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

"I thought something had happened to you two when I didn't hear back from you for so long!" Sevorah shouted when Ko parked the truck behind the clinic.

"Something did happen," Ko mumbled tiredly, laying her head on the steering wheel. She had dark circles beneath her eyes from exhaustion.

Trace hopped out and opened the front passenger door that concealed the still-unconscious Hannah.

Anna wheeled out a height-adjustable bed, bringing it as close as possible to the door. Despite herself, she still let out a small gasp when she saw the older woman.

Hearing her reaction, Sevorah hurried around the front of the truck and finally laid eyes on her mentor. Her hands went to her mouth, barely holding back her own shocked gasp as Trace carefully lifted the woman from the seat. She was much heavier now than she would have been before. Nothing he couldn't handle, but it was enough that he still needed to be careful about how he lifted her.

Sevorah helped him place her on the bed, which Anna proceeded to wheel into the building without even waiting for directions.

"What happened?" The mender snarled, lifting Trace up by the outside edges of his armored vest.

"Corpos," Ko mumbled from inside the truck, her voice barely coherent. She had remained awake long enough to reach the clinic, and now that they were here, she was already almost asleep.

"Corpos?" Sevorah hissed softly, a brow raised in disbelief.

Trace tapped her hand and tilted his chin away from the building and the truck. They needed to get away from the woman trying to sleep inside his truck.

"So, the situation wasn't nearly as clear-cut as you made it sound." He began when there were almost a dozen feet between them and the door where Ko was sleeping. "When we got there, we found them being invaded by a team from another scarpo town. However, that team had been drugged by DelGreen and had a couple of corporate weirdos with them. When we found Hannah, she was being operated on by the two corpos."

He proceeded to fully explain the situation to her.

"She made the right choice in that case. Hannah wouldn't have survived the trip back without the extra work. I'm not saying she had to fully install the legs at the end, but it would have only taken a little more time to finish the job." Sevorah sighed and looked over her shoulder. "I'm going to have to seriously start thinking about her graduation procedures now."

"What happens then?" Trace asked, more than a little curious as to why she had been delaying the process as it was.

"It depends on what she wants to do. However, strictly speaking, she will need to make her own clinic." She answered simply.

His brows furrowed at the reply. "Is that some sort of regulation?"

Sevorah nodded. "Ko will have a six-month grace period, but that will be all."

"No wonder you've been putting off her graduation procedures for so long." He muttered.

Her head whipped around to look at him. "Did Ko say something?"

Trace waved away her concerns. "No, nothing like that. It's just… I knew she was good. Then, watching her in the hospital, I realized just how much I had been underestimating her abilities. She really does know her stuff."

Sevorah relaxed and ran a hand through her hair. "It's true. She does. There are a few things that I still wish to cover with her more. But honestly, her knowledge and ability are far beyond that of any new graduate mender. The problem is what goes into creating a clinic of her own."

He groaned. "I hadn't even thought about that." Trace glanced at her, and then at the building. "Is that part of why you have been buying all the equipment?"

She scratched at her nose. "Partly. Now, if you would make sure Ko gets to bed safely, I would appreciate it. I need to go take care of Hannah." Sevorah looked up at the sky and groaned. "She is going to be a pain when she wakes up. She hates cyberware."

"Yeah, Ko mentioned that before."

She winced at that. "The two of them haven't always had the most pleasant of exchanges. Anyway, I should get in there and do what I can for the old bat."

Trace gently picked up Ko from the driver's seat and moved her to the passenger seat. He placed a light kiss on her temple and closed the door. He could bring Ko to her apartment, or he could bring her back to his place, which was closer. He also didn't have the keycodes for her apartment.

A few minutes later, Ko was laid out on his bed while he was asleep on the floor.

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***

When Trace woke the next morning, the floor was cool, and looking toward the bed, he could see that Ko hadn't moved at all. She had truly been exhausted.

Well, he certainly wasn't going to be the one to wake her up. As far as he was concerned, she could sleep for as long as she wanted. In the meantime, he would take a bottle of water and a sandwich down into the basement, where he could work on some projects without disturbing her. Truly moving everything down there had been a good idea, and this was just one more reason why that was the case.

Down in the basement, he waved to Deckard's camera and sat in front of the computer. There were a few items he needed to do still before he could fully lose himself in a project down here. Namely, installing sensors and cameras on the first floor around the doors and other openings. He needed to be aware of when someone showed up.

First, he actually needed to order those items, which is where the computer came into play.

After that, he could begin working on the myriad of other projects that he had in the lineup.

He had slowly been collecting the cards of each black-market company he worked with. Most of them had encrypted websites that he could access through the cards. They were useful for components and anything you didn't need to try on. The prices were a little higher as they needed to be delivered. The price of convenience and all that. However, he truly couldn't ignore the ability to order whatever he might need without leaving the warehouse.

Trace glanced at the current amount of credits in his account. He sighed and revised his list. While he had money, it wasn't enough to splurge on everything he wanted. The cameras and sensors came first, dropping his balance to just five thousand. He had been getting extremely lucky with jobs and payouts lately, and he knew that couldn't continue.

Originally, he had been content to spend his money as soon as he got it. Now, he was starting to think that he needed to do something more with it. The question he needed to answer was what that would be.

He had no idea what corpos or rich people did with their credits. Did they simply save them?

It was a question that he had never even thought to ask before that moment and was something he would have to talk to Stick-Point about later.

Rolling away from his computer, he moved over to his work desk and continued to work on taking apart the android body. It was a lot of slow, careful work, but he was learning a lot. All of the dead cyberware parts that he had gathered together to take apart to learn from were nearby. Whenever a section on the android body was too difficult, he would switch to one of the other parts in order to keep learning and making progress.

Trace had been working down there for several hours when Deckard's avatar made an appearance on the screen above the work desk.

"I have some news," He announced without preamble. "First off, the government of this city is very corrupt and very loaded. I've managed to install a backdoor into their slush fund account. As long as we don't take too much, too often, we should be able to use them as our personal piggy bank. Alternatively, we could just empty the account in its entirety."

"How much is in there?"

The avatar slowly grinned at him. "It fluctuates a fair bit, but at the moment, there are seven and three-quarters of a million credits."

Trace exhaled and blinked. "How-" He swallowed dryly. "You said it fluctuates; how much do you think we could withdraw at a time without getting caught, and how long can we go on for?"

"It's hard to say. The account is set up in such a way that makes it hard to track these things, at least from the backdoor I created. They may have another method. I can say that most of the withdrawals seem to be on the higher side. I'm talking fifty to a hundred and fifty thousand, though there are plenty above that as well."

"So, if we keep them between five and twenty thousand, then we would probably be fine?"

Deckard nodded. "It's hard to say how long we would be able to keep it going for though. I think we could probably get between forty and fifty thousand a day. However, that might be pushing it."

"I would think so, yeah. Once or twice might be fine, but if there is something I know for sure, it's that criminals keep a close eye on their money." Trace placed his elbows on the desk as he thought. "Do you have a few different accounts to run the credits through and then destroy?"

"Yup, it's all taken care of."

Trace nodded once and leaned back, his eyes going to the lights above. "In that case, see if you can get into their regular accounts as well, then empty the slush fund of everything. With that much money, we can outfit Ko's new clinic, just buy you a working android body, and get all the server parts you need to overpower whatever you come across."

The avatar chuckled darkly. "Now that is a plan that I can get behind. Give me a day or so to get everything in order. I've already looked at the other accounts. This was simply the first one I gained access to."

Trace nodded, not even wanting to guess how the other man had done it. Crypto-vaults and accounts associated with them were cryptographically protected. They weren't exactly easy to work through by their very nature.

"Oh, by the way, Miss Devko has just begun to stir," Deckard told him with a wink.

Rolling his eyes, Trace got up from the chair and hurried up the stairs. At the top, he found Ko sitting up in his bed, rubbing her eyes. Even without natural eyes, some actions simply remained ingrained in the very fabric of our being.

She yawned and stretched, noticing the pillow on the floor. "Thanks for letting me take your bed, and for watching over me."

He waved her thanks away with a grin. "I couldn't exactly take you back to your apartment, now could I? You've never given me a key to it. Unlike myself, who oh so generously gave you one to my own humble abode."

She snorted. "Puh-lease, you've given keys to this place to how many people now? Monroe, Sevorah, Stick-Point, myself, and probably a few others. I'm hardly among a rare crowd there."

He gasped and slid to the floor. "I had no idea my key got around so much. It's practically a streetwalker."

Ko laughed and sent him a message with an attachment that contained a key to her apartment. "There, now you can quit being so dramatic."

"I could, I suppose, but it's rather fun. Honestly, even if I'd had this last night, I'd probably have still brought you here since it was closer." He walked over to the bed and put his hand on her head. "How are you feeling? That surgery really pushed you and then I made you drive all the way back to the city as well. Sorry about that."

She shook her head. "It needed to be done. Both of them. As for me, I'm still a little tired, but I'm doing better. I am starving though, the nanites certainly earned their keep last night."

He paled at that. "So, the damage was worse than you were letting on."

She held her fingers a centimeter apart. "Maybe a little. I knew they would fix me right up. They were already working on it by the time you had dragged me out of the shower."