The rest of the day with Noe had gone quietly with us both doing our work and I headed home and had a quick dinner before just dropping into bed early so Sanctum could get on with putting me back together.

I woke up quite late and felt like every joint in me needed to pop when I finally got up, I just stood there by my bed trying to stretch entirely until I was all loose. I then started some of the exercises I tried yesterday and found I could actually keep myself in balance as my muscles actually had their usual strength back, even the tiny ones.

Perfect work Sanctum, thanks for putting me back together.

[User isn’t totally restored to full function and will find their physical limits much reduced for a few days longer at least but with a focus on standard movement patterns Sanctum has prioritized recovery efforts to accelerate functional recovery.]

As long as I can wander the green viaduct level for a few hours there shouldn’t be an issue. I’ll go loaded but I don’t think there will be any combat or running. It’s just lining up some tripods along a really long pair of tunnels that wind around a bit. And a couple of bar walls and maintenance doors.

I headed out after saying goodbye to mom who was setting up to spend a day with her friends on some new incarna release. I thought about stopping at Noe’s and saying goodbye before heading out but it felt a little silly, I was only heading out for the morning and would be back by late evening.

Taking the subway west to the closest bend of the green viaducts was uneventful apart from a ganger group I didn’t recognize causing some trouble on the platform with a bunch of corpo looking people. Maybe some deal for something gone wrong? I was already on the train and rolling away before it turned violent so I’d never know the details.

Getting into the viaducts was simple with it just being a standard maintenance sector with little security. Just a chained gate to the storage warehouse that was the entrance to the green viaducts and then a basic security door and a little empty checkpoint to the viaduct itself. The digital lock on the security door was already torn off so I just walked through and entered.

On the other side was a wide staircase down to a very big tunnel that was mostly filled with two big pipes overhead and the walkway underneath that was split up into two lanes by a simple steel pipe barrier around hip height and the occasional supporting girder.

It was even well lit due to the viaducts being used for a roadway for small maintenance vehicles so there wasn’t any stumbling in the dark this time. I checked around the interior of the tunnel and confirmed there wasn’t an IR network down here. No IR clusters and no wall ports. All the data management for the local security was likely a closed system with a hub somewhere that connected to the IR network above, that would be my entry point. I checked my maps and found an emergency flood shelter about half a mile from the entrance I’d entered, perfect, there was almost certainly a security checkpoint inside there or at least an office and with it being a shelter it would likely be unmanned right now.

Arriving at the outside of the shelter a little while later I was surprised to find it open, the wide pneumatic doorway was open to the world but the inside of the shelter was dark and unlit. Maybe I wasn’t the only operator needing to access the security grid from here?

I approached carefully, hand on my pistol, and checked around the door to the bunker. No sign of forced entry, no dust buildup on the floor, no lights on inside apart from the ever present hazard lighting that barely counted as light, little red blobs in the darkness that vaguely hinted at floors and walls.

So the door was either accessed properly or hacked, not a problem there as I was going to try to hack it myself. The problem was this door hadn’t been opened for long, no dust around the frame or trash blown around near the doorway, it might be a bit cleaner down here in the maintenance tunnels but there was still wrappers and little bits of trash on the wind.

Someone was likely inside, they could be a hostile. There was also the chance of it being a tech-savvy homeless wanderer or an unrelated operator or some corpo hunter which would just mean a bit of conversation and maybe some posturing but we could work something out.

I pulled out my new smg, I didn’t have any smart rounds as Noe had said they needed special materials that her mom didn’t keep on hand. So the materials were on order, just some gas mixture for propulsion and some magnetic fluid stuff for gyro stabilization, only a tiny amount for each round but it still made them expensive. For now I had normal cold rounds, still more than enough to drop a civilian in a single shot though and this iron could dump them out at eight hundred rounds per minute.

The gun would be perfect for this little vault exploration, I switched over to the digital scope, bringing it up to my eye so I could see through the darkness with the NV setting and turned on the thermal overlay so not only would I see where I was going but anyone alive would light up like a neon sign to the sight. Not for too long if they tried to pull iron though.

Making my way into the room tactically swinging my gun around to check the corners as best I could alone, I made it into the middle of the little foyer and checked around using the scope for signs of an occupant. I was still hoping for hobo hacker, they’d be the friendliest option. No bedrolls or food here but they could be in another room, there was also no traps of any sort. I’d fix that.

I quickly lowered and stowed the smg at my waist and with one hand on my pistol to draw I reached into the bags on my rig and grabbed a flash bang grenade Noe had a pallet of for apparently parts and materials. Supposedly they were a shoddy make and were bought bulk at a night market auction a few years ago by Noe’s mom, now they were just routinely taken apart whenever they needed a grenade casing, or a trigger or whatever. I’d grabbed a few for traps along with some tripwires I’d made.

Setting up a simple wire trap between the two poles near the entrance took no time at all, the wire would pull less than a centimeter and the flash bang would pop half a second later. There was still a little way around the poles to get outside but hopefully whoever was in here would just run out quickly in a straight line.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

With that done I pulled out my smg and moved further into the vault. Still had the hazard lighting to draw the rough shape of the rooms and hallways even if they didn’t light up any actual space.

There was a wide hallway at the back of the foyer room, it then split into two going left and right. As I got to the crossroads and checked around I found the smaller hallways didn’t go far, but had two rooms off each. Three were as dark as the rest of the facility, but the fourth door was open and a little bit of light was spilling out of it. Not enough to be the room lighting, but maybe enough for a torch or some other device. I quickly and quietly approached this doorway being careful of traps or alarms but there wasn’t anything set up.

Getting to the doorway and posting up outside it I did a quick check of my iron. Loaded, cleared and safety off. I swung around quickly into the open doorway and aimed my gun into the dark room, pulling it up to my eye to look through the sight.

Instantly I could see two guys in there, one was sitting on an empty metal desk and seemed surprised at my appearance. The other was using a penlight to check through a drawer full of shards near a computer bank that was on standby.

The sitting guy quickly reached for his waist and I snapped the gun to him and fired a three round burst dead center. He didn’t even manage to pull his iron up to aim before my rounds had knocked him back against the wall hard with a spray of cooler but still warm blood spraying behind him.

This provoked the other guy to flinch in surprise and he quickly ducked down as I turned my gun on him, unfortunately I was left frozen for a moment as I couldn’t tell his status from the thermal imaging blob. I didn’t see him reach for anything as he ducked and he might be surrendering. Just as I went to touch the thermal imaging overlay on the sight off with my right hand he pulled something from his pocket and span around on the spot to throw it at me.

I felt a stabbing pain across my shoulder which caused my to stumble back as what I guess to be a knife deflected off the top of my arm and hitting the wall behind me. It still sliced me real good as it passed and I felt a hot wash of blood run down my arm. Then I hit the back wall of the corridor as I stumbled.

The hostile rushed at me and I opened fire with one arm, a five round burst. But the gun pulled high quickly leaving the guy only two rounds to flinch away from. As he got to the doorway though I got my hurt arm to my gun and settled it in a proper grip again and aimed it at him just in time for him to dash to the left and into the darkness, the only light of the little penlight in the room left behind.

I pulled my gun to my eye just in time to see his form flit passed the turn in the corridor to the foyer. I pulled myself up and started moving as fast as I could but just in time I managed to remember and quickly mounted up on the corner and shut my eyes.

Bang. I rounded the corner smoothly and saw the hostile on the floor on his hands and knees. He’d tripped over my wire just in time to get flash banged at close range. I aimed at the back of his prone form and put a three round burst into him. He dropped immediately with a wash of dim pink in front of bright red surrounded by green on the scope. Not exactly what I’d put on a vid screen for artwork but certainly quite striking. These rounds put my pistol’s nine millimeter to shame in regards to stopping power, that borg in the dark before would have been dismantled.

Stepping up to the corpse I scanned over it with the scope for obvious dangers but it was just an old dusty long coat with an empty, loose storage rig over the top of it, I used one foot to gradually roll the body over with it being a lot harder than I’d seen people do previously. I’d had to get the body to a pitch point and all the way it tried to roll back onto its front with its full weight.

Eventually a little struggle got the body to roll over onto his back and let me see the front of the rig was empty too with a set of three knife sheaths under his left arm with one empty. No other weaponry. Was he an amateur or a specialized pro?

I checked his pockets and found a coded note that meant nothing to me along with a receiver communicator, used to talk to someone but only one way and without being directly hooked to a grid on either end. Must be a low level operator if he was barely armed and using disposable communications instead of a fixer. Maybe he’s just starting out or building back up after a huge mess? Not important anymore.

Grabbing one of his knives from the sheath I buried it into his head and stood up and walked away. Marchand was right as usual, better to confirm. I headed back to the room I’d found him and his friend to find the friend still slumped on the desk where I’d shot him earlier.

Walking over I looked through his pockets and gear to find a cheap pistol, looked like a mercer model three nine millimeter but it was dark enough that I could be a bit off. Other than that he had a truncheon hidden on his back which was interesting as I’d only seen police use them in riot squads and only once in person. I unloaded the pistol and stashed it in my left rig bag, then stored the truncheon in a knot on the back of the rig. It would be a bit awkward to pull out but it wouldn’t be easily seen.

Pulling out my knife and stabbing the friend twice in the temple to make sure, I wiped it off on his shirt front and slipped it back in it’s sheath.

Hostiles dealt with and only a single flesh wound, not too bad. Kind of hurt now I was calming down.

Sanctum can you cut off pain to different areas now that you’ve go the medical suite?

[Removing pain would be an extreme risk factor for User health, it is advised to simply increase the resting stimulus level until the wound is not felt strongly until the new threshold is breached.]

Okay then. Do that then, raise the threshold for pain on that area. If that makes it hurt less and doesn’t stop it from moving around anyway. If you could just go ahead and do that for future wounds in general while out on operation that’d be preem Sanctum. As long as it’s not tying you up from other things.

[Sanctum is able to handle the assigned task with minimal issues now that the medical suite is installed. Applying changes.]

My arm started to cool down from the painful burning that was building up, then it prickled numbly for a few moments before it just felt normal. I could still feel the cut, like a feeling of a hole in a sock, but it didn’t actually hurt anymore until I tugged on it with my finger.

[Do not attempt to increase the size of the wound.]

Right, sorry. Was just curious if it still hurt under whatever you did. This works great though. It’s not bleeding anymore either which is nice.

[Sanctum dispatched a number of local nanite units to the area when the knife struck the User. They are managing the vessels in real time to allow recovery while bypassing the damage where possible to preserve arm function. Functionally Sanctum is using the local nanites as manual clotting and pressure regulation.]

That’s nova. No more wooziness from blood loss.

[The nanite management of the User’s body can still be overwhelmed through sheer volume of damage. Vital organs are also required to preserve life functions and continued nanite operation and replacement. In the case the User is subjected to high levels of harm then the nanite integrity preservation measures will not be able to preserve the User’s life. But as it stands the User will find it much more difficult to die in a casual manner with the installation of the medical suite cyberware, limited in function and quality though it is.]

So I’d have to put some actual work into it if I wanted to die? Damn, sounds exhausting. Think I’ll just live.

[That would be preferred.]

Thanks anyway Sanctum.