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

The ride up the elevator was fast enough that Trace felt his stomach get left behind. Even with that sort of speed, it still took over two minutes to get to whichever floor they were headed to.

Trace glanced over at the corpo agent, who wasn't saying anything. "Do you have a name? Something I can call you?"

"Does it matter? Either you'll be dead in a little while or you won't be. Either way, we won't be seeing one another again after today."

"Do you have to make it sound so ominous?" Trace muttered, leaning against the rear wall of the elevator. "I don't even know what is going on here. I was kidnapped from my home merely because I somewhat match some bounty posters your boss has been passing around." He felt at the cuts in his arm and chest from where he had briefly flexed the cable earlier, causing it to cut into him.

"If that's true, then you'll have no issue-"

Trace snorted, unable to hold the reaction back. "Sorry, I would like to believe that. I really would. I'm an edger though, I know how corpo's work, and you gave a rather wonderful example of it a few minutes ago. There's no guarantee I'll be let go, if for no other reason than because you want to keep some information about all of this secret."

The man sighed softly as the elevator slowed. "You're not wrong, but maybe you'll get lucky."

"Yeah, and maybe the steel goddess will suddenly decide humans are allowed in space again," Trace muttered in return.

There was a soft chuckling response.

The doors of the elevator opened and for the first time, Trace got a look at the inside of the building. It was a massive, towering megastructure, and they had come out on one of the top floors. Usually, the middle section of each floor in these buildings was devoted to an arboretum of some sort.

Trees and gardens, whether for food or looks and to keep the air clean, were a common sight. Each one took up the open middle section of several floors. Then there would be an extra thick floor to account for the weight of the next garden and it would begin again.

The floor they had appeared on had no such opening for a garden or greenery of any sort. Which could only mean that they were on one of the upper floors of the megastructure.

He was led out of the elevator and down one of the corridors to a nearby room that had windows looking out over the city. They were a lot higher up than he had first thought.

Leaning against the reinforced glass, looking out over the city, was a familiar-looking back of a male android. In the corner was a desk computer, a couple of shelves filled with odds and ends, along with a few comfortable-looking chairs, and that was it.

The place was spartan.

There was no sense of identity to it. If this was someone's personal office, they either had no personality or hated being inside the place.

"Here's the latest potential bounty applicant, boss." The man said, pushing Trace forward. He placed his CD-10 and revolver on the desk and then stepped back by the door.

"Latest potential applicant?" Trace muttered, his feet dragging slightly. "No wonder you didn't want to let him keep the money. How many people have you been presented with?"

"You make the seventy-third. The information I possess on the edger who wronged me wasn't exactly of the greatest quality." The android turned away from the window and took a step toward Trace.

"Wronged you?" He took a step back, doing his best to act like he didn't know what was going on. It wasn't a hard feat considering how scared he was at the moment. "I apologize, but I'm only a tier one edger, and I've only just become that. I don't think there are any jobs that I could have possibly taken that would have let me meet someone of your standing, let alone wrong them in some way."

"My name is G1gl3Myte," He said, introducing himself as he leaned close to Trace's face. "I doubt you have heard of me."

"Um, hi? I'm Tune, I guess, and no, I don't know the names of many corporations… executives? Higher-ups? Powerful people? Whichever of those groups you belong to, it's a category of social interaction I can't, or rather couldn't, even hope of achieving. Since there was no chance of me mingling with them on a job, I have never even looked up the appropriate names."

The android's eyes narrowed, and Trace swallowed as he leaned backward.

"What exactly is it you are looking for?" He asked the man in a strangled voice.

There was no plan here. Not with the knife-tossing super-corpo-shadow-agent standing by the door, and an android in front of him. All he could hope for is the man declaring that he wasn't the one they were looking for. That, or somehow being able to miraculously talk his way out of the situation. A chance that was impossibly slim, even by his standards.

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"Some sign that you recognize me or other usable bodily indicator."

"All I'm feeling right now is varying degrees of terror and discomfort. I honestly don't know if you would be able to read anything useful through those, and they are kind of the overriding and pervading feelings at the moment."

"Hmm, that is a good point."

Trace had no idea what to expect from this man. Everything he knew about him came from Atraxia, who hadn't exactly been the most forthcoming or emotionally removed of people when it came to the man. And his own searches had turned up nothing. He was a ghost, at least at the levels of information that Trace could access.

Deckard may have had better luck, but he was already swamped with a dozen different projects. He hadn't wanted to ask him to do one more thing at the time. Something that he was now regretting.

Without knowing anything about this man, he had no idea how he was going to react. What he was like, nothing. Trace would never proclaim that he was an expert on the human condition, but like anyone, he could at least make a guess.

Right then, he couldn't even do that.

The android's eyes zeroed in on his cyberware arm and the modified shoulder. He reached out and grasped Trace's sleeve, tearing it from his body and revealing the matte black arm.

"Hmm, well, this is different from what I was told, and you don't seem to have any issues controlling it either. I'm guessing that it's not a recent addition. I don't recognize the make or model though, interesting." The android ran a finger down the length of Trace's bicep before pulling his hand back thoughtfully, "Have you ever been to the scarpo towns outside of Denver?"

"Yeah, pretty much every edger has. Going to at least one of them is seen as a rite-of-passage, almost. Once you've done your first job in one, then you can start taking other jobs in the ruins or outside the city." Trace answered truthfully.

It wasn't a hard rule, but it was one that was still more or less followed by most edgers. It was even considered bad luck not to.

That matched what all the previous applicants had told G1gl3Myte. This entire hunt was growing more annoying by the day. There had been thousands of people who exited the wall that day, and it was unknown how many of them were edgers. The border police didn't keep exact records of that nature, and even if they had, it likely would have done them little good. Of those thousands, hundreds would have been edgers.

All the information would have told them was which edgers had left the city that day. Valuable knowledge, to be sure, but still nothing that would have helped them. Not without knowing what each of those edger's missions was, which was something that they would never get.

All he wanted was revenge. Why was it so hard to get that on some piddly edger!?

Trace backed away from the man. He had no idea what was going on and was still scared for his life. "Is there something you need from me? Anything I can do to prove that I'm not the one you are looking for?"

G1gl3Myte grabbed Trace's jaw, twisting his head to the left and right, paying no mind to the muscles tearing in Trace's neck as he easily forced it each way. If he had gone even a little further, Trace's neck would have snapped.

The casualness with which he had overpowered him shocked Trace. This was a man who was used to his android body. Each move had been precise and done to the limit of what the young man's body could handle, and no further.

It was a terrifying level of control and power that Trace didn't think he could match on his best day. It required knowledge of not only his cyberware but also the human body and how muscles and tendons flexed. What sort of person knew that information, and to such a degree, that its use had become so second-nature?

The powerful man threw Trace to the side, who promptly grabbed his neck with a muffled scream and barely held back from biting through his lower lip. He scrambled backward, keeping both hands on his neck to support it. He didn't stop until his back hit the wall and a dozen feet separated him from the insane man.

G1gl3Myte sighed and turned to the agent in the doorway. "He's too weak and spineless. Sure, he matches some of the characteristics on the bounty, but so have all the others. He's clear."

The man nodded and entered the room, grabbing the two guns from the desk.

Trace, meanwhile, got to his feet and keeping his back to the wall, began slowly creeping toward the now open doorway. He didn't trust that they would actually let him go, not after all of this. There had been no reports from Stick-Point about edgers making reports on being taken and then returned for the bounty. So, either they were being paid a large amount of money to keep quiet, which was doubtful, or they were all being killed.

Edgers died every day. That was a fact of life and a hazard of the job. Seventy-two might sound like a lot, and in some ways it was, but those numbers had been spread out over weeks. Still, he highly doubted they would be able to keep this up for much longer.

Just as he reached the door, the agent retrieved the two guns from the desk, one of them catching G1gl3Myte's eyes.

"Wait-" The android growled out, stomping over to his desk. He roughly tore the CD-10 from his subordinate's fingers. "Is this yours?" He demanded of Trace. "The one who wronged me, who destroyed my previous android body, did it using one of these!"

"C- CD-10s are popular gun models." He stuttered out weakly.

"With suppressors?"

"Yes. They're a decently powerful pistol that comes with a pre-threaded barrel. It is one of the pistols suggested to a lot of edgers by job brokers." He said quickly, his mind scrambling to come up with something.

It didn't matter if the man believed him. He knew he was dead either way. They had been looking for some reason to kill him. All they had needed was the justification, and now they had it.

G1gl3Myte leveled the gun at Trace, his face completely emotionless. "Die edger filth."

He ducked out the door as a bullet zipped by his ear, barely missing him. With a curse, he took off running back toward the elevator, desperately hoping to find it either still there or some stairs nearby. He used stealth steps while he ran. The odd movements that threw his weight all around would make it harder to hit him. At least, that was his hope.

While he was supporting his neck, he had also been working at the jammer stuck in the slots of his NetConnect. As soon as he could get it out, then he would be able to contact someone to come help him. Hopefully, before it was too late.