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

Trace was annoyed that he was going to lose his two favorite weapons, but at the moment, staying alive was more important. There was one thing he didn't take into account though, G1gl3Myte had no actual need for the gun. The man was an android with all the benefits that came with it.

He was halfway down the long hallway when a crushing punch hit him at the base of his spine. The force of the blow threw him forward a dozen feet and jerked his hands back, providing the force needed to pop the jammer out.

Not that it really mattered with him in that condition. The lower section of his lumbar spine had just been fractured. The spine was part of what the nanites had been working to integrate first. However, progress was slow on that front.

It wasn't fully broken, and there would be no need to replace it with a cyberware version, but it had been a close thing.

Despite all of that, the pain was real, and he was left sprawled out on the floor, only able to crawl weakly away.

Desperately, Trace sent messages to everyone he could think of who might be able to help. Namely Monroe, Stick-Point, Sabrina, and Revlock. He didn't have an exact location, but he had gotten a decent approximation after seeing the view from the window. After that, he sent a frantic directed order to the nanites, telling them to heal his lower spine. It would take a few minutes for them to get the pain under control, let alone actually heal the damage,

Every move from his lower half sent spikes of pain shooting through Trace, even as he kept trying to crawl away.

Behind him, G1gl3Myte began to laugh, while the nameless shadow agent merely walked alongside Trace. His boots were an ever-present indicator of his presence, as Trace used his arms to drag himself along.

"You know what? I can see why you edgers like this gun, especially with the mods you have on it." G1gl3Myte said a moment before a chunk of flooring was destroyed by a bullet mere inches from Trace's outstretched cyberware hand.

After hesitating for a couple of seconds, he completed the action, putting his hand down on the floor and dragging himself forward again. The sadistic man controlling the android repeated the action several more times, leaving Trace's fleshware hand bleeding freely from dozens of cuts.

"Why are you doing this?" He grunted out, trying to ignore the building pain. His face had taken its fair share of shrapnel from the floor-borne explosions as well. "You don't honestly think I'm the one who offed your previous body, do you?"

"Does it matter?" G1gl3Myte returned softly. "You matched a description. You had the right weapon and were in the right vocation."

"Apparently so were the previous seventy-two applicants," He spat out tiredly.

"True, and none of them survived either. Funny coincidence that," The android snarked.

Trace stopped, and letting out a hiss of pain, rolled over to look up at the ceiling. "You never even cared about finding who actually interrupted your silly business with those gangsters, did you? All you wanted was a reason to kill people."

G1gl3Myte's body went unnaturally still while the agent took several steps back. "I never mentioned what I was doing when the body was damaged." For a moment, his voice went so deep and was filled with so much anger that the voice modulator crackled, unable to handle the sudden stress.

Trace chuckled, each movement sending ripples of pain down his back. "Oh, didn't I mention that I actually was the one who shot your body in the back? It was so easy to do it while you were sitting in that chair, not paying attention to anything."

What he was attempting to do was a gamble, he knew that. However, he needed to buy some time for the others to arrive and rescue him. Something that he desperately hoped they were already in the midst of planning. If he had done nothing but continue crawling along the floor, G1gl3Myte would have simply shot him in the back in another minute and ended things.

At least this way, there was a chance the man might not kill him right away.

It might not be a high chance, and it likely would end up with him getting even more hurt. But it was a chance, and that was all that mattered right then.

Unfortunately, Trace had overlooked one thing. Under the current circumstances, he couldn't even be sure that the messages had gotten out of the building. He had yet to receive any sort of reply to the messages from those he had sent out earlier.

"Do you know what you interrupted?" G1gl3Myte ground out. His voice modulator continued to act on the fritz.

"Not in the slightest," Trace chuckled painfully from his place on the floor. "As far as I could tell, you were doing some a poor job of being a worthless gangster running half-credit weapons."

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"I WAS DOING A FAVOR FOR RYZYX!" The man roared, his voice crackling terribly at the end and then breaking with a muffled pop. "This unit cost me three times the normal amount." He said angrily, his voice now coming through a speaker overhead. "They wanted to create a new information network in the city and that was the method they chose. It wasn't my first choice either."

Trace's brow rose in surprise. "What does that have to do with what I did? I mean, sure, my original job was to disrupt the activities of the gang, but the job was canceled after the incident with you. They decided it was too dangerous for an edger of my tier."

"That little trick you pulled at the end convinced them they needed to go about things in a different way. Which I had been telling them the entire time. The problem is, I was indisposed at the time due to what you did."

Trace blinked and tried to shrug, the action painful enough that he couldn't finish the motion. "Sounds like a smart move on their part and bad luck on yours."

The knife-tossing agent exhaled sharply at that, hinting that it was the wrong thing to say.

G1gl3Myte straightened, slowly smoothing his suit as he turned to his agent. "Take him down one level and strap him onto the table below. Ensure none of the scientists or doctors get in the way. Send them to other projects on other levels if needed. I don't want to be disturbed while having my fun." The speakers above them were once again used to convey his voice.

The man nodded once and took the CD-10 from his boss before the android turned around and stomped off. Each thunderous step sent cracks racing along the floor.

"You're not too bright, are you?" The agent asked as he knelt beside Trace. He grasped the collar of his shirt and began dragging him toward the elevator.

"What choice did I have?" Trace gasped out. "He was about to shoot me in the back. At least this way I survived a little while longer."

"Sure, you survived… long enough for him to torture you."

"So, that really is what he's going to do to me."

"That's if you're lucky. You really made the boss mad with what you did."

"I think your boss is a tad bit petty," Trace muttered.

The man snorted, doing his best to not chuckle, his eyes flicking to the small glint of a camera in the corner.

With that, Trace understood the man wasn't free to say anything. They were constantly being watched. If the rumors were true, and what Deckard had found in the NetConnect was common for Corporations, then that was only a single layer of the surveillance he was under. The agent was likely always being watched by multiple programs inside his own head.

The elevator took them down a single level, and abruptly Trace's head began ringing with the arrival of dozens of messages.

As soon as they actually arrived at the new level, the ringing cutoff again. It was hard to say for certain, but it seemed like there was a small opening in the building's jamming between levels. What he couldn't understand was why the agent hadn't done anything to prevent him from taking advantage of it. He was holding the jammer module Trace had ripped free from his neck earlier. Did he not think he would be able to do anything when it happened… Or was this his way of offering him a chance?

Either way, at least now he knew his message had properly gotten out.

Trace was dragged out of the elevator and then set to the side while the still-nameless agent began yelling at all the scientists and doctors on the floor.

While he was busy doing that, Trace quickly read through all the messages. The gist of them all was more or less the same. 'Where are you?', 'What is going on?', 'Monroe says you were captured.'

He could only hope that the message he had put together earlier, and which had finally gotten sent in the elevator, answered their questions. It sucked that the message had taken so long to get out, but that was just the way his life seemed to work.

Without a word of complaint, all the workers on the level hurried toward the elevator. They didn't even so much as glance at Trace, keeping their eyes on the ground the entire time. Within the span of a few minutes, the previously busy floor had been evacuated and was now empty save for Trace and the agent, who had his face covered by a hood once more.

"Just how well do you have those people trained?" Trace asked, feeling a mixture of awe, fear, and pity for the people who ended up working for this corporation.

"You'd be surprised what people can be trained to do," The other man replied angrily.

"Yeah, well, I imagine these things help with that." Trace flicked a sandwich wrapper that had the distinctive label for Siren's Rush on it. "I knew they were using it on everyone else, but for some reason, I never thought you all would be using them as well." He sniffed in disbelief. "I guess it makes a twisted sort of sense though. Controlling the populace is good, but controlling your own employees is even better."

"Not all of them," He was told as his collar was grabbed firmly and he was dragged along the smooth floor. "Just people in certain positions. Those where they would tend to complain due to the nature of the work, and positions that require higher than normal clearance within the company. Such as anything on the top ten floors, or those on the sublevels."

Trace filed that away. This building had sublevels, which in Denver meant access to the underfloors. He thought about commenting on how chatty the man was being, but decided against it. Either he was trying to give him information in his own way, or he simply didn't think Trace was going to make it out of this alive.

At the moment, he really didn't want to know which it was. At least his back had mostly stopped hurting, though it was still fractured. The same was true for his neck. Which had also mostly stopped hurting, unless he moved it. However, the muscles had definitely been torn in it. There was no getting around that. Having the nanites heal everything was possible. It would just take more time than he seemed to have.

At least without the pain constantly bothering him, he could concentrate on everything else better. Maybe that would allow him to come up with something that would help him escape, or at least not get tortured.

Moving quickly was obviously not on the agenda, but he had to do something. Frankly, getting tortured just did not sound like something he would enjoy.

Without the constant bumps of pain from his neck and lower back, Trace finally remembered the multiple knives he had hidden on his person. He had his regular combat knife still, along with the tactical stiletto inside his boots.

Now was as good a time as any to try to escape before G1gl3Myte rejoined them. If he worked quickly, he might even be able to get his hands on his guns and even the playing field some against the android.

Careful to not let his breathing change, Trace worked his arm under his back and withdrew the blade. It was go time.