courier bag, however, was nowhere to be seen. He could only hope one of the other men had it. For the moment, he took back his revolver, along with the multiple pouches the man had been wearing strapped to his thigh. They would be better than nothing.

He took one last look around, managing to find one of their guns in the scrub-brush. The barrel was jammed full of dirt and other debris. Otherwise; it appeared to be remarkably undamaged.

Without his bag, he couldn’t properly clean it out either. There were a few picks and random items in the pouches that got the job somewhat done. He would be able to fire it at least, but the tip of the barrel might experience some damage as a result. Or it could be completely fine. Some guns were like that. They were built tough, meant to be used and abused.

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Even with the gain turned up on his eyes, there was too little light for him to read the manufacturer's label on the gun. So, there was no way for him to know for sure. With the other three goons out there, he certainly wasn’t going to risk using any form of light.

He wanted to be the hunter, not the prey.

Once he was back on the road, he began to lightly jog along, massaging his injured shoulder the entire time.

This was not how he had envisioned the job starting in the slightest. He had hoped to reach the scarpo town before anything started to happen.

Naïve of him, he knew.

The area outside of the city belonged to three groups. The wastelanders mainly stuck to their towns and the places they had carved out as their territory. They were mostly just trying to make a living with as little corporate involvement as possible.

Next was the gypsies. They lived in their vehicles and tents and were almost always on the move. They roamed from one city to the next, crossing borders without a care. Most put up with their presence as long as they didn’t stay too long.

However, part of living the way they did meant being off the grid, away from the wireless charging arrays for days at a time. That meant their vehicles were always equipped with miniature-reactors in place of batteries. Naturally, that meant they were far more valuable than other vehicles to the third group.

They were known as raiders, and that was exactly what they did. Raid everything. Scarpo towns, gypsy caravans, corporation teams. Nothing was off-limits to them. All that mattered was how they were feeling that particular day, and if they wanted what they saw. If they were feeling good and wanted what you had. Well, then you were in for a fight, and death was a very likely outcome.

He hadn’t wanted to have interactions with any of them if he had a choice. Though, obviously, if he were to pick a group, it would be the gypsies. They had a somewhat dubious nature at times, but their reputation was still the best.

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That hadn’t happened, and he was left running after a few gang members that operated out of a scarpo town. Honestly, he was amazed they had been allowed to operate this long without being taken out by one of the other groups. That didn’t sound like something the wastelanders or raiders would normally allow.

Not that he actually knew anything about them from firsthand experience. Everything he knew had been taken from rumors and the net. He hadn’t thought to ask Stick-Point or any of the others what they knew. He still could, he supposed, but it was a little late for anything they could tell him to help.

Off to the side, he saw the old remains of houses and buildings. Unfinished construction, mixed with old forgotten efforts to bulldoze entire sections of what had once been populous neighborhoods. Now, only the jagged piles of broken concrete remained for most of them.

A few oak and pine trees peeked through in odd places. More of them could be seen in places that had been somewhat properly cleared. However, even in those places, Trace could see plenty of rusted metal and other debris sticking up through the grass.

He had been jogging for nearly twenty-minutes when he caught the first glimpse of a moving shadow ahead of him. At last, he had caught up to at least one of the three remaining goons. With any luck, all three of them were still together.

He kept jogging, gradually catching up to the shadow in front of him. The shadows pulled back little by little, as the light from the moon reflected off the scratched silvery surface of the goon’s arms.

As Trace drew closer to the large man, the shapes of the other two in front of him came into view as well. It was hard to tell for sure at his current distance, however, it didn’t look like the three had gotten away from the accident without injury.

There were fresh dents in the arms of the closest one. While the right arm of the man in the middle wasn’t moving at all. The fellow in the front seemed to have gotten it the worse as one of his arms was hanging lower than the other one. It had slipped completely out of its socket when he fell on it.

The best piece of news, at least in his opinion, was the sight of his courier bag. The scout rifle looked a little beat-up. Nothing that he couldn’t hopefully handle repairing with the equipment he had back at the apartment.

Unfortunately, that also meant the gun that was supposed to be his primary weapon for this OP had suddenly become unusable. That left him with the CD-10 and the large assault rifle he was lugging around. It had a selector switch on it, but a rifle like this just wasn’t going to be as accurate as his scout rifle.

He flicked the selector to three-round bursts and hoped he had cleaned the barrel of enough debris. If not, this was going to end badly for him.

Trace waited until he was sure he could hit the man in the front before squeezing the trigger. The rifle kicked against his shoulder as the night exploded with noise.

Shifting his aim, he steadied himself and squeezed the trigger a second time. He better prepared for the kick this time.

The assault rifle was a basic model with no fancy upgrades or enhancements on it. That left him aiming manually through the old-fashioned red-dot sight, that he only now realized had become misaligned when it hit the ground. Not a lot, but enough that his shots had gone from killing zones to debilitating zones. They still worked, but that was a large difference for a relatively small amount of distance.

The first two men dropped with pained screams, while the third whirled around with his own assault rifle at the ready.

Trace fell to a crouch, adjusted his aim for the bad sights, and pulled the trigger at the same time as the goon. A cold sweat erupted all over his body as he felt the pressure of nearby bullets passing his head. He could feel the rush of wind in his sweaty hair. If he hadn’t crouched, then he would have definitely been hit.

His target wasn’t so lucky as all three shots drilled through the man’s sternum and hit his reinforced spine. While he was still alive for the moment, he wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Trace flicked the selector switch to single shot as he stood and moved closer to them. A quick double-tap into each ensured they wouldn’t be a problem for him going forward.

The rapid beating of his heart reminded him of just how close this one had been to ending differently. He didn’t like working up this close for a reason, especially when there were multiple targets.

Trace gathered up his courier bag, and all of their useful items, his mind lost in a haze. Dragging them off to the side and into a ditch, he got back to walking.