By the time the morning rolled around, Trace felt as though he had only gotten two hours of sleep. Which honestly wasn’t far off. After everyone had left, he had taken some time to go through the information on a couple of the data prisms. It only took a few minutes of that for his mind to start protesting that it was too tired to continue. He had left the rest plugged into the desk computer for Deckard to go through.
He rolled out of bed, the notification in the corner of his vision springing into view and then vanishing almost as quickly. The progress they had made on his skeletal and muscular system was negligible due to how little sleep he’d gotten. They were constantly working on both items, but due to the extreme nature of the actual repairs, they could only be done when he was sleeping.
Looking over at the shorter of the shelves, he saw that Deckard was sleeping. However, there was a document open and waiting for him on the screen of the computer.
Standing over it, while he brushed his teeth, he read through all the notes Deckard had made for him.
There had only been a handful of data prisms, but Deckard had done deep dives into each one. Going through all the files and then checking for ghost-images of past files.
It used to be in the old days that you could recover something once it was deleted. That wasn’t the case with data prisms. The way the media worked was simply too different. All you could retrieve was a ghost-image of what had once been there, and that was literally nothing more than a ghost of what the file had once looked like. Nothing more.
It was useful in telling you the names of the files that had once been on the data prism, and that was it.
Still, it was something that Trace wasn’t capable of doing.
Unfortunately, there was no mention of any corporation contained within the files that Deckard had found. Not that Trace had truly been expecting anything else. This was a corpo hit squad. They would be better trained than your average gangster. Putting any sort of incriminating evidence on their personal devices would be trained out of them right away. Even if it wasn’t, he imagined there would be safeguards in place to erase any slipups as soon as they happened within the NetConnects they had been given.
That was how he would have set them up anyway.
Trace removed the data prisms and set them to the side. There were a few modules he could still go through, but those were read-only, not writeable. Unless they contained proprietary information from this mysterious corporation, they were no good either.
The odds of that, however, were decent. There were seven of the modules -two more than the number of data prisms- and none of them had a nameplate of any kind. The normal location for one was also rounded off, and smaller than normal. It looked as though the housings were custom, which was a lot of work to do for off-the-shelf units.
Carefully, he prepared a virtual sandbox environment around the port he was going to use and plugged in one of the modules.
Distantly, he was aware of the module attempting to do something, but with his protections in place, it had failed to load. There was no application on his HUD. Whatever program was on the module was meant to load right away. He would need to look into it more later when he had more time.
For the moment, he unloaded the module and pulled it out. Then proceeded to delete the virtual environment just for good measure. He put the modules in his bag for later and set about getting ready for the day.
He still hadn’t figured out a different solution to the problem of how he was going to procure some metal. Going to his normal junkyard while the street kids were in control just wasn’t a viable answer for him. There were too many memories from his early days for that to be comfortable.
That really only left Monroe’s suggestion of going to one of the other junkyards in the city.
There were only four junkyards in the city, period. One at each of the cardinal directions, if there had ever been any others, they had been moved and combined with one of those for at some point in the distant past.
He liked the junkyard that was at the southern end of the city. It was the one he had grown up using and always been around.
If he was going to go to another junkyard, then it would likely be the one on the eastern side. There used to be some military installations over in that area. They had all been torn out years before when the military in the area was disbanded. That junkyard ought to have plenty of good things he could bring back, assuming they would fit in the back of the truck.
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Trace made sure he took a minute to top off Deckard’s nutrient mix. Even now that he was awake, he was still burning through the stuff at a higher-than-normal pace.
Opening his fridge, he grabbed a slightly suspect-looking burrito along with a couple of titanium marbles and then went out the door. He made sure each of his guns was fully loaded, and that he had several spare magazines for each as well. After what had happened the day before, he wasn’t taking any chances.
Until he discovered what was going on, he was in the dark. He had no idea if the bear showing up was the world’s biggest coincidence, or something else entirely. All he knew was that he wanted to be prepared.
Regardless, he had somewhere to be.
Getting into his truck, he sent off a quick message to Ko, letting her know that he was on his way. They had loaded some of the mender’s equipment into the back of the truck once they were done using it. The majority of it was still down below, simply due to a lack of room.
Sevorah and Ko were both waiting for him when he arrived.
Trace and Ko had taken their time to scan the various pieces into their cyberware upgrade database while they were working throughout the night. That meant now, they only needed to move the items into the clinic for Sevorah to inspect.
The actual useable pieces would remain in the freezer in his basement until she was ready to take the next step with them. For now, she would spend her time taking these ones apart, and seeing what other protections they might have. It wouldn’t do to install a new NetConnect or set of eyes and discover they couldn’t be used due to some corporate lock that had been installed on them.
With all of that done, he waved goodbye to the two and sped off. He had too much to get done that day, to spend extra time talking with them.
Trace made sure to send a message to Monroe, letting him know where he was headed next. The welder could let himself inside the warehouse whenever he arrived.
During his drive to the eastern junkyard, he saw more police cars out and about, patrolling the roads than he could remember ever seeing in recent memory. Along with them were many of what were clearly corpo vehicles.
Just as Trace was pulling into the unfamiliar eastern junkyard, he received a call from Revlock.
“What did you step into?” The man asked him wearily.
“What are you talking about?” He kept his eyes on the road as he slowly dodged around piles of junk.
This was one of the downsides of going to a new junkyard. He had no idea where anything was. With his usual one, he knew right where to go, for the metal, or the tech. Not that they were super strict about the placement, but in general, those were where the bulk of those items ended up.
At this junkyard, he didn’t even know if it was set up the same way, or if everything was just dumped wherever there was an open spot.
“You called me in a panic yesterday, remember? Then you cut the connection and never called me back. Very rude by the way. Anyway, I decided to go against the rules and looked into the situation some more.”
“And? What did you find?” Trace asked when the man took a deliberately long pause to drive up the tension.
“Not much. The initial job we worked was completely legit. There is no sign of them being involved. However, there was a third party who got involved once we tracked the target to the sewers. At that point, they contacted the original client and paid them to mark the job as completed.”
Trace jammed on the brakes as he took that all in. “It sounds to me like this third party got their hands on that message you sent the client.”
“That’s what I was thinking as well. I’ll keep looking into it for as long as I can, but I’m expecting pushback. Any corporation that can shut down cameras like that and force a government entity to close a job early isn’t something either of us wants to mess with.”
Trace leaned his head back against the rest and stared blankly up at the ceiling of the truck. There was a lot to unpack there. Revlock had been doing him a massive favor by telling him what he did, especially at the end.
It was the corporation that was responsible for turning off all the cameras on that section of the wall. Plus, the original job contract had come from the government, which he had already sort of guessed. It was the police who had screwed up. It made sense that someone in their organization would want to know what had actually happened.
While that might not be the actual case, it was still confirmation that his thinking had been in the right direction.
He sat there for a few minutes, reviewing everything he knew.
A sharp rap on his window an untold number of minutes later shook him from his revelry. Monroe was standing beside his truck with a tired grin on his face.
“I figured I’d find you out here, lost. Didn’t think you’d be napping though.”
Trace flipped him off as he rolled down the window and hung his upper half out. “Lost is right. My junkyard is organized. This place, at least as far as I can tell, is pure chaos.”
The large man laughed. “You just need to know where to look is all.”
“You’re familiar with this place, then?”
He nodded. “Maybe not to the extent that you are with the southern junkyard, but this is the one I tend to frequent the most. It’s got some real gems hidden among its piles if you know where to look.”
“In that case, I’ll let you lead. You wouldn’t have come across a bank vault during your time exploring this place by any chance?”
Monroe chuckled. “Your truck wouldn’t be able to carry some of the great things I’ve found in this place. Yet another reason we should work toward getting that truck and trailer out of the badlands.”
“Yeah, yeah, we already have an agreement in place for that, and yesterday went a long way towards convincing me. Now, it’s more a matter of whether we can stand being in each other’s presence for a long enough time to complete the gig.” Trace cracked his neck. “Speaking of which, before everything went down yesterday, I was going to tell you. We got a job from Stick-Point. It’s about a drug operation out in the wastelands.”
“Sounds like an interesting job. Tell me the specifics while we load the metal. Either way, we need to get that hole in your basement patched before we leave to go and do it. Finishing the roof would probably be a good idea as well.” Monroe said after a moment’s thought.
“You got it, now hop in.”