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

It took twenty minutes for Trace to calm down enough for the adrenaline and fear that had been clouding his mind to begin clearing. As his mind started working properly, he stopped waiting for G1gl3Myte to simply come and kill him and began looking for another way out.

While there had been an exit for the stairs on the level above, on this floor, it was missing. One of the perks you received when you worked on this floor was you became a prisoner. No wonder all the doctors and scientists had been so eager to leave.

That left going through the thick windows or creating an opening of his own. Either option depended on the materials he could scavenge throughout the floor.

The first thing he needed to do before any of that was secure the elevator. He had already tried forcing the door open and had no luck, so there was no chance of him just sliding down the inside of it. However, he didn't want G1gl3Myte coming through it either when he least expected.

His electrical engineering studies each night had covered the basics of Arc Welders and how they worked. He needed a high-output energy source connected to a ground and a positive which would also be connected to a sacrificial metal of some kind. That metal would be what welded the two items together. Those were the basics at least, though the lessons had covered it in far more detail.

The point was with the items he was finding, he could actually make an arc-welder. It wouldn't be the prettiest, or most functional, item, but it would work to seal the elevator door shut. As a professional piece of equipment, it would be useless, but it would work for his purposes, and that was all that mattered.

A short while later, a scream filled the air as Trace boiled away a layer of synth-skin. He was working with what he had available, and that included poorly shielded low gauge wire. As soon as he hooked everything up and started welding, the wires had begun to melt and burned his fingers.

With tears leaking from his eyes, he went through the settings on his HUD and turned off the pain sensors in his synth-skin. A sigh of relief escaped his lips as blessed numb, emptiness filled the space where previously there had been nothing but pain.

Annoyed with his mistake, he quadrupled up on the wires, twisting them all together, and tried again. It worked better that time, and soon enough, the elevator door was completely welded shut on all four sides. The legs of a desk had been sacrificed, but it was a price he had been willing to make.

Now that the floor was secure -to his knowledge- he relaxed some and began to gather all the different supplies together in one place.

There was a lot there, and most of it was items that he didn't recognize. There were plenty of specialist tools, custom-built components, and various liquids, medicines, and other items. A lot of it more than likely probably would have been useful if he knew what they were. Instead, they belonged to whatever unnamed projects were being conducted on this floor.

Whenever he found one of them, he placed it to the side for later inspection. A few he might want to grab before he made his escape, while the rest he would destroy just for spite.

There was an excess of chemicals, none of which Trace could use. None of the teaching modules he had been using to that point covered the subject. He had no way of telling if they were all for medical purposes, poisons, or even explosives. As annoying as it was to ignore the resource, he was forced to leave them completely alone.

With little chance of him stumbling upon an already completed explosive, that meant he would need to find another way to get through the windows. Of course, even after he did, he still needed to come up with a way to descend the building- safely. That part was key. He could always just jump, but it wouldn't end well for him.

A part of him was beginning to wonder if that was why G1gl3Myte hadn't bothered to come down after he had killed the agent. The man wanted to see how he would make it out of the megastructure. He was just up there with the android version of popcorn, enjoying the show.

The floor was large, and the middle central area was filled with desks and tables. The perimeter edges were where all the testing rooms had been placed. The overall size of the floor was smaller than it should have been, but the wall that partitioned it from the half was solid with no visible door or other connecting item.

Regardless, all it meant was that there was still plenty of room in which he was able to find a lot of items. It would be up to him to come up with something useful.

There was so much there that he wanted to horde and bring back to the warehouse. Unfortunately, that was not to be. The best item he could come up with was a revamped version of the climbing suction cups. He had been meaning to turn them into a pair of gloves and gauntlets for a while and now he was presented with his opportunity. Not only were they his best shot of getting down, but they were also something that he had previously looked into creating.

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That meant he wouldn't be designing them from scratch. There would obviously be a fair bit of item swapping going on as he retooled the design to work with what he had, but he was confident that he could still get it to work. If he was lucky, it might even work out better than the original design. Or, at least, better for the current circumstances.

Over the next couple of hours, the revamped gloves and kneepads slowly came together. He had also modified a stationary laser into something that would take care of the window. Increasing the power output and refocusing the beam into something usable would likely destroy the unit. However, at least now he had a way out, as even his revolver ammo wouldn't have made it through the thick reinforced glass before.

He kept one eye on the countless security cameras placed all about the room. There were hundreds of the tiny objects embedded in the ceiling alone, and those were just the ones he had managed to spot. For whatever reason, G1gl3Myte still hadn't done anything and was simply enjoying the show.

He was trapped, and couldn't get any messages out, while no one could get to him either… at least not without a fair bit of difficulty. For the moment at least, he was secure and hopefully safe. If there had been fewer cameras, then he might have had more options, like using the nanites. However, he didn't dare reveal them under the current circumstances.

All of that meant he had no idea if any help had arrived yet, or if he was still on his own. All he could do was keep working on his plans.

Data prisms continued to fill the bag he had found, while components filled a second bag. This floor was a goldmine. Unfortunately, his time there had come to an end.

Trace placed both bags near the window and activated the laser. The focused beam started out strong but only lasted for thirty seconds before the focal lens on the machine ended up melting into a pile of slag. He had thought about taking the process slow, but decided it was not worth even attempting to draw it out pointlessly.

The laser had cut a little over three-quarters of the way through the glass, which was enough for a shot from the revolver to finish the job.

The last thing he needed to do was destroy everything that was being left behind. The plan to accomplish that was simple. He was going to overload everything on the floor. It wouldn't be explosive, at least not overly so. All the desk computers and equipment would be destroyed. Some of the super-capacitors would even be releasing bursts of EMP disabling and destroying the sensitive electronics.

It wouldn't be much in the grand scheme of things, but any damage he could do to G1gl3Myte was a good thing in his book.

Strapping on the kneepads and the gloves, he initiated the overload. Firing the revolver at the window, the glass shattered where it had been weakened by the laser. The wind rushed in, and he had to scramble to catch the bags before they were sent flying.

He gave the cameras the middle finger and activated the gloves and kneepads. Gingerly, he carefully lowered himself out of the hole and began his descent down the side of the megastructure.

By lowering the suction force of the gloves slightly, he could maintain a firm grip on the side of the building, while slowing sliding down the glass. Unfortunately, all of this had to be controlled manually, as while there had been the supplies to create a data port, he hadn't had the time to create and test a control program.

It took time, but he slowly slid down hundreds of floors, doing his best to ignore all the flying vehicles in the air. He rarely looked up this high and had never noticed just how busy the sky could be.

Finally, as he descended to the area below the fiftieth floor, communications came back online.

Message notifications began to fill the side of his vision, while Trace wearily did his best to hang on just a while longer. His neck was nothing but a mass of pain, and his spine had turned his legs into useless masses. Putting any weight on his knees hurt, but it helped to keep his speed slow.

Now that he was no longer being jammed, he was able to call Monroe and check in on everyone.

"Where are you?" He asked as soon as the man picked up the call. "I've managed to escape and am sliding down the side of the building."

"What do you mean, you are sliding down the side of the building?" Monroe shouted in surprise. "We haven't even managed to make it past the first floor yet. This place is a fracking fortress!"

"Well, I'm coming down the outside of it right now, but I'm hurt. Not sure how much longer I'll be able to hold on," His voice was becoming weaker by the moment.

Just descending as far as he had was already pushing him to his limits. If he had needed to put in any real effort at all into the process of going down, he wouldn't have even made it as far as he had.

Trace kept modulating his speed, his vision blinking in and out as he struggled to remain conscious. His arms jerked as his speed, which had begun to increase suddenly halted. The jerking motion on his neck was enough to knock him unconscious, as he continued to slide the final few floors to the ground.

***

Monroe and Sabrina spotted Trace as his unconscious body slid down the side of the building. Using the thrusters on her mobile fortress, she carried Monroe into the air, and together they caught and then forcefully plucked him away from the glass.

It took more effort than expected, but they managed it easily enough.

A few moments later, they were inside her trailer while another member of the group was behind the wheel, driving them away.

"How is he?" Sabrina asked, climbing out of her mech as it settled into its normal position inside the trailer.

Monroe plucked the bags from his shoulders, placing them to the side and inspected his friend's neck. "Look at these bruises. They look bad, like the entire area has been bleeding beneath the surface." He carefully ran his hands over the man, searching for any bumps that would hint at additional bruises. They both hissed in pain when Monroe eventually revealed the massive, misshapen bump and purple bruise on Trace's back.

"What did G1gl3Myte do to him?" Sabrina whispered in horror, her hand covering her mouth.