Monroe was only a few steps behind him, his own massive assault rifle in hand and a furious expression on his face.

Trace took one last look at the three unknown vehicles before they passed out of sight. They looked similar to the ones he had seen in front of the old battalion building, but not quite the same. They also didn’t look like the sort of cars edgers would normally drive.

“I might be wrong, but I think those vehicles belong to actual raiders,” Trace muttered softly, as they kept their eyes and ears open.

They performed a quick sweep of the first floor and then made their way to the stairs.

The second floor had crates, all in various states of being assembled. There were also some tools and various other things all around the back section. They had tables set up with tools to clean and work on their guns and some light electronic equipment.

None of it was worth much, but they were the sort of items that were always needed and were guaranteed to sell. If they could find better, more expensive items to grab, these would definitely be worth taking.

Moving up to the third floor, they found the first of the raiders. He was leaning over a crate that had been destroyed by the earlier grenade, a couple of inhalers held in his hand.

“How much of the drug can we salvage from this mess?” He shouted to someone farther in.

“It looks like only one grenade went off on this floor. It took out a few crates, is all. Most of the shipment inside is still intact.”

“Shipment?” Trace breathed out in wonder. His eyes lit up with understanding and he sent a message to Monroe. ‘These weren’t going to Denver, or at least not all of them were. They were selling them to the raiders.’

He nodded. ‘Stick-Point will be happy to learn this particular piece of information, I’m sure. The raiders have been causing more issues for everyone in the last couple of years. I guess now we know why.’

Trace nodded and flicked the grenades hanging on the man’s belt. ‘Do you think you have enough left to destroy everything on the floor?’

He grinned maliciously, his teeth gleaming in the dark stairwell. ‘I’m willing to try.’

All the grenades he had remaining were tossed into the various corners of the room, along with the center. Then they were running back down the stairs.

The noise was deafening in the enclosed space, and the entire building trembled.

The space above them brightened as several of the windows on that floor were blown or the items blocking the light were abruptly burned away. The sudden influx of air fanned the flames, while also clearing the air of the aerosolized gases. There were continuous pops as the inhalers exploded, each one adding a little more fuel to the growing fire.

Yells came from above them as the other raiders stormed down to see what had happened.

Trace and Monroe waited a few seconds, enough time for them to settle into a pattern of yelling at each other before acting. They ran back up to the landing, turned the corner, and opened fire. With how closely grouped the people above them were, they hardly needed to aim.

Four more raiders collapsed to the ground in an instant. Each one having suddenly sprouted several new breathing holes they didn’t seem to know how to use.

“Well, that wasn’t too bad,” Trace affirmed, taking a careful step up the stairs. “Doing this is much easier, with another person at your side.”

They stopped by the bodies of the raiders and grabbed the credits from their crypto-vaults. Monroe swiped the grenades they were carrying, and then they took a second to look at their weapons. They were all carrying smgs and pistols. None of them were low-end stock models, but each had instead been modified by the raiders.

Trace set the guns to the side with a grin. “I’ll be coming back for those later.”

Monroe grunted. “Are you making a stockpile or something?”

“Just seeing which ones I like, and which ones I don’t. There are things I like and don’t about every gun in my collection so far. Maybe I’ll learn gunsmithing at some point and create my own. Until then, I’m keeping a list of what each gun does well.”

The big man patted his large assault rifle. “You just need something like this. Plenty of power, range, and accuracy.”

“Don’t forget, you have to be a giant to handle the gonk thing. If I tried firing that thing in any sort of speedy fashion, I’d end up on my back with a dislocated shoulder.”

“Hah, we just need to bulk you up some. Put more meat and muscle on your non-existent frame.” Monroe said with a laugh, slapping him on the back.

Trace looked down at himself and sighed. He had finally started to put on some weight, and this gorilla had to come along. Anyone would look malnourished and skinny next to him.

“I hate you,” He said morosely, going back to climbing up the stairs.

They peeked into the fourth floor and quickly realized that it was just miscellaneous storage for the entire building. There were boxes full of inhalers stacked alongside boxes of liquid ingredients used to make the drug. There were also boxes of ammo, food, and other supplies. However, the vast majority of it was taken up by the ingredients to create the berserk drug.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

The two shared a glance and grinned. Now this is what they were talking about.

With all that ammo, they would be set for a while, as they could sell the excess. Trace could use a fair portion of it, but Monroe’s portion would largely be sold. The only standard caliber guns he owned were his pistol and the shotgun. The revolver and the assault rifle both required nonstandard ammo.

The food, even if it wasn’t canned, would be welcome no matter what. As for the other supplies, they had yet to even look at those boxes and see what was in them.

Monroe left Trace to work on that floor, while he went up to the fifth floor and began moving the food cans down to his van.

On his first trip down to the truck, both hands carrying ammo cans, he grabbed his climbing ropes from the back seat. Back up on the fourth floor, he had to shoot out an opening in the window, which freaked Monroe out. He didn’t want to send the window plummeting to the ground or anything. All he wanted to do was create a large enough opening to lean out of.

After that, he would attach an ammo can to the hook on his climbing rope and lower it to the ground. When it touched down, he would shake it loose and bring the rope back up. It took hours to transfer everything down, and he used that time to make sure Stick-Point was completely up to date on everything.

Unsurprisingly, the protective job broker was less than happy with him, and subsequently Monroe, for choosing to attack the building. He understood why they had done it, and their thought process, shaky as it may have been at the time. Understanding why they had done something had no effect on his own emotions or his opinion in regard to their job performance.

With all the details in hand, he decided that the risk to their newly formed group was too great. Instead, he wanted them to stay out there for the night and keep an eye on the gang until reinforcement edgers arrived the next day. The new team would be the ones to attack the other base, while they would then be free to explore the ruins or head on back to the city at that point.

Stick-Point did make an additional request of them. He wanted a batch of the inhalers brought back. The older man assured Trace that these would not end up in the hands of any corporation. The edgers had their own resources and they would be using them to understand where the gang had gotten their information on the process.

It was the backup plan in case the gang boss refused to talk.

The back of his truck was full of ammo cans. All of the available space was taken up to just below the metal sides, with some more stacked higher in the middle. On top of the ammo cans, they had stacked the boxes of food they had found. The food turned out to be a mix of new and old canned goods. Everything was then securely tied down to ensure they wouldn’t go anywhere.

Inside Monroe’s Black Betty, the canned food they had found on the fifth floor was stored. Along with that were all the boxes of extra supplies. After opening a couple of them, they found out that they were full of soda cans, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and the like. One of the boxes was even full of nothing but water filters, which they guessed the group had gotten in payment from the raiders at some point.

Only corporations and rich people played around with filtering water still. Everyone else just drank soda like normal.

Night had fallen by the time they were done moving everything, including their vehicles, and had settled on the roof to maintain a lookout.

“I’m starting to understand why you wanted another person with a larger vehicle to help with this,” Monroe groaned out, popping his back as he leaned back. “I’m not sure how much money we’ll actually make this time around, as I think we both plan on keeping most of what we grabbed. If that wasn’t the case though, and we did sell it all…”

The large welder and edger whistled. “I don’t know, ten, fifteen-thousand credits… each? Those old food cans are worth a mint, and those filters have to be worth something decent as well. The rest of it isn’t anything special, but it all adds up.”

Trace nodded, keeping his eyes on the lit building the gang was using in the distance. “I wasn’t expecting a windfall anywhere near this scale, that’s for sure. I was thinking that we would be picking through the tenth floor for the best equipment that we could sell. I just know that during my past few jobs, there have always been items left behind because I didn’t have enough room. Equipment, and other pieces, that if I had been able to take, would have earned me another couple thousand in credits.”

“You have an interesting way of operating, that’s for sure.”

He snorted. “Interesting? That’s one way of describing my loot goblin lifestyle. I grew up with nothing, and so I refuse to let anything go to waste, that’s all.”

“You realize most edgers don’t even grab the weapons that drop around them, right? They’ll grab the credits in a person’s unlocked crypto-vault, but that’s usually it. Unless the gun is better than theirs, of course. They don’t go grabbing them to sell them, usually. There are a few who do, but most don’t.”

“That’s just stupid. They’re leaving so much money on the ground after each of their jobs.” Trace sighed and lightly punched the roof. “I wish I would have known that growing up. I would have just trailed every edger I met and picked up everything they didn’t want.”

“Yeah, that would have gone over real well.”

They let the silence linger for a bit before Trace broke the silence with a question. “So, after doing this job together, and what we did at the warehouse, do you still want to work together to get that truck?”

“I wouldn’t mind some more time to get to know each other. I think you were right on that one. But yeah, I believe I do. You don’t seem like the type of person who will stab me in the back over the first prize we come across. It’s obvious you’re hungry for credits, but you also seem to have come up with a decent method to earn them.”

He paused and stared at the slightly younger man. “The only thing that really concerns me is your secrets. We all have them, but whatever yours are, drew that bear aberration to your place. It didn’t break into your basement by accident.”

The skin around Trace’s eyes tightened. “And how exactly do you know that?”

Monroe reached into his pocket and handed a blank module to Trace. “I had that stashed in my van. After we finished moving everything into the vehicles, I retrieved it so I could give it to you. Recognize it?”

“Yeah, it looks the same as the other modules we retrieved from the agents in the basement.”

“Well, I doubt that one is running the same program any of theirs are.” The bald man replied grimly. “I took that one from the bear and had my tech-whiz friend take a look at it. They’re better at the hardware side of things, but they knew enough to do this.”

“What did they find?” Trace was probably supposed to be angry that the man had stolen the module, but at the moment all he had was curiosity. No doubt, the anger would come later.

“The module has an auto-loading program on it, one that compelled the aberration to track something down. My friend couldn’t tell what that something was, only that it was part of the aberration and that the program was making it sensitive to anything that called to it in a specific way.” He shrugged. “Again, not my friend’s specialty, so that is the gist of what they were able to understand.”

Trace carefully kept his face blank as his back went cold. The aberration had been tracking the nanites. Why right then though? Had they noticed Meredith’s little car after all? He severely doubted that either he or Deckard had done anything to draw anyone’s attention in the short time they had been at the warehouse.

He sucked in a long breath and shoved the module into his pocket. “Thanks for giving this to me. I have a friend of my own who will want to take a look at it. But really, you shouldn’t have taken it in the first place. We have been beating our heads against the wall trying to figure out why they all showed up like that, and the entire time you had the answer!” Trace yelled, finally beginning to get angry.

“I only found out last night. My friend took a bit to get back to me.”

“Argh!” Trace yelled at the sky in frustration.