Trace ran a Search & Rescue scan when he reached the front door. The outline it revealed was of a man he didn’t recognize, and definitely not of Ko’s much more svelte female form.

He held his pistol at the ready as he opened the door a crack and looked out at the man on the door’s camera display.

The fellow looked absolutely wrecked. Everything about him screamed that he was severely ill.

“Who the frack are you?” The wrecked mess of a man asked as he leaned heavily against the door.

Trace kept the door in place with his foot. “I could ask you the same thing. This is my apartment. Who are you?”

An expression of utter confusion spread across the worn, tired man’s face. He pulled back to look at the numbers for the apartment and slowly shook his head.

“No, this is my apartment. I wasn’t gone long enough for them to have sold it out from beneath me.”

“Ahh,” Suddenly everything made sense to him. “You’re looking… decent-ish for a dead guy.” Trace couldn’t bring himself to say the man looked good. That would just be going too far.

He opened the door wider and invited the man inside. It was actually the other man’s apartment, after all, he was just borrowing it.

“Come on inside. Do you need any medical help? I have a friend who is a mender in training, who I can call over if you want.”

The owner limped heavily inside the apartment. Every slow step he took, a ponderous thing that was accompanied by a wince and a pause as he stopped for breath.

Trace decided to take the initiative to call Ko while he waited for the man to reach the couch. “Hey, Ko, I have a bit of a problem here at the apartment. Can you bring your medical supplies and get here, quick?”

“What’s going on? Are you hurt?” Despite the odd quality of her robotic voice, the worry she was feeling came clearly through.

“I’m fine, it’s not me. The original owner of the apartment just showed up and his condition is terrible.”

“The one who attacked the food corporation?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“I’ve got to see this. I’ll be over in just a bit. Make sure he doesn't leave.”

“Trust me, that won’t be a problem. Which part of his condition is terrible, did you not understand?”

She hung up on him without saying anything more.

Trace huffed in exasperation as he began clearing away his stuff. The two pistols went into his courier bag, while the scout rifles he simply left on the short table while choosing to scoot it out of the way. His duffel bag went on top of everything as a barrier of sorts to prevent easy access to the good stuff.

Finally, the wheezing corpse of a man reached the couch and collapsed onto it. “I think we should probably talk. I’m known as Pushman in edger circles, you can call me that for now. What about yourself?”

“I’m called Tune. I’m just starting out.” Trace replied, content to let the man get his breath back and take the conversation at his own pace.

“Why are you in my apartment?”

“I fell onto your balcony while escaping from a job. I was injured from the fall, and the place was obviously unoccupied at the time from the layer of dust. Once I saw everything in the office, I understood why and figured you had died somewhere after making your escape. I mean, it’s been weeks now. My old place was compromised, and this one was paid for so…” He shrugged, not needing to say anymore.

Pushman tried to chuckle, the sound turning into a nasty-sounding wheeze. “I can’t say I wouldn’t have done something similar in your place. I’m going to need my apartment back now though. You can stay here until you can find a new place, but I’m taking the bed.”

That was less than ideal. However, a part of Trace had always known his time in the apartment was limited. It had simply come to a close sooner than expected, is all. At least he hadn’t gotten rid of the crates he had used to move all of his stuff in with. He would be needing them again, it seemed.

If Trace wanted to, he could have ended the man and been done with the matter. It wouldn’t have been hard. He practically had two feet and three-quarters of his body in the grave already. That wasn’t his style. Besides, the man had information Trace could use later on when he went after the ‘Siren’s Rush’ corporation for what they had done to Ko.

Besides, the man was being fairly congenial to someone who had clearly been squatting in his place for weeks.

“I’ll start moving my stuff back into the crates later.” Trace tilted his head to the large, wheeled crates in the corner of the room. “I’m curious though, what made you suddenly change your plan of attack on the corporation? According to what I could figure out from everything in the office, you have been planning this attack for years. You had all, or at least most, of the details, and what looked like a really solid plan. Then suddenly you threw it out the window for what amounted to little more than a frontal assault. A semi-effective one, but not one that was nearly as damaging as what you could have otherwise done.”

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Pushman took in a long shuddering breath, as his eyes closed in remembrance. “I suppose I never did include any of that in my plans, did I? No, there wouldn’t have been a reason to. Sekmore Snak-Co,” The name came out as a tired, beaten snarl. “My sister used to work for them. She was one of the people in their labs, as a lab tech of some sort, I believe. I used to be so proud of her for having a proper corporate job.”

Trace gently sat on top of the duffel bag, as he became engrossed in the man’s tale.

“Then she got sick. Apparently, Sekmore saw nothing wrong with testing some of their products on their own employees. They called them free samples and passed them around to all the lower-level techs. None of them knew enough to find it suspicious that those above them never got any of those samples.” By this point, Pushman had worked himself into a rage and had spittle flying from his lips.

His face grew redder by the minute with anger and the loss of airflow, as he continued to struggle to breathe. Not that he was going to let that stop him from finishing the story in his current state. He would either finish it or pass out, likely both either way.

“Everyone who got the samples became sick after a while. It took months, by which point Sekmore Snak-Co had declared the product safe and started delivering it to the public. It wasn’t. Her internal organs started to fail one by one. At first, the company paid for cyberware replacements. Then she was let go, along with everyone else that was having similar problems."

A tear trickled down his face as he continued. “I was taking care of her, and she was starting to get better. All she needed was one more organ replacement, nothing big, you understand. At least, nothing else seemed to be degrading, and a few of the lesser affected organs even seemed to be getting better. It had taken two-years, and I don’t even want to think about how cyberware organ replacements, but she had turned the corner.

“She died on the operating table, complete system shutdown the mender said. I didn’t believe them of course. I wouldn’t have, even if the corporate suits hadn’t shown up to confiscate her body. They just took it and claimed that now that she was dead, her body belonged to them. They had been waiting nearby.” Pushman’s face had taken on a distinctly red-purplish hue as he swayed from side to side. “I never even got to say goodbye to her.”

With those finishing words, he collapsed to the side, completely out cold.

Trace listened to him breathe for a few moments before standing and moving over to the crates. It was time to start gathering up his stuff.

The man’s story was sad, and it did explain why he had suddenly lost it. However, it hadn’t been Trace’s sister who died, and unfortunately, that sort of story had some frightfully common elements to it for a lot of people out there.

The corporations were the ones who ruled the city. The local government was more figurehead than actual authority, thanks in large part to how useless the police department was. The mayor had tried creating his own special forces unit at one point, only for the corporations to eliminate them all with extreme prejudice.

Laws meant nothing when you had no power to uphold them.

So, while Trace sympathized with the man, in the end, it was simply another variation of a story he had heard before.

His clothes and a portion of Pushman’s better-fitting ones went into the first crate, along with all his tech supplies. The second crate he began filling up with things from the office. The new guns he had grabbed during the job and then left on the floor earlier and all his ammo. The new guns had been too large and too many to fit inside his stuffed duffel bag.

After that, he grabbed all his other items that had been left in there, along with the other system breaching module.

He wasn’t going to steal the other modules, but he was certainly going to take that one. It was too useful not too.

If he had a choice, he would grab the computer as well, but he had a feeling that Pushman would object if he did that. Although that reminded him, there was that one in the apartment above them that he had really liked.

Trace left out the climbing suction cups and the rope, just in case. Maybe he could get Ko to help him later. Bringing it down the elevator wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous though…

Hmm, he couldn’t make up his mind.

Ko sent him a message to let him know she had arrived, and there was a soft knock on the door a minute or so later.

“Really?” He asked when he opened the door. Standing on the other side was not only Ko, but also Sevorah.

She shrugged. “What? You said he was really injured. I figured we’d need the extra help.”

“Hi, Sevorah,” He grumbled politely, “Hopefully, you managed to find a warehouse or something that I can also use as an apartment.”

They followed him inside, immediately noticing the mostly filled crates.

“Ahh, he already set about kicking you out, did he?” Ko surmised.

He grunted. “Eh, Pushman, that’s his edger name, was polite about it. He offered his couch. But would you really want to keep the person who had been squatting in your apartment around? It’s better if I just leave. I got a few free weeks out of the place, so I’m not too mad about the trade. I do need to reset his permissions though. I thought he’d died, so I placed him as inactive on everything.”

While they were talking, Sevorah had already started removing some of her equipment and begun examining the passed-out Pushman.

“Whoever took care of him did enough to keep him alive, it looks like, and that’s it. He is going to need a lot of rest and recuperation time at the bare minimum.”

Ko peeked over her mentor’s shoulder and let out a long-impressed whistle. “They may have kept him alive, but the patchwork is substandard. I could do better than that. I don’t know of any clinics in the area who do this kind of shoddy work.”

Trace looked over at them from where he was putting the remaining titanium marbles into a small pouch and then into a pocket in his courier bag. “After attacking a corporation like that, you honestly think he went to an official clinic? My bet is he went to the absolute dirtiest back-alley slicer he could find.”

Ko winced. “If he did, then he is lucky to even be alive.”

There were traditionally three forms of medical care for people, without getting into the more esoteric stuff. The first were doctors. They worked almost exclusively with corpos due to how expensive they were. They had the best training and emergency services hired exclusively from among their properly trained ranks.

The second was menders, such as Sevorah. This was who most people with any sense and a modicum of money sought out for medical care. They were taught in a master and apprentice-type situation. They were under a union that made sure their skills were up to a certain standard before they could begin practicing on their own. The union also helped them seek out additional knowledge and parts on occasion, but largely left them alone after they were certified. As long as they paid their dues, anyway.

The last group was by far the worst. They were called slicers because that is exactly what they did. They sliced into you. They were completely unregulated and entirely self-taught hack-jobs with a propensity for death. Anytime you visited one, you were taking your life in your own hands, as they were just as likely to kill you for parts as heal you. It was to no one’s surprise that a large number of slicers eventually became scavs later on.