Trace delved into the towering piles of the junkyard, going ever deeper as he searched for something good. He could always visit the trash heap as well if he didn’t mind the smell, bugs, vermin, and general uncleanliness of the place. It was something that had never bothered him before, but now it suddenly did.

  He wanted to be better than what he was before, and part of that was not actively digging through the trash heap. Not if he could help it anyway. The junkyard was different. This place held an actual purpose. Even if it was being gradually lost with time.

  More and more, the junkyard seemed to be a place where scrap metal was stored. Sure, he still found used tech all the time, but the farther back you went, the less scrap metal there was. Of course, then again, the farther back you went, the less of everything there would eventually be.

  The junkyards all had large metal compactors at the very back of their yards. At the end of each week, a couple of piles would get thrown onto the belt and then squeezed into cubes. From there, they would be shipped off to one of the local metal recyclers.

  It was all in the name of freeing up space and keeping the economy going. Though Trace also knew that the place made a decent number of credits for each shipment it sent off.

  People could do the same thing, at least on a small scale. If their operation ever got too large, then they would need to start paying the junkyard a portion of their profits. As long as they kept it small enough, then the visits were free. Of course, you needed to have a vehicle to haul the metal away, and a crew to load and unload it all. You also needed to work quickly and find the right kind of metal, otherwise an entire load might only be worth a hundred credits.

  It wasn’t easy work, and whenever someone did manage to get a crew started, competition for positions was fierce.

  However, none of that mattered to him at the moment. All Trace cared about was finding some interesting items and good pieces of scrap metal that he could use later.

  He wasn’t looking for anything that would make him money or that could be used as a weapon. All he wanted was something that could be used as a project, something to distract his mind, and help him continue to learn and practice.

  Finding the scrap metal was fairly easy, as there were piles of it everywhere. Getting a couple of decent project items was harder, made more so as his requirements had increased from before. Most of the items he was coming across were simple pieces that he would have gladly taken before. Old appliances for the kitchen, or other places, such as attached to the vehicle in some way.

  Those were what most people tossed away and had junked. The more advanced items rarely got junked and were instead sent to other shops, as even in terrible condition, they often still held some value.

  Trace wandered the aisles of the junkyard for hours, slowly adding more metal to the bed of his truck. However, all of the even semi-interesting pieces of technology he found no longer met his requirements. Despite that, he was able to build up a collection of items that had parts he could cannibalize for something else.

  After a while, he was forced to give up on finding anything better and drove back to the warehouse.

  After parking the truck, he sent a payment to Georgie, slightly less than he had originally planned on, but still a decent amount.

  Inside the apartment, he quickly began transferring the various items from the back of the truck into the apartment. He would take them apart and sort the parts and various other items over the next few hours and days.

  One of the projects that Trace had been meaning to work on was his climbing gloves. They were meant to replace his old suction cups, and he had already bought all the supplies for it.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite ready to attempt something that delicate just yet. Working on gloves required a dexterity and skill that he wasn’t confident he possessed quite yet.

  For now, he would work on other projects using materials he gathered from the items he had brought back from the junkyard.

  Placing the first of the items on his work desk, Trace began to deconstruct it, placing each of the pieces in a different nearby box.

  He was well on his way through the third piece when he received a message from Revlock.

  ‘Are you available at the moment? A certain interesting woman we both know just requested a meeting.’

  Trace blinked, his mind taking a few seconds to catch up and understand what he was actually trying to say. His eyes widened in surprise and hope as soon as he caught on.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  ‘Send me the details, and I’ll be right over!’ He replied to Revlock.

  Next, he sent a message to Ko.

  ‘Revlock just sent me a message. That lady from before wants to meet again. Are you busy?’

  They were all dancing around the topic of who she actually was. He was just going along with it, though he had no idea why.

  ‘Let me know when, and I’ll be ready.’ She sent back a moment later.

  Revlock took a while longer to respond, but soon enough Trace had a place and a time. They would be meeting the woman at a high-end restaurant in two hours. Revlock would be there for the first few minutes to help things along, and then he would leave. This particular discussion would be between Trace and the woman alone, or rather, it would have, had he not also invited Ko along.

  Two hours later, a thoroughly clean Trace parked the car outside the towering building and opened the passenger door for Ko. He was wearing the same outfit as he had on their last date, while she wore an angled skirt and blouse combo. One side of the skirt was just above her knees, while the other side hung down below the top of her boots.

  Inside the building, they rode the elevator to the very top. They were escorted into a private room, and it was only then that Trace decided to remove his mask.

  Revlock made his appearance a minute later, and then a couple of minutes after that, the same android woman as before arrived. A perfectly formed brow raised in surprise when she saw Ko, the corners of her lips, curling upward.

  “I hadn’t originally intended for this to become a date spot, boy. However, I do suppose, it is the perfect place for that.”

  Trace snorted and shook his head. “While I won’t lie and say that I’m not enjoying the ambiance of this place, that was not the main reason I invited her. Ko is someone who has become an increasingly important part of my life. It was my belief that she needed to hear anything that you had to say concerning this matter.”

  The android woman nodded slowly and turned to Revlock. “I’m only here to make sure you both, well, three arrived safely, and to ask you one question.”

  She gave her permission.

  “Very well. I just need to clarify one thing. Before you mentioned eliminating a problem and removing a leak. I just wanted to double-check with you. That was the job broker Jonas the Slick you referring to at the time, correct?”

  She nodded once.

  He sighed and massaged his temples. “Thank you for doing that back then, and for answering my question. We had believed that to be the case, but wanted to be sure, just in case we may have missed something.”

  With that, he stood up, gave them all a tilt of his head, and then left the private room behind.

  “Before we get started, do you wish to order anything to eat and drink? Our meeting this time will be much longer than the previous one.”

  “Is that alright?” Ko inquired after a moment. “You won’t consider it rude to have us eating and drinking in front of you?”

  The woman laughed delicately. “Oh dear, I’ll be eating as well. That is part of why I chose this restaurant. They have food suitable for androids.” She touched her throat. “I’m not sure how extensive your own work is, but synthetic tongues have come a long way recently. Mind you, the flavors are still somewhat muted for androids as there were additional difficulties they had to overcome on that particular front. Still, I can finally taste food again, assuming it’s extremely sour, or spicy, etcetera. Then it just comes across as mostly normal to me.”

  “Interesting,” Trace quirked his head as he leaned back. “This might be ignorant of me, big surprise there considering how I was raised, but I never even thought about that particular aspect of your life. Wait, so does that mean you are actually in there tonight?”

  The woman delicately tapped on her head and nodded. “Indeed, my braincase is inside this android this time around.”

  Ko frowned and shook her head. “Isn’t that a tad bit reckless, considering who you are up against?”

  “And who is it that I’m up against, exactly?” She returned without missing a beat.

  “You never specified last time around, but I have been kind of assuming RyZyx,” Trace replied. “The operation I interfered with back then was theirs, after all.”

  “And that is exactly why I decided to meet with you again. Well, that and because he hasn’t been doing what I expected him to.”

  “Are you finally going to give us some names?” Ko wondered, leaning closer to the table.

  “Hmm, let’s see, you can call me Atraxia, and we’ll leave which corporation, or corporations I own or manage, a secret for now. As for the one you annoyed, while he does have an actual name, it’s rather plebeian. For the last fifty or so years, he has gone almost strictly by the handle G1gl3Myte.”

  Trace and Ko shared a look and then shrugged; they had never heard of the man before.

  “It’s not surprising that you haven’t heard of him. Even if I gave you my real name, you wouldn’t be able to find me either. People like him and me enjoy our privacy, and we spend a lot of money to keep it that way.”

  “Then why is he doing this?” Trace asked, completely perplexed. “All he is doing is bringing more attention to his existence.”

  “And that is why we are here meeting again,” Atraxia reminded him. “I expected him to keep things simple and small. To go after you himself, with a small team of people, instead, he has thrown the entire city into chaos over this event.”

  “Do you know why he might have suddenly decided to go down such a wildly different route?” Ko asked.

  “I might,” Atraxia hedged as she slid closer to them. Suddenly, she reached out and grabbed hold of Trace's matte black cyberware arm. “I have been monitoring you since our last interaction. Vinna-Kwoi is most interested in you and this arm. Despite appearing like they have turned their attention elsewhere; you are still firmly on their radar. I must admit to being curious as to how you managed it myself. That said, I was watching before they became aware of you.”

  The two were perplexed for a moment, until they remembered what had happened only a short time after his initial meeting with the woman. A certain little transforming car had made its appearance at the warehouse.

  “How closely have you been monitoring me and the warehouse?” He asked, swallowing heavily.

  She released his arm and slid back across to her own side of the table, completely relaxed once more. “In the beginning, not extremely, after Vinna-Kwoi made their appearance, I ensured my people paid far closer attention to everything happening there.”

  They barely held back the twin sighs of relief. That meant she might have missed Meredith’s appearance then.

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