Ko still seemed a little out of it as they walked through the market. It wasn’t just that she was tired, though that was obviously part of it. The gang attack, and then working on some of their victims, really seemed to be eating at her.

Trace nudged her shoulder as they stepped in front of a vending machine. “Are you ready to talk and tell me what’s bugging you?”

Ko sighed and shook her head. “This was just a lot today, is all. Several of the gangs have been ramping up their activities over the past couple of weeks. The front portion of the clinic has seen a steep increase in activity. Sevorah runs that as cheaply as she can, and we do good work. That means we have a lot of work. However, the clinic doesn’t mess with cyberware, it’s strictly healthcare and other life-saving services.”

He collected the dozens of sodas that had been deposited beneath the vending machine and stacked them in his bag. His head remained turned towards her, as he kept listening to what she was saying.

“Sudden operations like the one today are rare. The incoming patients have to meet a certain number of criteria. However, there are two main ones that absolutely can’t be ignored. First, they have to be able to afford Sevorah’s mender services, along with any cyberware they are supplied with. Secondly, and by far the more difficult of the criteria, they have to make it to the clinic in order to receive help. The first is hard enough, but the second is often the true stumbling block.”

Trace could understand that. The elite of the city had access to emergency services, which could show up nearly anywhere and rescue them if their life was in danger. That is, of course, assuming they held the right membership plan.

With the right package, they would fly in, fight off aggressors, grab the patient, and then stabilize them while en route to a trained doctor. However, certain items began to fall off as each of the lower plans was chosen. You held the absolute basic plan, but were captured? That was really too bad. All you got was a single high-performance personally calibrated healing stim shot into you from long range. There would be no rescue operation, and that one healing dose was all you got. Since you were captured, all it really meant was that you had just given your captors more time to beat on you.

Emergency services were good at what they did, but like any corporation, they were in it for the money. After you survived, you would then be stuck with a hefty bill covering the rest of their fees for the service.

In return, what Sevorah was doing was practically saintlike. There were no hidden-fees or anything of that nature. All you had to do was drag your dying body to her clinic in time.

“How many times have you seen people in that sort of condition before?” He asked her gently.

“Too many times,” She replied softly. “And not enough.”

They continued shopping, and she gradually shook off some of her sadness. By the time they had picked up their own dinner, she was getting closer to being normal. After eating, they stopped at another stall and picked up food for Anna and Sevorah before heading back to his truck. Both of them had asked the duo to return with food.

“Ah, that’s right. I did have something to tell you about,” Ko told him suddenly, her voice overcome with excitement. “You know how the nerve connections on cyberware die out if they aren’t extracted properly or frozen right away?”

He nodded. It was why the scavs had all their freezers, and why he had asked Sevorah and Ko for their help with the corpo agent’s cyberware. It was possible to replace the connections, however; it was hard, expensive, and never seemed to work right.

“Well, I had an idea about that, and asked her if those ‘dead’ cyberware pieces could be used on an android?” Trace whipped his head around to look at her, immediately seeing where she was going with that thought process. “Slow down there,” She cautioned him. “She said it’s possible, but that there are a few steps that need to be taken for it to happen. It’s easier and cheaper than replacing the destroyed nerves, but it’s still not easy.”

Trace opened the passenger-side door of the truck for her while he thought over her words. “That potentially makes things easier for us… At least it gives us a place to start, which is more than we had before.”

***

Monroe parked his van inside the warehouse beside the truck. They were going to take both vehicles for this job. The hope was that they would come across enough loot to fill both of them.

Both of them had plans to explore any ruins they came across after the job as well.

Trace topped up Deckard with nutrient mix one last time and left him with two of those strange modules plugged into the desk computer to look at upon his request. He was sleeping less and less already. Finding a project to occupy his mind had done wonders for his recovery. Instead of sleeping eighteen to twenty-something hours a day, he was down to more like fourteen to eighteen.

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His memories were still fragmented, and he had started to notice gaps where he didn’t think there should be one. Deckard was still hopeful that the issues he was having were a result of the jumbled fragmentary nature his memories were in at the moment and nothing more serious.

The night before, Ko had agreed to stop by and look in on him from time to time while Trace was gone.

Monroe handed Trace a box of ammo as he came out. “I loaded them myself last night. They contain a few extra grains of powder than normal, so the kick will be a little extra.” It was a box of ammo for the revolver.

Trace cursed and pulled the courier bag around to his front. “I wish you would have told me. I’ve been collecting all my empty casing ever since I got it. I’ll still give them to you though.” He retrieved a partially full box of used cartridges and handed it to the big man. “I got a decent amount of ammo with the gun, but I was definitely starting to worry about where I would get more once I ran out. I haven’t fired it as much as I could have as a result.”

Monroe accepted the box with a grin, knowing what that was like. “Should we head on out? I’ll follow you.”

The drive out of the city was completed without issue despite the near-endless number of ol’jelly suckers. The police and the corporate security teams were still working together. To make matters worse, was the violence from the gangs he could now see erupting all over the place.

It was a good thing the Midway gang had been eliminated from his neighborhood before all of this began. Hopefully, that would keep his warehouse safe, along with Sevorah’s clinic. He couldn’t say for sure that they would have been within the gang’s territory, but even if they hadn’t been, they would have only just been outside of it.

Far too close for comfort, in his opinion.

They followed the old road out of the city for a couple of miles before taking a turnoff. His last job out in the wastelands had taken him out to Lonetree and the scarpo town that existed out there. This time they were headed a little more east and going to what had once been a place called Parker.

There were several ruins of old towns in between them and their destination that they hoped to explore on their way back. However, they also needed to be careful as they drove through each of them. They were prime locations for potential traps or other creative methods designed to make them stop.

Both of their vehicles were armor-plated and had run-flat tires.

If someone really wanted to get them to stop in the middle of those ruins, they would have to work at it. With any luck, they would simply be let through without a problem. They could have fun with everyone on their way back.

They managed to go off-road and partially skirt around some of the ruins that they had been driving through on the highway for the last several miles. Despite how large this particular section of ruins was, it was completely abandoned due to its close proximity to Denver. By the time that would have become an issue, it was already too late for the place, and it was smarter to move a little farther out.

Parker, according to what Trace had learned, was a fairly large scarpo town as things went. There were roughly fifteen hundred residents, and they even had a small wall around the place.

Back in its heyday, Parker had been home to well over one hundred thousand people and had been a city in its own right. Now, it was surrounded by the ruins of what it had once been, while the people who lived there scavenged those same remains to make their living.

It was a tough life, but the people there never thought about giving up and moving to Denver. They might need to sell their items to the people who lived there, but they themselves would never be under the corporate thumb. They were free.

In the distance, Trace could see the mounded hills of what had once been a great reservoir. It still contained plenty of water. In fact, there were even a few streams that now ran out of the top of it. However, much like the water that had been in his basement, it had taken on an acidic quality.

There were a few corporations that worked to filter it and make it semi-drinkable. They succeeded well enough that while it lost the acidic note; it retained the scum that clung to the tongue and the overall smell of garbage. It was what they used as the base for the sodas everyone drank. The taste they infused into it overrode the unpleasant taste and smells. There was nothing they could do about the scum that clung to the tongue. Not unless they were willing to spend even more money on filters anyway. The idea of that happening was a joke in and of itself.

Trace had no desire to see what was actually floating in the waters of the reservoir.

Turning his attention back to the road, he barely noted the crumbled remains of a rusted and decrepit warehouse to the side as he drove through an intersection. The walls of the building had fallen inward, eventually taking the roof and crushing anything that had been left inside with it.

Behind him, Monroe flashed his lights and pulled up alongside him as Trace slowed. “How far out are we going?” He asked, keeping his head on a swivel.

Trace consulted the job details and then the map. “Just another mile or so. We won’t even be getting near the scarpo town, though I would suggest we lock up everything extra tight just in case. Stick-Point says the drug operation is being run out of one of the ruins but doesn’t know which one. So we’ll have to look around on our own.” He chuckled and looked behind them. “I suppose we might have passed it already, but I was just heading to the marker pin he had given me as a starter point.”

Monroe rolled his eyes. They had already gone through this the other day when they had talked about the job and done the planning.

“I’m asking because I thought I saw something move in that destroyed warehouse back there.” He said, the deep bass of his voice rumbling through his van and carrying effortlessly to the driver’s seat of the truck.

“Are you thinking a watcher for the operation or one of the scavengers for the scarpo town?”

He shook his head. “Not sure, but it’ll only take a couple of minutes for us to find out.”

“Alright, since you saw them, you’ll lead us to the right spot of the warehouse, and then I’ll take the lead. No offense, it’s just that I’m shorter and smaller, and weaker…” Trace trailed off. “Why am I suddenly dissing myself like this? Get driving!”