Created G.H.O.S.T. System - A Cyberpunk Story

Over the last few weeks, things had begun to change in the area around Trace's warehouse.

Ko had taken her test a couple of weeks earlier and passed it with flying colors. She had also agreed to purchase the building that the Midway Gang had once used. As a mender, she had been given an extremely good deal on the place.

As a result, the area had been undergoing several changes. It seemed as though people liked being near menders, and businesses had been opening one after another. At the moment, his warehouse was slightly closer to Ko's eventual clinic, but was somewhat more akin to being in the middle of the two clinics.

Regardless, he ignored all of that. He did his jobs, worked with Monroe, spent time with Ko and Deckard, and otherwise lived his life. It was nice and had given him some time to work on his various projects.

Deckard had been busy as well, making inroads to many of the corporation's servers, along with those of the Denver Government. It had taken him some time and careful maneuvering, but he was finally ready to begin activating each of the programs he had spent so much time placing inside their servers.

All that was left to do was decide on the time to begin the first of their operations.

Strangely, there had been no further word from G1gl3Myte, or Atraxia, for that matter.

The silence from either of them was more than a little unnerving. Ultimately, there was nothing that could be done on the matter. They simply didn't know enough about the two or have enough access to their corporations to learn more about either of them.

Trace had made a few more improvements to the railgun and started creating a schematic for a smaller pistol version of it. He was able to do a full scan of the weapon using the same method he did with all the cyberware augments for his internal library. It wasn't quite as good, or as detailed. However, it did provide him with enough information for his own purposes.

The server and its capabilities had also been expanded upon. In the meantime, Deckard had finished going through all the data prisms that Trace had swiped during his capture and subsequent escape. He had found a lot of interesting plans, many of which hadn't been completed yet. They were all in various stages of being researched or otherwise worked on.

Only a few had been completed to an even semi-usable stage. Not that Trace would be able to create them with his current abilities or resources. At the moment, the two were studying the various plans, both completed and otherwise, and thinking about ways to integrate them into their own uses.

It was a long-term goal.

Regardless, the last few weeks had been busy. At the moment, Trace was staring at the heavy door he and Monroe had finally hauled back from the eastern junkyard. It was a massive thing and had been an absolute pain to install, a process that had involved them ripping out the old one and then reinforcing everything. No one and nothing was getting through this behemoth. It would be easier for them to go through the wall again than try breaking through the door itself.

The trailer and semi-truck had been invaluable for transporting this particular monstrosity. Then, once it was in the basement, they had needed Sabrina's mobile fortress just to unload it and wrangle it into position. Something that she had not been happy about, at least originally. Having her prized mech treated as a construction tool rankled her sensibilities. In the end, the opportunity had let her properly meet, sort of, Deckard, the programming whiz that she had been hearing whispers about for a while.

They were slowly becoming an unofficial trio of sorts that shared certain projects. Deckard did all of their programming. Sabrina was the official hardware genius. While Trace was working to catch up with her, it would still take a long time.

He was the type who could kludge a working prototype together from scraps, usually. Whereas Sabrina's mentality was unusually strict in that regard and didn't let her step too far outside the established schematic and materials. Trace's, in turn, had developed a fluidity due to how he had been forced to train himself.

Trace spun the wheel on the heavy door, lifting the rods built inside the door. Making the holes and reinforcing them had been an unexpected pain, but it had been worth it, in his opinion. He and Monroe had created oversized holes and stuck thick, walled metal pipes inside.

Opening the door, took a bit of effort due to its size and weight. What he was looking for was the tunnel beyond. Ever since they had dumped those bodies down there, the tunnel had slowly begun to become more active. It was something that he and Monroe had noticed as they were removing the old door. The sewer tunnel floor and walls had been licked completely clean.

There was no trace of slime, old runoff water, or other detritus that had fallen down from the streets above. The area outside his basement was sparkling clean, and it made him wish he had bought more security cameras. Honestly, it would have been a good idea to set up a few in the sewer, and it annoyed him that he hadn't thought of it before.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

He would need to order a couple later.

Closing the door again, he spun the wheel and pushed the matter from his mind for the moment. He had something else he needed to be doing at the moment. Heading up to the main floor, he checked that his bag was on the passenger seat of the car, along with his suit helmet. He was already wearing the stealth suit itself and had his pistol and revolver in their concealed thigh holsters.

***

"You're early," Trace muttered softly, glancing to the side.

Kenshin walked into Pushman's living room, with the man himself a few steps behind him. "Barely. The rest are right behind me." He came to a stop beside the couch Trace was sitting on. "Are you sure we can trust this man, Marek?"

Trace's eyes flicked over to them both. "For anything else, no idea. He's human. On this though, oh yeah. These are the same corporations that attempted to experiment with his town. If Ko and I hadn't been there, to set things right at the academy scarpo town and send them back… It's highly likely that his town would have been completely lost."

"What is the relationship between all of them and Edgewater?"

"That… I don't know. Not outside of the obvious, anyway."

The sword-wielding man nodded silently, walking over the closed door that led out to the small balcony, and looked out through the window. "How have you been since the bounty was revoked?" Kenshin and his group had also been involved in his rescue that day.

"Just healing up while doing my best to stay busy," Trace muttered in annoyance. "Just because the bounty was revoked doesn't mean people have completely stopped trying to collect on it, only mostly. At least the gangs have begun to settle down… somewhat." He finished with a sigh.

Before they could continue the conversation, the rest of the group showed up and rang the doorbell. Pushman went to invite them in, and they waved to Trace as they all came inside. The last two to show up were Monroe and Marek, the Manitou Springs scarpo town supply team leader. Trace had only officially learned his name when the man contacted him with information a few days after he got back from the tower.

The man had learned a few things from the corpos they had taken hostage after retaking their town. He had been adamant about repaying his debt to Trace and Ko, and the only way he could even think of beginning to do that was with information.

So, they had gathered the group together in Pushman's apartment to talk about Edgewater. Now, they were just waiting for him to make his appearance.

Trace pushed Pushman towards his office. "Go on, gather your materials, and anything else you might need. We'll be counting on you to make sense and use of everything Marek tells us. I'll let them in when they arrive."

A few minutes later he was back out in the living room, spreading materials across the small table while the others talked above him.

Trace perked up as he received a message from Monroe, his partner, letting him know they were in the elevator. "They're almost here."

Marek nodded to Trace as he entered the increasingly crowded apartment. His eyes zeroed in on the map Pushman had placed on the short table. At the side was a small legend containing dozens of lines of information pertaining to the neighborhood.

"No, that information is wrong. Well, partially," He corrected himself. "All four of them are working together, but the primary corporations are EdibleEats and Sekmore. The other two get their drugs from them, and then combine and further refine them to fit their needs. All original drug creation is handled by those two corporations, at least that is the case here."

Pushman quickly made an addendum to his notes using an ink-sheet with its pen and waved for the man to continue.

***

Everyone else had left Pushman's apartment after the meeting save for Trace, and Pushman himself.

"How helpful was his information?" Trace asked the man, as he followed him into his office.

"I can't say just yet. Some of it was helpful for sure, though not immediately useful. A lot of it merely filled in gaps or corrected misinformation I had gathered. Which is useful in its own right. I'm hesitant to place an exact value on this meeting just yet because of those factors. We're still in the information gathering stage, and correcting misinformation is intensely important."

Trace cocked a head at the wall. "Still at the gathering stage. What's this then?"

The man coughed lightly. "A thought experiment, nothing more. I like to be prepared."

"Uh, huh? Well, be prepared towards Siren's Rush," Another plan, this one more complete, though still lacking information in several key places, appeared on the wall. "Ah, good. Still haven't managed to get those last few pieces, though?"

Pushman shook his head. "No, and this plan actually needs to be revised. The new security measures they have been implementing have changed far more than initially expected. It's like a stack of cards with them. They change one thing, only to realize that it affects several other systems, so they change those, and soon all the cards have been touched in some way." The disgust in his voice was apparent.

"How long before they, uh, stop touching cards?"

"I couldn't even begin to say. Anyone, even halfway competent at their job, wouldn't even need to do it in this way to begin with. With whoever they have running the show… It could just be an endless loop of incompetence that, oddly enough, keeps everything secure."

Trace ground his teeth together before nodding. "Fine, keep an eye on the situation when you can. But I want you to focus on two other people and their corporations for the moment instead. One is G1gl3Myte, the frack-holed braincase, slot-sucking-" He sucked in some air and cracked his neck in an attempt to cooldown. "The other is Atraxia. She is also in a braincase and goes around in an android body. They are both over one hundred years old, I know that much. I don't know what corporations are hers, but at least one of his is called Semya."

Pushman wrote the name down. "You got it. Anything else?"

"No, thank you, though, I'll be sending you some credits in the next few days for everything," Trace told him, appreciatively.

The man waved it away. "I'm glad to help when it comes to these corporations, you know that."

"I do, but these two people are different. Besides, this might be your extremely weird hobby, but you're good at it. Might as well be paid for it. I might not be able to give you a lot at the moment, but I can certainly help ease the bills some."

Pushman laughed. "Trust me, I'm not hurting just yet. Job brokers at my level may not get paid as well as some of the higher tier edgers, but I'm certainly making more than you, and more consistently at that."