The need for credits reminded Trace that there was another option available to him. One that he had been putting off for a while now. He could sell all the locations of the scav dens to the reapers.

  It was something that he should have done a while ago when he first got the information. If he had, the reapers might have been able to save a lot of people by eliminating those dens. Instead, he had been greedy, and thinking about his own personal benefits. How much he would be able to get if he eliminated them all himself?

  It was perhaps a little disgusting to think that way, but well, he had to look out for himself first.

  Retrieving the list of locations, he called Stick-Point.

  “Hey, I have a list of scav locations to sell the reapers. I’m not sure how many of them are still valid, since the data is a little outdated at this point. Some of them might have been hit already. I have over forty-locations all throughout New Denver, and if they are willing to pay extra, I also have a few data prisms with extra information on them.”

  There was a sigh on the other end of the line. “Trace, you’re going to give me an ulcer boy. Hang on, let me send a message to the brokers who work with the reapers.” The call went silent for a few moments before Stick-Point came back. “Alright, I sent them the message. If you want to send me the locations, I’ll work with them to go through them all.”

  Trace had already prepared the list and hit send as soon as the other man said he was ready for it.

  “Huh, prepared, aren’t we?”

  “I’ve been sitting on it far longer than I should have been. It’s time for them to be eliminated.” He replied with a sigh.

  “Speaking of being eliminated… You wouldn’t happen to know a man by the name of Hobin-Jin, would you? Corpo suit works for Vinna-Kwoi. I had a visit from him earlier today. He had a few questions about you and your arm.”

  Trace cursed. “I’ve never heard of him or met the man. However, that visit yesterday, the one I messaged you about? Thanks for sending help, by the way. Those corpos were from Vinna-Kwoi and they were interested in my arm as well. They thought it was their property, until I actually showed it to them, and they saw up close how different it was from their model.”

  “You’re playing a dangerous game, Trace. You need to be careful.” The older man coughed and changed the subject. “Anyway, I’ll let you know about these locations and how much they pay for them and if they want the data prisms.”

  He gathered up a few supplies and went to the elevator. Taking it down to the basement, he unscrewed the control board off the wall and disassembled the buttons. Replacing the basement buttons for the elevator only took a couple of minutes. Taking out and replacing all the corroded wiring in the wall took a while longer.

  Next, he needed to replace the lights on the ceiling, none of which worked. They had all long since become rusted shells that were hanging on by nothing more than metal threads.

  How he was going to get up there to replace them all, along with their wiring, was another issue entirely. It was only after he had tackled the issue of light that he would start cleaning the basement up properly. The walls and floors all needed to have the layer of corroded concrete scraped away, along with all the other filth.

  That was for later.

  Back upstairs, he set about cleaning his guns and other equipment that had come along with him to the badlands. Everything had sand in it somehow. Even if it had stayed in the van and in his bag the entire time, it had still managed to get a few grains of sand.

  While Trace was cleaning his guns, he also took out the reloading equipment from the crate. He already had other reloading equipment, not that he had ever used it. In the past, ammunition had been expensive. Now he just needed to pick it off the bodies of his enemies.

  What he needed was a reloader that would work with larger calibers, like his revolver. His current setup didn’t allow for that. If he was lucky, maybe one of these new ones would.

  Nothing. They were nice units, one of them was even automated. All you had to do was fill each of the hoppers with material and it went to work for you. He’d keep that one. However, none of them fit any casings outside the standard sizes.

  That meant he would continue to be dependent on Monroe and his unknown friend for the foreseeable future. Not that he had anything against Monroe. They had already worked through the one issue they had before. It was more that he just didn’t like being beholden to a single person like that.

  The tall, six-foot-nine-inch, musclebound man himself showed up just after Trace finished cleaning the last of his guns. He was about to begin setting up the automated reloader when the large warehouse door opened, and Monroe entered while dragging a large pressure-washer unit. Most of its size was taken up by the large number of filters it had attached to it. The motor on it was no slouch either, considering it had to pump the water through all the filters.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Going to wash Black Betty?” Trace asked, glancing over at the van. “You might want to rename her Silver Betty at this point. I don’t know if there is a speck of paint left on her.”

  “Cute, but no, I’ll be taking a different approach to cleaning her. This is for you.”

  “Uh, thanks? It’s just what I’ve always wanted.” Trace replied with no small amount of confusion.

  Monroe rolled his eyes and dragged it over to the lift, the warehouse door closing behind him. “Come on, grab those hoses you were using before and hook them up to the city-water outlet.”

  Still confused, Trace followed along with what he was being asked to do. He connected each of the large hoses together and then dragged one end to the lift and the other to the outlet.

  Monroe screwed the end closest to him onto the pressure washer, after which Trace did the same to the water outlet. He flipped the nozzle beside it, letting the foul-smelling water flow.

  “If this makes the basement smell like sewage…” Trace began.

  “It won’t. Hopefully, now hop on. I want to see if this even works like what I was envisioning.” Monroe urged him along. “They used a slightly weaker one of these to clean parts of the semi earlier today, and let me tell you, these things contain more power than you might think.”

  Trace hit the lever, and the lift began descending until Monroe abruptly told him to stop. They had only gone down about fifteen feet, but it was enough to see the nearby corroded wall that was caked in years of filth and dirt from the water.

  “Uh, you might want to stand back for this,” The man said with a grin as he began turning the machine on to full power.

  A weak-thin stream of water shot out of the nozzle as Monroe moved the large wand into position. As soon as it was where he wanted it to be, he pulled the trigger, and a wave-shaped jet of water shot out against the concrete.

  At first, Trace only thought that Monroe was cleaning the wall, which was nice even if that had been all. Then he noticed something else. The concrete wall was less porous and jagged. The water was wearing down the weakened surface that he had originally believed he was going to need to work at manually.

  It wasn’t perfect, as the concrete hadn’t been weakened evenly, however, it was no longer dirty and jagged. The only area he really cared about being even was the floor, anyway.

  Monroe stopped after he cleared everything within reach and turned the pressure washer off. “What do you think?”

  “I think we’re going to need some wetsuits and something that will lift us into the air with this thing. There are a lot of walls and ceiling areas that we can’t reach from the lift. We’re also going to need to lift everything on the floor another few inches to make sure they don’t get too wet.”

  Monroe wiped some water from his face and gave it an experimental sniff, his nose curling in distaste. He brought the end of the wand to his nose just to make sure and shook his head. “Yeah, we’re also going to need more filters, a lot of them. Luckily, we just happen to have a lot of them in stock.”

  The extra supplies they had gotten from the job they had done right before he lost his arm were still in the basement. Everything else had been sold to pay for his surgery, but the various odds and ends and been harder to move on short notice. That included the box of water filters that they now had a use for.

  “How long do we have the pressure washer for?” Trace asked him as the lift took them back up to the main floor.

  “As long as we need it. The mechanic's shop wasn’t using it, so they’re letting us borrow it for cheap. I mean, let’s not go overboard or anything, but a couple of weeks shouldn’t be an issue.”

  “Sounds good. Why don’t you go get cleaned up? You smell like an outhouse reject. You’re not sitting in my truck smelling like that.”

  Monroe gave him the finger and jogged over to the outdoor sani-spray shower, making a quick stop by the water outlet to turn it off.

  Trace lugged the pressure washer and lengths of hose off the lift and to the side, before sending it back down to retrieve the truck. They would need the extra room it had in the back if they actually bought anything.

  Monroe had grabbed a pair of cleanish clothes from his van and already changed into them by the time Trace reappeared with the truck.

  “So, are you going to tell me what’s up with your arm?” Monroe asked after they had been on the road, heading to the black market for a couple of minutes.

  Trace swerved to the side, completely taken by surprise at the question. He knew Monroe had noticed the difference; he just had never expected the man to come out and ask about it so frankly like that. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel for a few seconds, thinking about how he should answer, only to come up blank.

  “It would be better if you didn’t ask about the arm.” He said at last. “All I can say is that it was done by a friend who wishes to remain nameless and unknown. I asked them a while ago if I could introduce you to them, and they said no. Sorry.”

  Slight lies mixed with the truth. He was simply swapping Deckard and the system he had created, for the most part.

  Monroe grunted; his expression unreadable. “I can’t fault you for that. It’s not like I have introduced my friends to you either.” He grew pensive for a moment and leaned closer to Trace’s face. “Is that why you were able to see in the sandstorm before? Did your friend also do you something to your eyes?”

  Trace blinked at him in surprise and began to laugh. “Have I really never told you? My eyes are mil-spec in origin. I plan on getting some work done on them at some point, but they haven’t touched them yet.”

  Monroe began to laugh as well, only for it to peter out a few moments later. “Wait, if they’re mil-spec, just how much of you is cyberware? Civilians can’t operate mil-spec hardware. You need the same mods that the military has in order to use them.”

  Trace shook his head. “What you see is what you get with me. Eyes, NetConnect, and now my arm. That’s it. Me being able to use these eyes is all due to some theory Sevorah had about the plasticity of their connections or something. At least, that’s what Stick-Point told me after she had already done the job. I’m starting to doubt she told him the actual truth though. Those may play a part in it, but I don’t think they’re the main element.”

  He shrugged. “Who can say? For now, I’m happy to have them, even if she didn’t tell me the truth originally.”

  https://www.amazon.com/author/joshuakern

  

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