Trace was carefully shaping the light armor, removing small amounts at a time. The individual sections were meant to be attached by themselves instead of placed on a suit like he was attempting to do. It was why the shaping he was doing was taking so long, as there were several extra items that needed to be removed.

  Slimming them down also removed some of the padding behind the impact plates.

  While he was working on the mostly mindless activity, Trace was also using his new knowledge to construct a weapon. Ko had mentioned using some of the drugs as poisons in the future. While he was a bigger fan of simply killing things in one go, he also understood that might not always be an option.

  For now, he was designing a sort of small hand crossbow that would be strapped to the back of his left hand, or possibly the wrist. He could either add a powered element to it or pull it back with his right hand.

  There was also the possibility of turning it into an extra addon for his cyberware arm in the future.

  His mind was alive with ideas and things he could modify or change. Even with the new knowledge, he was content with taking things slowly. Trace was aware of his limitations and that nothing had changed, at least not right away. He might have the knowledge, but he still lacked the skills and equipment to take advantage of it. The skills he could and would acquire within his enhanced teaching modules. The equipment, however, would be another matter altogether.

  The new 3D printer could do a lot, but it was only good for creating general items. Anything that needed specific and tight build tolerances was another failing. Higher-quality printers had solved that problem to a remarkable degree, however, in the end, it was still a general-purpose printer.

  Of course, there was nothing saying he needed to create each of the items himself. He could order them made or order the parts and then put everything together on his end, as the case might be. It was simply a matter of how much he was willing to let his designs leak out of his control.

  Trace dropped the last piece of light armor that he was going to shape that night. Both of his vibro-blades needed to be sharpened, but at least he was done. He had gotten careless on a few of the pieces, but mostly they were fine.

  He was stripping down to his boxers, getting ready for bed, and a round of learning when the screen for Deckard’s avatar came to life.

  “Good, you’re still awake. I’ve found something.”

  It took him a moment to understand what he was talking about, but once he did, his mind was suddenly wide awake. “You did? What is it?”

  “That’s the thing, it’s a, I suppose you could call it a disorder in your brain. Whatever they did back then made it so the pathways in your brain are carrying nearly triple the amount of electricity. It is still nearly nothing. However, the brain wasn’t meant to handle that sort of extra load. Not constantly, in any case. Every once in a while, things get crossed, and well, suddenly Sunday tastes like strawberry, right is left, and then your tongue is tingling. Really, you’re lucky nothing worse ever happened.”

  “Lucky, yeah, that’s the first thing that comes to mind when I hear brain damage.” Trace ran a hand over his face as he sat on his bed. For some inexplicable reason, he wasn’t feeling too great at the moment. “Is there anything we can do about it?”

  “The nanites might be able to take some of the extra energy that is being generated?” Deckard suggested doubtfully. “At this point, whatever they did was done so long ago that it is literally a part of who you are. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to even start solving something like this. I can maybe put together a few things that help mitigate the problems it causes, but that is it.” There was a pause. “How were you keeping everything under control before?”

  Trace shrugged. “I started eating better, and that seemed to do it. Not overloading my brain with informational downloads probably helped as well.”

  “That is less scientific and useful than I was hoping,” Deckard said drolly.

  “Not sure why you were hoping for more. You know how poor I was back then.”

  “Yes, but I thought Stick-Point might have provided you with some sort of help in this matter.”

  “I never told him about how bad the issue was. Besides, he is prevented from providing that sort of aid to an edger, even just an aspiring one at the time.”

  When it became clear that he wasn’t going to get any more useful information on the matter from Trace, Deckard changed the subject. “Very well, since this is outside of my expertise, do you mind if I send the information I gathered, along with my observations, to Ko? Afterward, I’ll begin creating a hotpatch for the nanites that pass through your brain.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.” Trace didn’t care if Ko got a close-up look at his brain. “Just make sure to remove any mentions, images, or whatever that might hint at the existence of the nanites. She’ll undoubtedly need, or at least want, to show it to Sevorah.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  ***

  His morning notification was sitting in the corner of his vision when he woke the next morning. Skeletal system integration was as slow as always and barely made any progress. It required a ton of titanium and had started out at four percent completed for some reason. Since then, it had moved almost point sixteen points of a percent. It was truly going to take a while for it to complete.

  However, there was now a new line that had been added to the notification.

  - Muscular System Repair (Percent Completed): 88%

  - Skeletal System Integration (Percent Completed): 04.158%

  - Energy Diverted (Percent of Nanite Destruction): 03%

  The nanites weren’t meant to store energy, and doing so would slowly destroy them. Only a small amount of the energy would be used or passed off to the other nanites as they went about their duties.

  It wasn’t a huge number of nanites that were being destroyed, but it was a constant expense. One that wasn’t offset by the number he constantly created.

  Still, at least for the moment, the matter would remain mostly under control.

  Trace sharpened his vibro-blades while eating breakfast and then went back to work on his stealth suit. With the shaping of the light armor plates done, now he just needed to find a way to efficiently fasten them to the suit. The 3D printer would also create sections to hide anything he needed.

  The stealth suit was a truly simple affair. It was nothing more than a black one-piece with fitted light armor sections attached to it. The stealth aspect would come from the tech that Trace would be adding to it later on.

  For now, it would be done through optical-based camouflage sections that used a special color-changing paint. Multiple microdot cameras placed all over the suit would help to ensure that the camouflage matched the area correctly. It would be controlled through an application on his HUD that Deckard was creating for him.

  Sourcing the paint would cost the last of his money, which was something that Trace was not exactly eager to do, yet again. He had already emptied his account enough times that he had grown leery of that particular bad habit. As a result, while he needed that paint and other items. He wasn’t quite ready to buy them just yet.

  He wanted more of a credit buffer first.

  Before all of that though, he first had to secure the light armor sections and complete any last-minute shaping.

  Over the next few hours, he worked on the armor and answered messages from Stick-Point and Monroe. A glue was used to attach the armor pieces to the suit. That was only the first step, in order to help him put everything in the right place. Once that was done, they would still need to be secured properly later.

  The strength of this stealth suit was in its name. It was meant to help Trace sneak around. While the armored plates were ostensibly light armor, at that point, it was more in name than function. He had shaved so much off during the shaping process that they were more akin to ultra-light armor plates.

  It would be lucky if they could stop more than one ten-millimeter round, and anything more than that would be pushing it.

  Stretching out his back, Trace finally set everything to the side a while after lunchtime and went down to the basement. He finished cleaning the ceiling and then began removing the old lights and putting in the new ones.

  Deckard was waiting for him when he finished everything that day. “I found something on a corporation’s server. One of the corporations related to RyZyx has several androids stored inside level ninety of a megastructure in downtown Denver.”

  “RyZyx, huh? That could be trouble. I can definitely understand why they would have android bodies, but that corporation isn’t one to be easily messed with. If we wanted to steal something from a corporation, they would be the absolute ones at the top of the list that we would not want to mess with.” Trace told him, explaining the details of his earlier job and then the meeting with the mysterious android woman afterward.

  “You’re right. That doesn’t sound like someone we want to steal from.” Deckard agreed after a moment’s thought.

  Trace eyed his unfinished stealth suit, his fingers tapping on the desk. “If I can finish the stealth suit, and modify my climbing equipment… And assuming you’re able to help while I’m inside, then it might be possible. Maybe it would still need to be carefully planned out, and it all depends on how good the place’s security is, of course. I’m hoping that it isn’t as up-to-date as their main headquarters or the megastructures that are actually under their name.”

  Deckard was silent for several moments. “It varies from floor to floor. The basic security for the entire structure isn’t that high. As long as my connection isn’t severed, and you aren’t too overt, I can keep your presence hidden. However, the floors in question are a different matter entirely. The network lag caused by all the hops I’m doing in order to keep this location safe and hidden might be an issue. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to keep up with everything at that point.”

  “Is there any way that you could just… I don’t know… cause a network meltdown? Metaphorically bomb their servers or send a supervirus through. Whatever it is you system ghosts do in those circumstances.” Trace asked, grasping at straws, and throwing out terms he had seen in holovids in the past. His introduction to real-life programming had taught him much of that was made-up scat. However, without more experience in the system breaching aspect of things, he couldn’t tell just how much or which specific items.

  Deckard burst out laughing at the man’s ignorance. “Sure, I’ll just send something like that through open connections and expect it to work. No, I would have to create a private connection to send them through, which could be traced. So, I would have to create a full connection at my last jump connection, which would introduce even more lag. It would also be even more detectable.

  “The other option is taking everything slow and sending the various items in piece by piece. The same way I used to gain access originally. Doing things that slowly also gives them more time to detect the code fragments. Even if they don’t, once I compile them, we would be on a short-term clock to get everything finished.”

  “I mean, if I’m going in there to begin with, then we would be on a clock of sorts anyway, right?” Trace pointed out.

  Deckard grunted, a thoughtful look coming over the avatar’s face. “I’ll think about which method to use and start working on the programs. You concentrate on finishing your stealth suit and the helmet to hide your identity better. Your eyes might blur your face, but I doubt the effect is perfect.”

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