Deckard was right. It did take him several days to get the programming right. He had to do countless revisions during that time and worked on the helmet whenever he needed a break.

  The front of the helmet had the rebreather mask integrated into it as he shaped and reformed it, making it smoother and more streamlined.

  Eventually, all that was left to do was paint everything and then begin testing it all out.

  He mixed up the paint with plenty of hardener, covered the tiny lenses on the cameras, and began laying down the first coat of paint. In its base form, the paint was a dull matte grey. He laid down several coats of the paint, removed the tape that was over the lenses, and hung the suit and helmet up to dry.

  As soon as he was done, a new notification appeared in the corner of his vision.

  - New Perk unlocked and has been identified as ‘Newby Student 1’

  - Newby Student 1 – You are now better able to integrate knowledge that you have seen, heard, or read

  Well, that would be nice to have, although he wasn’t entirely sure how much value it would give him these days. He wasn’t really around other people who did this kind of work, and most learning and teaching was done through the modules. There was some reading in those things, but most of it was active learning, or the teacher talking to you while you actively did something. Either way, he wouldn’t say no to it. If nothing else, it was the system’s way of acknowledging the effort he had put into the suit and saying he had reached a certain level of skill at last.

  Perks were nice, but they were slow in coming so far.

  Now that the stealth suit was mostly done, they could start looting the scav dens. The number of possible options had gone up explosively during the time in which he had been busy. The reapers had been doing their best to wipe out all the scavs from the city.

  Before he could message Monroe and let him know the good news, he received a message of his own. It was from Pushman, asking him to come over as soon as he was able to.

  Trace sent the original planned message to Monroe and then left to go talk to Pushman.

  At his apartment, he found the man looking much better than the last time he had seen him. He was still walking somewhat stiffly, but he at least no longer looked like he was on death’s door. However, his scars were still an angry red, and he looked to have lost some muscle mass.

  The man was still alive, but without his sister, and no longer having any hope of personally getting revenge, he was lost.

  Trace carefully dropped two duffel bags beside the couch. The clink of metal clueing Pushman as to what might be inside the bags.

  “You brought me back my guns?” He asked in surprise.

  Trace nodded. “Well, mostly. I’m keeping the sniper rifle for now, but everything else I’ve managed to get my own version of in some form. I won’t say they’re all as good as yours, but I like them, and that actually seems to count for more. I took these, but never really ever used them. I think I like the idea of a collection more than anything.” He shrugged and took a seat. “I’ll be keeping the modules for a while longer though.”

  Pushman waved his hand. “As long as they're being used, it’s fine. Not like I’d be getting any use out of them at this point.” The man sighed, his eyes going toward the large glass door and the small balcony beyond. He gave a small shake of his head and continued. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about that request you made. Come here, I want to show you this.”

  Inside his office, all the items pertaining to his planned attack on the Sekmore corporation had been removed. In their place, new information pertaining to Siren’s Rush had been carefully written down and then connected in a confusing maze of lines.

  “You seem to have been hard at work. I think… I can’t really understand what is going on here,” Trace leaned closer to the first board and slowly began to understand what was going on with all the lines. Pushman was keeping track of people in the corporation. “How are you managing to keep track of them while being stuck here?”

  “Micro-drone, and besides, I’m not stuck here. I just can’t move around well. I sold my old truck and bought a van that I outfitted as something I could spend an entire day in.”

  “Ah, so you would park near the building with your chosen target, send up your little drones, and then begin doing your thing?” Trace guessed.

  Pushman nodded. “Pretty much. I have a smaller computer setup in the back, so I can continue to search for information while controlling the drones with my NetConnect.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “How much information have you managed to gather then? Why did you want to talk?”

  “That’s part of what I need to speak with you about.” Pushman walked over to his desk and down with a sigh of relief. “Apparently, Siren’s Rush learned a few things from my attack on Sekmore Snak-Co. They are in the process of revamping all their security measures at the moment. So, unless you are prepared to attack them at this very moment, I won’t have anything on their security for a while. I’ll keep gathering information on the people and their routines until then, of course.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  “It’s fine. Miss Devko helped me as well. What these corporations do is DISGUSTING!” He broke down into a coughing fit at the sudden rage that had him yelling and thumping on his desk computer.

  Trace waited for the man to regain his ability to breathe properly, before vocally prodding him. “I understand that this job isn’t going to be a short one. I never expected it to be something short, so that’s fine. It just needs to be done right. What else did you want to talk about?”

  Pushman opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. “There were a few more items about Siren’s Rush, but they can wait until later. This was the main item I wanted to talk to you about.” He tapped a few items on a keyboard that was visible only to his augmented eyes and then made a flicking motion.

  The wall of the office lit up with information and a picture of a man with a blurred-out face that could possibly be Trace. It was nice to know that the facial blurring effect did indeed work. The rest of the information on the wall made for much less happy reading.

  “Where did you get this?” Trace asked him after taking the time to read it over several times.

  “An old informant of mine. She’s a secretary at a pleasure doll house, and that came across her desk the other day. She knows I’m now a job broker, and thought it might interest me, and guess what? It did.”

  “Yeah, how are you enjoying the new gig?” He asked distractedly, not looking away from the bounty notice on the wall.

  “It’s interesting and actually fits me rather well. You have to do a lot more information gathering on each of the jobs before handing them. I have people for that, but I still have to sort through it all on my own. It’s a lot more intricate than I used to believe. Now stop stalling. What’s going on with this bounty? There’s no name or face, but that is definitely you.”

  “It is, and I didn’t realize they had put out a bounty as well. He wasn’t supposed to be allowed to go that far,” Trace muttered, tapping at his chin. “It’s the remnants of a job I did a while ago. I took out an android which ended up being owned and controlled at the time by someone high up in a corporation. I assume it’s RyZyx, but I never actually got a proper name for which one it is. The man apparently is interested in getting revenge.” Trace kept going, relaying the entire narrative to him.

  “Let me get this straight. You interrupted some deal that RyZyx had going on in the wastelands, and since then this guy has turned all the gangs in the city into overactive idiots while they supposedly search for you. Which they instead took as orders to try and take over territories and go to war with each other.” Trace nodded. “Right, so when ‘Plan Shizz Brain’ didn’t work as expected, he began handing out bounty notices.”

  “I guess. I mean, this is the first time I’ve seen them. I’ve been holed up inside my warehouse the last few days working on a project. Something that I really wish I was wearing right now, in fact.”

  Trace raced back to the warehouse. He wasn’t willing to take any chances that he might get recognized and shot at. It didn’t matter that his face was blurred on the bounty, the other details more than made up for that.

  As soon as he was back, he slipped out of his clothes, put on a skintight jumpsuit, and prepared to use the suit for the first time. The sides of the stealth suit were undone, allowing him to easily glide inside. Everything clipped snuggly into place, and the plug slipped automatically into the neck port. On the neck of the suit was a row of exposed connectors that the helmet would use to connect to everything.

  He placed the helmet to the side, not wanting to put it on just yet.

  Trace spent a few minutes walking around the warehouse, getting used to the weight of the suit. All the light armor plates, electronics, and carbon fiber pieces added around thirty-five pounds, give, or take a few pounds, likely give. It was well balanced, with no one area caring too much weight.

  That said, he had already recognized one area where he had messed up. He hadn’t accounted for his courier bag or weapons when he designed it. There was no place to store anything naturally. He could, of course, strap on his holsters, and bag like he always did, but if he did that, then they wouldn’t be disguised. Doing that would effectively make the entire suit pointless.

  He already had a few ideas for the guns and knife issue. The bag would require more time.

  Directing his attention to his HUD, Trace clicked on the icon for the program that Deckard had created. As it was the first time it was being run, it ran through all the cameras one by one, and then the various sections of paint. The program analyzed how well the connection performed over each section of the suit. From there, it began shifting through the various colors at different speeds before settling on a dark camouflage pattern that would help him blend into the shadows. Inside the program, there were multiple preset camouflage settings, along with active stealth which used the cameras.

  Grabbing the helmet, he put it on, and the program integrated it into its camouflage after running it through the initial analysis.

  Turning on the active stealth, he began walking around the warehouse, watching as the colors shifted on the suit. The view was slightly blurry, but it wasn’t too bad. He had covered the eyeholes on the helmet with a single light-layer of paint so they would blend in with everything else. It allowed him to see through the holes while still keeping the stealth effective.

  If he moved too quickly, the paint couldn’t quite keep up, but it was actually more robust than he had originally thought it would be. Regular walking speeds were fine. It was anything above that where the color-changing started to become a problem. Of course, this was inside the warehouse, where there wasn’t much difference in the overall background behind him.

  What was more of an issue was how hot the control module and wireless energy receiver unit, against his back, were getting. Active stealth mode took a bit more power than he had anticipated. He would need to bump up the cooling for the suit and the wireless energy receiver unit while he was making the modifications for his weapons.

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