Trace broke off a small piece of the calorie bar and put it in his mouth. He didn’t even bother to taste it before swallowing it. Almost immediately, a stream of notifications began to stream down from the upper-left of his vision. The sheer quantity momentarily distracting him.

  He cursed softly and could only let the nanites continue to work at eliminating the contaminants in his body. This was definitely the real deal, a calorie bar made by DelGreen. It wasn’t something made by some gang. Those notifications had all been about mind-altering substances.

  He stuck the bar into a secure pocket and began to wonder what was really going on. Just from how everyone was acting, it was clear that the people from the Manitou Springs scarpo town had all been affected. What wasn’t clear though, was when had they come under the drug’s effects. Before they went home, or after?

  How much of what everyone had been told was a complete fabrication? And why were they doing all of this to Hannah?

  “How many should we leave alive?” Trace asked Ko as they checked their weapons.

  “Just enough to answer some questions,” She replied darkly.

  It mattered little to her if they were all under the influence of something. The actions they had taken were all reprehensible. Besides, the current circumstances were somewhat similar to what happened when someone went cyberpsycho.

  “Alright, let’s do this. I’ll take out the two working the surgical equipment first. Once this is all over, just let me know what you need, and I’ll get it for you.” Trace told her as they got close to the door.

  “Hit their NetConnects first, as they are jacked into the consoles. That serves as their primary connection to the machines. Their hands are manipulating the bioware installs. It’s actually rather impressive. Still, to do as little harm to Hannah as possible, take out those spots first.”

  He nodded and performed an S&R scan just to firmly set their positions in his vision, bringing up his pistol he aimed at the first target. Kicking open the door, he squeezed the trigger, the bullet taking the woman right through the neck. A beat later, a hole appeared in the man’s neck as well. Two more shots took them each in the shoulder, ripping their arms from the surgical controls.

  The shotgun coughed in rapid succession; the pellets firing out in a tight cluster.

  Within moments, the room was completely still, save Hannah’s pained cries.

  Ko rushed over to the surgical console and pushed the two bodies aside. She retrieved her own data-cable and carefully jacked it into the machine. Taking control of it as she began to work on Hannah.

  “These old machines were meant to be operated by several people or over a much longer period of time than we are used to these days. Even complicated modern surgeries only take around an hour. In the old days, when this technology was new, it was common for them to last between twelve and twenty-four hours to install a piece of cyberware.” She said slowly, the words coming in a halting fashion as operating the machine took all her focus.

  While she worked toward saving Hannah, he moved the bodies and slapped the faces of the two Ko had left alive. Both had been wearing bulletproof vests on the outside of their clothes and had been knocked out after receiving the full force of the shotgun blasts. A little prodding of their chests revealed them to be more squishy than normal, leading Trace to believe that a couple of their ribs had been broken.

  They were still alive, though, depending on the internal damage, that might not be the case for long.

  He slapped them both again, urging them to wake up. Pained groans filled the room as the two woke, foamy blood leaking from the corners of their mouths.

  “What were you doing here?” He demanded, poking them both in the chest. “Why did you do this to Hannah, and why did you attack this scarpo town?”

  “What are you talking about?” The man on the right asked, with a bloody-filled cough. “Who’s Hannah?”

  Trace put some pressure on his chest. “The woman on the operating table. What happened to her?” He growled out.

  “It wasn’t us… who did…” He coughed again, a wheeze filling the room as he struggled to breathe. “I don’t remember we went to get supplies from our usual contact in Denver. We were eating a meal, and then everything becomes fuzzy.”

  The man next to him was in a little better condition, though he seemed equally confused. “I vaguely remember that there was something going on at our town when we returned, so we came here for help… Then it all just becomes a blur. I think we attacked these people, but I don’t remember why.” His brows came together as he struggled to remember what had happened.

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  Despite everything, Trace didn’t think the two were lying to him. He had heard the story of Ko’s mother, and others like her. Some remained cognizant of what they were doing, even as they were driven by an extreme hunger. Others were overtaken by a sort of fugue state that messed with their memories. They were the lucky ones, as they didn’t have to deal with the memories later.

  Unfortunately, if they were telling him the truth, then that didn’t actually help them this time around. He might be able to get the details on who their supply contact was. But that was it. They didn’t really have anything else to tell him.

  “It doesn’t seem like these two have much to tell us,” He told Ko, as she worked. “I’ll have to ask some of the others we skipped on the way here. Now, what do you need me to do?”

  Ko closed her eyes and swallowed, her robotic voice coming out as barely more than a whisper. “Put the bodies on the table next to her. I’m going to need to salvage parts from each of them. Then I need my supplies from the truck. I have no idea where everything is here, and those bags have the basics more than a lot of this.”

  Trace finally understood why she had made him promise that he wouldn’t hold what she needed to do against her. Ko was doing something similar to what the scavs did, at least in her mind. Personally, he had a slightly different take on it, since he had already done the exact same thing a couple of times already. However, maybe she was afraid that seeing the entire process completed in its full bloody glory would be different for him.

  He quickly secured the two-surviving people together, making sure they wouldn’t be able to escape easily. It would have been better if he’d had Monroe’s jammer modules right then. The best he could do without outright killing them was to make escape difficult and remove them from the same room as Ko.

  One by one, he dragged the bodies over to the table and then hauled them onto it. The limited space available on its surface quickly filled to capacity and beyond as he also took a moment to strip them of their gear and clothes for her.

  With that done, he left her to her work and dragged the last two from the room and out to the waiting area. The four in that area had woken, though they looked utterly confused and more than a little lost.

  “Where are we?” One of them asked Trace when he appeared, followed by a gasp when they saw who he was dragging.

  “You’re inside the scarpo town at the old Air-Force academy outside the Colorado Springs ruins.” He told them as he none-to-gently released the two he had been dragging along. “Your group came here after your supply run and took over the place. I don’t know all the details or the extent of the damage, but I know that at least several of their people are dead.”

  “How many-” The girl gasped and looked away. “How many of our group are dead?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know how large your group was originally when you arrived here. I took out a few of your group at the apartment complex and down below on the first floor. We mainly tried to avoid casualties since we didn’t have the full story.”

  It took them a moment to understand what he was getting at. If they wanted to prevent more of their people from dying, they needed to help.

  “Look, I need to go get some medical supplies from outside the building, and I will undoubtedly run into more of your people if I hurry. The question you need to answer is if you will be of any use to me. Will they even pause or recognize you in their current state, or will it be faster for me to just shoot them all in the leg?”

  “I’d at least like to try,” One of them said. “If nothing else, I can help you bring those medical supplies back. Consider me a witness for the others, that you aren’t just mowing them down.”

  Trace snorted at the idiot’s audacity. “You people invaded this place and have been killing these people. If I wanted to do the same, there is nothing stopping me, especially out here in the wastelands. I won’t turn down some help carrying the bags though. Now get up. We need to hurry. I’ve already wasted enough time talking to you all.”

  He pulled the man to his feet and removed his bindings, pushing him toward the door with a tilt of his head. “The rest of you… Don’t get any funny ideas.”

  He really didn’t want to leave them outside the area where Ko was working. But he needed to get those supplies for her, and she still had the shotgun and the mono-filament whips attached to her fingers. So, she was far from helpless or unarmed. It was just a less than ideal situation, was all.

  With a growl of annoyance, he pushed open the door, and the two headed out.

  It only took a minute for them to come across the next group, one that he and Ko had avoided earlier. It turned out that they did indeed still recognize their team member, enough to put down their weapons at least. Once Trace entered the room, they scrambled to pick them back up. Thanks to the distance they had already put between themselves and their weapons, it was easy for him to put a single bullet in each of their legs.

  The pain, more than the act of going unconscious, seemed to be what helped clear their minds.

  A minute later, they continued on, a limping troupe of five bleeding people coming up behind them.

  In the end, they were able to secure all of their remaining people with minimal difficulty and several of them without even removing the fugue state. Trace and Ko weren’t the only ones who wanted answers, it seemed. As more of them became aware of what happened and where they were, the more they wanted to know what had occurred to them while they were in that state.

  As such, the need to capture a few people without waking them became a priority. It took a few tries, but by the time Trace walked out of the building to the truck to retrieve the bags, they had several people already being questioned by the others.

  Everyone congregated outside of the surgical area, where he passed off the three duffel bags to Ko.

  She promptly opened one of them and removed a jet-injector along with several vials. A few moments later, and after several puffs of displaced air, Hannah’s cries had finally begun to quiet as she fell into a numb sleep. The anesthesia meds in the room were missing, and she hadn’t had the time to tromp through the building looking for replacements.

  It was only when Trace appeared with the bag that she had been able to finally numb the woman’s suffering.

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