Trace was sitting across from Ko in an underground bar. The lights were a mix of neon and LEDs that were predominantly of varying purple hues. It wasn’t his favorite color normally, but he thought Ko was a fan of it. She liked it enough to dye her hair a dark purple color, at least. That had to mean something.

At the end of the table, attached to the wall, was a private screen that they had tuned to show the drop proceedings. Not that there was much to see at the moment. They had gotten there early to ensure they had a place to watch it, only to find the prices for private dining spaces cheaper than expected.

“Why do you think she does these drops?” Trace asked as they waited for their food to arrive. The screen currently showed the landing location, which was empty, and a few people talking back and forth. “I mean, after everything people did to her, and her family, why is she still helping us even this much?”

The drops weren’t exactly super helpful in nature. At least that was the case if you listened to the people who wanted to control them all. Thankfully, this was one of the rare cases where the average person was smart enough to know the truth.

The drops brought down titanium that the goddesses’ robots had mined from asteroids. They also brought a supply of chips and other components for her companies, along with a small supply of vegetables that had been grown in space.

The food was mostly negligible; it was a drop in the bucket of what they needed. The supply of titanium, though, was always useful. Mining it on Earth had become harder in recent years. It was an abundant metal, however, the easiest, and therefore most profitable, way to mine it was through pit mining.

Even corporations had their limits with that particular method as they discovered how much land it took up and ruined. Land that could have been used for housing, or cultivation, or any number of other things.

The push back against the mining corporations had been growing over the years and their power had continued to diminish.

Ko shook her head, relaxing as she looked up at the lights. “Who can say? Space is her domain. She doesn’t allow anyone else to go up there anymore. We don’t even know how much of the solar system she has explored at this point. Maybe she’s even gone beyond it to the next one.” Her eyes flicked over to the screen. “It’s possible that she just doesn’t care anymore. They say time heals all wounds. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she thinks of us as nothing more than pets.”

“It’s going to be a real problem when he wakes up, if he wakes up, isn’t it?”

“We already knew that.” She said just as their food was brought to them.

It looked pretty good, considering it had been mostly spat out of a 3D food printer. The meat patties for their hamburgers were just seared meat paste. The lettuce and tomatoes were flavored and colored paste. He had never had the real items before, but he had to imagine the paste didn’t do them justice. At least, the cheese and buns were nice.

Overall, it was probably one of the better meals he’d eaten in a long time. The company was nice as well.

The fries were odd though; the outside was nice and crunchy while the pasty inside was mushy. Those he was not a fan of, the mouthfeel was all wrong for him.

Together with the smoothie he had drunk earlier, this was probably the best he had ever eaten, period.

He sat back with a groan a few minutes later in contented bliss. “I don’t think I’ve had something that good in a long time.”

Ko nodded. “That was indeed rather satisfying.”

Over on the screen, a countdown had appeared for when they expected the drop to come into view. A few seconds later, a large block could be seen free-falling through the sky. Its speed continued to pick up, before suddenly slowing as large parachutes caught the air and began steering it toward the proper site.

It took another couple of minutes for the process to complete, with it ending as the large block slid into place.

It was the first time either of them had watched a drop in a while, and both were surprised at how little had changed. The local government and corporations all drove up as the ramp into it fell to the ground. Over the next couple of days, the entire thing would be stripped of its contents and then disassembled.

It wasn’t a rocket. Each of these drops was a one-way trip. The only authorized launch site on the planet was in the middle of the ocean and under Meredith’s direct control.

For a second Trace found himself holding his breath, half expecting something to happen.

Nothing did, at least nothing anyone was aware of or could have perceived. Hopefully, that meant nothing had occurred at all.

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Breathing out, he relaxed and felt his shoulders slump. “Well, I’m tired, and have a bunch of jobs lined up for tomorrow. How about you?”

She nodded. “Yeah, what happened earlier took a lot out of me. I guess we didn’t need to be so suspicious of the placement on this one. We were just seeing connections where there weren’t any.”

He nodded and stood.

Together, they left the restaurant and bar behind.

***

Back at the drop site, everyone missed seeing a large portion of the parachute disintegrating into a silvery puddle. The puddle of nanites quickly reformed into a small R/C-sized car that sped off towards the direction of Denver.

***

Trace felt his body popping as he rolled out of bed.

The notification that appeared in the corner of his vision confirmed that the nutrient shot he had taken before bed had done its job.

- Skeletal System Repair (Percent Completed): 79%

- Muscular System Repair (Percent Completed): 39%

He couldn’t say the pace had gone back to what it was originally, however, it had definitely gone up. For now, that was good enough. Getting his body back into a decent condition wasn’t something that wasn’t going to be done overnight. Even once it was done, he needed to start on upgrading it in various ways. Whether that was through the G.H.O.S.T. System or cyberware remained to be determined.

He checked on Deckard and then grabbed his bags and guns. It was time to get busy.

The first job of the day was a simple grab-and-dash from some gonk’s apartment. The fellow hadn’t paid someone and now they were going to be paying in items. He had a set amount he needed to reach that the slacker owed. Everything he took past that was purely extra credits in his pocket. The best part was the numbskull only owed a few hundred credits.

Unless there was absolutely nothing in the apartment, it would be hard to not reach that amount. Even in his old apartment, you could have found that in just crappy tech, probably, maybe.

The apartment was on the far side of the city, as he was lining the jobs up in a path that slowly brought him back home.

A while later, he pulled the bill of his hat lower, and ran an S&R scan to check for people inside the apartment. When it came up empty, he sprang the old lock and pushed the door open. The apartment was so old that it didn’t even have doors that slid into the walls.

Trace took a moment to look around the inside of the apartment. There wasn’t actually that much inside the place. That’s not to say that it was empty, so much as tidy. Which was unusual in his experience. All the random crap that other people seemed to collect and just put wherever was missing.

He had to say that he liked it. Without all the extra junk everywhere, all that was left were items that held some value.

All he had to do now was find the ones that were worth the most, or the most useful to him. It made his life so much easier when things were all neat and tidy.

He dropped the duffel bag on the floor and quickly began going from room to room, selecting items. None of them were items that he particularly found useful for himself. However, he could see arguments being made to keep a few of them for the apartment.

Regardless, it only took a couple of minutes to fill the bag. By the time he was done, the value it contained was well over what he needed for the job.

Outside in the truck, he separated a few items from the bag and marked them for the client. With that completed, he moved onto the next job.

The next job just had him tracking down a vehicle and tagging it for another edger to follow as part of another job. He scheduled the stop for a time of day when the target would supposedly be home, as they worked, or at least were active at night.

It was a quick stop, one that only took a few seconds. Long enough for him to get out of the truck, place the tracker and then get back in the truck.

Each of the jobs was just as quick and easy to complete, and the money they paid out reflected that. These didn’t even count as tier-one jobs. They were the basic of the basic, the sort of jobs that edgers who were just starting out cut their teeth on. But he needed his money, and his sticky fingers helped fill that void.

After taking the time to drop everything and sell the rest, it was getting late in the day.

As a result of his efforts, he now had enough money to start paying someone to begin work on the roof. It wasn’t enough to finish the job. However, as long as he continued to provide the sheet metal, the amount of progress would be pretty good.

Trace spent the rest of the night going through his enhanced teaching modules. He had been ignoring them the last couple of days, but now that things were settling back into a new sort of normal, he needed to resume learning everything that he could.

***

Trace peered through the scope of his scout rifle. He was lying on a table on the ninth floor of a building that lined up with a nearby scav den. It was one that he had gotten the location of from the server files.

He had been monitoring the location all morning, checking to see how much activity there was coming in and out of the building. He was ready this time, both for them, and for gathering loot. The truck sat parked down below, with both crates crammed into the back of the truck bed.

After the scavs had attacked his old apartment while he wasn’t there, he had decided he would need to strike back at them. There were things that needed to be done first though. Namely, the acquisition of some proper equipment. Which he now had, with the guns, armor, and most notably, the truck. He also needed to become more proficient at aiming and hitting his desired target.

He wouldn’t say that he was where he needed to be in that regard just yet. His constant practice had left him a better shot than the average scav. He knew that much for certain. Besides, he wouldn’t be going in as a typical edger or reaper, but as a wraith in training.

That meant silent kills whenever possible and remaining unseen for as long as possible. Confusion and fear would be his friends. Each of his guns, except the revolver and the shotgun barrel on the Maritech X5, had suppressors.

Trace flicked his eyes over to thermal and looked through the scope on the rifle. One of the benefits of having a proper scope was still being able to access the abilities his eyes gave him. He increased the magnification, on first the scope, and then his eyes, dialing everything in until the inside of the apartment was in sharp focus.

This place was a different style of operation than the one he had found himself in before. There was no server rack or hulking auged-out bruiser. There was a nice-looking desk computer in the corner that was putting out a fair-bit of heat. He also counted five different freezers in a room at the back.

There were also more scavs moving about the place. They had two ‘surgical’ rooms, three ice-baths, and a minigun emplacement pointed at the elevator.

Oh yeah, going in silent was definitely the right choice.