Trace decided he could deal with the crappy sound, as long as he could actually hear the voice of the person inside the braincase. His opinion might change depending on what happened when he plugged in the speakers though. If all they did was scream at him, then those things would be quickly going back into the closet.

It took some work to get the old monitor connected. He had to heavily modify the connector before he found the right combination needed to get it to work. Even when he did, the overall quality had taken a very noticeable hit.

A few seconds after he had plugged in the monitor, a blinking line appeared in the top left corner of the screen.

Trace blinked in surprise and leaned back. That was decidedly not what he was expecting to see. He soon found that wasn’t the biggest surprise the odd braincase had been hiding.

- Host in a comatose state due to catastrophic loss of oxygen and nutrient solution

- Initial brain damage repaired repeatedly over the last 47,424 days

- New damage suffered and repaired due to extenuating use conditions

- Coma condition has been maintained for the safety of the host during this time

- Apparent rescue conditions have been met by the individual identified as Trace Delevey

- Beginning host wake process, please hold on

Trace read everything on the screen three times before he finally cursed and began to laugh in surprise. The stupid thing had almost gotten him. If whoever had made the prank hadn’t put such a ridiculous date in it, he might have even believed it.

The braincase looked old but not one hundred and thirty years old. Still, it was an awfully advanced prank to put on something like this. It had known who he was. Granted, that wasn’t hard to learn. His new NetConnect was probably broadcasting his identity or something. Which meant he had missed a transceiver of some sort when he examined the braincase earlier.

Considering how custom and old the thing was, he supposed that was possible. Annoying, but possible.

Still, a weird amount of effort to go through for a prank, and one that still told him nothing about the condition of the person inside.

“Fracking weird prank aside, I still need to find out how the person is doing before I decide what to do with this thing.” He muttered, his fingers beginning to tap on the floor in annoyance.

The previous text vanished from the screen, only to be replaced by a new, even weirder command.

- Requesting that the individual known as Trace Delevey press his finger into the nutrition mix hole of the braincase

“Ugh, no, that’s unsanitary for whoever is in there. I think?” He wasn’t actually sure. Now that he thought about it, that part of the port was exposed to the air, so it had to have some method of being cleaned.

He reached for the hole and then pulled his hand back several times. Each time wondering why he was even considering doing this. It was a simple, strange prank message, nothing more. Yet, part of him wanted it to be something more. That was the part that kept trying to stick his finger in the hole. The other part was busy convincing him that some sort of finger-eating device was going to snatch his digit whole as soon as he did what had been asked of him.

Still, eventually, his finger disappeared into the nutrient mix hole.

The tip of a finger could be replaced or regrown fairly easily these days. It would be expensive, but depending on the method, it wasn’t a permanent loss of fleshware either. It made the decision to take certain risks easier in the end.

He felt a clamping pressure on his finger and the bottom of his stomach dropped through the floor. A trickle of blood made its way down to his palm before the pressure on his finger eased up and released it.

In a rush, he pulled his finger back out and held it up to his eyes for inspection. It was still whole. The nutrient hole hadn’t tried to eat his finger or cut it off. Instead, he now had a thick band of dark gray matter squirming about beneath his skin.

As he watched, the band slowly diminished in size until it vanished entirely. All that remained was the general ache in his finger from having whatever it was injected and a slight reddening to the skin in that area. Outside of those two things, you would never know that anything weird had just happened to him.

Trace backed away from the braincase and the slowly blinking line on the monitor. Suddenly, he wasn’t so sure this was a prank anymore. The level of tech involved in doing what it had just done went beyond just some weirdo’s apartment project.

That had been corporation-level shizz pumped into his finger.

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Which left only a few options that he could think of. Either he had really stepped into it big time on accident and gotten involved with some corporation's secret scav project, which was a possibility simply because they were acting differently than normal. Or, he really had found some mysterious braincase from a hundred and thirty years ago.

There were a couple of other options as well, but they were less likely and hardly worth considering.

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Nothing happened for several long minutes until he felt a tickle begin at the back of his neck where his NetConnect was. The odd sensation continued to grow and climb up his brainstem until it reached his eyes. His brand-new eyes began to twitch and act in ways they generally weren’t supposed to before calming down a few seconds later.

Finally, the blinking line on the monitor changed to something new.

- Connection to the individual known as Trace Delevey has been established

The line of text was erased, and then the monitor went dark as it went into standby mode. The connection to the braincase had been turned off.

In the corner of Trace’s vision, a now familiar-looking, blinking line prompt appeared.

- Trace Delevey has been tasked with protecting the host brain until consciousness has been reached. Is this mission agreeable? Reward will be a full body nanite scan, followed by all possible muscular and skeletal repairs.

He glanced down at his finger in sudden understanding. That was what had been injected into him, nanites. He had heard about those, but they were considered lost tech. One of the steel goddess’s projects that no one else was allowed to work on for some reason.

“Um, yeah, I’ll do what I can to keep the braincase safe, I guess.” He agreed.

It was an easy promise to make when he had no idea what might be coming for them. What he did know though, was that he needed to find some way to hide it.

“Wait,” He paused in a half-standing position. “How long is it going to take to wake your host?”

The line blinked a few times.

- Unknown

- Due to the length of the host’s coma, the process will begin at a slow pace and ramp up as certain markers have been achieved.

“Well, that doesn’t exactly work for me. I’m not going to be guarding some braincase for the next fifty years just for that reward you promised me. Odds are I would be dead by then.” Trace finished standing and began gathering up his stuff.

The now pointless monitor and unused speakers went into their previous box and then shoved back into the closet. At some point, he would need to go through the place and start throwing out all his old useless projects.

Just because he had been able to fix some of the junk didn’t mean anyone wanted to buy it. As far as he was concerned, a lot of the items had served their purpose as pieces of learning. It might be worth it to salvage a few of the rarer items from a few of them, but that was it.

Maybe tomorrow…

While he was putting those items away, the line of text in his vision had changed several times without him acknowledging it.

The text began to grow in size as he continued to ignore it until he was forced to pay attention to it.

- Individual Trace Delevey’s concern has been noted

- Alternatives are being generated

- Trace Delevey has been registered as a user

- First reward will begin to be administered tonight during the user’s sleep state

- User is to ensure that they have eaten a full meal beforehand as resources will be needed for repairs

- User needs to deposit a source of metal in the stomach for additional nanite construction

Trace groaned at the ridiculous demands. Now the tiny little robots were wanting him to eat metal as well.

“Is there a specific metal that you would prefer, or another method through which you could absorb it? Humans are not typically supposed to eat metal.”

- Titanium is requested

- At this time, the stomach is the only available distribution port

- Another port may be constructed in the future

He raised his brows at the casual mention of it adding some weird port to his body. Scratching his head, he looked around the apartment, looking at his tech and what it was made of.

Titanium was expensive in large amounts. However, it had become somewhat common to use small amounts of it in many things. It was just a matter of telling whether or not he had any items like that.

Well, he had been considering throwing out a lot of the old tech anyway. This gave him the perfect excuse to go through it all and scavenge the useful items before he did just that.

Trace pushed the large empty crate he had taken from the scav den to the spot beside his door and got to work.

Everything he had gotten from the scavs was pushed to the side and forgotten about for the moment. He had another project that had taken over his thoughts.

One piece of old forgotten tech after another was placed in his lap and carefully dismantled. His nimble fingers and old tools worked well together as they went through the familiar dance. For each item, he would zoom in his new eyes, and check everything over. With the increased magnification, he could easily spot places where he had done bad solder jobs or had missed a broken diode or other item on the boards.

It was informative, and incredibly useful information that would help him the next time he was fixing something. At the moment though, he was playing the destroyer.

His pile of capacitors, EEPROMs, and more gradually grew as he went through each one. The only pile that didn’t really grow was the one containing the titanium fragments. He had only found a few pieces of it, and it had all been lower grade as well. Nothing too exciting, in other words.

Over the last two hours, the crate had filled up with junk and was close to overflowing.

There was still more in the apartment, but it was past time to go to bed and he was exhausted. Trace quickly downed a bland sandwich from the vending machine in the hall, carefully swallowed each piece of metal with hefty swallows of soda, and then collapsed on his bed.

It had been a very long day.

The worst, and the best, he could remember having in many ways. The job itself had been an absolute joke. Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong! At the same time, he had walked out of the place alive, and with more money than he had ever had before. Not to mention his new cyberware upgrades.

There were also the promised rewards from the nanites. As far as he knew, those things weren’t capable of lying. It had been an odd day, so who knew at this point?

Of course, it hadn’t been all good things. He supposedly had a group of scavs that might be coming after him now.

Maybe everything would look different in the morning. He doubted it, but he could certainly hope.