Creating the hole was harder than he expected as the wall ended up being thicker than first expected. That was very good news for the stability of his warehouse. The laser welder wasn’t the best for welding steel plates together. However, as long as he increased the power and focused the beam properly, it worked.

  Several hours later, he had the basic space for the new workshop put together. It had mainly just involved scraping sections of the wall flat, and then putting pieces of metal against it to help hide the hole he had made for Deckard. The plates were then all bolted into the concrete to hold them up and welded together.

  After that, it was a simple matter of creating a basic room outline. Something he did using the massive tables he had been using outside the apartment. The elevator and the truck got a real workout, as it kept going up and down on a dozen little trips.

  Both of the 3D printers were moved down below, along with the desk computer.

  By the end of the day, the only thing still inside the apartment was his bed, clothes, and all the guns on the wall.

  Deckard and the entire server rack had been moved down below and into their appropriate positions. It still wasn’t perfect by any means; he had put it all together in a day, after all. But it did a much better job of hiding Deckard and getting all of the items out of his living space.

  The next day, Deckard truly got to work on his projects and Trace made a stop at the clinic to speak with Sevorah. She had a job for him.

  The front of the building was bustling with activity when he arrived. Anna was directing people as usual, but was also sorting items into two heavy duffel bags. She peeked around him and shook her head when she noticed he was driving the truck.

  “You’re going to need to head back and pick up that fast little car of yours for this job.” She pulled him through the crowd and nudged him down the hall towards Sevorah’s office.

  “What’s going on?” He asked as soon as he knocked on the open door. “This place is a mad house. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many people here before not getting treated.”

  “That’s because we aren’t helping them at the moment,” Sevorah snapped back. She stretched her head out and cracked her neck while taking a deep breath. “We’re a little busy putting a plan together for when you get Ko out there that we haven’t been able to do anything else at the moment.”

  “Right, Anna mentioned I need to get the fastback instead of the truck. Where are we going, and how fast do I need to drive?” When Sevorah had mentioned she had a job for him earlier, it had been odd, as she would have normally gone through a job broker. He hadn’t said anything and instead came right over. Now he was beginning to wonder if that had been the right move.

  Sevorah’s mouth opened and then closed as she thought the matter over. “How big is the back seat in your car?”

  He looked at Ko, who shook her head.

  “The back seat is big enough, but the trunk probably isn’t. Not with all of our gear, and his. The truck might be a little slower, but it is a better choice for this job, I think.”

  “Fine, but you need to drive as fast as you can. Your destination is the old Colorado Springs ruins and the scarpo town that exists in the old military base there. The woman who trained me, my old mentor, just sent me a message. She was injured in an attack and is barely hanging on. Ko is going to do what she can for her, and you are going to bring them both back as fast as possible. Is that understood?”

  Trace nodded, pulling up the map as she sent him the address. “Don’t worry, the truck is faster than she looks, even if it isn’t as quick as the car.”

  A few minutes later, they were tearing through the city on their way out. Both of the heavy duffel bags, along with a third one that contained a couple of tools that Ko might need to examine the old woman, were in the back seat. In the tool chest next to the seat, and hanging along the rear window, Trace had all of his guns prepped and ready.

  He had also prepared a new standard-style large backpack with all the pockets he could want.

  As soon as they were through the walls, Trace mashed the pedal to the floor and the truck jumped forward.

  “Have you ever met this woman before?” He asked Ko after a few minutes.

  The condition of the road was preventing him from keeping the pedal pegged to the floor. Unfortunately, there were too many canyons and towering rock walls on the way to their destination that would keep them from going off-road. At least for the first third of the trip. After that, they would get past that section of the area and then enter areas that had once been forested.

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  Some of it was still forested, as it had recovered over time. The massive fires that had devastated much of the area during the last World War. Unfortunately, in other parts, the damage had been too catastrophic, or corporations had taken the chance to move in and create compounds for their secret projects outside the city.

  “A few times in the early days of my apprenticeship with Sevorah,” Ko replied softly after a few moments of looking out the window. “Her name is Hannah, and despite being a mender, and a good one at that, she never approved of cyberware. She’s a purist, fully fleshware, without even a NetConnect. If she needed to do something, she did it with an ink-sheet, computer, or had someone else do it for her.” She told him bitterly, her left hand going to her throat unconsciously.

  “I take it the reason someone got their cyberware was never particularly important to her?” He asked softly.

  She shook her head. “No, all that mattered was that they were no longer pure.” She spat the last word venomously. “Let’s just say that she and I never exactly got along. Sevorah and her had more than a few fights over the subject as well. She was more than happy to take people’s credits to operate on them, but actually associating with someone who had visible work done… That was going too far.”

  “Is that why all of Sevorah’s augments are so natural looking?” He wondered curiously. “I mean, I’m pretty sure at least one of her hands is cyberware, but it’s like yours in that I wouldn’t have known it wasn’t natural if you hadn’t shown me.”

  “That is part of it,” Ko agreed. “Sevorah always had different ideas on the subject than her mentor, but you have to learn from someone, and a bond forms during that time. It doesn’t matter how irritating and backward thinking they are. That said, she wasn’t going to make things worse if she didn’t need to. So, when she did need to get the work done, she made sure it was as unobtrusive as possible.

  “Plus, she also wanted to test whether or not it had an effect on one’s mental state. It does, but only a small amount. Having your cyberware arm or hand too closely mimic your original fleshware actually becomes a detriment after a certain point. It is never perfect, and the person realizes that begins to notice every small detail that is wrong.”

  “Sevorah is certainly dedicated to her work,” He muttered. A quick glance in the rearview mirror revealed a couple of cars trying to overtake them in the distance. He pressed the accelerator closer to the floor and edged toward the side of the road, where the damage wasn’t quite so extensive. “What kind of welcome can we expect from her in this case?”

  Ko snorted and twisted in her seat to look behind them. “Normally, I would say she’d spit in my face and curse at us. Now that she and the little scarpo town she lives in has been attacked, who knows? The message Sevorah received this morning didn’t exactly contain a lot of details. All it said was that they had been attacked by raiders and that she needed help, fast.”

  “This old bag sounds absolutely delightful,” He muttered mostly to himself. Trace had dealt with his fair share of ridicule, unfair judgments, and more during his days on the streets. Purists were a group of fanatics that he had never had to deal with and was all the gladder for it. How the woman had managed to remain one while also becoming an accomplished mender was beyond him.

  Behind them, the cars slowly fell out of sight as he drove recklessly fast. The suspension on the truck and the large tires rolled over every dip and hole without a problem. The smaller, and undoubtedly faster car, with its large tires and tricked-out suspension, might have been able to do the same, but the ride wouldn’t have been nearly as smooth. It was probably a good thing that they had taken the truck instead.

  “We’re getting close to the turnoff,” Trace announced a while later. “Keep your eyes out for any traps or other problems. You said they were attacked by raiders unless they were completely driven off, then they are likely still in the scarpo town looting the place.”

  Ko held onto the handle above her head, as he abruptly spun the wheel and went off-road.

  The scarpo town was built into the remains of an old Air Force base. The place had been decommissioned and then turned into a museum. Getting rid of the country’s military had been a brilliant move on the part of the corporations. It had been terrible for everyone else, but it had been great for them.

  All the old fences around the base had rusted away over time or decayed due to the effects of fire and subsequent rusting. It was slower driving through the trees like this, but it let him avoid the road and anyone who may have been waiting for them there.

  Trace stopped the truck atop a small rise, hidden in the trees, and looked down at one of the buildings. The old apartment complex had been refurbished for the scarpo town’s use, along with a few of the other nearby buildings. Outside of the windows on the first floor that had all been destroyed, they still looked to be in good condition. The raiders hadn’t set fire to any of them or done anything overly destructive, yet.

  A dozen trucks and around fifty cars were gathered in the grass-covered parking lot of the apartment building. He knew not all of them would belong to the raiders, but unlike usual, none of the vehicles looked like typical raider fare.

  Sitting on the ground in front of the apartment buildings was a gathering of the scarpo town’s residents. Some were bleeding, a few lying still, obviously dead, and others were in the midst of yelling at their captors.

  “That can’t be all the people in this town. Can it?” Trace asked after they had been watching for a minute. “This place is huge, and that’s only a hundred people. There must be more groups somewhere.”

  “There are,” Ko agreed, handing him his scout rifle back. She had been using its scope to get a closer look at the people down below. “Hannah isn’t part of that group. I can’t say how large any other groups are, but there must at least be one more with her in it.”

  He sighed and began checking his equipment. “Well, this is going to be fun. First, I need to take out a bunch of raiders just to rescue the old woman we came here to get.”

  Ko rolled her eyes at him. “Oh please, don’t act like you aren’t going to be looting all the previously walking lootbags while I take care of her.”

  “Of course I am,” He grinned. “That’s assuming I get the chance to do any looting after all of this though. You might find her, and then just rush her into the truck.”

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